Author's note: Hey, I added some plot! Yay!

Also angst. Like, ALL of it. Be warned and proceed with caution!


Hopping into his pants in the dark while being half-asleep was a trick in and of itself. Doing it while trying to hold his phone with his shoulder, listening to the words that seemed to be bouncing inside of his head without registering properly and wondering if maybe he wasn't awake after all was, indeed, an experience of a lifetime.

He was suddenly overcome by a sense of déjà vu – in the weeks following the Indominus incident, he would sometimes catch himself waiting for this nightmare to end, because surely it couldn't be real. He kept expecting the world to shift back into place, for him to wake up in Claire bed instead of on her couch, to the smell of fresh coffee coming from the kitchen instead of the sound of her crying in the bathroom, thinking he couldn't hear. Day in and day out. Lather, rinse, repeat.

And now he couldn't help but feel the same way because, once again, nothing was making any sense.

"I'll be right there," he said into the phone, and by the time he hung up and turned around, Claire had already found her shirt and was zipping up her jeans, moving with the military efficiency and precision, which was impressive, given the circumstances. But then again, he should've probably stopped being surprised by anything she was capable of by now.

"You should stay here," Owen began automatically, but she just gave him one of her signature You've gotta be kidding me looks and reached for her tennis shoes, forgoing the heels for once (much to his relief), and her phone, so he just nodded, knowing it was a lost battle before it even began. She wouldn't be Claire Dearing if she chose to sit out yet another major crisis instead of jumping right into it headfirst.

By the time they were out of the suite and waiting for the elevator, she was already on the phone, waking up Lowery and telling him briskly to go to the Control Room and pull out the footage from the raptors' paddock for the last few hours. And one had to really know her to recognize that the edge in her voice came from panic and not annoyance.

They reached the ground floor just as the doors to the second elevator slid open and Barry all but fell out of it, still in the process of strapping the holster to his waist. He was followed by the woman Claire knew worked for InGen who looked comfortably familiar with him, and just for a heartbeat, the gears shifted in her brain, pushing the midnight calls and everything else out of the way - because when did this happen?

Except it wasn't the best time to think about this.

"I'm going to the paddock," Barry told Owen, his eyes flickering briefly to Claire, but when the raptors were involved, it was just between them, and she chose to let Owen call the shots as he pleased.

She saw a shadow of hesitation cross his face, but his eyes darted toward her, and he nodded. "I'll be there soon." And once outside, he followed her instead of Barry.

The First Aid station was a 10-minute walk away from the hotel, at most, but they took the car anyway on the off chance they might need it later.

"She didn't do it," Owen said as they rounded the Mosasaurus's pool gleaming in the night.

"I didn't say anything."

"You're thinking it."

Claire bit her lip, glancing out the passenger window for a moment. "She's a wild animal, Owen."

"Well, just because she—"

"Just because she attacked me doesn't mean she would attack someone else?"

"That sounded better in my head." He admitted with a wince and pulled the car to a stop.

"Let's just find out what happened." She pushed the door open.

Inside the First Aid station, all lights were on, making the already painfully white walls even whiter.

"And here's the cavalry," Maxwell said when they simultaneously opened the double doors and stepped inside without turning to them.

"What is it?" Claire breathed out.

The man sitting on the cot before them looked only vaguely familiar to her. She saw him among the other InGen people before, but never spoke to him, as far as she could recall. He was stripped from the waist up, his cargo pants all but shredded to pieces, his hand pressing a bloodied towel to his head.

"Two lacerations – left shoulder and left thigh, multiple puncture wounds of unidentified source, a broken rib, and quite possibly a sprained wrist. Still working on the last one. Concussion still pending."

"No, what happened to cause all this?" She swallowed, hard.

The sight of blood combined with the thick smell of antiseptic hanging in the air was making her all kinds of queasy, and she tried to look anywhere but at the needle in Maxwell's hand, trying not to imagine what he was about to do with it. She was standing in this brightly lit room, but before her mind's eye, all she could she was the dim hangar in the docks and body bags in the far corner. The air smelled the same.

The man winced. "A raptor."

Owen's jaw clenched, his eyes narrowed slightly, and she knew he was about to disagree as strongly and as vocally as possible.

