Author's Note

Happy Friday the 13th everybody! Hope you have a lucky one. I know I'm enjoying mine so far. Plus you guys get another chapter so that's lucky, right?

I remember having a lot of trouble with this chapter. It jumps around a bit more than I would have liked it to and spans a lot of stuff, and time, but I hope you still like it.

Go onward and enjoy!

Training

Telling Barry she's a mutant the next day is a bit anticlimactic.

She's nervous about it all night and all the next morning, even though the odds of him reacting as well as Owen are good, especially since Owen vouches for him pretty confidently, but she still stresses over it. So when they take him out to her paradise, Barry following behind them on his ATV, she just sort of mutely leads them into the meadow, abruptly turns to face him when they get there, and blurts it out, "I'm a mutant."

She then sticks her hand out holding a seed and makes it grow in about two seconds, eyes screwed up tight and shoulders hunched.

"Well, that explains a lot," is all Barry says and she cracks her eyes open to see that there is absolutely none of the shock Owen portrayed the day before.

"You're not surprised?" she asks, bewildered. "Not even a little bit?"

"Oh, I am surprised, but I am a lot better at dealing with surprises. Did Owen tell you about my grandfather?"

"Yeah…."

"Well, you try growing up with a teleporting grandfather. You would be used to surprises, too."

Liv lets out a breathy laugh, finally lowering her hand with the flower. Yeah, she can understand that.

They then all sit down in the grass and Liv explains in a bit more detail about what all she can do, like what she did with Owen. It's weird, actually getting to talk about it all. She's had no one to share this with for so long. Everything dealing with her mutation, she's always had to tough it out on her own, trying to understand it, learning all she can do. Being able to tell them and actually vocalize it all for once is refreshing.

And then Barry offers to help her learn even more.

"But you're not a mutant," Liv protests, not meaning anything mean by it, but Barry is a normal. He doesn't have any abilities, so how could he possibly help her learn about her own?

"My grandfather told me much about what he could do and how he learned to control his abilities. He said the key to being able to travel to places he had never laid eyes on before was to first gaze upon the pieces of himself he'd never seen before."

"The pieces of himself? What, you mean like looking inward through meditation or something?"

"Yes, exactly. I believe you could benefit from his teachings, for your abilities have to do directly with your most inner self, your aura as you call it. If you take the time to better understand your inner self then perhaps it will help you master your aura as a tool, enable you to use your abilities effortlessly without the drain you felt after the Triceratops and maybe even enable you to do things you never even dreamed of before."

"Did it help your grandfather?"

"Yes. When he first started out, he could only teleport to places he had been to before. With time, effort, and meditation, he was able to gaze at a picture of a place and then take himself there, and then, later, even that aid he did not need. He was able to reach out with his inner self and find the place he wished to go without needing to see anything at all. He discovered that it was his inner self that was taking the journey first before his body all along. Meditation helped him realize what was happening and then helped him to be able to send his inner self on the journey himself wherever he wanted to go."

Liv leans back on her hands, staring up at the sky for a moment. "You really think meditation will help me understand my aura and how it works?"

"Yes, I do."

"And you can teach me?"

"My grandfather taught me everything he knew since it is good for all souls, not just mutant."

She casts a questioning glance to Owen but he just holds up his hands. "Hey, don't look at me. I don't know anything about meditation yoga or whatever. It's up to you, kid."

Unhelpful, but, hey, meditation is basically sitting around doing nothing for an hour, right? It doesn't sound too hard, and it's not like it's going to hurt anything, so she nods. "Alright, I'll give it a try."

It's better than doing nothing. And she would love to get a better grasp on her abilities. Could come in handy one day.

"Excellent." Barry moves to sit in front of her, crossing his legs in a way that does not look like it should be possible, or at the very least should be painful. "Now close your eyes and take a deep breath."

"What, we're starting now?" She tries to mimic the way he has his legs twisted but quickly gives up, folding them in the traditional Indian style instead.

"No time like the present."

"In that case," Owen lays back in the grass, lacing his fingers together on his stomach, "I'm going to take a nap."

