Epilogue
Barry considered Owen a dear friend. They had real conversations, played basketball (terribly) one-on-one, fished (also terribly), and could almost always tell when the other was lying.
The first time Barry heard about Owen and Claire from Connor Elks he thought it was a joke. And then Claire showed up at the paddock the following day, loudly proclaiming to be breaking up with Owen. It was confusing. Even more confusing was that they quickly got back together and Owen wasn't willing to give very many details.
That was a red flag, Barry knew. Owen talked about his past girlfriends all the time - usually bemoaning a nagging comment one had made. And when he pressed Owen about Claire, he had only shrugged and smiled.
"She's not something to complain about," he said kindly.
But there was something wrong. Things didn't make sense. They came out as a couple and then two days later broke it off. And then Owen went to see her and suddenly they were together again. He didn't doubt Owen's persuasiveness. He'd seen the man charm plenty of women. But a woman like Claire Dearing wasn't his usual target.
After a few weeks of Owen's evasive answers, Barry's suspicions were running wild. Eventually he came up with a theory that he never expected to be correct.
"You can't tell anyone," Owen warned him firmly.
"Are you serious?" Barry asked in disbelief. "You're pretending to be together?"
"Barry, I'm not joking. No one can know, alright? She'd kill us both. We'd be chopped up to bits and fed to Rex."
"Why are you doing this?" he laughed incredulously. "What's the point of this?"
"It started as a joke and it got a little carried away. It's not a big deal. Just keep it to yourself."
"Why not end it?" he asked.
Owen shrugged. "I don't know. It's kind of fun, I guess."
And so Barry laughed. And he laughed, and he laughed, and he laughed some more. He laughed at his friend up until the point that Claire told him she wanted to end their fake relationship. And then, seeing Owen so agitated by the split, he realized what had happened.
"You fell in love with her, didn't you?" he asked him as they sat together on pub stools, nursing near empty bottles of beer.
"Shut up," Owen grumbled. He swallowed the rest of his beer and slammed the bottle down. "God damn it!"
Barry felt a great deal of sympathy for the man. He'd seen Owen date and lose a handful of women, and most of the time he bounced back quickly. He'd been back to normal a week after The Great Lisa Debacle (Amber's phrase for it, but Barry liked it and often used it). But this was different.
Three weeks after the fake break up, Owen was still snapping at people and in a bad mood. He yelled at some of the techs for not cleaning the floor of the paddock well enough and sent them in for an impromptu clearing. And ten minutes later, Owen was facing down the raptors inside the gates.
At the Med Bay, Barry had a hard time reconciling Claire being there. Owen wouldn't have been there if he hadn't been in such a bad mood and insisted the floor be spotless (because it really wasn't that filthy but Barry hadn't argued with him). And he wouldn't have been in a bad mood if Claire hadn't ended things between them. Or if she had ended things sooner, before he got too attached. Or if she'd recognized Owen's feelings and reciprocated them. So he snapped at her in the waiting room. He was angry and scared that his friend had been hurt and was lying on a hospital bed with three gashes splitting his chest open and he couldn't believe her gall - her stubbornness. She refused to leave and Barry bit his tongue as best he could.
...
Owen told Barry he was going to invite Claire to the bar for his going-away party. Barry wanted to say something about it, to remark that he didn't think it was a good it. Owen was still in love with her - as much as he tried to hide it, Barry knew. Amber knew too but she was smart enough not to ever bring it up. Until that night anyway. As Claire made awkward conversation with people she didn't know all that well, Owen, Barry, and Amber stood together, saying cheers to Owen.
"God, she's fucking gorgeous, isn't she?" Owen said, his words slow from the alcohol. He was watching Claire across the crowd.
"Maybe you should go do something about it?" Amber suggested pointedly.
Barry hid his smirk behind the rim of his bottle and Owen turned to smile at Amber. "You'd like that, wouldn't you?"
"I think everyone would," she answered. "Including you."
And later, when she was leaving and saying her goodbyes to Barry and Owen, Amber had told Owen to make his move before it was too late.
But Owen was leaving in two days, and Barry couldn't see what could be done. He looked over to Claire and saw her watching them with a small smile. She'd dressed up - or maybe for her it was dressing down - for the night. She seemed relaxed, but also...sad. There was an air about her, Barry realized, that was a bit depressing.
"You know she told me she wanted something to happen between me and her?" Owen said to him after Amber walked away. "I don't know, man. I still think I might marry that girl one day."
He laughed at himself and Barry smiled at his friend before looking back at Claire. She had left her table and was chatting with another employee.