"Ms. Dearing, you're aware I'm not a surgeon, right?" Maxwell piped up just then, throwing a quick look at her. "I'm not a people physician at all."

"And we really appreciate everything you're doing here," Claire assured him apologetically, still working on maybe not passing out. Not running away. "So, about that raptor—"

"It wasn't a raptor," Owen said immediately.

Claire's hand landed on his arm. "Just walk us through it," she asked the man.

"She jumped out at me. I fired my gun. She took off."

He was anything, but inefficient.

"You shot my raptor?!" Owen snapped.

"She was going to eat me, Grady!" The man retorted, and for a couple of seconds they just glared at one another.

"What the hell were you even doing in her paddock to begin with?" Owen demanded.

"Her paddock? It happened in the North-East sector, near the river."

Owen frowned. "In the forest? That's not possible."

Except it obviously was, and the thought made Claire's skin prickle. "Where, exactly?"

"About two miles away from the resort, not far from the aviary."

"I can't believe you shot my raptor." Owen shook his head, and was about to add something else, but this was when his walkie-talkie crackled and hissed to life until Barry's voice broke through. "Owen?"

"What's up?"

He stepped back, towards the exit, and Claire followed him more on instinct that anything else.

"She's here," Barry said.

"What?" He frowned.

"She's here, Owen. She's in the cage."

They both looked at Maxwell and his charge, at the blood on the floor and a pile of crimson-colored gauzes, at the clothes that were clearly cut off the man's body to allow the vet to have a better look at his wounds.

"Are you sure?"

"I'm looking right at her. I couldn't be any more sure."

"I'm coming over," Owen said at last, his voice tense and his brows furrowed. "This doesn't make any sense," he muttered as he and Claire climbed back into the car five minutes later after she called in for a chopper upon Maxwell's request since the man needed a more professional help than they could offer in the First Aid station equipped mostly to deal with sunburns and mosquito bites (seeing as how the dinosaurs were never meant to roam wildly around the park in the first place), talking more to himself than to her.

"Could she have escaped?" Claire asked nonetheless.

"Escaped? Not impossible." Owen started the jeep. "Climbed back in? Highly unlikely." He glanced at her. "I'll take you back to the hotel."

Claire shook her head. "The Control Room."

He looked at her quizzically, but didn't protest, steering the car instead in the right direction.

"It wasn't a raptor then," she offered after a little while, thinking he'd jump right on board with the most logical explanation she had at this point, but instead, his frown only deepened.

"People who work here usually know what they're talking about."

To that, she had no response.

Claire had never been the one to resign to premonitions or the 'feeling' that something was off, but whatever was going on now had the fine hair on her arms stand up for the reasons she couldn't put her finger on just yet.

They drove in silence, but when Owen pulled up to the grey, inconspicuous building housing the Control Room – one of a few left of the old park and actually in use – and she pushed the door open, he caught her by the arm. "Hey." And when she turned, his hand slipped around her neck, and he kissed her, hard. "Take care, okay?"

"I'm not the one who's going to deal with a raptor," Claire reminded him, struggling to keep her voice nonchalant, and failing, mostly.

In the red and blue light of the dashboard, Owen's face looked dark and almost unfamiliar, his eyes haunted and odd. She could feel his breath falling on her skin, a comforting sensation, but it also seemed like he was right there with her, in that 'not quite understanding' that something was off, and it unnerved Claire. She needed at least one of them to have it together, terrified of the alternative.

"I'm serious," he said softly.

And she was this close to telling him to go back to the hotel so that she could barricade both of them in her suite until the sun came up and chased the shadows away. Her heart was hammering so fast she could barely breathe. For the person who didn't believe in anything she couldn't see or touch, she was way too aware of having someone's eyes on her, staring from the dark. She wanted to at least ask him to stay with her, not to go anywhere, but the words died on her tongue, and the next thing she knew, she was promising him not to wander around alone, and then she was out of the car and heading for the door, pulling her magnetic pass out of her pocket of her jeans. The lock clicked. The tires of his car screeched on the asphalt behind her back.

