BBRae Week: Day 2

Awkward Moments vs Primal

She watched the young boy struggle in vain.

They slammed him against the wall, his small frame hitting the concrete with a loud, reverberating thud. His cheek pressed hard against the cement, and he squirmed helplessly all the while they held him down. His eyes, the colour of forest trees and glittering jade, locked with hers; a silent plea for help.

He was the last normie left in the project.

The more time that had passed, the more they'd all innocently assumed that not even their cold-hearted captures would have the nerve to weaponize the sweetest, most kind-hearted soul in the place.

Of course, they'd been wrong.

So wrong.

Raven was made to watch, as she always was.

She would be their keeper, should things take a nasty turn.

Something inside her cracked at the way he looked at her; something she'd thought long gone. He was succumbing to his fate; she could feel it, but hot tears spilled down his cheeks, and he never once took his eyes off her.

She had to remain neutral.

There was nothing she could do; nothing that wouldn't simply get them both killed if she so much as tried.

A fate as a weapon was far more hopeful than a total death sentence. Perhaps, his wouldn't be so bad. Some of those gifted abilities were hardly altered at all.

Liar.

A voice in her head wouldn't even allow her the comfort of a fib; not in this hellhole. She could recall how they'd meticulously taken their time developing and testing Garfield's particular serum. They'd saved him for last. Not out of sympathy, but because his was the most potent, and had most likely killed previous test subjects before him.

They had to get it just right.

Couldn't afford to squander any potential viable hosts.

Raven forced herself to look away when they began to strip him of the dirty rags they called clothes, exposing his pale skin to the cold sterility of the room. He was shivering. Whether from fear or chill, Raven could not tell.

The syringe glistened in the artificial light, the bubbling green serum pulsating with life in the glass chamber.

They were going to inject him with it.

Even in the tube, it looked menacing; like a deadly, toxic poison. She didn't know what it was going to do to him. She didn't know what weapon they'd bestow upon him. So, Raven took one last lingering look at the boy with sunshine in his hair, and tried to commit him to memory. Just in case.

He bucked when the sharp needle pierced his skin, a near silent scream leaving his opened mouth. His eyes closed shut from both the pain and the exhaustion, and he grimaced before he stopped moving entirely. Tears still lingered in his pale lashes, and the moisture from his running nose dribbled down over his mouth and to his chin.

Raven didn't realize she'd been holding her breath. She didn't know that her expression had betrayed her own emotions; it had been so long since she'd felt anything for the subjects, she'd nearly forgotten what it was like. It both saddened and terrified her to know how effectively they'd vetted the human out of her.

Slowly, the green toxin disappeared from it's chamber as the administrator pushed the plunger of the needle down.

Garfield Mark Logan.

She knew him, only not when he was so dead in the eyes.

He was the kid full of life and vigor, even in a place as desolate as this. Those first few spring flowers that grew between the concrete, somehow thriving in a wasteland; that was Gar. With his golden hair, the striking green of his irises, and youthful smile, he was widely loved among the group. A ray of sunshine, he was always making jokes and cheering people up, even when all they did was push him away or put him down.

He was resilient.

Persistent.

Above all, he was optimistic.

To Raven, he'd always stood out.

Someone just out of reach, someone she'd often hoped and longed for. She hated how she craved his attention; how she'd often wished that it was her he'd doted on instead of the others. Being in his presence was akin to feeling the warmth of the sun against her face again.

What was it like, to be loved by someone so full of the emotion?

Raven was no fool; she had long since accepted that she'd never come to know such a thing. Nonetheless, dreams cost nothing, and in the least, she was allowed that much.

That was why, this time around, it was difficult to go through with her part.

The boy made of summer was vanishing right before her eyes. His body, frail and helpless, had slumped down to the ground as the guard backed away steadily.

The entire room was silent, holding its breath in the few crucial moments that always dictated what would happen next.

Raven was ready.

She always had to be ready.

This time, for Garfield's sake.

For a few moments, the boy she'd considered her muse lay perfectly still, much like he would in all her drawings of him.

And then the convulsions started.

They raked his body in violent waves, sending him thrashing wildly about on the spot.

Raven's hands had curled into tight fists, her nails digging into her palms hard enough to leave marks.

The monitors that surveyed his vital signs spiked, alarms beeping as the numbers grew higher and higher. Judging by the looks on their faces, the doctors and scientists could have presumed he'd died; there was no way any individual would have survived such a shock to their system.

"Oh, God…"

The guard's breathy prayer drew their attention away from the screens immediately.

The soldiers were all backing away, watching the scene with newly registered horror on their faces. Raven could feel the way fear spiked from within them.

This one was going to be bad.

The empath's eyes widened, and she nearly rubbed at them with her shaking hands, thinking that what she was witnessing must have been an illusion of some kind.

