hi i'm back from my ship week, I wrote six fics (the shortest being 1k and the longest being 17k), and now I gotta get back in the game (which is easy bc the jp movies are on netlfix again eye emoji dlsklghgh)

Boy I'm excited to get to finishing this fic, I've had another JP fic boiling in my brain *forever* now and I wanna write already

ALSO, for clarification, while I use characters from Jp: lost world, the events of the second and third movie did not happen in this au! The first park was reclaimed and then site B is like. An experiment (that's heavily monitored from a distance) to see how the dinosaurs develop without human interference


Ellie had considered throwing the letter in the trash, as she did every year when they sent her an invitation, not even bothering to read it anymore (they always said the same thing anyways, and the words had long since become stale to her). She'd felt so incandescently angry when she'd received the first one, when the new park had opened on the anniversary of their fated visit of the first, supposedly to replace its tarnished memory with something that wouldn't leave them all scarred for life.

The thing is, thought, that those memories couldn't be so simply replaced.

The thing is though, that Ellie remembers the first time she'd seen a dinosaur- the first time she'd run her fingers along a massive leaf that had died out millions of years ago, that she had only seen as an imprint marked on ancient rock. Ellie remembers how her jaw had dropped and her heart had swelled and she thought that there wasn't a single dig site that could compare to the beauty of seeing the animal in the flesh, so beyond her imagination that she couldn't have possibly formed a proper sentence, a coherent thought, if she wanted to. Ellie had felt as faint as Alan looked, and it's a wonder she hadn't joined him on the grass, gasping for breath as they watched the brachiosaurus eat, hopping onto its hind legs to tower over them. It had been much the same with the triceratops, touching her horn, her rough skin warm and living beneath her hand. She has yet to experience so much euphoria as she did then in that moment.

But the memories of fearing for her life and the lives of her loved ones haven't faded either. She remembers, intimately, the rotten-meat breath of velociraptors and the piercing roar of the t-rex, the painful pounding of her heart against her ribcage as she had ran, fueled by adrenaline and pure desperation and so much fury and fear that she had burned with it.

The scars are gone, and the nightmares have receded (had been gone for a very, very long time now), but the memories persist.

Ellie hadn't known why Alan had accepted the invitation this year, not until they had had a long conversation over the phone and then later again at a coffee shop where they had done nothing but talk until their coffee turned to cold sludge in their cups. In a lot of ways, Alan had become hard for her to read in the time after the incident at the park, had closed himself off behind a wall of thistles as he dealt with his trauma. (She couldn't blame him either, she'd done much the same and they'd frozen each other out instead of talking like they used to). In the end, it had dissolved their romantic relationship, though luckily their friendship had been strong enough to survive the tempest of their roiling, ragged emotions.

But as many things change, just as many stay the same, and Ellie had always thought that Alan Grant's curiosity was his greatest asset and his greatest flaw. For all that he saw himself as the astronomer, admiring the stars from a safe distance, there was still a bit of astronaut in him, that wanted so much to touch them, despite the knowledge that he would be burned. And Ellie- Ellie wants to touch them too.

She looks down at the keys of her laptop, the draft of the book that she'd started just a week ago peering back at her, unfinished, waiting for her percolating thoughts to be pressed into its blank pages. She closes the laptop with a sigh, not much feeling like writing anymore, her eyes passing over the envelope on her desk before quickly flickering away again, too many complicated emotions slithering like tangled snakes in her belly.

The new one's been open for a few years now, and nothing's happened, she reminds herself, though it doesn't really help her feel all that much better. The margin of error that a place like Jurassic World could allow for was miniscule, and she couldn't help but feel that if she set foot on the island again, it would set off like a bomb under her, set to go rotten the moment she came back, like some sort of curse. It had only taken one errant storm (and Dennis Nedry) to turn that park into a living nightmare the first time around.

Ellie shakes her head, frustrated with her circular thinking, aware that it would get her nowhere when she'd already decided to go, but still unable to help it, flexing her jaw as she settles on her couch and turns on the tv. She needs a distraction, she thinks. There's still a few months before they'd even be going, anyways.