It took her and Lowery a couple of hours to go through the footage from the raptors' paddock, finding no proof of Blue not being in it for any amount of time. She kept on circling her cage, popping up before one camera or the other. The images were dark, but the lithe form of the raptor was unmistakable. It almost skipped Claire's memory that Blue had an implant now, and when she finally remembered that and told Lowery to place the animal on the map, the signal, unsurprisingly, came from her cage, although whether she was more relived or confused, Claire couldn't tell.

It was almost 5 in the morning and the sky was getting grey at the horizon, when she finally stepped into her room again, feeling like she'd been up for a thousand years instead of 4 hours.

Claire's lips twitched against her will at the sight of Owen sitting on the couch, fast asleep, his head lolled slightly to his shoulder. She padded softly across the room and knelt by the side of it, her arms folded on the armrest. She couldn't recall the last time he saw him so at peace, the nearly ever present frown smoothed out of his forehead. He looked younger. Unguarded. Her chest tightened with the sudden rush of affection that surged through her, so intense it almost hurt.

She brushed her fingers through his hair, pushing it out of his forehead.

"Owen?" He jolted awake at the soft sound of her voice, eyes snapping wide. "Hey, easy, it's me."

He blinked once, twice, as if he wasn't quite there for a moment or two before his eyes focused on her face, his lips tugging up at the corners ever so slightly. He ran a hand down his face. "I wanted to wait up for you."

Claire laughed softly. "Mission half-accomplished."

He caught her hand and kissed the back of it before putting it to his cheek, his gaze making her heart go thump-thump-thump in her ears. Christ, what had she gotten herself into? Her fingers curled around his – a reflex, really – as she caught him up briefly on her uneventful time in the Control Room, and he returned the favor by confirming that the raptors' paddock remained locked and secure, Blue surprised but not quite impressed by their midnight visit. They checked the whole cage and found nothing out of the ordinary.

"I told you it wasn't her," Owen said.

Claire sighed. "You did. And now the question is – what the hell was it?"

xoox

Claire Dearing's most notable – and most infuriating, according to her sister – trait was, perhaps, her determination to always get what she wanted. Harvard? It wasn't even a challenge, truth be told. An internship in the most prestigious company in the state afterwards? They didn't even think twice. Flying up the corporate ladder in Masrani Global? Sweat, blood and tears might have been involved at some time or the other, but she'd never admit it to anyone.

Minor setbacks were okay. Complete lack of progress, on the other hand – not so much.

She absolutely hated hitting a brick wall.

"Wow. When you said you wanted to raid Wu's office, I didn't think you meant 'raid'." Owen whistled, stepping into the room that looked like it was hit by a tornado not 5 minutes ago.

"I didn't do it." Claire's head popped up from behind the desk she was currently going through – all drawers pulled out, their contents in various stages of being examined. "Not all of it." She blew a strand of hair off her face. "Are you going to help or not?"

"Okay," he crouched down beside her. "What are we looking for?"

She tossed one folder aside and picked up another one. "All assets—" she cut off and offered him a small apologetic smile. "Sorry, I've been reading those old reports all morning. They're starting to get into my head."

Owen pulled the folder out of her hands, his eyes scanning several paragraphs of solid text. "Just tell me, what is it?"

She drew in a breath. "Every animal created in this lab was accounted for. If I can find any discrepancies, then maybe—"

"Wait, you think there's another dinosaur out there we don't know about?"

She might have as well told him they were looking for an alien.

"Do you have any other ideas?"

"And a raptor, too?" He pressed on, dubious.

"That I can't tell." Her face hardened, and he saw she'd been stewing in it for quite a while now. "For all I know, it can be part monkey, park alligator."

"Crocodile."

"What?" She looked up, puzzled.

"There're no alligators on this island, only crocodiles."

"Technicalities," Claire huffed, making him let out a soft laughter.

Owen observed the mess around them. "You don't really think they'd've left something like that behind, though. Do you?"

"I don't and they didn't." She rubbed her eyes tiredly, sick of the unnecessarily bright fluorescent light that gave everything an unpleasant grey undertone. "But I hoped Wu would have copies stashed somewhere." She sighed as she swept piles of useless documents around her with her glance. "Which starts looking like a really weak theory."

"Hey," he reached for her hand. "Whatever it is, we'll figure it out."

