Disclaimer: I do not own the Jurassic Park franchise or any of it's characters; I only own the characters and plots of my own mind.

Foreword: Gwyn would be around 33 years old in 2015. This one is also pretty short, because this is just a little hint at what happened just prior to when This Damnable Place starts.

13. The Job Offer––2015

Bozeman, Montana, January 2015

"You've gotta be shitting me," Gwyn deadpanned.

She sat in the office the Museum of the Rockies had given her, staring at the screen of her laptop with a completely slack expression. There, on the screen, at the top of her email inbox, was an email from the Masrani Corporation. The Masrani Corporation was the proud owner of Jurassic World, the offchute of Jurassic Park. Why they were emailing her was beyond Gwyn; it had been years since she––or her father––had complained to them. The park had opened in 2005, much to the horror of the Grants, and both had complained restlessly and endlessly for the first several years the park was in operation. When it became perfectly clear that no amount of complaining and protesting––and god were there protests––would shut the place down, the Grants had surrendered. That hadn't stopped them from sending the occasional email, however. Still, it had been more than several years since Gwyn had been in contact, so she hadn't a clue why they would be emailing her… unless they wanted to take legal action against her for some absurd reason.

Upon clicking into the email, Gwyn was faced with a highly unexpected email.

Dear Dr. Grant, my name is Simon Masrani, the CEO of the Masrani Corporation, and I am writing in the interest of offering you a job at my park, Jurassic World.

I have heard tale of your commendable and fantastic work at numerous dig sites and of your extensive work in animal behaviorism; I am greatly intrigued on how you might be able to combine your two lines of work to benefit the creatures on Isla Nublar. We also consider ourselves fans and followers of your father's work here at the park and would be honored to have a member of the Grant family among our staff. A brief overview of your offered position is as follows: you shall be considered a consulting paleontologist, and would also be brought around the park to the various paddocks to ensure that our dinosaurs are being treated with the utmost respect and that they are as happy as they can possibly be. Should you consider this position, I shall cover it in more detail. I shall also like to inform you I am very much aware of your involvement in the events that took place at the original park, and are aware that you are surely very apprehensive about considering or accepting this offer. Hence, I am taking this moment to inform––and assure––you that our safety measures have been boosted and we don't anticipate an event such as the one you encountered to ever happen again. It is with every wish in the world I hope you consider this position.

All the best to you, and your father.

Signed, Simon Masrani.

Gwyn gaped at her computer screen openly and unattractively. She leaned back in her desk chair, which reclined a little, and she stared at the painting of the brachiosaurus that hung over her door. After a quiet moment, she rocked forward with a disbelieving 'no' and reread the email. Several more times. And then a sixth time just for good measure. Each read revealed that she had not read it long the last time––Simon Masrani had, in fact, offered her a job at Jurassic World. It felt like the world was a toy box that someone had shaken around and disrupted the previously organized contents. Gwyn's perfectly normal morning had become perfectly odd. The idea of working at Jurassic World was… odd. Strange. Outlandish. Wrong. She couldn't work at Jurassic World; it just wouldn't work. People would be up in arms about her being there; she would be up in arms about being there. It was a situation and a suggestion that simply didn't compute. But the worst part about that email… was that it was making her think.

There were two knocks on the door. Gwyn jumped, wrenched from her own thoughts.

"Shit," she hissed under her breath. She straightened up a little in her seat and shut the lid of her laptop halfway, hiding the email from her own view. "Come in!"

The door to the office was opened halfway, and none other than Billy Brennan leaned in. A scarf swung around his neck and his cheeks were pink, which betrayed the fact that he had just stepped in from outside. The smile that pulled across his face was just as dazzlingly charming as it had been thirteen years ago.

"Morning, Gwyn," he greeted.

Gwyn's shoulders, which she hadn't realized had stiffened, relaxed upon seeing his familiar face. "Morning, Billy," she greeted on a sigh. Billy took a step into the office and tugged his gloves off.

"I'm here to pick up those fossil samples for my lecture," he reminded. Gwyn blinked at him, the information computing quietly for a moment before she groaned and flopped back in her chair. Her hands rose to cover and swipe over her face upon realizing that she hadn't remembered to grab them that morning.

"Ah, shit…" she griped under her breath. Across the room, she could hear Billy chuckling fondly. Gwyn pushed herself to her feet and pulled at the bottom of her sweater to straighten it out. "I forgot to grab them when I got in this morning." She grabbed her museum ID off the desk, and let out another half groan upon spotting the note she'd left herself the day before. "Even though I wrote a reminder to grab them and left it right where I could see it, I still forgot…"

"Bad start to the day?" asked Billy. He shoved his gloves into his pocket and unzipped his jacket, the museum's heating system clearly doing its job. Gwyn sighed and slapped her fist against the lid of her laptop, shutting it with a snap. Billy raised his eyebrows.

