The Price of Feathers

Fury and Flames

Raven leads Dagne past the partygoers and directly towards the second floor. The Russian resists her urge to ask unnecessary questions because she is beyond curious about what was going to happen next.

Just before the last door in the hallway, Raven talks a moment to breathe, motioning for Dagne to stop as well. She does so and almost trips when she slides towards the wall. Raven has red eyes when she looks again, and Dagne's crystal blue eyes widen as her friend storms into the room.

There were muffled screams that stopped when they burst into the room. Dagne wanted to scream at Raven for her past self's stupidity, but when she sees a half-naked Sage with tears running down her eyes and two guys holding her down onto a bed, her eyes also turn red.

"Get off her," Rave growled at the two intimidating teenagers. One boy had shoulder-length blonde hair, and the other, who was kneeling on Sage's leg, had a rugby shirt on. The boys laughed at the younger Raven, although the older Raven had long replaced her. The blonde-haired boy stood up and made his way towards Raven. The orphan was shaking, and her knuckles were whitening under the force of her fists. This would not end well for anyone in this room or house if Raven unleashed her full fury on these bastards.

Dagne knew she was powerless to do anything, but she tried to call out to her friend and get her attention before killing Sage and everyone in a 40-kilometre radius. Then she remembered what was happening and that Sage survived, so she forced herself to take a step back and watch the situation play out with clenched teeth.

"Get. Away. From. Her." Raven growled, but as she spoke, her arms were heating up, and there were sparks of flames spilling out from behind her teeth. Sage's eyes widened but then closed. Raven's eyes turned completely black when she realised that Sage had passed out because of the boy kneeling on her. She didn't even flinch. She moved towards the boy and ripped him off the red-haired girl's body. Her body snapped towards the second boy who charged at her, and she caught him by plunging her fingers into his eyes and squeezing while her eyes hand was engulfed in flames. When the first boy realised what was happening, she turned towards the door and set the entire room alight. The blonde-haired bastard fell to his knees and started crying.

"Please, stop! Please don't hurt me. I'll stay away from here. I promise. It wasn't my fault. Rick forced me to take her. I prom-, "he didn't have a chance to finish his sentence because she ripped his heart out of his chest.

Then Raven's eyes, still completely black with an under glow of violent red, settled on the passed-out Sage. She walked up to the girl and picked her up. Raven was on autopilot when she broke the window with a laptop from the desk, and then Raven cleared out the window's glass before lifting up Sage and carrying the girl out of the window and jumping down to the group from the second story. Raven watched her younger self walk away from the burning house and back towards Sage's car. Thankfully she knew how to hotwire a car. She smiled at how the feeling of knowing that she got there in time to save Sage before those fuckers could do anything worse. Before she could fully appreciate the moment, she noticed all the people running out of the house. She hadn't really paid attention to them the first time around but now she couldn't help but chuckle at their panic. Now they were running. Not when Sage needed their help. They only really cared about themselves at the end of the day. Raven turned to walk away but noticed a girl enter the house. Towards the fire. She never noticed her, and she couldn't see her face but there was something about her that was familiar. She had a beautiful tattoo running down the length of her spine. Dagne recognised those tattoos immediately, but she didn't say anything. She needed to confront Amara about that when this was all done.

Raven motioned for Dagne to follow her. They took a single step, and they were back in Sage's room. The red head was still asleep, and Raven's eyes were still black while she went into the shower. She'd managed to sneak back into the house, not that she needed to consider her foster parents were still out of the house. There was something so terrifying about the way that Raven moved while in this trance. It was like she was a machine with a sole mission of protecting Sage and then wiping away all the evidence of her involvement. Raven settled herself into the chair opposite Sage's bed and fell asleep.

The actual Raven was speechless. She remembered saving Sage but so much of this seemed like it was a fictional reality. She knew that they blamed her for the fire, but she blamed it on the guys smoking upstairs. She had no idea that she had been tapping into her dragon powers that night. But it did make sense. So far, they'd realised that her dragon was triggered by fear and anger and that night, she felt both in equal measure. But how come she didn't remember coming home or cleaning up and going to sleep. She remembered waking up in Sage's room and having the red head look at her with wide eyes in the morning Sage woke up screaming and Raven rushed to her to console the crying girl. She didn't remember the specifics of what happened. She never saw Raven change, but she did she her barge in and that was enough to tell her that the girl beside her had stopped her from having the worst thing possible from happening to her. Without another word, she wrapped her arms around her foster sister's waist and refused to let go until the taller girl setting into the bed next to her. That's how they fell asleep that night, and every night after, wrapped in each other's arms.

Raven was blushing when she turned towards her trainer for the day.

"Comfy over there, Ash?" Dagne teased, but Raven refused to say anything. She tightened her grip around Sage and turned to face her entirely. She brushed the hair out of her face and kissed her forehead. Of course, younger Raven had never been this bold, but this Raven knew the feeling all too well, and she would give anything, including her own life, to get it back for real.

"Come on, sestra, and something tells me that this was the last part we needed to see," Dagne whispers and Raven whimpers at the loss of contact as the two friends silently exit the room and close the door behind them, exiting the illusion at the same time.

Raven sighs and falls to her knees on the yoga mat. Dagne kneeled beside her and rubbed her back. Raven wasn't crying. She had tears dried on her cheek, and there was a dead look in her eyes, but Dagne was going to get up to call Amara, despite what she saw in the memory, to ask her to help her roommate, but before she could get up, Amara walked towards them. She was going to going to talk to her about what she saw, but right now, that was not the priority. For now, they needed to damage control and help Raven heal from what she had just relived.

Raven was completely despondent. On the inside, the orphan felt completely overwhelmed as the emotions poured over her and she felt her younger self and her older self-merge emotionally. She felt like she wanted to scream and cry out, but she also felt a sense of calm wash over her. Amara knew exactly what to do. She lifted her up and carried her bridal style towards the sunroom. She laid her down on the sun bed and waited for the vitamin D to seem into her pours and calm down the black and silver-haired girl. Her pupils were dilated and racing across her eye back and forth. It would be a few moments right now.

Raven shot up and held her head. A white-hot pain clawed into her brain while the feeling of lemon juice seeped into the wounds. She cried out in pain, but Amara sat beside her and held her while she cried out.

Raven's eyes were red and watery and then looked up to Amara with doe eyes and cried out. She turned and buried her head in her shoulder and started to weep. This was pathetic. Raven had officially cried more in a few days in this fucked up world than she had in her entire life in the real world. Although the more time she spent here, the less real her previous life felt. But she'd just relived her so named real life. Everything felt wrong now that she knew the truth.

"I've always been a dragon. How could I forget that? How" She asked and waved her arms around before holding her head in pain again.

Amara studied her. She knew what was going on, but she had no idea what to say. In every version of this conversation, it went horribly wrong, so she settled with pulling her roommate into another hug, resting her cheek on top of Raven's head. She was debating on whether she should tell her the truth.