Claire bit her lip, refusing to meet his eyes. "This is exactly the kind of thing we can't afford right now, Owen," she breathed out, looking somewhat deflated and helpless by the moment. "Someone's already been hurt, and I can't let it happen again, but I don't even know where to start because everything here was such a huge goddamn secret, and—"

"Wait, Claire. Stop it." He sat cross-legged in front of her. "You're not letting anything happen. None of this is your fault." Which she knew was not true, not entirely, but he sounded like he believed it, but she couldn't quite tell if it was helping or making everything worse. "You really need to cut down on this God complex, you know? You can't be responsible for everything that happens everywhere at all times."

"This is the worst pep-talk ever," she pointed out, somehow unable to hold back a small smile. "And yet it's working, for whatever mysterious reason."

"I know my audience." And if he could look even more smug, Claire honestly couldn't imagine how. "Look, I might still have some paperwork left in my bungalow. It's just about the raptors, though, but I could go fetch it for you if you think it'd help."

Claire nodded. "Yeah, that… I'd really appreciate it."

"And in the meantime, I could have a look at the footage from the North-East sector from the last night and see if anything pops up," he offered.

"We've done that already," she grimaced. "That area is only barely covered by any kind of surveillance, what with it being a forest, but I was half sleep and…" She inhaled deeply and lets it out slowly. "Yes, that would help."

She felt tired to her bones. So tired she thought she could fall asleep and stay asleep for about a century. Up until now, she couldn't even imagine that thinking could hurt so much, that keeping her eyes open could be a monumental effort requiring a hell of a lot of concentration, that she could feel crushed under the weight of the world.

No, she didn't actually think she'd find anything in Wu's office when she came here a few hours ago, but 'Thorough' might have as well been her middle name, and doing something useless felt just a teeny-tiny better than doing nothing at all. She had to give it a go. Had to see it for herself after being kept in the dark for so long. It was unsettling to think how much she didn't know about the park she was responsible for.

Owen grinned. "And now, would you like to set this place on fire?"

Claire smacked his arm with the papers she was holding. "Don't you even—"

Her phone started to ring, cutting her off, Karen's name blinking on the screen as it chirped. She reached for it instantly.

"Hey, Karen. How's it—" Claire started and faltered, a deep frown creasing her forehead. "Wait, what? ... Slow down, I can't—They did WHAT?"

Ignoring Owen's quizzical face, she scrambled up to her feet and hurried out of Wu's office, her lips pursed into a thin line as she listened to her sister, her eyes blazing with that murderous glint he was happy to have never seen directed at him.

"I'll call you back, okay?" He heard her say before she disappeared up the stairs leading to the main Innovation Center area.

By the time Owen made it there, she was standing by one of the digital displays, yelling at someone.

"…I don't care how it happened, Andrew!" Claire's voice was ringing with only barely suppressed anger, and the mysterious Andrew clearly had no idea what he'd gotten himself into. "You promised to keep my family out of it and—I don't care whose fault was it! ... Do you have any idea—I don't give a damn about your campaigns. If you can't keep track of your own people, it's not my problem." She rubbed her forehead. "Yes, you are going to do damage control, although I don't see how it is relevant now." Claire closed her eyes for a moment as if trying to regain her composure, then snapped them open, seemingly even more furious. "No, I'm not going to talk my sister out of suing you if she decides to do it!" And hung up and muttered, "Jackass."

"What did they do now?" Owen stepped closer to her, his hands running up and down her arms until she stopped shaking, although whether it was rage or distress he couldn't tell at once. Maybe both.

"Someone leaked online the footage from the Main Street. From that night. And Zach and Gray were caught on camera, and now it all started again – they're in the highlight, and there's press, and no one would let them be, and Karen wants to switch the schools, but I don't see how would that make sense – it's not like the other people don't watch YouTube." She paused to catch a breath. "And now they're telling me it's all 'under control', and I just—" She exhaled sharply. "Zach and Gray… they've already been through so much, Owen. Their lives just started getting back to normal, and now it's…" Claire shook her head, looking helplessly at him. "I have no idea how to fix it."