"Something like that. Come on, you can just come down to the archives with me to grab them." She snagged her ID, ripped the useless note off her notepad, and tossed it into the trash. She clipped the ID to the waistband of her jeans and shot her friend a smile she hoped looked convincingly okay. It didn't need to look happy or chipper––it just need to look okay. Because if there was one person other than her father that knew her disastrously well, it was Billy.

And it was Billy whose eyes narrowed a little, whose lips pursed inquisitively. But he nodded and gestured for Gwyn to lead the way. A quiet breath fled her mouth and she led him out of her office. They wove their way through the familiar museum, at which both worked when they were not out in the field. Though Billy and Gwyn's romantic relationship––which had somehow managed to remain blissfully secret––had ended some nine years prior, the two had remained close friends and coworkers. Their break-up had been mutual, and they hadn't allowed it to spoil their friendship. Their paths crossed regularly, and they were always happy to catch up over coffee over lunch.

The archives were filled with rows and rows of shelving units laden with innumerable boxes. The room was carefully temperature controlled and locked behind a passcode protected door. It was a carefully organized maze, most often silent unless they were going through a reorganization spree. Gwyn knew the room like the back of her hand––at least, she knew the shelves that belonged to the Siebel Dinosaur Complex well.

"So, how's Laura doing?" Gwyn asked, slipping on a pair of white cotton gloves. She started down one of the aisles of shelves, eyeing the boxes as she went.

"She's good. Says you should come over for dinner soon," Billy replied. He waited at a table at the end of the aisle, perched on the edge. Laura was Billy's fiancée, a lovely woman who worked in the anthropology department at Montana State University. They planned to get married in a year and a half, and Gwyn was happy to say that she would be attending. She'd found a friend in Laura, who didn't care that, at one time, Gwyn and Billy had dated.

Gwyn pulled a box off the shelf and paced back to the table, where she set it down gingerly. "Well, tell her I'll happily come over whenever she'd like." She disappeared around a different set of shelves, dragging her fingers along the catalogue numbers as she went.

When Gwyn found the second box, she slid it off the shelf and made her way back to Billy. There, she opened the box and reached inside to pull out a small slab of rock that had a gallimimus footprint pressed into it. Gwyn held it up for Billy to see, brows raised promptingly, as though asking if that was what he wanted. He bobbed his head in confirmation. Carefully, she replaced the fossil and moved to open the second box. What she removed from that was a chunk of rock, in which the skull of a gallimimus was inlaid. Again, Billy nodded his head. As Gwyn carefully replaced the second fossil and closed up the box, Billy shifted himself off the table and crossed his arms.

"So… what happened to make your day so rough so early?" he asked. Gwyn balled up one of the cotton gloves in her palms and pressed her lips together. Slowly, she pulled off the second glove and balled it up just the same. After a quiet moment, she looked up and over at Billy. He was waiting with an expectant look on his face, which was littered with tiny little scars from the pterodactyl attack he'd suffered through years before. Gwyn scrubbed a hand through her hair and sighed gently.

"If I tell you… do you promise not to tell anyone?" she questioned seriously, quietly. "Especially not my father, because he will… flip a shit if he found out."

Billy's brows slowly started to furrow and he stood a little straighter. He was concerned, she could tell. His eyes danced across her face, as though trying to discern whether or not she was being completely serious. When Gwyn arched an eyebrow and kept her expression deadpan, she made it clear she was. It was then that he cleared his throat and nodded.

"Yeah, I promise. What's up?"

For a quiet moment Gwyn massaged the back of her neck, which was happy to be free of the abuse of the sun for a couple of months. "I… got an email from Simon Masrani this morning," she started slowly.

Billy scoffed breathily, eyebrows rocketing towards his hairline. "Was he sending you some kind of… cease and desist?" he asked.

With a wry kind of deadpan on her face, Gwyn rolled her eyes.

"That's very funny, Billy, but I haven't been in contact with the Masrani Corporation for well over five years. No, it wasn't a cease and desist––and I've never given them reason to send me one, thank you very much." She took a deep breath then and braced on hand on the corner of the table, leaning all her weight on it. The other hand rose to massage her chest, pressing the familiar line of scar tissue beneath the front of her sweater. "Simon Masrani offered me a job at Jurassic World."

Billy gaped. Openly and unattractively, just as Gwyn had earlier.