Having dinner with Sarah and Kelly had seemed like a good way to tell them, when Ian had thought of it at the time.

They'd be fed and sated, they would be in a public area so they couldn't yell at him, and maybe he could get a word in edgewise about his decision to go back to the park (that honestly wasn't just because Alan and Ellie had decided they'd go back as well, he very much had his own reasons.)

In theory, anyways. In practice it's very much… hmm. They're both staring at him flatly, in a way that tells him just what they think of his idea of going back.

"Listen, I know what you're thinking", he says, holding up his hands in mock surrender. Kelly scoffs, rolling her eyes at him like she's fifteen and he's telling her that she isn't allowed to go out with friends until she finishes her homework.

"No, look, I'm not insane", Ian says defensively, feeling very much like the situation is leaving his grasp before he can even properly look it over.

"Ian", Sarah hums, all soft and soothing like she would to a cub, or an injured animal in her care, "you know you don't have to prove anything to anyone, right? You're not obligated to go to that park, no matter what anyone tells you." Her voice is too sugary to be sincere and Ian isn't sure if he's being mocked or not, it's always fifty-fifty with Sarah. At least with Kelly he knows he's being mocked.

"Dad, you spent four years absolutely railing about the island, for good reason of course, and then when the new park cropped up you went on a rampage for months but now you've decided to go back? What happened to Jurassic Park and Jurassic World being death trap buffets for a bunch of horror movie monsters that no longer have a basis in science?" Kelly asks blandly, picking at her pasta, her dark eyes scrutinizing.

"Don't mock me", Ian says insistently, "I thought you'd be all, uh, supportive, that I'm facing my greatest nemesis."

Kelly takes a bite of her pasta rather than gracing him with any sort of response. It's Sarah who takes his hand, and her eyes turn a little softer, genuine, mouth pulling into a tense line before she smoothes her expression into something that Ian can classify as less mockingly concerned and more- it's more like the face she uses when she's trying to understand peculiar animal behavior, teasing out the reasoning behind it in her head like trying to unravel a length of rope. Ian's long become used to this particular look of scrutiny.

"You're not just going because and Dr. Sattler are going?" Sarah asks, taking a sip of her water and peering at Ian over the lip of her glass. Her green eyes are piercing, always have been, and Ian thinks he fell in love with them first. He doesn't know how Sarah's stuck around for so long, but he's grateful that she has, and that she doesn't need a ring to know their relationship is solid.

"I want closure", he answers. It's more than that even, but he's not sure how to verbalize into something that Sarah and Kelly would understand. They weren't there, and for all the stories that Ian had told them, the fear and the awe that he had felt in Jurassic Park had to have been felt first hand for it to be understood. Ellie and Alan certainly understood it. Lex and Tim understood it, even with how young they were when they went, and there's a solidarity in it, in being part of that group that survived, and Ian supposes that there is some deep seated part of him who needs it more than he'll admit.

And maybe, maybe, he wouldn't mind seeing a dinosaur again. Not being eaten is the goal, of course, he remembers well enough that he had only escaped by a hair's breadth from the rex's teeth and that he had spent the rest of that weekend in a bunker half high on a diminishing supply of morphine and wondering who else would fall victim to the hungry jaws of the loose predators. God, he hadn't even had to encounter the raptors. Ian mentally shakes his head and goes back to his dinner, ignoring the prickling sensation of Kelly's dark eyes, deciding that perhaps he's still on the fence about how he feels about the animals.


Lex's been to the park twice already, has seen their computer and security systems, the protocols they have set down in the case of an emergency. She's even seen the labs, if only to make sure the head scientists were taking the utmost precautions with the dinosaurs they were breeding (no frogs this time, she thinks wryly), though she's never been into the park proper. She'd declined the tour, when it'd been offered to her, and no assurances of spared no expense could convince her, even after she'd checked after their systems.

