It isn't until three of them are all crammed together in a trailer, eyes wide and bodies still as stone as the T-Rexes prowl vigilantly outside, that Ian realizes in a flash why his stories did nothing to dissuade Sarah from coming down here.

She'd sat patiently with him while he recounted in stern, solemn tones of warning what exactly had gone wrong with Jurassic Park, and why Hammond's idea was doomed to fail from the start. It wasn't a subject he tended to bring up often; Sarah's inquisitive questions usually led to unburying memories, perfectly-detailed and as fresh in his mind as they had been several years ago. On the couch in front of the TV, on a drive back from a lecture, once even in the bedroom, wrapped in a sleepy embrace- she had never ceased asking him about the dinosaurs, mindful of his reluctance to open up about it but also deeply curious and intent on satisfying a thirst for knowledge. In retrospect, Ian probably should have seen this coming, from her insistence on the topic to the way her eyes sparkled when he spoke on it, no matter how brief such statements might have been. In a way he had sensed her enthusiasm, and tried his best to turn her off the subject by describing how the tyrannosaur had fractured his leg, how the raptors had roughed up the kids and how four people had died, and how it was a miracle he himself, along with Sattler and Grant, had even gotten off the island in one piece…

Well, in his case, it had been more like two pieces. Several, actually, as the injury hadn't been a clean break. But that was beside the point. The point Ian had always intended to make to Sarah was the simple, logical fact that dinosaurs are dangerous, no matter what time period they're living in.

But her scientific curiosity had driven her to defy all of Ian's warnings and light down on Site B without telling him. And in some way or another, Ian feels responsible. Once he had heard from Hammond of her whereabouts, he had begun to mentally run over all those stories in his mind, wondering where he had failed. It occurred to him then that he hadn't properly placed the blame. Had Sarah, perhaps, taken from his stories that Jurassic Park was based in human failure, understaffed and under-planned and serving as an experiment in the arrogance of scientists to believe they had a right to bring back extinct species? Ian himself had made that last point more times than he could count… Had she viewed the dinosaurs as less of a threat than the humans, believing they would grow tame when handled properly? Though Ian can't pinpoint where he had gone wrong with the stories, he knows undeniably that he did go wrong, and is now paying the price.

And, he thinks as the T-Rexes peer in at him with those terrifyingly intelligent reptilian eyes that had featured in every one of his nightmares since the incident, after all, Sarah doesn't know the half of what it did to me. They hadn't begun regularly seeing each other until he'd started to gain notoriety, his story either ridiculed or adored by the polarized press, and Ian figured he needed someone to latch onto to help weather the coming storm. Who better than his beautiful colleague who had come to see him in the hospital in Costa Rica, bearing a small bouquet of flowers and the explanation, "I thought you could use some company?" She hadn't been around for the worst of it after he returned from Isla Nublar. She knew almost nothing about the sleepless nights he'd suffered through, the dreams so vivid he'd thought they were real until he woke up hyperventilating and sweating through his sheets. She didn't know about the poorly-timed panic attacks that snuck up on him, mostly in the apartment, sometimes in the car, once or twice outside the lecture hall just after he finished speaking. By the time Sarah came into the picture, he'd gotten himself somewhat under control. The nightmares were never as bad when he lay beside her, and telling the stories over and over to her helped lessen the dark sway they had on him. Surely if Sarah had seen Ian in such a critical state, she would have never gone to Isla Sorna, if only for the sake of her mental health.

Now, Ian is forced to realize that he didn't convince Sarah at all, he only helped persuade her. And god dammit, all those trauma symptoms are starting to come back to him in full force- fine time for Sarah to become acquainted with that part of him. Already his breathing is speeding up, harsh and loud beneath the T-Rexes' angry roars. A cold sweat has broken out all over his body, and his vision is blurring. Thank God Nick stands between him and Sarah, because he's starting to shake, and he wouldn't want her to have to feel that. His heart is pounding, and he just wants to run screaming out of there, run back to contact a helicopter and lie down on the floor as it whisks him away. Failing that, what Ian wants to do more than anything is throw up, and he doesn't even care if it gets on anyone's supplies. A nasty taste is rising in the back of his throat, and his stomach, already doing somersaults at the sound of the T-Rexes outside, begins to churn away unpleasantly…

The worst part, he realizes somewhere in a calm, detached part of his brain, is that throughout all those terrible months of nightmares, never once did anyone he loved figure into his fantasies. And now he's here again, and Sarah is right here with him, and somewhere out there Kelly is anxiously waiting for him to make good on his word, and if anything happens to either of them it'll be Ian's fault. And he wouldn't be able to live with that knowledge. The stress is tenfold now that he's not just looking out for number one.

Fortunately, this is the exact kind of thought to snap Ian out of his mounting panic. Fighting the urge to gag and freezing his body against the tremors, he chances a glance over at Sarah, whose face has gone white. She's breathing just as hard as he is, and Ian realizes that she must be scared out of her mind. This is her first experience with the deadliness of dinosaurs, after believing that they were harmless for so long. Nick as well has never experienced anything like this. Both of them are counting on Ian, the dinosaur veteran, to lead them out of here alive. And it's up to Ian to get them out of this mess that he unknowingly got Sarah into in the first place. Now is not the time to lose his cool.

It's okay, he longs to whisper to Sarah, but he's not sure if she'd be able to hear him over the noise of the dinosaurs. It's okay, honey, I'll make sure we all survive if it's the last thing I do… I promise. I know I'm always the unreliable one… but this time, you can rely on me.

Then the trailer rocks, pushed by an increasingly incensed tyrannosaur, and all comforting words are driven from his mind.