For a moment, that was all he did. He scrabbled for something to say, nonsensical noises sputtering past his lips. At one point Billy went silent and he held up a finger. He sat down at the table and steepled both hands in front of his mouth. "Holy shit…" Billy finally managed to mutter.

Gwyn gestured to him with a hand pointedly. "My reaction exactly. Word for word."

"They're offering you a job? On Isla Nublar?" Billy stressed incredulously.

"As a 'consulting paleontologist,' whatever the hell that is."

"That's… insane. Absolutely insane. I mean, you'd think that with the hell you and Alan kicked up after the park opened they'd want you two as far away from that island as possible. I mean, not like you aren't perfectly qualified for whatever it is that they want you to do, but…" Billy trailed off, mouth open, at an utter loss for words. Eventually he just made a gesture with his hands and snapped his mouth shut. Gwyn scoffed under her breath and sat in the chair across from him.

"I agree completely. I thought that they'd rather have me pitching a fit from Montana; not pitching a fit in the middle of their carefully constructed park," Gwyn deadpanned. She threaded her fingers through her hair with a sigh. "Apparently, I thought wrong."

There was a heavy beat before Billy caught Gwyn's gaze from across the table. Concern had returned to his features, though there was something almost scared behind the look in his eyes. "You aren't… considering taking the job, are you?"

Immediately, Gwyn opened her mouth to respond, but nothing came out. The answer was 'no.' No, she would not consider taking the job because she would be crazy if she did. It would be detrimental to herself––and to Alan. No, because going back to that damn island was a very bad idea. So if that was the answer, and that answer was so easy to back up and defend––why wasn't she saying it? Why wasn't that one syllable word falling from her lips to soothe Billy's worry? It was lodged in her throat like a stubborn crumb. Slowly, Gwyn's eyebrows started to pinch together and her mouth started to close.

"Oh, my god…" Billy muttered breathlessly. "You're considering it."

"I… no, no! I couldn't, I can't… I…" Gwyn laughed and waved her hands dismissively, trying to bat away her confusion. She again froze and felt the denial stick in her throat. She shook her head again and clenched her fists painfully tight. "I can't go back. I'm not going back. I'd probably die if I went back, my heart would give out."

"Gwyn," Billy stressed. It was a tone that she recognized––he wanted her attention, because if he let her keep talking he wasn't going to get it. Gwyn looked across the table to find him peering at her with a partial frown and gently raised eyebrows. "You're considering it, aren't you?"

Gwyn stared at him for a long, quiet moment. Her expression started to crumble a little, her brows furrowing and her lips turning down at the corners. There was an unpleasant stinging behind her eyes and her heart was hammering unnecessarily in her chest. "I… I think I am. A-and I shouldn't! If I went back to that… damn island, I would lose my sanity. But there's some stupid part of my brain that's trying to convince me that I have to go back, that I need to go back!"

The squeal of Billy's chair getting pushed back cut through the air. He came to crouch in front of his fellow paleontologist and reached out to clutch her hands in his own. "Why do you feel you need to go back?"

"Because I don't want to be scared anymore," Gwyn said in a hushed whisper. She watched Billy's lips twist into a frown and heard her name fall from his lips gently. Sadly, almost. "That island is this… looming shadow in the back of my mind that never goes away. It's an enigma, a-a ghost. I'm scared of a place that is literal thousands of miles away, all because I have this… vision of it in my head that won't go away. It's this monstrous, looming thing that has haunted me for twenty-two years… it has me jumping at the sound of squealing brakes and tensing at the sound of thunder. I'm sick of being scared."

"And… going back is going to fix that?" Billy prompted gently.

"In my mind, Isla Nublar is this place perpetually bathed in dark skies, rain, and blood. I don't see it as a real place, I see it as the landscape of my nightmares. I can… barely recall how beautiful I thought it was before shit went downhill that day. I have this… odd gut instinct that if I go, see that the island is just an island––no matter the number of dinosaurs there––I won't be so scared anymore. It's stupid. I know it's stupid… and it scares me that I'm considering considering it, but…" Gwyn trailed off with a useless shrug of her shoulders.

The two were quiet for a moment as Gwyn's spur of the moment confession hung heavily in the air of the archives. Billy clung tightly to her hands, and she squeezed his fingers back, clutching the only steady source of support she had in that moment. Silence settled over them, almost uncomfortably so. Then, after a quiet clearing of his throat, Billy raised his brows and squeezed Gwyn's fingers.

