Into the Ether
So, the other week I asked Nadin for a story idea and she gave me the following setup. This is the result. Hope you enjoy. :)
Characters: Claire, Owen, Lowery
Setting: Jurassic World / Nublar, post JW
Situation: Claire and Owen never really got together after JW. Got pulled into different directions immediately. Claire is now being sent back to Nublar to deal with retrieving all documentation, shutting down systems, etc. It's the first time she and Owen see each other again.
Claire felt the thump of the helicopter touching down vibrate straight through her. The closer they'd got to the island, the more tense she'd become. From the moment she'd first spotted the island, surrounded, as usual, by its ever present clouds, she'd been unable to look away.
It was odd to realize that while this was the place she'd once called home, it had been over six months since she'd last been there. And that instead of feeling comforted by the sight of the island, of feeling excited to be back there, all she felt now was dread.
From the moment she'd been asked to return to Nublar, she'd been left in a constant state of heightened anxiety. She hadn't had to say yes—she'd known that. And she'd really wanted to say no. But, then she'd heard herself saying yes. She could've backed out. Said she'd made a mistake, and that no, she couldn't go. But then she'd signed the paperwork and had booked her travel. She'd found herself making sure her passport was still up to date and packing (although this time her suitcase was full of practical clothes, not business). And then, suddenly, she'd somehow ended up on the helicopter flying out over the ocean. And while part of her had wanted to rip open the door and jump, there was a part of her that knew that she needed to do this, needed to be there.
She needed to prove to herself that she was strong enough to go back. That that day hadn't broken her, the way she often feared it had. Getting a chance to go back there, to face it all, was her opportunity to do that. She was hoping that having a job to do would help her stay grounded and focused. That if she started to panic, to regret her decision, she'd be able to bury herself back in familiar work as she evaluated the state of the park and the remaining dinosaurs, figured out what could be saved (and potentially sold off) and what they would end up abandoning, just as Jurassic Park had all those years earlier.
When Jurassic World had officially opened, Claire had been so sure that was a sign that they would succeed, unlike Jurassic Park. While part of her would still argue that the park had, for 10 years, another part of her felt like all they'd really managed to do was just delay the inevitable a little bit longer.
The fallout of Jurassic World had been swift and unforgiving. It felt like that day had happened many lifetimes ago, not simply months. When she'd been in the airport hangar waiting with her nephews for their parents to arrive, she had been treated like she was just one more of the 20,000 guests who had been evacuated from the island. She hadn't had ID on her, and none of the emergency workers had had any way of knowing what her title had been on the island (and she hadn't been eager to let them in on it). It had felt nice to be mostly anonymous within the crowd.
But the peace of that moment (and while it hadn't felt peaceful at the time, looking back now, she could see that it was, considering everything that had happened since), had evaporated the moment she and Owen had stepped out of the hangar and into the bright sunshine and back into reality.
Some days, she'd let herself wonder what life would be like if they hadn't done that. If they had just stayed cooped up in that hangar for a few more hours. Would it have changed anything? She liked to think it would've, but she was also practical and logical enough to know that it probably wasn't possible. It was inevitable that they were going to be spotted by someone who knew them, and that they'd get sucked right back into the craziness of it all.
They'd been pulled apart immediately, people requiring their expertise, their knowledge, their influence. They hadn't even had time to say goodbye. Of course, at the time, Claire had assumed she'd see him again soon. Like in a couple of hours. She hadn't expected that that would be her last encounter with him, well, ever.
When things had felt like they were starting to calm down (which just meant when her weeks finally didn't have her working 24/7, but instead more like 22/7), she'd tried to find Owen. She'd searched through everything she'd had access to, but she wasn't privy to any InGen information, so she couldn't track what had happened to him there. She'd even tried going to social media, looking him up on Facebook and trying to connect with him there. But while she'd found his profile, it hadn't been updated in over eight years, the account having long gone dormant.
It had been a random comment by her sister one day—when Karen had commented about seeing another paparazzi photo of Claire, and how she thought Claire looked tired—that had sent Claire scouring through the tabloids, a place she normally avoided. But, try as she might, she'd never found even a single photo of Owen. It was like he'd just disappeared off the face of the earth.