Barry closes his eyes, hands resting lightly on his knees, and says bluntly, "Snore and I will send you back to the Research Center to do those reports you neglected to do yesterday."

"Hey, I have an excuse! I was busy finding out Liv is a mutant."

Liv snorts and Barry shakes his head. "Quiet now," he says. "Liv, close your eyes."

Learning meditation is…interesting.

Okay, so it's mostly boring, but she is trying, even though most of the time she's really close to falling asleep.

Barry says that in order to look upon her inner self she first has to tune out the outside world and focus on her own body. She's glad they only do this in her paradise. There are far less distractions in the forest than there would be in the Research Center. She likes sitting in silence, she's used to it from being on her own all the time. So the not talking part is easy for her. It's the emptying her mind and focusing on nothing but her own body that's difficult. Barry instructs her to concentrate on individual parts of her body, starting with the crown of her head and gradually flowing down to the ends of her toes. She is to concentrate on that and nothing else.

Yeah, boring. But she makes herself do it because Barry says it really works if she has patience and she's not one to give up.

It just takes a while to get the hang of it.

It's not like she isn't already self-aware of her own aura, though, because she is. It's just that she can only see and touch and control her own aura when she actually needs it to do something. When she needed to heal the trike it was easy to bring her aura forward and use it to manipulate the trike's. But when she just wants to look at it and understand it without actually doing anything? It's hard. It's hard to understand just how it is that she's able to call on her aura when she needs to. It like her body instinctively knows how to do a pirouette and now she's trying to figure out how each of her limbs move in order to accomplish it. Barry says that if she can change it from instinct to conscious action, then she'll be able to open up the possibilities of what she can do.

Owen comes with them every time they go out to meditate, even though he's basically just lazing about doing nothing. She keeps expecting him to ask about Vic again, to ask plainly this time if her father is hurting her. But he never does.

She gets the feeling he's waiting for her.

She wonders sometimes if she shouldn't just tell him, the main reason she was holding back in the first place was because she didn't want to tell him she's a mutant. But she can never get the words out, her fear of Vic and what he would do to her making them get stuck in her throat. Besides, Vic has been strangely absent lately. She doesn't see him as often as she used to. He's no longer the near-constant shadow lingering around the paddock to watch training sessions. Something else is occupying his time, so she worries less about incurring his anger and it makes it easy to slip away to her paradise with Owen and Barry. Vic has no idea she's hanging out with them so much, so even when she does see him, he leaves her alone.

She's content to leave things as they are for now, because at least this way she knows she gets to stay with Owen. If she tells him and he helps her get away from Vic, she could very easily end up being taken away and she'll lose him.

Besides, she's content to just leave things as they are for now, because at least this way she knows she gets to stay with Owen. If she tells him and he helps her get away from Vic, she could very easily end up being taken away and lose him.

So she just pushes it all from her mind and gets back to meditating.

Oddly enough, being able to call upon her aura at will isn't a gradual change but more like the flip of a switch. One minute she's focusing on the tip of her nose and the next she's seeing herself glowing red, eyes closed. She shifts from her nose to focusing on her own aura, of the feel of it around her and inside her. It's like a warm pressure, extremely subtle to where she usually doesn't notice it at all, but she does now. It pulses and moves around her, like a layer of water over her skin. It's just as slippery, too, as she grasps it, tries to get it to move, but without any clear direction or goal it only pulses a little more quickly and then settles again. She huffs in frustration.

"Just concentrate, Liv," Barry says in front of her. "Don't force it. Recognize the natural movements your body and aura already know and learn to do them yourself."

She takes a deep breath and nods, more to herself than anyone else. Instead of trying to force her aura to do anything she just stares at it for a while, studying it. After a few moments she realizes it's different than the other auras. All the other auras she's ever gazed upon, they've often reminded her of fog or smoke, they exist but not with any real solidity. Her aura is firmer. It has actual substance, which is probably why it's able to manipulate other auras.