"It is stupid. But it's also brave. If… if you think that this has the potential to help you in some way… and if you come to the conclusion that you can do it… give it the thought. Give it the consideration. You don't have to answer that email tonight. Or next week. Or the week after that. Give it thought––a lot of careful, in-depth thought. And if you say yes… I'll support that. It'll be… hard to see you go, but I'll be your grounding system back here at home," Billy told her. He squeezed her fingers fondly and smiled just a little. "And remember that, even if you go, you have every right to tell them 'no' and come right back home." Gwyn smiled down at him and pulled her hands out of his. She then bent at the waist and wound her arms around his shoulders, hugging him tightly. The embrace was tightly returned. "You almost gave me a heart attack, Gwyn––was that how you felt when Alan told you he and I were going to Isla Sorna?"

She laughed over his shoulder and gave his back a thump with the palm of her hand. "Yes, actually." Gwyn drew back and smirked at him wryly. "It's unfortunate I didn't get to see you reprise my storming off without shoes on."

Billy returned the smirk and rose to his feet. "We'll do a full recreation if you decide to go. Drive out to Fort Peck Lake and everything." He slid one box towards himself and carefully lifted it into his arms. His gaze sat heavily on Gwyn as she did the same; it was the kind of gaze that she could feel, one that she couldn't ignore. When she looked over at Billy, he smiled faintly. "Nothing ever stops you, does it?"

Gwyn snorted and hugged the relatively heavy box close to her chest. "Tell that to a velociraptor."

OOOO

Two and a half weeks later, Gwyn stood in her living room, staring at her open laptop. Masrani's email was pulled up and staring defiantly back at her. Any time her screen dimmed and threatened to put her computer into sleep-mode, her hand would dart out, tap the trackpad, and wake it back up. She had been doing this since she'd finished dinner. That morning, Gwyn had decided that she would be emailing Masrani her answer. It was an answer that would seal her fate for the foreseeable future. It was nerve wracking. And it was ultra nerve wracking to be doing alone. And it was quiet in her house; the television wasn't on, she wasn't playing music, and it was late enough that no cars were passing down her residential street.

The quiet only heightened the tension coursing through Gwyn's body. She knew that she had to write her response. And she had to do it now. Because she was going to tell Masrani that she would consider the position. It wasn't a hard 'yes' because she needed to know more; she needed to know this because getting hired could very well be a publicity stunt to bring more patrons to the park. She needed to know that she wouldn't be exploited. Because the media had tried to exploit her trauma when she was a child, but Alan had done is damndest to fight them off. If Masrani really, truly wanted her to work with him and work at his park, he would answer her questions. Gwyn needed to know his intentions; and once she parsed those out, it would be easier to settle on an answer.

"C'mon, it's only an email…" Gwyn muttered, dragging her hands over her face. She slapped her cheeks a couple times and then shook her hands out. With some amount of tension momentarily relieved, Gwyn sat herself down on the couch. She placed her laptop on top of her thighs and let her fingers hover over the keys. One of her eyebrows quirked upwards as her fingers touched the keys. "An email that could send you to your death."

With one last steadying exhale, and a cracking of her knuckles, Gwyn started to type out her response.

Dear Mr. Masrani…

Afterword: And that, my friends, concludes this prequel. I've had an absolute blast writing this story, and I'm very happy that you all have enjoyed tagging on for the ride. And if you found this story first and are not aware that it is a prequel, you can go to my profile and check out the rest of Gwyn's story, should you so wish.

Review Replies!

Bluecean: That she will! Little does she know that the email won't kill her… it'll just gently usher her into the arms of our favorite raptor handler. I hope you enjoyed the final chapter! Thanks again!

JosieoftheRose: Well, it's good to see that things with Billy cooled off, and now they're just colleagues, eh? I hope that you enjoyed the story; thank you again!

NicoleR85: Like I've said, if Gwyn had gone to Isla Sorna, she would have never accepted a job at Jurassic World. I hope that you enjoyed the final chapter, and the story as a whole! Thanks again!

monkeybaby: Thank you so much! I hope you enjoyed the story!

Evaline101: Honestly, me too. Initially, they were just gonna be good buddies, but then the idea hit me like a brick and I couldn't let it go. It just… works too well. I hope that you enjoyed the story! Thanks again!

acetwolf94: I've added more, and that more is the final chapter! I hope you enjoyed it! Thanks again!

fallondyson: I hope that you enjoyed the final chapter; thanks again!

And that is finally that. 'Tis the end. Of course, there's still This Damnable Place, but all of the little bits of Gwyn's life prior to Jurassic World that I could conceive to write have been written! I am very happy that I had the chance to write this for you all, and that all of you enjoyed reading it. Thank you, all for being so lovely!

~Mary