"Claire?"
The feeling of a hand landing on her knee, shaking it, propelled Claire out of her thoughts and back to the present with a gasp. She looked around frantically, her body already in flight mode, adrenaline surging through her system.
"Sorry, Claire," Lowery said, when her gaze finally landed on him. He was looking sheepish as he pushed his glasses up the bridge of his nose. "But, the pilot does need to go back today, he's got more people to bring over. So…" Lowery looked around behind him for a second, before returning his gaze to Claire. "So, if you're getting off…"
Right. As tempting as the idea was of just staying in her seat, of letting the helicopter take her back to the safety of Costa Rica, Claire undid her seatbelt, before climbing out cautiously. The moment her feet touched the ground, she felt a shudder run through her. She was back.
She pretended to look around, although she wasn't really taking anything in, in order to have a few seconds to collect herself. She wasn't all that confident that she wouldn't collapse if she took a step forward.
From the helicopter landing pad, Claire could see Main Street off in the distance. She could see, even from there, evidence of the damage the final fight between the T. rex and the Indominus had caused. But, besides that, the island didn't actually look all that different. There were the same sounds she was used to hearing upon her arrival. The helicopter pad wasn't close to any of the guest attractions, and so even before, it had never felt like you were landing in the middle of a busy park.
Straightening up, Claire looked over at Lowery, who was standing beside her, watching carefully.
"Okay, where to, first?"
.-^-.-^-.
The rest of the afternoon flew by in a hurry, Claire hidden down in the Control Room with Lowery. It felt both so similar to how it had used to be, and also so different, that it was unnerving. Like she'd somehow ended up in a parallel dimension or something. The same monitoring dashboard was up on the main screen, surrounded by the ever changing security feeds. Except, unlike before, the number of guests was 0. And when a camera from Main Street would pop into view (not that there were many left working there), instead of seeing tourists wandering about, it just showed a completely devastated area. Claire had had to look away the first time she'd seen it pop up, feeling the bile rise up in her throat.
Lowery seemed to be walking on eggshells around her, and by the end of the day, Claire found herself wishing that the old Lowery would come back. The one who would tease her and make inappropriate jokes. The one who saw the dinosaurs as a real life miracle, and not the one who now seemed so world-weary, the shine having worn away in a hurry the day of the incident that had put an end to Jurassic World.
As they finished up their evening there, Claire asked the question she had been dreading. The question she knew she should have an answer to, but that she just hadn't been able to absorb any of the notes she'd been given about this trip. It felt like she'd been underwater ever since she'd said yes, that she'd go back. Everything had seemed muffled and unclear. She had just nodded, letting people point her in the right direction. She couldn't even tell you what she'd packed.
"So," Claire started, looking around the room, before returning her gaze to Lowery. "I'm guessing we're not spending the night down here."
"Nope," Lowery agreed. "We've got everyone set up with rooms over in the employee residence. Decided it'd be easiest to keep everyone together there and there's also the cafeteria setup. And it's about as secure a location as we can get. So pretty much everything we all need in one spot." He started shuffling through papers on his desk, before he found an envelope which he handed over. "I've got your key here. You're in 312."
"Thanks," Claire said, pulling out the keycard and trying not to wince at the sight of the Jurassic World logo on the back before slipping it into her pocket. "And getting there?"
"We travel in packs now," he said, pushing back his chair. "Kinda like the dinosaurs, you could say. Safety in numbers, and all that. At least, that's what I was told. I think they're just trying to keep the jeeps for themselves."
Before Claire could ask who, specifically, Lowery was referring to, a new voice joined the group.
"We gave you a chance to show off how well you could shoot. It's not our fault you failed."
The voice froze Claire in place, her heart almost stopping before it raced ahead at triple speed. Slowly, she turned around, taking in the new person standing in the doorway. "Owen," she breathed out.
"Claire," he just said curtly, before returning his focus to Lowery. "Besides, do you really want to be in a jeep with all the pteranodons still flying about? Barry almost got picked up today."
