A/N: Hi everybody! Sorry it took me so long to get this one uploaded, work got in the way. Originally this was to be a standalone piece from the Owen chapter, but I decided to combine them since it's the same situation from two points of view. Claire's introspection is a lot different from Owen's because she's dealing with more than just romance, but in all I really like the way this one turned out. I'm thinking of making this one a three-parter. Or more. Drop me a review and let me know if you liked it!

Claire pushed through the crowd of reporters and screaming civilians, trying not to flinch as camera bulbs flashed in her face. Cameras and microphones were shoved in her path, and a few more daring reporters stepped in her path in vain attempts to get their questions answered.

"Claire, any comment on the proceedings?"

"What do you have to say to the families of the victims?"

"What about the children that died?"

That question in particular haunted Claire for weeks. She didn't know how many people had died as a result of the Indominus Rex's escape. She wasn't even aware her own assistant, Zara, had died until Zach told her that Zara had been eaten by a pterodactyl…that was promptly eaten by the park's resident mosasaurus. She had lost sleep over the staggering loss of life as park guests continued to go unaccounted for, and more and more that had been recorded entering the park that day were listed as missing. Efforts to recover the bodies of the dead or search for the missing were hindered by the free-roaming dinosaurs all over the island. Masrani Global would never recoup the millions and millions of dollars in losses and would never get past the negative press, and they knew it. Every Masrani Global employee, including Claire, had been given a hefty severance package, but it couldn't ease Claire's conscience. The company was being quietly and discreetly dissolved, but that didn't help her sleep any easier.

As the park operations manager, many felt Claire was directly responsible for the events of that awful day. Why hadn't the risks associated with a genetically modified dinosaur been considered? What in God's green Earth made them think a dinosaur like that would be anything but a major liability?

They had considered the risks. They had considered the risks extensively. There had been meeting after meeting after meeting about the risks. Operators like herself wanted to know. Park employees that were to be assigned to the paddock wanted to know. Investors wanted to know. But the Indominus had presented challenges that had never been considered in board meetings, and if someone had said that the creature the lab technicians had dreamed up could rip out its own tracking chip because it remembered where they put it, that person would have been laughed out of the room. Your average raptor had a brain the size of a walnut; there was no way it could scratch up the side of its paddock to trick the staff into thinking it had escaped.

Claire regretted not telling Owen what was in the Indominus most of all. Maybe if he had known sooner that the base DNA was velociraptor, they could have avoided a major loss of life. She hadn't expected his pack to choose a new alpha and turn on him. She equally hadn't expected Blue, his beta, to come back. She didn't know what in God's name possessed her to release the Tyrannosaurus, only that she had, and she led it herself to the fight, armed only with a road flare. She didn't know what possessed her to throw said road flare right at the Indominus's head, but she had, and somehow instead of both dinosaurs coming to kill her, they fought each other. She'd run back to Owen and her nephews, scared out of her mind, but unhurt.

Claire shoved past another "intrepid" reporter and hailed a cab. She wanted out. She hadn't asked for any of this, she was just pursuing a wild dream…dinosaurs, alive again in her time, and it had all gone to pot. And she had been at the very epicenter of it when it did. Claire climbed in her cab and passed the cabbie a fifty.

"Just drive, I don't know where I'm going yet. And fast, I want to get out of here." The cabbie sped off, leaving the media frenzy far behind her. Claire tossed her head back against the seat and let out a breath she hadn't realized she'd been holding.

When the first summons to court arrived in the mail, she knew her ordeal was far from over. It had hardly been a week after she'd been flown back to the States with other survivors from that wretched day that she'd gotten it. Her hands shook, and she'd called her sister. Karen had been more than generous and had let Claire and Owen stay with her family until they found new places to live, and their severance pay had certainly helped matters. She had relied upon her sister for support when the first hearings came around; gradually, though, she noticed her sister was slowly pushing her into the arms of the behavioral researcher who had come home with her. Claire still called Karen, and once she got her apartment at least halfway furnished and organized she'd had the entire family over for dinner and games. But more and more she was finding her true comfort with Owen Grady. They sent text messages back and forth, which turned in to phone calls, which led to their second first date. Claire smiled to herself. He had been absolutely charming. He'd dressed up, he'd shaved, and it had been up to her to order alcohol first. He'd been the perfect gentleman the entire night; a complete heel-face-turn from their disastrous first attempt, and after dinner…Claire's face heated. Owen Grady certainly had talent where that was concerned; she had to give him that. But there was so much more to him than that.

Owen didn't judge her based on what happened in the park. Claire was hard pressed to find someone who didn't want to hang her in town square for what happened that day. Karen and her husband had been furious at first, but when Claire met her sister in that hanger with tears in her eyes, just glad to be alive, Karen had forgiven her in a blink. She had explained dozens of times that the fragments of DNA used to produce the Indominus were selected to allow the animal to better adapt to its environment on the tropical island, and that everything else was overlooked by the lab technicians. She had explained over and over that she had no involvement in the selection process, nor had she ordered or approved the new animal; Simon Masrani had commissioned it, himself, to increase park attendance and draw in new sponsors. She'd had to explain that the chief geneticist on the project, Dr. Wu, had escaped the island and that law enforcement was pursuing him. Vic Hoskins, who had led the disastrous effort to militarize Owen's velociraptors, died before her very eyes because he did not understand that being an alpha was not the same as having them trained.

