A/N: heeyyy... so. admittedly this whole story is just a big giant self-insertion fantasy and deals with DADDY ISSUES. this also sort of ignores "the lost world" and "jurassic park 3", i'm sorry. i admittedly have a lot of trouble writing ian and owen, so also a warning for that.

If Ian knew that that argument would have possibly been the last conversation he had with his daughter, he would have kept his mouth shut. Well, he would have tried to.

Try.

He hated how that was the one thing he didn't do with his eldest daughter—the one that he was aware of anyway. He never tried. He couldn't imagine why J.T tried for so long; putting up with awkward two week long visits twice a year, birthday calls that just turned into ten minutes of silence after greetings were exchanged, even more awkward two-weeks-after-Christmas gift exchanges where he would just buy her love.

It was a mystery why she wanted to be in his life after The Incident, something she wouldn't have experienced if it wasn't for him. It was his fault. That's why her mother officially cut off all contact with him. If he had just tried harder back then... A little eight year old girl wouldn't have had to watch her father be thrown about like a cheap rag-doll. She wouldn't have had to experience a monster that would threaten her life, give her nightmares for years from what little J.T had told him—another thing that his ex-wife had yelled at him about.

If Ian didn't want to try before what had happened at Isla Nublar... He definitely didn't want to afterwards.

She kept trying even when her mother forbade him from seeing or calling her. Sneaking phone calls to him while her mother was out –though she must have found out about them, thanks to the long distance charges—or when she was at a relative's house. Having her grandmother—he was honestly surprised that Jen let J.T see his mother—to his house for a weekend during their visits. Eventually that had stopped and she would buy a bus ticket to Texas and call him from a bus station payphone at 3 in the morning, telling him to pick her up. She was fifteen then.

His daughter tried for eleven years. He repaid her with silence and hastily bought gifts that she picked out herself—she'd always decline at first, he'd have to insist three times that it was fine—because he couldn't talk to her. Get to know her beyond stilted conversations about school and how her mother was doing.

Life, uh, finds a way.

It found a way to turn an already failing parent-child relationship into a giant pile of shit. No wonder why she gave up at sixteen. It was an accident, he must have been out then, not that it was any excuse. He had to hear about it from his mother over the phone.

"She tried to go see you last Christmas, Ian. You didn't pick up the phone she said... She also said she took a cab to your house, you didn't answer. She called me crying, you know. She said she was tired of trying with you. I'm sorry, Ian. I tried to talk to her... She wouldn't have it. I'm so sorry."

If he just tried...

It was like every other visit.

Silent. Discomfort hanging in the atmosphere—awkwardness so dense that you couldn't take a knife to it without the blade snapping in half. The only sounds you could hear were the house settling and the T.V playing some action movie that neither of them particularly cared for in the slightest.

The only thing that was different was that she wasn't a child anymore; not even a teenage girl that managed to sneak out of her mother's house to see him. J.T was twenty-five now, eight or so years had passed since he last heard from her.

Malcolm glanced at his daughter; her hazel eyes glazed over with disinterest, her tawny brown skin painted with dark shadows from the harsh blue light of the television. She looked nothing like him, the only features of his that showed were light-almost faded eyebrows and the curls in her black hair—it wasn't fair to say she had got that color from him, since her mother also had jet black hair.

J.T looked so much like her mother.

The sounds of a commercial broke his reverie.

"Welcome to Jurassic World..."

His lips pressed into a hard line and his hand gripped the arm rest of the couch. Muscles in his body tensing up as a dull ache appeared in his leg. Dark eyes watching as clips of happy families gazing with awe at living dinosaurs and rides and the science center play in front of him.

"Come join us for our fifth year anniversary..."

"I can't believe they did that shit again—that they went through with it." Those were the first words he had said to since greeting her at the door ("Sorry I just showed up, can I come in?" "No, it's alright. Come in." "Thank you." "How have you been?" "I've been okay, but you?"). Heat flared up in his system as his nails scraped against the faded leather. "As if what happened back then didn't happen. Throw money at us to shut us up."

"..."

Ian glanced at J.T again, who stared back at him with tired eyes. Her bottom lip twitching slightly and her fingers toying with the hem of her shirt.

"...This is kind of... Why I wanted to see you." The young woman said, hazel eyes flickering from the screen to her father. "I have a new job now and..."

"You can't be serious, J.T."

"You didn't let me—"

"Please don't tell me you're working there. At that place of all places. What are you even doing there?! What happened to you writing novels or that radiology thing, huh?"

"Dad..."

He grabbed her upper arms, unaware of how tightly he was hold onto her. "Why. Don't you remember what happened then? How you had nightmares for weeks—years? For Gods sake, Jen wouldn't even let me talk to you after that—"

"Like you ever fucking talked to me before then." She spat, her words going right for his jugular and slicing it open. Her hands balled themselves into tight fists, so tight that they shook in her lap. "You forgot I was even visiting you that week and you took me with you because you couldn't find someone to take me off your hands. Before all that shit happened, you were eyeballing—whatever that's not important. Y-you didn't bother talking to me before any of that! Why bother getting married five-hundred-fucking times and having five billion kids if you didn't get it right the first three or four times! I kept thinking, 'Did I do something wrong? Is that why he never cared? How long do I have to try'..."

She was out of her seat now and tearing herself out of his grip; hot wet tears dripping down her beet red face, her jaw clenching tightly together and the sound of her teeth grinding together reminding the man of nails on a chalkboard.