Garfield's skin was slowly changing colour. It had started at the site of the injection, and it spread along his body like a potent virus, turning every part of him a green so splendid, it could have rivalled the color of his irises.

It climbed up his back, around to his ribcage, up to his throat, and even his face. It hit the nape of his neck, where Raven briefly wondered if his luscious, golden locks would be spared.

They were not.

Every part of Garfield Logan was now green, including the soft waves of his hair, as if he'd been painstakingly painted over without a single detail spared.

It was perhaps, aside from Cyborg, the most bizarre transformation Raven had ever witnessed at the camp.

Only when the serum had taken complete effect did the spasms finally wind down to a halt.

Not a moment later, Garfield's eyes shot open, and something a lot like a menacing growl rumbled in his throat. Amber swirled in his irises, now a thin golden ring around the black of his dilated pupils.

Raven felt the hairs on the back of her neck stand on end, and in moments, she was ushered into the room by force.

In seconds, the scene before her had changed, as had the innocent boy she'd come to admire from afar.

Garfield Logan was gone.

In his place stood a tall, angry, frothing at the mouth, monster.

For the first time in a long time, the girl was scared. She was terrified, practically cowering on the spot.

He'd effectively thrashed the guards against the walls with a ferocious roar, and they were currently slumped over, lifeless, a trail of red staining the otherwise white canvas of the room.

The strength in his ferocious claws was no doubt unmatched by anything they dished out at him, and it was only a matter of time before his eyes, no longer human, locked with hers.

Raven was the last one left standing, and no one else would dare enter until she did what she'd been groomed to do.

Somewhere on the ground, the syringe responsible for such devastation was laying in pieces.

He was breathing heavily, from the exertion of dealing with the guards who had tried to subdue him, and the tranquilizer serum they'd shot mercilessly into his furry body. Streaks of read oozed down his torso, and Raven knew he'd been wounded in the fight for control. The tranquilizer darts lay bloody on the floor next his massive, clawed haunches.

He huffed, his upper lip curling to reveal a set of sharp fangs glistening in the light. He was tall enough that he very nearly had to squat without hitting his head against the roof of the room.

Nonetheless, he did not move to attack her, and Raven took the opportunity to calm his erratic emotions.

She reached out with her abilities, carefully, tentatively. With gentle grace, she soothed away the feelings of fear, anger, and dread emanating from within the troubled, tragic beast before her.

She calmed him.

It took immense effort and concentration, as every time she would settle one emotion, the others would crop back up with the propeller that was his insurmountable anxiety. She was making him nervous, this strange, pale slip of a girl with the violet hair and quiet voice.

He wasn't sure he could quite trust her yet, with her peculiar scent and unique abilities.

Raven slowly stepped over the bodies, moving deliberately towards him. Her bare feet padded against the cold floor, expertly dodging the splatters of crimson blood around her. The closer she got, the more powerful her influence would be.

The monster seemed to stagger, as if forced back by an invisible aura.

Raven kept her eyes trained on him, unblinking.

He opened his maw, but only a weak whine gurgled from his throat, and then a long-winded howl of protest.

He could not hurt her.

He would not.

The boy still trapped within refused; the boy was guilt ridden and disgusted with the crimes he'd already committed. There was blood beneath his fingertips and nailbeds; the kind he couldn't scrub away.

By the time she reached him, he'd already begun shrinking in size, and Raven could have sung praises to the heavens; the transformation was not permanent, even though the green was evidently there to stay.

A naked boy cowered down towards the floor, hugging his knees to his chest while burying his face in his arms. He rocked gently, confused and unable to make sense of what he was feeling. His shoulders shook with every difficult heave he took, like oxygen was a foreign gas to his weakened lungs.

Raven sat next to him and reached out a delicate, pale hand towards his bare arm.

All his clothes were shredded from the change, and he was left entirely exposed in more ways than one.

Upon contact, she could use the full effect of her powers, and so, Raven absorbed what was left of his already mostly healed wounds, taking away any lingering pain.

Dry sobs wracked his body, and she did her best to absolve him of his more detrimental emotions, too.

When he was finally able to look up at the girl whose touch was cold as ice, she noted that his irises had returned to their more natural forest-green colour. They were bloodshot and tear stricken, but at least she could recognize him again. Her sunshine boy.

He searched the planes of her face like he was seeing her for the very first time, his pupils darting about in ways that made her heart gallop. Under any other circumstances, she might have blushed; he'd never looked at her that way before.

"R-Raven…?" He stammered, his voice hoarse and strained.

He knew her name.

That had caught her off guard.

When she didn't answer, too distracted with the notion that somehow, he'd noticed her enough to recall her name, Garfield glanced down at his unsteady hands.

Although much shorter now, his nails were still sharpened claws and very much a pigmented green. He stared at them with glassy eyes, terrified. "What…what am I…?"

Raven's fingers found his, drawing his attention back to her. She traced the many lines of his palm before whispering; "One of us."

-FIN