"Hey," he squeezed her shoulders gently. "You don't have to fix anything. Let your sister sue their asses. Stop trying to protect the company that keeps on screwing you over and over again, Claire."

"I'm just trying to do what's right," he voice was small, her entire form somewhat deflated. "Back then as well as now. And if I don't, it'll all go to hell. This park, this island—"

"So what if it does? Let it! Maybe you should start thinking about what's right for you, for a change."

There was logic behind his words, solid and undeniable, and so scary she didn't even dare venture in that direction.

"I need to do this, for me." She said simply. "I need to finish what I've started so that I could put all this behind and move on with the rest of my life."

"This isn't life," he shook his head. "It's a project."

"It's the only life I have." The words were out of her mouth before she even realized how true, how accurate they were, and when she did, the thought left her scared and desperate and more lost than ever before.

He studied her face for a few long moments, his own expression unreadable, save for the slight curve of his lips, which she wasn't sure was humorous. His touch was warm to her skin, but she still couldn't stop shivering.

At last, Owen sighed. He dropped his gaze down to his feet, then swept the place – whatever was left of the Innovation Center, with its shattered information screens and discarded fossils lying everywhere and a layer of broken glass on the floor – with a long look, before meeting her eyes again. "I'll try not to take it personally."

xoox

She was caught in the darkness again, black and stifling, so black it seemed to have sucked out not only the light from everywhere around her, but the air as well. Thick, suffocating, pressing in on her. The smell of blood was heavy in the air, she could feel its stickiness of her palms, but couldn't tell if it was someone else's or her own. So much blood. She tried to take in a proper breath, but her lungs felt like they'd shrunk in her ribcage.

Someone – something – let out a scream, and Claire whirled around, and around, trying to locate the source of it, trying to understand if it was a cry of pain or anger, but it was coming from everywhere around her, enveloping her like a cocoon, growing louder, louder, louder, until she could hear nothing else.

She collapsed on her knees, needing so desperately to curl in on herself and stop being, but her hand brushed against something on the ground. No, not something – someone. She knew what it was even in complete darkness.

In her dreams, they never made it out. In her dreams, they always died.

"Claire?"

The scream broke off abruptly, its echo fading in the distance.

In her dreams, they always died, but she never did, punished for her mistakes by having to live with the weight of loss and guilt, wishing she could take their place instead.

Teeth. We need more teeth.

"Claire."

She blinked her eyes open, and found Owen's face hovering over her, a pale spot in the night. Her breath was short and fast and almost forced, her heart frantic.

"What happened?" She murmured, her mouth dry.

"You were crying in your sleep," he responded softly.

"What?" She brushed a palm to her cheek, feeling the wetness on her fingers, confused, embarrassed. The dream was already beginning to dissipate, the way most of them did, leaving nothing but a nasty aftertaste behind. Outside, the storm was raging again. They must have left the balcony door open in the living room; she could feel the cool rain-scented air on her skin. "Sorry I woke you."

Owen brushed her hair out of her face, smoothing it. "Don't be silly. C'mere."

He gathered her in his arms, her cheek resting on her shoulder, their legs tangled together, until the stiffness started to leave her body, her mind no longer resembling a death trap.

"I thought it'd get easier with time, but sometimes it feels even worse," she whispered, bundling a fistful of his shirt in her hand.

Tired. So tired...

"It will," he promised her with enough faith for both of them, or so she hoped, as his hand started tracing slow, soothing patterns on her back. "It will get better. And you won't even notice."

Claire squeezed her eyes shut, breathing in the familiar scent of him, melting into him, waiting for her heart to start beating in synch with his, willing her mind to let go, to break free.

"Tell me something," she asked Owen then, her voice nothing but a whoosh of breath.

It started as a bit of a joke back in San Diego and grew into their thing, something they'd do whenever they'd end up wide awake on her couch in the middle of the night. Or sitting on the floor in the hallway. Or separated by the door to her room when he'd hear her cry and come over to talk her through it.

Tell me something about the Navy.

Tell me what the Thanksgivings were like when you were a kid.

Tell me about the scar on your left wrist.

Tell me…

Tell me…

Tell me…

Tell me you want me, she wanted to ask more times than she could count. Tell me you need me, was always on the tip of her tongue. Tell me I'm safe. Tell me not to be scared.