She tries it, placing a seed on the ground next to her and reaching her aura out to mix with the green aura of the seed. It doesn't just mix, though, like she always thought. It creates a kind of membrane around the green aura, but it's not perfect and filled with holes. As she urges the seed to grow she can see some of the smoke escaping the membrane, the seed's aura fighting against her own. This is probably why it took so much more effort to heal the Triceratops. The membrane has too many holes and the trike's aura was probably slipping out of her control too much to where she had to instinctively fight harder in order to get the other aura to listen to her. Now, she concentrates on the membrane, concentrates on closing the holes until each of them are filled, creating a perfect bubble.

She smiles, continuing to encourage the seed to grow and feeling it respond a lot faster now.

And then the sunlight behind her eyelids is blotted out by shadow.

"Uh, Liv?" Owen says, voice sounding odd, and she opens her eyes to ask him what's wrong.

Only to see that where before there was open field there is now a huge tree right next to her, its branches sweeping high above them to practically cover the entire meadow. It's the seed she had been growing, and it's the same size as some of the trees that she's been gradually growing for years.

"Holy crap, did I do that?" she can't help but ask aloud. She knows she did it, but it's just that she's never been able to grow anything so fast before.

Barry laughs joyfully, clasping her shoulder firmly with his hand. "I believe, my girl, that you are getting the hang of it."

With a slight nudge in the opposite direction, Liv watches as the tree shrinks, reverting back down to a seed in seconds. She turns to Owen and Barry, both of them grinning at her, and she grins back. "Yeah, I think you're right."

Her grin vanishes as her ears are filled with frantic screaming, like a thousand voices screeching at once. She lets out a choked-off scream of her own, curling into a ball on the ground and covering her ears against the noise and the pain.

But still she hears them. All of the auras on the island crying out at once. It's almost louder than last time, if possible.

She automatically turns her attention to the two burning auras of the new predators, because why else would the entire island be panicking?

Well, unless there was yet another new predator, but she's not going to contemplate that idea.

The thought dies as soon as she focuses on the two predators though. Whatever they're doing, their auras are raging in anger and fury, burning hotter and hotter as if trying to outdo each other, but it's always been obvious that one is stronger than the other.

What is going on? What are they doing?

And then, as soon as it started, it stops. Not the screaming, but the predators, because, in an instant, they go from two to one.

One of the predators died. Based on the panicking residents of the island and the way the predators' auras themselves seemed to be fighting each other, Liv would bet anything that they fought each other, and then one killed the other. The stronger one is victorious, of course.

And she made the final kill without any remorse, without almost any feelings at all, really. If she were human, Liv would be tempted to call the dinosaur a sociopath. She just killed her sibling like it was nothing. Not even Blue was like that when she was fighting against Echo. That had been about dominance, about staking her claim as beta. She didn't want to kill Echo but would have if it came down to it because a beta never backs down no matter what. But this, this had no purpose. There was only two of them, there didn't need to be a leader. They weren't pack animals.

But she killed her and it scares Liv. It scares the entire island.

When the screams finally quiet down once more and she's able to force herself to look away from the predator's aura, she becomes aware that Owen's cradling her to his chest, rocking back and forth and murmuring soothing words in her ear. She turns her face into the crook of his neck, clinging to him, grateful that this time he's with her and she doesn't have to go racing blind through the jungle. She lets him calm her, lets him reassure her that she's safe, but is she really?

The future does not bode well with a dinosaur like this on the island. Liv can almost hear the faint echoes of the Jurassic Park victims, claiming that those who do not learn from the past are doomed to repeat it.

So Liv decides to warn them. She tells Owen and Barry of the new dinosaurs born in the labs months ago, of how they've sent the entire park into a frenzy of fear, and how one has now killed the other. None of these dinosaurs need to kill for food. It's provided to them, more than their stomachs will ever need.

This was murder.

"I'm scared, Owen," Liv says, still held firmly in Owen's arms, like a child in the arms of her father after a nightmare, but this isn't a nightmare and she's not claiming it as one this time. "The whole island is scared. I can feel their fear, all the time, but I don't know how to stop it. What do we do?"