"You know, I'm really getting sick of you," Barry said to Owen, joking. "I can't wait for you to leave."
"Yeah, I know," Owen said in mock solemn.
"But I think she'll have a pretty hard time with it," he said, pointing discreetly in Claire's direction. Owen looked momentarily confused then thoughtful. Barry rolled his eyes. "Just don't say I never did anything for you," he told him. He got up from the booth and made his way over to the Operations Manager who had stolen his buddy's heart (and mind, it sometimes seemed).
He badgered her into taking Owen home herself and then waited until the following day to hear news from Owen about what happened.
"I'm an ass, that's what happened," he said over the phone. "And come to think of it, you are too. No more Fireball. Ever."
So Barry dropped it, deciding there was nothing more that could happen until Owen came back from his mission.
And then the following morning, when Owen met him outside the control building, he was grinning like a maniac.
"She came over last night," Owen explained.
"Really? And?"
Claire's car rounded the corner, grabbing both men's attention. Owen quickly turned back to Barry. "And she stayed the night then left this morning to change her clothes. And you're not allowed to mention anything about it to her," he said in a rushed, stern whisper.
Barry watched as Owen walked up to her car as she stepped out. She grabbed his hand and lifted herself up on her toes to give him a swift kiss and a smile.
...
There was no way to know just how serious their relationship was going to be. Barry knew of Owen's feelings and had an inkling of the depths of Claire's as they got to know each other better in Owen's absence, but he'd never expected them to come together as fast as they did after Owen returned.
"That's our list," Owen told him as he looked at a piece of paper stuck to his fridge. "We're trying to decide which of our places to live in permanently so we've been writing pros and cons."
Barry read over the notes. Claire had written (her handwriting was much neater than Owen's) that the trailer was more secluded, had better views, the option for outdoor spaces, and was closer to the raptor paddock. Owen had written (in a chicken scratch Barry could barely make out) that Claire's apartment had more space, a bigger bed - for sex, he'd written, and a bigger shower - for steamy shower sex.
...
"This woman, I tell ya," Owen grumbled as he and Barry laid brick pavers down in a path from Owen's porch to the spot where Claire normally parked her car. "With her fancy shoes and their stupid heels that get stuck in the fucking ground."
"I thought she didn't know we were doing this?" Barry said.
"She doesn't," he said. Claire was in New York for a week attending a conference for Masrani Global. "And I'm beginning to regret deciding to do this." He stretched out his back and grimaced.
"Just think about all the sex you'll get for it," Barry told him. "I, on the other hand, am doing this out of the goodness of my heart."
"And for free pizza and free beer."
"Oh, right. So, I do have something to look forward to," he said, smiling.
...
"You could have picked her place and you wouldn't have to go through this," Barry said as he and Owen watched the truck drive off with the trailer he'd made his home for the better part of six years.
"Yeah, but I would've missed that view," he said, turning to look back at the lake. "Besides, we've got a lot more room out here now anyway." He turned to look back at the newly finished house where his trailer had once stood.
"She's got good taste," Barry said appreciatively. He took in the single story home's impressive craftsman design.
"We knew that," Owen replied as he started walking towards the front porch. "She married me, didn't she?"
...
He'd been angry with InGen and those in charge, including Claire, for the reckless decisions they'd made. Recreating tyrannosauruses and velociraptors had been dangerous enough, creating a hybrid that combined those and a few other large, carnivorous dinosaurs - for a profit, of all things - was just stupid and greedy. Add to that he and Owen hadn't been brought on to the project until after one hybrid ate her sibling, and the lack of available funds to properly care and train the beast, it had been a doomed endeavor from its conception.
He and Owen never stood a chance at establishing a relationship with the Indominus. She was far too aggressive and hadn't had a proactive rearing from birth by a trainer so she didn't trust humans. Still, Owen tried to bond with her. He named her India, or affectionately - and he used that term loosely - Indy ("Golf is technically next, then Hotel. But how can I not name the Indominus Indy?") and they tried to teach her to hunt. She was a skilled tracker, but it quickly became clear to them that she wasn't interested in hunting for food. She enjoyed the chase, and often times played with whatever poor animal they threw in with her, but she wouldn't eat her kill. She still waited for the crane to drop something inside the paddock for her, leaving the carcasses from her hunts all over her paddock.
When Indy escaped by climbing the walls (because surprise! She was bigger than expected) Owen told Claire to send the ACU out with lethal ammunition. She had protested, knowing the money at stake, but at his insistence ("She's heading to the raptors! You send them out now and kill her or everyone else dies! Okay? Everyone! She will not stop. And if she breaks through the paddock and lets the girls loose it'll all be over!") she called in the heavy artillery.