It would've been so easy, so simple. Secrets were always meant to be shared in the dark, she thought sitting by his side, almost touching him but never quite there, never brave enough. Which was ironic – considering she didn't even think twice before she decided to play cat and mouse with the T-Rex, and how not okay was that?

Tell me everything I want to hear.

She'd always go for something safe instead, however (Tell me about your prom, tell me who you wanted to be when you grew up, tell me about your hopes and dreams and if I'm a part of them – yeah, maybe not this one), occasionally making him laugh – a sound so rare in the weeks following the I-Rex disaster it would always catch her by surprise.

The raptors were an unspoken taboo at first, something none of them mentioned, what with the loss of them still being too raw, and even though Owen never said it, she knew he thought Blue didn't make it either. Back then, she never pressed, but now he was telling her a story from the training days and his unfortunate decision to give them a soccer ball, and how they ripped it into nothing in 3 seconds flat, thus hopelessly failing the whole experiment. As it turned out, the raptors were not meant to play 'Fetch'.

She still couldn't fully comprehend his fascination with them, their bond, but there was so much fondness in his voice, so much easiness not tainted with blood, it was overwhelming. She'd have him talk about his raptors nonstop if it was up to her, if only for the sake of catching a glimpse of the before Owen, the one she never truly knew. (As if her list of regrets wasn't long enough already.)

Her mind slipped back to their conversation earlier that day, which now seemed almost ridiculous – how on Earth was she supposed to move on with anything if she couldn't make it through most of the nights on her own? If she needed someone else to pick up the broken parts of her and put them back together time and time again?

She didn't know how to need someone, always a work in progress.

"Tell me something else," Claire asked when the soccer ball story was over as she struggled to stay awake, her hand rising and falling with his steady breathing. Anything, she thought, the sound of his voice more important than what he was saying.

Tell me you won't leave.

Tell me you love me.

Tell me…

Tell me…

xoox

"Well, this is it."

Owen dropped a box on the counter before Claire, blew the dust off its lid and lifted it open. Claire coughed and waved her hand before her face before peering in, and then at him, and then into the box again.

"Is this how you keep the paperwork?" She asked, almost mortified. "I… I don't even want to know what your cheque book looks like."

"It's empty," she flashed a megawatt smile at her.

"Figures," she sighed with resignation.

In the end, it turned out to be easier to get him to take her to his bungalow than to haul his stuff back and forth in case it was another dead end, and at this point, Claire didn't have any reason to expect any other outcome. It was still worth a try though.

"You want a Coke? Or a beer?" Owen poked his head into the fridge, then glanced at her. "I would've stocked up on Cabernet Sauvignon and caviar if I knew we'd be stopping by, but-"

Claire gaped at him. "I'm not high-maintenance," she protected with fervor, which, by the looks of it, was the funniest thing Owen ever heard.

"That's cute. I'll have to remember that." He put a bottle of Coke in front of her, and she threw a crumpled piece of paper at him, all righteous indignation. "How long do you think it'll take? I've got to—"

"Go," she waved him off, already pulling the files and folders out of the box. "I'll just stay here."

He frowned, unconvinced. "How are you going to get back?"

"Come pick me up when you're done." She suggested without looking up. "This might take a while." And then, under her breath, "This is fascinating."

Owen shook his head. "You're such a weirdo."

"Says the guy who spent the last few years hanging out with a bunch of raptors."

"People are overrated," he shrugged, and then gave Claire a pointed look when she glanced up at last. "Most of them."

She put down the papers and leaned on her forearms over the counter. "Did I make the cut?"

He leaned forward as well, his face hovering mere inches from hers, his gaze shifting from her eyes to her slightly parted lips to her eyes again, his own mouth twitched into a wicked half-smile, and for a few moments it was like a daring game, neither one of them moving. And there it was again, that sinking feeling in the pit of her stomach that it was just too good to be true, and her heart was doing leaps in her chest, and there were so many shades of blue in his eyes…

And it was such a damn shame she couldn't tune out the rest of the world for at least a while.

Owen crossed the little distance that still was between them, capturing her mouth with his.

"You are the cut, Ms. Dearing."

