i. full moon.
She's pushing at an elevator button and pounding along the dark empty corridor now. The sounds of her sneakers slapping against the tiles echo and bounce of the walls but she doesn't hear that, doesn't hear anything until she's at the door and she knocks three times. Rap-rap-rap. It would have been more, should have been more – the neat, sharp taps don't convey what's in her mind's eye; if they did she'd be hammering the thing down, because that's what it feels she ought to do, but some part of her is holding back. There's no dinosaur after her now, no bone-chilling click of raptor claws on the tiles behind her pounding sneakers, no nasal reptilian breathing on her shoulder, but just once, she turns to look, and starts when the door opens behind her.
"I don't know why I'm here," she says, and he doesn't say anything. Never does. He just holds the door open for her and she's inside, on his couch, a couch that's too big for two people let alone one, grey as his eyes but much softer, the high sides rising to near her shoulder and she draws her legs up under her, a ball in the corner, as he hands her a glass of what should be water but that she knows is vodka. She is grateful for it, even though one sip has her spluttering and crying all over again.
He sits beside her and the weight is comforting; it's comfort enough not to be alone, but – "I don't know why I'm here," she says again, for surely anyone, anyone from the pool of survivors, the ones who escaped the island with most of themselves intact save for the hidden scars on their hearts and their minds, would have been a better choice. "Did I wake you?" she asks, realising that it must be late. In her haste to leave her home, and the bed that was in her mind a raptor nest, with its swaddling covers that felt overwhelmingly like severed limbs, she had not checked the time, but the world had grown quiet and dark, but for the glow and the buzz that emanated constantly from the New York streets and the full moon, high in the sky. It was not raining. She is grateful for that, too.
He shrugs, and she understands his meaning. He spends all his time sleeping, especially now. He does not seem to be plagued by the same nightmares as she does. He does not seem to be scared, not of anything or anyone, that that she can't understand, because precocious and plucky as she is, if she'd the scars he has, she's not sure she'd be able to go a night without waking up in a cold sweat.
She'd met him just six weeks ago. (Had it only been six weeks? It felt longer.) He'd been one of the easier ones to track down, one of the easier ones to make talk. Most of the InGen crew had refused to speak with her, and she'd allow them that. But she needed to know what they had seen on that island, for the sake of the future, for the sake of not repeating history's mistakes – again. Ian had been some help (and some comfort). Detail on the island's flora had been disappointingly sparse, but she persisted, speaking with anyone who'd seen it who would speak to her, and each interview, each story of survival and almost unspeakable horror (almost, because they spoke, but their voices were clipped and they wavered, and Ellie knew that, though they tried, there were things they didn't want to tell her, and things they lacked the vocabulary to describe. The look in their eyes was enough). Roland Tembo had been perhaps the least helpful, telling her only that those beasts deserved death. He'd seen enough death, she figured, not to be left a quivering mess in its wake, but there was a sadness in his eyes that spoke of loss, and she realised soon enough it was not his imminent death he'd ever feared.
Dieter's eyes, in contrast, held no sorrow, no fear. Dieter was rather harder to read. He seemed bored most of the time, and stared at her with that steely grey gaze that wouldn't have looked out of place on a wolf, stared at her over coffee while he drank five cups that first hour they talked, and told her dinosaurs should not be allowed. That was it. They simply should not be allowed. She had to stare back into his eyes to prevent herself staring at the scar on his lip, ripped open by a dozen tiny teeth and stitched back together as best as could be managed. It was a stark white line now that ran down his chin like a crack in ice. She had to look away when he raised his cup to drink; he'd as many fingers missing as he had remaining – "But I'm happy I can still shoot a gun. Maybe if I see those little green devils again..." And he'd mocked firing a gun at her with the thumb and index finger he had left on his right hand.