Obviously it had all been beefed up since the 90's, and the lines of code that had flashed across her eyes, reflected against her bifocals, had been comforting to look at, safe. A line of binary couldn't eat her, and she wrapped that thought around her like a shield of ones and zeroes (though another part of her mind had reminded her that binary hadn't protected Dennis Nedry, and yet another part, angry and fifteen and trembling thinks that he had gotten exactly what he deserved for what he did.)

Tim had dissociated himself somewhat from the experience.

She'd been so… angry? Disappointed? That he couldn't seem to ever express how much that place had harmed him- them, that his eyes went a little blank when she used to force him to talk about because she needed to know she wasn't the only one going mad with nightmares. Lex thinks Tim might have hated her in that time period. Lex hated herself in that time period too. She hated everything, had burned with it, for many months after they'd come back home, drifting from her mom's to her grandpa's and then back again, feeling hopelessly unwanted and burdensome. She chuckles a little pausing to look down at the dishes she's washing, hands pruned because at some point she'd stopped really washing them, her hands hovering in the water rushing from the faucet.

For a brief time, she'd been such an edgy teenager, but Lex can forgive herself for that. Tim and her grandpa had already forgiven her for being terrible to them (and at the very least, the park had helped her forget that her parents were also getting a divorce. God, yikes was that not a good year for her.

Lex picks up a plate, scratches absently at a stubborn stain with her thumb. Tim had called her the other night, and had, in the most muted way Tim had been able to convey, admitted that maybe, perhaps, some part of him (ten years old, carrying books about dinosaurs around with him everywhere because he was such a nerd), was excited to go back.

And honestly, Lex isn't even that surprised. Tim had always been better at compartmentalizing than her, and at his core, he'd never stopped loving dinosaurs, as much as he tried to distance himself from the memory of the park. They're predictable like that, Lex thinks with a snort. Tim had gone and become a paleontologist and she'd started up her own tech company and now-.

Her hand trembles faintly; her thumb picks at the soapy stain on her plate.

Now they're going back.


"So like, do you think Claire's letting Wu send us back to Site B so we won't be in the way of her planning", Owen huffs as he packs the final bag of gear into Barry's truck, palms stinging from the rasp of rough canvas against newly healed, pink skin. He'd scraped his hands on a run in the restricted zone with his girls, where Charlie had been just a touch too enthusiastic and the tree that Owen had used to catch himself from falling had shredded through the calloused skin of his palms. It'd been great, Owen loved nothing more than messing himself the fuck up.

"So your clumsy, unorganized ass doesn't get in the way of her planning", Barry amends shielding his eyes from the glare of the sun with a hand, mouth pulling back in a scowl of annoyance at the heat. The back of his gray shirt is soaked with sweat, and Owen wipes at his forehead, perspiration clinging to the ends of his hair.

"Hey, I'm- okay I don't end up in the medical wing any more than any of the other handlers-"

"You end up there surprisingly often for someone who's supposedly psychically connected to them-"

"And it's not that I'm disorganized, I have my own filing system. It just so happens that it doesn't look as pretty as yours or Claire's organization system", Owen rambles defensively, following Barry to the driver's side of his truck, opening it up for him, and leaning against the window after he's closed it. Barry raises an eyebrow, the corner of his mouth quirking with humor. Owen, despite himself, grins back.

Barry shakes his head, his laugh a quiet, deep thing that's more breath in his chest than sound, tapping his fingers against the side of the truck door through the open window.

"Go say goodbye to your girls, we'll be waiting for you at the dock. Don't take long", Barry says, sounding fond.

Owen nods, stepping away from the truck, and after Barry drives away with a shouted a bientot, he treads over to his motorcycle. He hears his pack in the back of his mind, winding down from their quick training run from earlier, tunes into all of them for a quick moment before pulling back into the general pack channel, the warm buzz of the summer sun melting them all into puddles. There's relief in the wholeness of their bond, keeping Owen's mind from being bisected because rather than overwhelming him with sensation, it's a subtle awareness, a ping pong signal that travels between them as easily as breathing.