He followed immediately. Anger bursting inside of him as if someone lit a firework inside his chest.

"J.T. Did you really think I never cared about you—if I didn't, would I have tried to save you and Hammond's grandkids—"

"SHUTUPLETMETALK. I thought 'Oh, maybe he'd understand if I explained. Oh, he went through the same thing. It's been over fifteen years...It'd be okay.' Thinking maybe you were done pitying yourself like you did throughout my childhood and maybethatwecouldusethistotrytobefatherandfuckingdaughterforonceinourlives—"

"How. How. How would this... bring us together, huh?"

She froze.

"...It'd... I'd be facing all that head on. M-Maybe you'd see how well I-I was doing and...Ahfuck! I was tired of all that shit! Tired of thinking I was fucking over it only to have nightmares about it out of nowhere... Having flashbacks after weeks or months of nothing..." She avoided looking at him now, her shaky hands rubbed where he had grabbed her earlier.

He grit his teeth, running a hand through his greying hair. "Don't you think I'm tired of all that too? Don't you think I'm sick of thinking about what could've happened to you if I didn't..." His eyes were stinging and his voice was hoarse. Shit.

"...I'm a fucking idiot. I shouldn't have bothered coming to you about this. Wasting your time like usual. Sorry. Sorry. Sorry." She bit back sobs as she walked to the front door which she slammed behind her.

Ian stood there; a maelstrom of emotions swarming inside of his body and drowning him.

Life, uh, finds a way.

Jurassic World's containment issue was all that was on the news for weeks. Some genetic hybrid—nice to know that those scientists had gotten more in character for playing God—had escaped and caused a breach in the aviary for pterosaurs. Hundreds injured; some in critical condition if they didn't die later on from their injuries. Many had died during the attacks—some were lucky to die immediately rather than suffer.

Boy, did Ian hate being right all the time.

His stomach churned as his mind wandered off in the direction of J.T—was she still working there while this was going on? Was she safe? Was she hurt?

Ice water coursed through his veins at the thought of his child in that chaos, being mauled by those things, being...

He dashed to his computer, opening up Facebook and looking up his first ex-wife's name since J.T had probably blocked him. There was probably a better way to go about this, but he couldn't think of another way.

There, a picture—selfie or whatever they were called—of grey haired Jen sitting next to a battered J.T in a hospital bed was posted five days ago. Bruises and scrapes peeked out under the bandage wrapped around her head; her hazel eyes appearing cloudy and tired, most likely from being doped out of her mind on pain medication.

"My little girl J.T Malcolm has seen better days. But doctors say she should be fine to transfer to a U.S hospital soon! Thank you all for keeping her in your prayers!"

His heart sank.

He knew that it was a mistake opening another park. He knew that J.T choosing to work there was the worst thing she could have ever done. But... A small part of him had hoped that there wouldn't be something like this even if he knew from the beginning twenty-two years ago that it would end in disaster. A part of him hoped for the best for her sake.

Ian wished that Jurassic World didn't turn out as bad—even worse than the dry run two decades ago. Even if it meant J.T never seeing him again after that fight five years ago, he wanted her to be safe and unharmed.

Suddenly, his phone rang and he felt tempted to just... Let it ring, let it go to voice mail. He didn't want to talk to anyone right now. If he did, he wasn't sure how he'd be able to form a semi-coherent sentence. The phone had stopped ringing before a louder beep echoed through the room.

"Hey, Ian. It's Amelie..."

The man blinked, wondering why they were calling now of all times.

"I dunno if you've heard from someone else but, J.T got hurt at that new park..."

How did they know that? Why would they know that? Did J.T keep in contact with them and not him?

He'd be lying if he said that that didn't make him upset—if not fully piss him off—just a bit. But, it wasn't like it was Amelie's fault. He just wished his kin wasn't so petty—what was he doing, thinking like this? His daughter was in the hospital and here he was...

"She's been in Costa Rica at some hospital for a bit, but she came into the States today. Some hospital in San Antonio... University Hospital. Yeah. If you wanna go see her, then maybe you should. I'll see you around."

Dial tone.

Ian sat in his chair for a while. Contemplating.

He wanted to see her.

But would she want to see him?

Jen would be there too, wouldn't she? Knowing how emotional and quick tempered she was, he would have to expect a pretty bad reaction to seeing his face after twenty-two years. Of course, his daughter was more important than being screamed at by an ex-wife—something that he was kind of used to at the age of sixty-two, and not just from Jen either. Oh no, his son's mother wasn't fond of him either; Kelly's mother however was probably the one he was the most... tolerable to.

It was just a matter of intruding where he clearly wouldn't be wanted and to make things worse between his eldest. He had an idea of how chaotic that could be, he didn't even have to apply his specialization to it. It was like sticking your dick into that acid spitting dinosaur's mouth and getting your dick melted off as a result—to even relate that to "chaos theory" was a fucking insult. You knew what you were getting into. Anyone could predict that without equations.

Ian snorted, where the hell did that thought come from? Whatever.

His long fingers drummed on the arm rest of the computer chair; dark eyes continuing to stare at the picture of his injured daughter. A sigh escaped him before clicking out of the window, he had reached a decision. He was going to see her. He had to at least try with her, even if it was probably way too late at this point.

He was going to see his baby girl.