Barry had watched Indy grab a man around the middle and toss him in her mouth. She clamped down on his torso and yanked his leg from his body. There was so much blood. Owen, to his credit, never paused or seemed to bat an eye as he continued firing his rifle. The two of them were crouched down next to the F-150 Owen had adopted as a work vehicle and they were surrounded by other ACU Special Forces vehicles.
Owen and the other men and women around them had military backgrounds and experience in combat. Barry came from zoos and sanctuaries. He'd seen animals get out of control and be put down suddenly and swiftly but that moment wasn't anything like what he'd seen before.
Indy hardly seem to care about the bullets. Most appeared to bounce right off of her. Owen had yelled out for everyone to aim for the softer skin of her underbelly which finally seemed to be doing some damage. She roared in anger and pain and flipped the closest vehicle to her, crushing a man beneath it. It wasn't until someone shot a rocket launcher at her that the terror finally ended.
Only two people died, which Barry counted as some kind of horrific miracle, but dozens were injured.
They set up a makeshift triage center outside the raptor paddock since it was close by. Blue and the other girls chattered excitedly at all the commotion from behind the gates. After Owen made sure Barry was alright and not injured, he climbed the bridge to give the girls a distraction. When Claire arrived, Barry silently pointed to the bridge and watched as she ran to him, her face ghostly white and looking like she was holding back tears. On the bridge, they embraced and held each other for at least as long as he looked at them.
Barry had an estranged wife and a six year old child he suddenly felt like he should reconnect with.
...
He moved to Florida after the incident at the park and brought his family with him from Haiti. He had a job at a zoo in Miami and preferred the lazy tigers to the man eating monsters he'd seen on Isla Nublar.
"You got something in the mail!" his wife called to him from their kitchen. "Looks like it's from the park."
Barry walked through their living room, checking out the window to the backyard where his daughter was playing outside with some friends, and into the kitchen where his wife was sorting through the pile of bills. She tossed a large envelope across the counter at him.
It was heavier than the average piece of mail, but Barry suspected that was mainly caused by the fancy embossed paper the envelope was made of. The stamp in the upper right corner was that of the park's logo. He ignored the uneasy feeling he got at the sight of carnivorous teeth and ripped the back open.
Inside was a personalized postcard from Owen and Claire (mostly Claire, admittedly) wishing him a happy holiday. The picture on the front was that of the happy couple, sitting on the steps of their front porch with their German shepherd, Foxtrot (Fox for short - sometimes Owen called her Mulder to be funny) and their daughter, Juliet, still a small toddler with bright red hair like her mother and the coy smirk of her father.
Barry turned the card over and read Owen's scratchy, near-illegible message:
Hey, man,
Claire made us do these super cheesy photos for these dumbass Christmas cards. Women, am I right? Still, you gotta admit I've surrounded myself with some pretty adorable females.
Anyway, I hope you're doing okay and are liking the super boring elephants and donkeys or whatever it is you're working with these days. I'm sending along some pictures of the girls. They miss you, too. And one of Golf and Hotel - yeah, man! I finally found a Golf and Hotel!
We're thinking about taking Jules to Disney in a few months and would like to meet up with you if you're up for it. We all miss you, Barry.
Love you, man. Happy holidays.
Owen and the Grady Bunch.
Ps - Amber says "Merry Christmas, Fucknut." Seriously, her words. Not mine.
Barry chuckled and passed the card back to his wife for her to read. He took out the other photographs from inside and flipped through them.
The first was of Juliet, her hands and face scrunched against a small fish tank with two bright yellow fish inside. On the back was Claire's handwritten scrawl: Juliet, Golf, and Hotel. Barry laughed and looked at the picture again before flipping to the next.
The next few photos were of the raptors. Blue and Charlie leaping in the air for rats; Echo rolling around in some bushes, her head angled to view the camera; and one of Owen directing the three with the clicker.
They lost Delta to some health problems two years ago. Owen had called to let him know and asked for some advice on how to handle it with the other three.
The last picture was of Owen and Juliet on the bridge. Juliet had her arms wrapped tightly around Owen's neck and had a goofy scowl on her face that closely matched the silly expression Owen was giving. The camera was angled (and clearly taken by Owen as his arm was in the shot) to show the three raptors on the ground below. They were all staring up with cocked heads.
Barry laughed and showed his wife who smiled and chuckled with a shake of her head. He turned to the fridge and affixed the postcard and the last picture to it with magnets.
With his hands on his hips, he looked at the pictures and shook his head. He smiled and marveled at how life had turned out for his very dear friend.