Owen's velociraptors were another story entirely. As far as she was aware, only Blue had survived once the raptors chose the Indominus as their new alpha over Owen. Owen had loved his velociraptors; they were his pack. They gave his life meaning, and they respected him as their alpha. There was one night she'd let herself get drunk with Owen at his apartment and she had cried for at least an hour over the pain and trouble she'd caused him. Owen had held her while she cried, and when she stopped sobbing long enough to listen, he gently explained that saving his life from the tyrannodactyl had meant more to him than the loyalty of a few velociraptors. She'd confessed then; how scared she had been, how unsure that her plan with the T-rex would work. How terrified of the Indominus she had been, and how it haunted her nightmares; the ghoulish image of the dying apatosaur followed her night and day.

And then there were the pictures. People sent her pictures of injuries their family members had sustained, through email and regular mail. Someone had leaked her private email accounts and her address, and the pictures came non-stop. Pictures of people who had lost limbs and later died of their injuries. The first one made Claire vomit for an hour, and she hadn't been able to eat anything for three days afterward. It wasn't until Owen closed out her email accounts and rerouted her mail to a post office box that the pictures stopped coming. He'd offered to bring her the mail so she wouldn't chance upon any more pictures, and she'd accepted.

Claire wasn't really sure she'd have been able to get through any of what the media had been throwing at her without Owen Grady. He was her rock, her source of strength. She reached for the pendant around her neck. It was just a little heart-shaped charm Owen had given her about a month ago. She wore it every day, once she'd finished chastising him for spending money on her. It made her feel like Owen was with her. It made her feel strong. All of this nonsense was really out of her control, and people just couldn't see that she'd been as hurt by it as the rest of them. Except Owen.

Owen was a part of the tragedy the same way that she was, only not publicly. Owen couldn't talk about any of his life's work without sideways glances and baser assumptions that he was as culpable of the incident as the public believed her to be. His greatest achievement, becoming the alpha of a velociraptor pack, had to be swept under the rug and hidden because of what she allowed to happen in that park. Claire could never forgive herself for the grief she caused Owen. She'd heard it said that couples shouldn't form out of a tragedy because that's all they had in common, and she was starting to believe it. Really, what did Han Solo and Leia have in common after the second Death Star was destroyed? Claire snorted and smiled. She had Owen to thank for that; in exchange for watching a few foreign films with her, he'd made her sit through the original Star Wars trilogy, which took explaining in and of itself before she would watch them. (Seriously, though, if they came out first why are they four, five, and six? It just didn't make sense to her.) She had to admit, Harrison Ford had a certain rogue charm, and she saw a lot of Owen in him. She saw a lot of herself in Princess Leia, minus the Hopi-inspired hair doughnuts, as her boyfriend was fond of calling them.

Claire liked to imagine that she and Owen had more in common than just this tragedy. They shared a love for really bad movies, Chinese takeout, and a healthy love for debate. Owen was an equal, intellectually competent and stimulating in every way. She didn't have to explain things to him the way she had to break things down for men before. He tried to understand her; he tried so hard. One night she'd picked out a particularly complicated docudrama, just to see what Owen would say, and he sat, arms crossed, face screwed tight through the whole thing. He asked questions when he got lost or confused, and there was the occasional comment from the peanut gallery, but he made it through and had actually enjoyed the film. Or so he said.

Claire felt like her head was swimming. After today she didn't have enough mental reserves left to be this existential about her relationship with Owen; she just knew that she wanted him in her life. He could play a video game while she sat next to him on the couch, reading quietly, without a word spoken between them, and they were both perfectly content. He didn't expect her to entertain him or demand attention. Every now and again, he would remind her that he acknowledged life outside Halo or whatever and would sneak attack her to give her a kiss. All she felt like doing was going home and watching a movie with him…Claire looked out the window and saw that her cabbie had taken her to a part of town closer to Owen's apartment than her own and quietly typed out a text.

At your place? I had a really bad day. Wanna snuggle and watch a movie or three. It was easier to snuggle and watch movies at Owen's apartment anyway; unlike her, he had a TV in his bedroom, something he constantly heckled her about getting in her own room.

Owen texted back fairly quickly; he was never too far from his phone. Sure thing. Not there now but can be in a few minutes. Claire gave her cabbie Owen's address and dialed her phone.

"Hullo?" Owen's voice sounded a little thick, like he'd been out drinking. A twinge ran up her spine. She knew Owen's womanizing ways and still didn't fully trust him to be alone in a bar.

"Hey. It's me."

"I kinda noticed. Caller ID and stuff." Claire giggled.

"I'm exhausted. Where are you?" She asked, fiddling with the edge of her skirt.

"Nowhere in particular, just one of my old haunts from way back. Here alone, I can hear you thinking it." Claire's shoulders sagged as she let out a breath, trying hard to conceal it from Owen.

"Oh, alright. Meet you back at your place?"

"Yeah, I'll be there in a few minutes." She could hear someone talking in the background and using his name.

"I'm…I'm not interrupting anything, am I?" Claire bit her lip.

"Nope."

"By yourself?"

"Yeah, just having a drink or two." She heard him say something to someone else, and a male voice responded.

"You're not driving home, are you?"

"No, not driving. Don't have a car, 'member?" Duh, Claire. Owen's motorcycle was back on Isla Nublar. He was going to have to call a cab. She was pulling up in front of his apartment complex.

"Well, I beat you home so I'm going to let myself in. See you in a few?" Claire paid her cabbie and got out of the cab, hoping Owen had remembered to leave his spare key under the potted plant next to the front door.

"Okay. See you in a few." The next few words rose unbidden from her lips.

"I love you," she said before she could stop herself. It just felt natural. Despite their obvious differences, she really and truly loved Owen. He was exactly what she needed, when she needed it, in more ways than one. He had done everything she'd needed him to do before she knew she needed it. She couldn't lose him, and yet she'd just gone and said something stupid like "I love you," entirely too early.

There was a long pause on Owen's end.

"I love you too."

Claire beamed as she headed up the sidewalk to Owen's apartment.

He loves me.