Oh wow, I wrote this a while ago and never realized that I hadn't posted it up here. I hope you like.
Disclaimer: I do not own Jurassic Park/World.
Owen thought that now would be when it all started to calm down; the point when everything would finally plateau and they could kind of catch their breath properly for a while. He thought it was when they might be able to think about living, about healing, even if think was all they could do for awhile. The nightmares were starting to come in slightly less frequency, they weren't becoming less frightening, but the regularity of them was making them somewhat…hmm…a part of his life. He wasn't hating them anymore. They just were.
He'd hardly seen Claire and she'd hardly seen him, in the month and some space they'd been off the island. She was caught up in the fallout. He'd been too for a space of time, although in a much, much lesser degree. He was working odd jobs now, trying for something to keep his mind a bit occupied because he needed it. They both came home to the little house of Claire's though. And that was a thread in the insanity that kept them functioning.
Owen thinks that maybe their enforced distance has actually done a bit of good. It's given them space when they didn't know they needed it. And their relationship which could've cracked in half if they'd stayed close to each other as much as they'd wanted too, stayed intact.
But it's been a month and some since it had all happened. Claire was back after an exhausting day with lawyers and board members and she just wanted to take off the heels, flop on the couch and stare vacantly for a while.
Before the incident, that would have been the time for Owen to offer her a drink. Now, they both know better. Alcohol just helps the nightmares come into their waking hours. Claire had locked herself in the bathroom with a frying pan for more than an hour the first time she'd gotten drunk after the island, sure there was a dinosaur loose in the house. It took Owen much, much convincing to get her out of there, to believe him when he said it was safe.
So Owen just handed her a glass of cold water and sat in the other couch and watched her. She sipped sporadically from the glass and then finally wound down enough to properly notice he was in the room. He gave her a little smile to let her know that he knew it'd been rough and said, "Hungry?"
"I should be," she said, "but I'm not feeling it."
"Ramen," Owen says sagely, "Always works for that."
Claire huffs a laugh and says, "No."
But Owen was getting up and pulling ramen out of the cupboards and because she's too tired to stop him, she just watches him over the edge of the couch. He slices in some potato there to give some weight to it and when it's done, he pulls a tray out, dumps some in a bowl and brings it over to her. She curls up on the couch and digs her fork into it and twirls it around, still not actively eating.
Owen goes for his own food and opts to eat tray-less even though the bowl is burning his thigh when he rests it on his leg. He eats though and after awhile Claire feels brave enough to try one noodle. She eats it slowly and then decides she will have another. She works her way through a quarter of the bowl like that until the huger wakes up and she eats the rest normally. When she's done, Owen has finished his second bowl and is ready for his third.
"Want any more?" he asks.
He watches her consider seriously and then nod.
"Just a little," she says and hands her bowl to Owen. He both bowls to the amount required by the owners and hands Claire hers over the back on the couch before circling back to his seat. She eats the rest carefully and then rests it on the tray and puts the tray on the coffee table.
"I'm going to shower," she says and sweeps out the room.
Owen finishes his food, does the dishes and drops her heels in her room before going to take a shower himself. Claire is lying in her bed half asleep when he pokes his head into her room later.
"Hey," he says.
"Goodnight," she mumbles and Owen laughs. He comes in sit on the edge of the bed and brushes back her hair.
"Goodnight," he says and kisses her hair. He turns out the light on the way out.
Owen starts awake on the couch heart pounding, dripping with sweat, breath coming harshly. He's shaking he notices. This was one of the worse ones then. He bends over his knees and waits for his breath to even out. After a while it does and he looks around at his surroundings. The lights are still on although the TV is off. He must have turned it off before he truly fell asleep. He has just gotten to his feet to head to his room when he hears Claire scream.
He rushes to her room and sees her twists under the covers and scream again. Before he reaches her though she is sitting bolt upright and gasping.
"Hey, hey, hey!" he says as he sits heavily next to her. He raises his hand just in time to block the one handed strike from her.
"Claire!" he says but she has already realized that it's him; probably already had while the blow was in motion but had been unable to stop it.
"Owen," she breathes and allows him to hug her while she trembles. When she calms down Owen turns on the lights and they both flop down on the bed, Owen with most of his legs falling off the edge, Claire still under her duvet.
They don't say anything, just rest. An hour later Claire announces that she can sleep now, so Owen turns off the lights and then snatches her other pillow, throws it on the ground and sacks out there.
He wakes at six in the morning to Claire's gasp and sits up to find her sitting up in bed hand resting on one upraised knee, chest heaving gently. She turns her head and watches him and their eyes lock for a long moment and then she is kicking off the covers and heading to the bathroom.
Owen lifts a hand and watches it shake. He huffs out a laugh. Her turn today. A little more and they'll have it down to a science. He gets up, throws the pillow on the bed and wanders into the kitchen to start coffee.
He's in the bathroom when Claire comes out so when he does wander in damp and warm from the shower, there's a breakfast bagel waiting for him and Claire is at the table reading the local news on her phone, sipping coffee from a cup that Own still considers too large and Claire insists is perfect.