"What are you doing here?" Lowery said. "I thought you were going to be out in the field all day."
"I was," Owen said simply. "But, we finished with the fences we were working on and decided it wasn't worth starting anything else today. Not with the amount of daylight left. I was tasked with picking you up and taking you back."
"Drew the short straw?" Lowery joked.
"Something like that," Owen agreed.
Claire's gaze was just ping ponging between the two. Lowery had never said anything to her about Owen being out on the island. How long had he known? Was Owen's name in the information that Claire had never been able to read? What was he doing back there? And what had he been doing all this time? How come he'd never reached out? It had been his idea that they stay together, after all. So much for that…
"So, are you ready?"
As Owen asked the question, Claire noticed that he never looked her way. His gaze was focused steadily on Lowery, or a wall, or something else that wasn't her. Part of her wanted to say something, but she was still feeling too stunned—the whole day's events had overwhelmed her, even if nothing shocking or surprising (minus Owen's appearance) had really happened.
"Yeah, we were just finishing up," Lowery said, clearing his throat. "Let's go."
Considering it felt like Owen was trying to pretend that she didn't exist, she was surprised when he grabbed one of her bags from the corner of the room as he turned to leave. She grabbed the other, and followed after him, trailing silently behind him as he led them through the building and then out the back door where a park jeep was waiting.
Claire silently handed her bag over to Owen to toss in the back with the other. She was about to go around the jeep to climb into the back seat, when she realized that Lowery had already claimed it, leaving her with the front passenger seat. Fantastic.
The ride to the residence was quiet. Claire spent it staring out the window, trying to focus on anything but who she was sitting next to. The backroads looked exactly as she'd last seen them, which was disorienting. For a brief moment, she could pretend that the last six months had never happened. That this was a regular day at work for her, back on Nublar.
Soon they were pulling up to the residence and she was snapped out of her thoughts. There were already a few other jeeps in the parking lot that all looked like they had been recently used, which meant some of the others on the island must be back there, too.
As soon as she got out, she went to pull out her bags, surprised when Owen met her there. Like before, he grabbed one of them, but this time, he turned his attention to her.
"What room?"
"What?" Claire was so surprised he'd said anything directed at her, that she completely missed his question.
"What room?" he repeated.
"Oh, 312," she told him. "But I can take it." She reached for the bag, but he just turned and headed towards the building.
Lowery was ahead of them, holding the door open, so Claire just shut the door to the jeep and followed after them.
"Claire, come to the cafeteria after you get settled," Lowery said as they stopped by the elevator. And then, before she could protest, he disappeared around a corner, leaving her and Owen alone.
"You don't need to do this," she said, the silence getting to be too much. "I'm sure I can find my room."
Again, Owen didn't say anything, just stepping into the elevator when it arrived with her bag, and Claire was left to follow him again. Giving up, she stayed quiet on the short ride up, and then down the hall to her room. Once he'd put the bag down outside, she thought he'd finally leave, but he didn't, waiting as she pulled the key from her pocket and opened it open, before carrying the bag into the room.
She dropped the bag she was carrying onto the bed, before turning to face Owen, having had it.
"Okay, what's going on?"
"What do you mean?" he asked, stepping back from where he'd placed her bag, his hands falling to his hips.
"So you will talk to me?" she said. "What's with the weird silent treatment? What happened?"
"What happened? What happened?!" It was like the floodgates had opened, and whatever Owen had been holding back spewed forth. "Jesus, Claire. You don't answer my calls, my emails, nothing for the past six months and you expect me to just act like everything's normal?"
"I what?" Claire asked, her jaw dropping. "What emails? What calls? You never called once!"
"What do you mean 'what emails'? The ones you ignored."
"I ignored–? Owen, I haven't heard from you in six months! I tried to find you, but it was like you just went poof. I didn't have a phone number for you. When I tried your email, it got bounced back that the account had been deactivated. I even tried looking you up on facebook!"
"You…" Owen started, before trailing off, a stunned look on his face. She watched emotions chase across his features, struggling to keep up with his racing mind. "You didn't get them?"
She rolled her eyes, unable to help it. "Do I look like I got them?"