Now he stares at her wordless, and she stares back, and the tears come freely. She hadn't cried in front of him before and she hadn't wanted to do it now; all their talks until now had been about the island, yes, but she'd been gathering information and due to Dieter's seeming inability to express any emotion other than to laugh at others' misfortune, they had never talked about feelings. In all ways, he should have been the last choice when she'd woken that night. She should have called Alan, or Ian, or anyone else, anyone who cared for her and had been there, anyone who was suffering the same as she was. But instead she'd come to him, hoping for comfort, or something else he'd never given her, and she didn't know why until he waggled his fingers at her, like some grotesque mime waving hello.
"We all lost bits of ourselves on the islands," he says, voice cracking, rough, like he's not used it in a few days, and she realises, for what she thinks might be the first time, that he's making a joke. Her tears now are intermingled with laughter, and she swears she sees Dieter smile, but it fades so fast she might've imagined it. It's hard to see through tears. She takes another shaking gulp of vodka, and this one goes down easier.
"Did I tell you about Carter?"
Ellie shakes her head.
"When they rescued me from that island, where they left me for dead, I crawled all the way along the riverbank and to the edge of the forest. They saw me calling out for help, with those little things still all over me, eating bits of me." Her eyes go from the scar on his chin to the ones on his neck, his shoulders, his chest... and she realises only now he's wearing nothing but his boxers, and she averts her eyes quickly and takes another sip from her glass. There are more scars there than she could ever have imagined. (She never imagined Dieter's body under his clothes.) "They pull me into helicopter and fix me up and I ask where is Carter? Where's my buddy? I been shouting on him since I got lost in there, but no one can tell me. When we get back to the mainland I find the other InGen guys and they tell me, oh, he must have gotten stomped on when the Rex came through the camp. And that... is that."
Now Dieter takes a swig of his own vodka, and a shuddering breath. "I didn't see it. I couldn't stop it. I pulled Doctor Malcolm from the edge of the cliff and I didn't even know the guy. I been with Carter nearly ten years. I would fight with that Rex for him but I never got the chance."
Dieter stares at her over his glass, and this time she holds his gaze not to avoid looking at his scars but because she can't look away. He's hardly a wreck, but this is the most emotion he's shown her since they met. She doesn't know what to say. She'd been afraid to lose Alan on that first island, but he'd come back to her safe and sound. "We lost Muldoon," is all she can offer. "I didn't know him well, but on that island, when you're together—"
"I knew Muldoon," says Dieter. "Good hunter. Good man. Roland... admired him. I was thinking after Carter and Ajay... but he didn't want..." He takes a breath and doesn't finish. Ellie gets the feeling that he has finished, in his head, and the end of the sentence isn't something for her to hear. Dieter puts his glass down and stares at her, and she stares back, her tears quieter now, streaming silently down her face rather than coming in hot, painful waves.
"I don't see any flowers on that island," says Dieter. "No beauty."
"I know," says Ellie, and she understands why she'd chosen him of all people. When she'd woken screaming from that nightmare, raptor's breath still hot on her shoulder and Ray Arnold's lifeless hand still grasping her arm, she'd come the only person she thought might actually know the horror of seeing limbs ripped from their body. It had been him, and, she realises now, it had always been him. Alan didn't understand the full horrors, hadn't been able to connect with her in the way she needed. Ian had understood more, but in his mind his duty was to warn others away from that island over trying to heal himself.
Dieter shifts his mangled hands in his lap, shifting closer to her, and Ellie, without thought, pushes herself closer to him too, so close that their noses are almost touching. They hold each other's gaze for a moment, Ellie's eyes blue and bright, Dieter's grey and challenging, and he bares his teeth in a grin that's almost a laugh. They're stupidly white.
"Is this what you want?" he asks in a voice so low it's one step above a whisper.
"Yes," she says, because she'd never wanted anything more.
The next time she wakes up, she's tangled in dove-grey blankets, and the flesh pressed against her is warm and (against all odds) alive, and for the first time since the island, Ellie thinks that those parts of her that are missing might be coming back to her.