Owen and Barry share a long, hard look. "I'm not sure," Owen finally admits, "but if this dinosaur is as dangerous as you say she is, then we can't just do nothing."

"At the very least we should find out what she is," Barry says. "Figure out where she's being contained. How large she is, how dangerous she is. And what her chances are of escaping."

A shiver runs down Liv's spine. If this dinosaur, this monster, ever escapes, it will mean death to the entire island.

And she can't let that happen.

"What do you need me to do?" she asks.

"For now, you don't need to do anything," Owen says firmly. She opens her mouth to argue but he narrows his eyes at her sternly. "Let Barry and I handle it."

She lets out a huff. "Fine."

"Do not worry, Liv," Barry says, trying to sound reassuring but slightly missing the mark. "For now, all you need to do is focus on you and strengthening your abilities."

Liv nods and moves away from Owen, moving to continue her meditation. If she can't do anything right now, fine. The least she can do is this. She can unlock any new aspects to her abilities. She can get stronger. Stronger than this monster.

They may need it.

Barry and Owen snoop around, trying to find out more about the new dinosaur, but just keep running into walls. Liv isn't much surprised though. They can't admit to knowing the dinosaur exists without telling anyone how they found out, meaning outing her as a mutant, but they are trying, stopping just short of breaking any laws.

She's not sure whether she actually wants them to break the law or not, if it comes down to it, if it's their only remaining option. They need to find out more but, for now, there is no real need to worry. There is no real danger. She's safely locked away, growing frighteningly fast, but not getting out any time soon.

In the meantime, Liv's meditation sessions continue and she continues to get better, faster, stronger. It's a bit of a high, learning how to better control her abilities. Plants grow with a simple wave of her hand and she feels like she can grow another paradise in just a few minutes.

But it doesn't stop there.

She's always had a sort of empathy or something, she knows that. Well, not empathy, exactly. More like she's able to tell what another is feeling based on what she sees in their aura. It works mostly with just animals and not humans. Humans have a natural instinct to protect their inner selves, to protect what they're truly feeling, so she doesn't really get any emotions from human auras. She imagines, with practice, that could change, but she's not particularly interested in that. She doesn't want to know what someone else is thinking and feeling all the time.

With animals, however, it is extremely useful. It's mostly been just little things in the past. She knew the Triceratops didn't want to die. She knows the new predator is the complete opposite of warm and fuzzy. Now she's getting better at picking out individual emotions. And she's starting to be able to use it in regards to the raptors. She can tell when they're having a good day or a bad day, when they're being playful or are really annoyed. She can tell when they really get a training exercise or when they don't understand what Owen is trying to get them to do.

Then one afternoon she discovers that it's not just a one-way street.

She's up on the catwalk, waiting for Owen and Barry. They're going to go hang out at her paradise again but she has to wait for them to finish some reports. In the meantime, she's playing with the raptor squad like she did before, throwing rats out into the forest of their enclosure for them to hunt down. The raptors are fully grown now, making them almost as tall as Owen, definitely taller than her considering she hasn't grown much in the height department, and they're a good four meters long from snout to tail.

They're basically big enough to ride but there's no way she's going to test that.

Since no one else is around she takes a quick peek at their auras. They're happy for the extra treats and excited that she's paying attention to them. That makes her pause, that they'd be so attached to her. She still doesn't understand how she's become a part of their pack. What has she done to deserve their trust and loyalty? Why do they care?

She's just tossed another rat when that last thought crosses her mind and, instead of going after the snack like they always do, the raptors each come to a jarring halt at the tree line and turn to look up at her. She looks around, thinking maybe Owen climbed up the stairs behind her, but she's still alone. Brow furrowed, she takes a look at their auras to try to figure out why they stopped.

The sense of mine going through them and spreading down the pack bond connected to her is so astounding she has to grab onto the guardrail to keep her balance. They really, really do consider her part of the pack, but that still doesn't tell her why.

The emotions suddenly shift, going slightly less mine and more affectionate and protective, almost like….

Almost like they consider her their own hatchling.

