Alan had stood, his feet sweltering in his thick shoes and socks, watching the shadows grow longer and longer as the day passed. He had watched the car whisk Ellie away from him, for what he was beginning to think would be a longer time than they had discussed. He stood until the world was completely dark and still. He liked how the desert turned black, with nothing but the stars and the moon to look at. No clouds in the sky made for marvelous celestial viewings. Alan had often thought, had he not become a paleontologist, he would have become an astronomer.

The trailer seemed so empty without Ellie. In a way, she was what made it home for him. It was when they had sat together so many nights ago fawning over the vertebrae on the table that he felt things were on the mend – life was regaining its normalcy. Slowly. The specimen was reconstructed now, but everything else lay in pieces around him.

The raptor skeleton they had been excavating the past few weeks was undoubtedly on a plane to Washington at that moment. Hardly a groundbreaking find, but the museum had snatched it up for a pretty penny absurdly fast. Every skeleton to Alan felt like an overwhelming triumph - they were his real children.

The loneliness he felt without Ellie was, at times, overwhelming. It was akin to having his dominant hand amputated – everything was awkward, clumsy and random. Despite his longing to be with her again, the deeply rooted sense of right and wrong told him it was for the best – although it certainly didn't seem like it. She wanted something he wasn't ready to give up just yet.

And she had told him about her dreams as well – the raptors. About him and how when she looked at him, things got worse. It was difficult to comprehend; when he looked at her, he felt things getting better.

To top off the list of unexpected things that had happened to him since leaving Costa Rica, a newfound interest in the behavior of Velociraptor mongoliensis was certainly the most startling. He had poured over the sounds they had made, the movements they had exhibited over and over again. As nauseating as it was to recall the sounds they made, he simply had to record them while the memories were fresh. He had written them down on just about whatever legible writing surface there was to be had, and at times had found himself replicating them in the semi-privacy of the bathroom. He knew this would have been unbearable for Ellie, yet unbearable to him as well if he could not pursue it. There was something to be said about the curiosity of Alan Grant – insatiable unless whetted.

But slowly, he began to agree with Ellie. It was for the best. They were different people now, incompatible by an unfortunate mutual experience.

Life finds a way.

Ian Malcolm was a prick. Half the scientific community knew it. But he was right. Life found ways to continue. Ian would continue being a prick, Ellie would move on and evolve, and Alan would stay in the dirt and in the mud, digging up long dead bones, and putting them back together again.

Everything else was all memories now - before the island, on the island, and the hospital in Costa Rica.


That's all I got! I'm very sorry it kind of petered out very quickly at the end, but I hope you enjoyed reading it because I enjoyed writing it. Thank you for the very positive feedback I've received, and I'll try to keep on practicing with your suggestions you've given me.

{EDIT} I finally got the strength to edit things a little to my original vision (channeled some serious George Lucas but without all the CGI garbage).

WHO KNOWS maybe I'll write some more about Alan ...