He thought that now would be when it all started to calm down. It was supposed to be. It was supposed to calm down, just a little. Even just a little. But then there were mornings like these and Owen wonders. He knows he's not the only one wondering.
It's the mornings that hit them first. It wasn't like that. Not when they first got off the island. The mornings were like how the evenings and the nights were now. Even the rest of the day was pretty normal after ten. They were like themselves, like they were supposed to be. In the evening and nights they were scared, like they were supposed to be. They woke up afraid. They woke up shaking, frightened of dinosaur roars and greenery, screams of people and teeth burying into you, the sound of gunshots that did nothing.
But the mornings….It wasn't that they didn't wake up scared. But they woke up… prepared. Owen knew Claire could see it in him, the way he could see it in her eyes. See it in the way she wakes up scared but ready to get off the bed and walk into the forest he sees shimmering behind her eyes.
It takes sometime, but the morning reaction creeps through the rest of their day slowly. And Owen can't seem to stop it. He's still afraid, still jumps a little at shadows, still wakes up from nightmares he can't remember. Still shakes after them, but when he closes his eyes in those moments before he falls asleep after another nightmare, he hears a roar echoing in his ears, feels it vibrating down his bones.
Claire hears it just before she wakes, he thinks, though she doesn't say anything. She turns the shower on ice cold to remind herself that this wasn't the island. She turns it ice cold to drown out the roar. Owen turns the heat on, because he never used hot water on the island and in the mornings it was always ice cold there.
When they meet at breakfast, they carefully don't notice. But Owen doesn't think they can go like this forever. Owen flicks knives at the chopping board. Claire works out like she's going to be the next big female body builder. Bagels change to protein shakes. Owen teaches Claire how to use a gun in the four hours she is home one weekend. Owen works out harder than he ever has before. He goes parkouring through the suburbs.
They watch movies together and they sit thought the blood and gore just even though Claire throws up later that night and Owen doesn't go back to sleep after he wakes up screaming.
It's when Owen wakes up in the night breathing hard after a nightmare and calls out, "Claire!" and she comes over and they lock eyes when she comes through the doorway, that they know, that Owen knows that she is seeing the forest in his eyes, sees the preparedness and knows the mornings have caught up with them.
They both sit on the floor rest against the bed and wait for the sun to rise. It's sad, Owen thinks as they watch the sun rise. It's a new day but it feels like more. It's feels almost like too much but not quite. They sit with their arms around their knees, shoulder to shoulder and watch the sun rise.
There's a roar in their bones and it just won't go away.
It's been almost two months after the island and Claire finds herself tapping her fingers impatiently on the steering wheel at each red light. She finds herself poised on the edge reading to step into a chilly morning every morning, with not the memory or a roar, but the feeling it invoked within her. She realizes that even though she hates what happened on the island, hates the island because she is scared of it, that she can't, she doesn't think she'll last without it.
It's been two months and Owen knows. Knows, but can't explain, but he knows. Knows in the way his hands stop shaking when he needs them to, knows in the way, that if he ever stops having nightmares now, he might never be able to go back to sleep. Knows in the way that his bones don't feel the same anymore.
There's a roar in their bones and it just won't go away.
It's two months and some and Claire has just woken Owen up by the gasp she emits as she sits up in bed breathing heavily. Owen sits up from the floor and waits. She doesn't want to look at him but she does eventually. They hold each other's' eyes and then she looks away.
"I don't know what to do," she finally says. She sounds scared. Owen, Owen, realizes that he is scared.
"If we're talking about fixing this here," he says, "I don't know what to do either.
"And if we're talking about fixing it somewhere else?" she asks him and her voice is tight and not quite sharp and there's anger there.
"We won't fix it there," Owen says. And it's the truth. He's helpless. He can't say anything else and he won't lie to her now.
She gives a sharp, unhappy laugh, wraps her arms around herself.
"It can't be fixed can't it?" she says and Owen who was holding out hope that it could, knows in that moment, that it can't.
He says nothing and she laughs again. She's going to die young and she knows it. She's never going to reach forty and she knows it. Owen might live longer than her, then again he might not. They're both not going to live as long as they should and they know. Know it and accept it. Claire laughs again and Owen laughs a little too. They look at each other and Claire's eyes are warm. She loves him. Owen's eyes are soft and warm in return. He loves her, so, so, so, much.
There's a roar in their bones and it's not going to go away.
When they finally step foot on the island Owen expects the roar to quiet down a bit, to be sated. Instead it grows louder and Owen knows that he, he glances at Claire, they, are back home. Back to a nightmare, back to the one place in the world that they fit in anymore, like a bizarre puzzle piece that had changed somewhere in the time the box was being emptied. Back to the one of the five deaths that they have chosen. Back home where if your bones didn't vibrate you might break them yourselves.
There's a roar in their bones and it's not going to go away.
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Have a nice day/night.