Work Text:
----
Her heart was pounding in her chest, a staccato rhythm of primal fear that told her to runrunrun and everything was a blur of slipping and sliding and trying to keep one foot in front of the other as she and Owen ran from the Indoraptor. She couldn’t tell you how they’d made it from her room’s balcony, along the tower’s moulding and across the observatory’s roof as they had in one piece. The rain was pouring so hard that it was almost coming down sideways and Maisie swayed slightly as the wind buffeted her, the hood of her red sweater snapping wetly against the side of her face.
Owen pressed her hands against the metal spire at the end of the roof, large hand engulfing hers as he squeezed her shoulder with the other before he moved away, nodding to Clair at the other side and she brought a gun to her shoulder and sighted down the barrel. When the laser flashed, Maisie knew it was the special gun the guard had used in the auction, the one made specifically to set the Indoraptor on a target as easily as a hunting hound being given a scent and loosed. Owen ran towards the predator as Clair activated the frequency that set the hybrid careening towards him in a rage and he slipped under the creature’s massive weight as it came down, missing him by inches and smashing into the glass ceiling. It screamed as it fell through, scrambling and calling out and Maisie’s heart squeezed for it even as she clung all the tighter to the slippery metal under her fingers. She knew that feeling of fear, feet kicking out uselessly in the air as desperate fingers clawed for any type of grip and knowing that to fall was death.
The creature pulled itself up, as Maisie had from her own fall from the banister all those years ago, and turned on the adults, posture coiled tight and ready to spring as it continued to track Owen. For some reason, Maisie knew instantly that it wasn’t because of the target that’d been painted on him moments ago. The raptor wanted to go after the man now.
It was going to kill him, it was going to kill Claire and then it was going to turn around and kill her and there was nothing she could do about it. Her grandfather was dead, Eli was a monster that had let another loose in the only place she’d ever known, tainted her home and her dreams and none of it was fair.
“Stop it!” The little girl screamed, voice thick with tears as she took a gasping breath, her chest tight with fear. Her fingers trembled against the spire and they were so cold that she was sure they’d frozen that way, turned to ice and ready to shatter at the smallest movement like the rest of her.
The hybrid stopped its advance on the adults, dewclaw ringing against the arched ceiling like a knife against a champagne flute calling all to attention. Black haunches dropped delicately to its front legs as the dinosaur looked at her with a low rumble, body still as it considered her with eyes so bright and sharp that to think for a moment that there wasn’t something more in there was impossible.
Movement broke the spell Maisie held with the enormous creature as Owen raised his hand sharply, murmuring something that she couldn’t hear over the pounding rain but caught the beast’s attention again. It whipped around with a screech, rearing on hind-legs to leap and she knew their chance was slipping away. She needed its attention back on her and distracted so the adults could do whatever it was they needed to get them all out of this alive. A dozen ideas came to her mind at once but all that stuck was the video she had seen yesterday, of Owen and those baby raptors. He said he’d shown weakness and the dinosaur had acted on it, even against the instinct she had to go for the food she knew he would bring.
Maisie let out a rough and forced keen, strangled as it was by her fear and how impossible her plan was as she tried to make her noise carry over the rain. It was going to kill her; it was going to tear her to pieces or eat her whole and she was going to die. The second sound came easier as she clenched her eyes shut in terror and sobbed. She didn’t want to die. The noises kept coming, rough and broken and it took her a few moments to recognize that silence had settled over the roof, only broken by the shattered noises and the low hiss of the rain dying off. A bolt of ice raced down her spine as she realized that it wasn’t her making the noises anymore.
She cracked open an eye, breathing hard and gasped at what she saw, flinching back. The Indoraptor was low to the roof, tail drooped as it cocked its head back and forth, calling back at her. She knew that noise, the same as Blue had done on the video. Comfort, empathy. He was talking to her now. The hybrid slunk towards her, belly scrapping against the steel spine of the roof, swaying slightly as he balanced his too big form slowly and awkwardly along the narrow path towards her. Maisie could see Owen and Clair across the dinosaur’s back at the other end of the roof. They were both ghostly pale, faces drained of colour as Clair clung to Owen’s arm and his hands clenched so tightly she could see the twitch of his straining arm muscles from the other end of the walkway. She realized with a start that the smaller raptor from the fight in her room was crouched on the glass next to them, twitching and shifting her weight uneasily as she watched Maisie back with intense eyes.
A sharp bump against her elbow made her squeak and scramble on the wet ceiling for balance, reaching out on instinct to steady herself on the nearest object, which just so happened to be the dark skull of the carnivore pressing his deformed muzzle into her side. Yellow eyes looked up at her, his throat letting out a clicking rumble and Maisie tentatively rubbed at the scales under her shaking hand. The noises grew into a full rolling purr and as the last few raindrops fell around them, the Indoraptor closed his eyes and pressed into her fingers.
---