His grin was broad and contagious, and it might have as well been the best thing she'd ever heard in her life.

"My sister wants you to come over for Christmas," Claire said.

"Really?"

"I'm not even sure she wants me there, but you – yeah." And then, when he raised an eyebrow at her, "Don't flatter yourself, you'd be on the babysitting duty of you go."

"Do you want me to go, Claire?"

And somehow, she had an impression they weren't talking about just Christmas, if the intensity in his eyes was any indication.

Claire looked away for a moment, out of the small kitchen window on the left from her, then back at Owen again, and it was so strange, so surreal. She used to think of this island as her home, her life sorted neatly and organized to the minute, and now there was this person who felt more like home than any place ever did, and didn't have a single goddamn clue what to make of it.

"I'd really like that."

"I'll be back in a couple of hours," Owen pecked her on the lips once again. "Don't get too excited over this stuff, it's scary," his eyes darted to the dusty box, and she smacked him on the shoulder with the back of her hand. "Really hot, but still scary."

He tossed his empty Coke bottle into the trashcan, and then she was suddenly all alone, the rumbling of his car fading behind the trees.

The air inside the bungalow was hot and stuffy, what with it staying locked for a few weeks now. Outside, it wasn't much cooler, though, but she still pushed the windows open, as well as the front door, allowing only the screen to stay shut for the sake of keeping the mosquitoes away. She grabbed her Coke then – not exactly her drink of choice under normal circumstances, but it was too hot to be alive, and the drink felt nice and cool, and screw it, really – and the box, and moved to the couch, purposely ignoring half a dozen emails she needed to reply to.

They waited for more reports, and more figures, and more numbers, and her best prognosis for the viability of a new park, which - ha! – she couldn't even think about, even in theory, because they said 'New park' and she heard the teeth snapping at them, the old garage crumpling around her and Owen when the Indominus crushed it with her snout, the screams of the people on the Main Street attacked by the Pteranodons, her own yell 'Run!' And her breath hitched in her throat every time, her eyes searching instinctively for Owen to make sure he was, in fact, alive.

Back in San Diego, she'd wake up sometimes, breathless and shaking, the images of death and fear dancing before her eyes, and pad down the corridor to the living room until she could hear him breathe in his sleep. A small reassurance, but it was better than nothing.

The company was losing millions of dollars by keeping the park closed, and she could easily imagine the marketing team working on the new campaign, could probably even predict what turn it would take, what buttons they would try to push to win back the trust of people. And even though they refused to let her in on their plans, she could feel her time running out. Claire also knew there was no way she could make them see it from her standpoint – they weren't there, they never knew what it felt like to have your whole world collapse around you – and if there was something running loose on this island...

xoox

Owen had been playing a game with Blue – the one in which he was trying to get her to cooperate, and she was ignoring him entirely, or doing the exact opposite of what he was asking for - for roughly an hour and a half when his phone started to ring, instantly sending the raptor off on her merry way into the forest within her compound.

He pulled it out, thinking it was Claire.

It was not.

"Lowery."

"Hey, Owen. Is Claire with you?"

"No." He turned around and tried to spot Blue wherever she was hiding behind the trees, listening to Lowery type something rhythmically on the other end of the line. "Why?"

"I can't get hold of her, her phone seems to be off."

"Oh, she's… She's in my bungalow." Owen squinted in the sun, shading his eyes from it with his hand. They were making some progress again, but Blue was determined to make it as difficult as possible. "The reception can be spotty there. Everything okay?"

Lowery paused. "We found the raptor. Like, the new one. The one that what's-his-name saw the other night."

Owen froze, his arm dropping to his side. "Are you serious?"

"I'm looking at it right now. In fact, it's…" More typing. A bad kind of pause.

"What? It's what?" Owen demanded.

He could all but hear the other man think hard before he finally said, "It's about half a mile away from that cabin of you—"

Owen hung up, cutting Lowery off, and started to run.

To be continued...


A/N: Thanks for the support, guys. It means the world to me :))

I keep promising to wrap it up, but there'll still be a couple more chapters. I'm sorry, I guess? Also, I'm totally high on all the deleted scenes and BTS featurettes, because how awesome are they?!

Comments are always welcome :))