It used to be overwhelming. Owen would be fifteen and trip into an animal's mind without even realizing it, and his skin would itch with the grainy feeling of hot dirt, except that he'd be nowhere near dirt, inside in a classroom, and his head wound pulse with it, teeth grinding, chewing on the corner of his cheek until it would bleed (heat against his fur, grime entrenched into his pores, his hand clenching against the smooth wood of a desk, feathers waterlogged with rainwater, his forehead burning, soft sheets against his skin, too much split screen input going into him at once, funneling runny and thick as if through a straw)-

It hadn't been great.

His bike roars to life beneath him, hands flexing against the handlebars before he speeds off towards his girls' paddock, kicking up a storm of dust as he goes. He lets the cool blanket of his pack's wind-down fuzz his thoughts, taking the edge off of the nerves that prickle just beneath his skin, too many ants burrowing down into his veins. Blue prods curiously at his mind and Owen quietly tells her to wait, that he'll properly explain the situation once he arrives at the paddock and can connect with them physically. They're aware that something's going on, even if not the particulars, and Owen needs to make sure that when he leaves, they'll know it won't be a permanent thing, and that they'll need to be on their very best behavior while he's away, lest the scientists (or god forbid, Hosksins, get any ideas). Perhaps he'd been procrastinating in telling his pack that he'd be going off island for a while, kept it in a corner of his mind they wouldn't be able to access, but only because he had not wanted to rile them.

He dismisses the Ingen guards, who clearly don't mind leaving their shift early, and Owen waits until their cars are gone before entering the paddock. He waits patiently for each of his girls to bump into him in greeting, brushing a palm along the side of their flanks, warmth flooding his chest as he looks at each one of his girls. It hits him, rather suddenly, that this would be the farthest he would be from them since any of them were born.

"Okay", he starts, a part of his brain wondering how insane and absurd this would look to an outsider, the rest trying to keep a wave of sadness from bursting into the bond and shooting the girls into a panic. "I'm going to be gone for a little while. I'll be going to a different island to do some work for Wu, but it shouldn't take more than three weeks."

Roma snaps her great white jaw, a hissing bark ripping from her throat, her tail lashing, Venecia mimics her sister, and Owen can feel their upset through the link, harsh pulses of alpha going alpha going skating through his mind. The raptors aren't very happy about it either, Delta cawing in denial while Echo and Charlie scuff at the packed dirt with their sharp sickle claws, Charlie's warbling translating to a distressed no no no no in his head. Blue stays eerily calm, but Owen can see the frost in her gold eyes.

She waits though, helping him to wrangle the rest of the pack back into submission, snapping at the scruff of Echo's neck when her skittish tail comes too close to slamming Venecia into Owen (and Owen knows, despite the size difference, Echo's tail comes with quite the punch, and trying to get Venecia off of him would be an ordeal for everyone involved).

Calm steady good, he thinks as he soothes his hand along Delta's snout, looking into her eyes until she bows her head, chuffing softly in apology.

"I don't want to leave for that long or for that far either", Owen says, regret and his own flavor of sorry sorry sad sorry tinting the bond in a shade of melancholy gray. "Just be good for the temps, alright? No murdering anyone who falls in the paddock, no matter how tempting and deserving they might be of it, don't try to escape out of the paddock, and don't give the docs too much of a hard time, they're nervous enough as it is. But I'll be back as soon as I can, alright? Plus we'll be in each other's heads still." He grins, tapping at his temple, and to his relief, the array of tangled distress that the girls had been projecting melts away, replaced more with a…

It's abstract, not grieving, that's too severe, but something like it, and he hopes, desperately, that he can keep his connection to them even so far away. Owen's become as dependent on the bond as his girls have and the thought of losing it sets his teeth on edge, crawling cold fingers up his spine.

"Blue's in charge while I'm gone", he says, and his girls chuff because it's more of a joke than anything. Of course Blue's in charge, she's the beta, why wouldn't she be?

"I'll come back soon", he adds a little more softly. He has an hour before he has to catch up with the vessel into Isla Sorna. He sighs, finds a cool corner for him to sit in, and allows his pack to smother him until the next shift of InGen security arrives.


chapter title from the Cave by Mumford and Sons