"But I'm older than you!" she protests aloud, even though they probably don't understand the words. She was born way before them, she was there when they freaking hatched. Why in the world would they consider her the baby of the bunch?

"You alright, Liv?" Owen asks, coming up the stairs and coming across the catwalk to join her, Barry right behind him.

She points down frantically at the raptors. "I finally know where I fall in the pack."

"And where would that be?"

After a few false starts, trying to not make this sound completely weird and gross, she finally settles on, "They've gone all mother bear on me."

Barry arches a surprised brow. "They think of you as their own offspring?"

"Yes. At least, I think so." She rubs her forehead in frustration. "I mean, I can sort of understand their emotions by looking at their auras, so it's kind of hard to understand, but…yeah. I think that's what they're trying to say. But why would they think that? I'm not a Velociraptor! And I'm older!"

"Well, the age thing is more complicated than that," Owen says, leaning against the rail with amusement in his eyes. "You see, they're fully matured adults now while you're still just a kid. They can probably smell your adolescence. To them, they're older than you."

Liv's mouth falls open slightly and she sputters, "What, you mean like dog years?"

"Exactly. So in the pack, since they're technically more mature than you, that automatically places you as one of the young and them the adults."

She sighs. Of course it does. "But what about them treating me as their hatchling or whatever? We're not even the same species."

"To some animal species, especially birds, that doesn't matter," Barry explains. "The cuckoo will hatch her eggs in another bird's nest, often a bird of a different species, who then raises the baby cuckoo as one of her own. Species does not matter to them."

"So they've basically adopted me? Wait, but if they're the adults and I'm the baby or whatever, why do they listen to my commands? They listen to me almost as well as they listen to Owen."

Owen shrugs. "Don't know. You'll have to ask them that."

"They know simple commands but that's not exactly enough to have a conversation."

"I don't know, kid. You can understand them pretty well. How do you know it won't work unless you try?"

She looks at him a bit skeptically but then Barry says, "Go ahead, Liv. Try it. You have said that you share a unique connection with the raptors, a bond that connects your aura to theirs. Perhaps there is something you can do with it."

It sounds crazy. Bonds have never been anything more than emotional connections shared between people. They're not magical bonds or anything like that. People can't do anything with them, no telepathy or physic link or any kind of special ability.

But Liv isn't normal. Her aura isn't normal. It's made of different stuff that allows her to do things no one else can. Would it really be any different here?

She closes her eyes and concentrates, finding it easy now to bring her aura into focus. But it isn't just her aura she needs to look at right now. She also concentrates on the pack bond she shares with the raptors. It's grown since the first time she's seen it, stronger, thicker. Still not as thick as their bond with Owen, but that will probably always be the case. He is their alpha, after all. Still, they care about her, just as she cares about them, and it's connected them in a way.

Following the bond, she feels along it until they branch out into each of the raptors' auras. They've gone off into the forest in search of the rat, but she can sense their curiosity. They know she's up to something.

With a deep breath, she reaches out to the pack bond with her own aura. She doesn't envelope it like she does to grow plants or heal animals. That doesn't feel like the right thing to do, so she follows her instincts, instead grasping the bond and giving an experimental tug.

The raptors stop in their tracks and she can feel them swivel their heads to look at her even though she can't see them. Heart racing excitedly, she digs her fingers into the bond, so to speak, and tries to send a thought along it.

Come here.

They don't move. Licking her lips, she tries again, this time less word-based. Human language is still mostly a mystery to them, so she tries to send an image instead, of them standing in the clearing below her.

There's a slight rustling of leaves and Liv opens her eyes to see the raptor squad standing in the clearing, just as she asked them to. She grins, sending her love and affection for them down through the bond and they return the feelings to her just as fiercely.

It really is a two-way street. She can send things, just as she can receive things from them. She wonders if she's been unconsciously doing it all this time which is why they listen to her commands so easily, but that doesn't explain why they listen to her at all.

She can feel their loyalty to her. She takes that emotion and sends it back to them, along with her own curiosity and just one word, hoping they understand what she's trying to ask.

Why?

