Raven woke up 2 days later and found himself in a cage.
His limbs were bound, and even his mouth was taped, making him frantically look around in confusion, only for him to be sucker punched with the worst headache of his life.
He gritted his teeth, feeling the throb echo through the back of his skull, and with it came the memories.
Not all at once. They came in pieces, jagged and mismatched, like shards of glass pressed into his mind.
Though everything seemed hazy due to the concussion he was suffering from, he still clearly remembered the brutality of it all.
His father falling, arms outstretched, blood soaking the back of his shirt.
His mother's scream broke in the middle, turning to a choking gasp. David crying, so small, fists flailing inside the pram. The smell of gunpowder was so strong it burned his throat. And the laughter… voices that didn't belong in their home
Raven's stomach turned. His breath came quicker, muffled by the tape, and the cold around him seemed to tighten.
They were gone.
He wanted to tell himself maybe not, maybe there was still a chance, but the truth was already set in him like stone. The last thing he'd heard before blacking out was the deafening crack of a gunshot.
And then nothing.
He pulled his knees in as close as the rope allowed, lowering his head until his forehead pressed against the bars. The chill sank into his skin. A sound escaped him, small and muffled, his throat raw from trying to hold it in. Tears came hot and fast, slipping past the tape to trail down his chin.
He was now all alone, everyone that he cared for and everyone that would've care for him in return was gone. He crouched down, sobbing, not wanting to believe that his parents and baby brother were dead, not wanting to believe that life could be so cruel, so… lifeless.
Then he remembered the men who had made his life this way, those despicable assailants who turned his dream-like life into a literal nightmare.
As his sorrows morphed into anger, he had to bite his lips till they bled, just to not scream out in all his rage, knowing it wouldn't do him any good. He swore that he would get revenge for his parents and his baby brother, who did not even have a chance at life at all.
But his thoughts of anger, despair and dejection were not allowed to continue for long as he was soon interrupted by a man who had just walked in.
The scrape of boots against stone broke the silence. Raven lifted his head, heart thudding faster. A shadow moved across the bars, and then the man stepped into view.
The scar caught his eye first, a jagged line running from brow to jaw, distorting the man's expression into something permanently unpleasant. Raven recognised him instantly. The same man who had been in his home. The memory tightened his stomach, but he kept his face still.
"Well, well, well…"
"It's so nice of you to wake up. You should know that it's not polite for a servant to not come to service for two whole days." The man said in a mocking tone.
Raven was a smart child, to say the least, and he naturally got the gist of it very quickly.
He was now their property, he was now their dog, in all senses of the word, and he would be kept on a tight leash so he would not be able to get away at all.
Knowing that if he wasn't useful, he would meet the same fate as his brother, he obediently waited inside the cage without showing any outward hostility at all.
"You catch on quickly. That will be a necessary skill to have if you want to survive, so that's good to see, " he said.
He stepped closer, leaning on the bars like he was inspecting an animal at the market.
"You're ours now. Property. A mutt on a short leash. Be useful and you live. Be useless…" He shrugged.
"Well, you've already seen how that ends." The words landed heavy, but Raven forced himself to hold the man's stare.
"We've decided to leave you alone for today so you can recover, but from tomorrow you work for us as our slave and in return… We will be kind enough to feed you, " the man emphasised the fact that he had no choice in the matter, and afterwards promptly left, leaving Raven alone again.
He cried that night. He cried until his chest hurt and his throat burned. The tears kept running until they soaked into the tape over his mouth, loosening it bit by bit.
When it finally peeled enough for him to move his lips, he just sat there breathing heavily, not saying a word.
'What's the point. No one's going to hear me. No one's coming.'
His head was pounding, his eyes sore. He tried to think about anything else, but it all came back the same way. His mother's screams. His father's body hitting the floor. His parents lying there.
'Stop thinking about it. Just stop.'
He pressed his forehead to his knees, trying to make himself smaller. David's face pushed into his mind anyway. That little pram. The crying. The sound of the gun. He swallowed hard, but it felt stuck in his throat.
'I should've done something. Anything.'
The ropes bit into his wrists when he shifted. The cage felt too close. His breathing sped up, so he bit his lip until he tasted blood, forcing himself to stay quiet.
'Crying's useless. Showing anything's useless. They'll just enjoy it.'
The tears slowed eventually. His head felt heavy, and every blink seemed to last longer. The cold floor pressed into his side, but he didn't care.
'Sleep. Just… sleep. Forget for now.'
His eyes closed, and for a moment, the cage was gone. There was no shouting, no blood, no ropes. Just silence.