"I thought—" he paused, looking sheepish, and cleared his throat. "I thought that you decided it was easiest to have a clean break. To just step back. That you used the opportunity to…"
"I tried to find you, Owen. I wanted to find you," Claire said, taking a step towards him. "You said we'd stick together, remember? And then you were gone."
"I didn't—" he protested.
"No, I know you didn't mean to," she told him, raising her hand. "At least, not right away. But then when I couldn't find you, couldn't get a hold of you, I… I started to wonder if you had regretted those words."
"Never," he said, stepping forward until he was directly in front of her. "I meant them. I tried to contact you."
"I wonder who's been receiving all those emails you sent," Claire mused. "And the phone calls. Surprised they didn't tell you to stop calling."
"Wish they had," Owen said as he pushed his hand through his hair. "At least then I'd have known it was the wrong number, and not you choosing not to respond."
Claire decided not to focus on that. It wasn't like they could change the past now.
"Where've you been? What have you been doing?" she asked. "How did you end up back here?"
"My contract with InGen wasn't over," he said, giving a shrug. "I tried to get out of it, but they wouldn't let me. They had some other projects they had decided I'd be useful on."
Claire felt her jaw drop. "Other projects? Do I want to know what?" Based on what she had known about InGen, she couldn't think of any other projects that would require Owen. But, then again, InGen had been behind the Indominus. Had they been already working on something else?
"Probably not," he shook his head. "But, then when it was decided that they needed to send a team back here to start doing some clean up, sort out what was left and what's salvageable, I put my name forward."
Claire felt her eyes widen. "You wanted to come back?"
"You didn't?"
"I–I don't know," Claire admitted. "I did and didn't. Still feel unsure. Feels like I needed to–to get some closure. But also, it feels sort of unreal. Things look so normal, but also so different. I kept expecting others to walk into the control room all afternoon."
He nodded. "I know what you mean. I went out to the raptor paddock the first day I was back here, and I don't really know what I was expecting. Maybe that I'd find Blue out there. But I didn't."
"Have you seen her?" she asked.
"No, no one has," he said. "While we've got the tracking system back up, a bunch of the relay points are down, so a lot of the island is still left uncovered. And that's assuming…" He trailed off at that, but Claire knew what he meant. That was assuming that Blue was alive.
She looked around her room, before returning her gaze to Owen.
"We should probably get down to the cafeteria," Owen said. "Everyone gathers in the evening to compare notes and plan out what we'll do tomorrow."
"Oh, okay," she said, watching as Owen turned and started for the door. She mentally debated what she was about to do, before hurrying after him, grabbing his arm. "Owen, wait."
"What?" he asked, turning around to face her.
"Just–" Claire bit her lip, before she reached for him, a hand snaking around his neck to pull him down as she pressed her lips to his. There was a brief moment when she thought she'd made the wrong move, but then his arms wrapped around her, tugging her closer. "I'm glad you're here," she whispered when they finally separated, her head resting against his chest, arms still wrapped around him.
"Me too," he agreed, before dipping his head and pulling her into another long kiss.
She didn't even realize they were moving, until she bumped into the bed. She was tempted to just pull him down with her, but his earlier words rang in her head, and she gently pushed him back. "Cafeteria," she reminded him.
"Right," he said, wrinkling his nose.
"We can pick this up again later," she said. "But Lowery'll probably come looking if we don't show up soon."
Nodding, Owen grabbed her hand, lacing his fingers through hers, before tugging her away from the bed and towards the door. "But I'm holding you to that."
"To what, later?" she asked with a laugh, suddenly feeling light, as if all her dread about being there had evaporated.
"Yeah," he confirmed. "This time, we really do need to stay together."
"For survival?" Claire asked, remembering his words from back in the hangar.
"For–" he paused, looking thoughtful, before finishing: "Ever."
Thanks to Nadin for the story prompt and for editing. And thanks to Elise for editing and naming.
If you enjoyed this, please drop a comment below.
And if you're looking for anything else to read, I've got lots of other JW stories, including one I update every Thursday evening called Feels Like Home (rest are complete).