At that, they look to Owen, and then back to her. Back to Owen, and then back to her. She sends them her confusion but they just keep doing the same thing. They look to Owen, and then back to her.

She looks at Owen as well, brow furrowed, trying to understand. What does Owen have to do with them listening to her? Running out of ideas, she takes a look at his aura. And is surprised by what she finds.

There's a bond as thick as a rope running from his aura to hers.

Tears quickly fill her eyes and she covers her mouth with her hand. She knows he cares about her, especially after what was said when he found out she's a mutant, but she didn't expect there to be a bond, at least, not one so strong. It's stronger than what he shares with even the raptors. They must be able to sense it, somehow, the deep connection her and Owen share.

Owen's hands suddenly cups her face, wiping her tears away. "Liv," he says, concern in his eyes, "what do you see?"

"I-I see a bond," she says, voice thick with emotion. "Between you and me."

He smiles softly. "Of course there is, kiddo. You said that's what happens when people care a lot about each other, right?"

She sniffs loudly, wiping at her face. "Yeah, I guess I shouldn't be surprised. But," she turns to look at the raptors who are still staring up at them, "why does my connection to you make them listen to me?"

"Maybe it's because they know it means they are not the only ones who adopted you," Barry supplies. "Maybe, in their eyes, you are their alpha's hatchling."

A longing pain shoots through her chest. She wishes that were really true, that she was actually Owen's daughter. Owen wraps an arm around her shoulders, squeezes, and she knows she's not the only one thinking it. "That still only makes me a hatchling," she says. "Would being the alpha's hatchling really make that much of a difference?"

"Maybe it's because you're human," Owen says, "and they know that, in reality, you're older than them. You have more experience and, as a human, have more intelligence and understanding of the world. You're not trapped in the paddock like them; you can come and go as you please. Maybe this is their way of acknowledging that, even though they feel the need to protect you as one of their young, they still know you're superior and they respect you."

Liv hums thoughtfully to herself, rolling that thought around in her head and examining the pack bond more closely. It does explain the strange mixture of emotions coming from them, the strong need to protect and the strong need to listen to her. Though, if she were down in that paddock with them, would those feelings still hold true?

She fishes another rat out of the bucket and throws it into the trees, the four raptors immediately darting off in search of it. "Well, whether you're right or not, that's probably as good an explanation as we're going to get."

It's nice to know they're on her side, whatever the reason. She gets the feeling she's going to need all the help she can get for whatever trouble this new dinosaur brings.

Author's Note

Alright, so like I said, a lot of stuff covered in this chapter.

Liv doesn't fess up to the abuse quite yet. I know a lot of you were hoping she would, but as you can see, admitting she's a mutant wasn't the only thing that was making her hold back. If she gets taken away from Vic, she'll lose the only good things she has, but with Vic's mysterious absence, she's fine to leave things as they are.

I wasn't quite sure exactly when the Indominus was supposed to eat her sibling, so I had it happen at only a couple months old. They apparently grow really fast, according to the movie, so it could have happened at any time. I always saw it as such a sinister thing to do. The Indominus herself is sinister to me. Some people don't like her portrayed as a monster, but if she were human that's exactly what we'd call her. She killed her sister for no good reason. Killing humans, okay, I can see that being justified. She didn't like being locked up and only wanted her freedom. I get that. But then she started killing other dinosaurs for sport. She saw herself as superior, and again, I understand that since she's an animal, but other animals don't kill needlessly like that just to prove their superiority. The way Owen reacted, it sounded like very unusual behavior. Honestly, the Indominus kind of reminded me of a serial killer.

And then there's the raptors. I know you guys have been waiting to find out why they've brought her into the pack like they have, and I hope this was satisfying. And believable. I don't know, I'm not sure why my head went this way but it felt right at the time. Let me know what you think.

Next chapter will be Sunday. And next chapter...I am so excited for next chapter. I was excited when I was finally able to write next chapter.

Why am I so excited when I get to be mean to my characters?

But the fluff! And raptor puppy piles!

Hope you enjoyed, PLEASE REVIEW, and see you all next time!