Disclaimer: I do not own the rights to Jurassic Park and Jurassic World characters. I simply borrow them to have some fun.

Author's Note: While I loved the family dynamic of the three of them in Dominion, I found myself wishing for some solid father-daughter time. The extended version of the campfire was pretty good ("Wrong girl, wrong time") but not enough to satisfy this plot bunny. Hope you like.

The Missing Chapters of Maisie, Owen, and Claire

"'Til the Cows Come Home"

The very first news report came as they were driving down Route 88 after stopping off in Minden, Nevada. Despite being only about 40 minutes from the touristy outskirts of Lake Tahoe, the relatively small town was quiet and full of mom-and-pop shops and diners with friendly waitresses that took cash only and asked no questions. After scarfing down lunch and stocking up on a few parts at a local auto store, Owen and Maisie packed back into the motorhome and started driving to meet up with Claire who had taken a detour in their station wagon to check in with Lowery.

Owen already respected Lowery Cruthers quite a bit as "the only Jurassic World engineer man enough to stay behind" during the Indominous incident when everyone else got choppered out. If he hadn't still been at his post when Claire radioed to open the T-Rex paddock, they might all have perished on the island that day. But Lowery's quick rise through the ranks of the FBI these last few years had afforded their unlikely trio even more favors in the months following the events at Lockwood manor. Not only had he helped Claire and Owen set up new identities and fabricate birth and adoption certificates for Maisie, Lowery had also been able to sell off the land, lumber, and camper Owen left behind, setting them up with a larger camper, fit for a family of three, and a piece of new land close to the Sierra Nevada Mountain range. In his more cynical moments, Owen suspected that Lowery just enjoyed the covert "double-agenty" appeal of working for and against the very government who would be looking for Maisie if they knew what she was…or what she'd done. But they'd all grown pretty close on the island in the immediate aftermath of Jurassic World's shutdown, and it was obvious that a genuine fondness for that friendship had been the primary motivating factor in – as Lowery himself put it – "actually helping someone for a change."

So as Owen cruised along in their vintage Airstream along the highway, anxious to reunite with Claire, it was with a solid appreciation of how much they owed the agent she'd gone to meet. And while they weren't quite as "off-grid" as Owen would have preferred, having a valid registration and convincing ID certainly made things a bit easier and certainly more comfortable for the almost-11-year-old in their charge. Flipping on the radio and hoping to educate Maisie a bit more on the virtues of 60s and 70s rock 'n' roll, Owen checked his rear-view mirror and noted the kid still parked on the air-mattress sofa that doubled as her bed, quietly coloring in her sketchbook.

"What'cha workin' on?" he called back as Bob Dylan started crooning through the speakers.

Maisie flipped her notebook over so he could see in the mirror. "Stygimoloch," she said, showing off the spiky-headed juvenile sketched into the foreground.

"Hey not bad," said Owen, though privately he wondered whether the girl had ever drawn a rainbow or a unicorn in her life. Grandpa Lockwood had certainly impressed upon her a rather…narrowed set of hobbies and interests.

"It's supposed to be Stiggy," Maisie clarified, tapping her colored pencil on the right side of the paper which depicted a pretty good recreation of the cell block he and Claire had shared. Using the whistle command he'd often used on Blue, Owen was able to goad the young stygimoloch into busting through the adjacent cell wall with his thick domed cranium that characterized the species. Owen often wondered if Maisie had perhaps seen the whole thing right before they ran into her – and now he had his answer.

"Pretty good likeness, kid," he nodded. "You know, there's a paleontologist in Montana who thinks that the stygimoloch is actually a juvenile–"

"Pachycephalosaurus, I know," Maisie finished for him.

Owen chuckled and shook his head. There really wasn't a whole lot about dinosaurs that Maisie didn't know. "Any guesses who the paleontologist was?"

The girl arched a knowing eyebrow. "John Horner, of course," she replied, poshly, and then added in the rough American accent she'd been working on, "Duh."

"All right," Owen laughed, "but do you know who his college roommate was?"

Now that had Maisie stumped, and she stared expectantly at Owen's smug reflection with that little twinkle in her eye he was getting to know so well. "Dr. Alan Grant," he said, mimicking her Queen's English. Maisie gasped.

"Really?" she bounded toward the RV's cockpit just as Owen bumped over a sizeable pothole.

"Hey careful," he said as the camper jolted while she climbed into Claire's bucket seat.

"Did you know Dr. Grant?" she asked, buckling her seatbelt and sitting erect and attentive. Owen let out a sigh and thought guiltily of Claire. The woman would spend hours at night while he drove and Maisie slept, pouring over dozens of books on homeschooling and choosing curriculums, but she hadn't been very successful at getting Maisie as engaged as she seemed to be whenever Owen casually dropped a bit of dino-related trivia.

"I saw him once," Owen replied. "At a lecture he gave on raptors and what he believed about…well, how they communicated."

"Was he right?" she returned eagerly.

"Sort of," he said, flipping on his turn signal as they neared an exit. Owen paused, wondering exactly how to explain Grant's theory about the resonating chamber between the raptor's upper palate and larynx to a ten-year-old. "He theorized that raptors," Owen began, searching the ceiling for words and scratching at the back of his neck. He started again, "Grant thought they might have been able to communicate using a kind of…sonar ability," he said. "Like dolphins." The exit ramp led down to a red light, and Owen came to a stop, looking over at his young passenger.

"Did they?" she leaned forward, and he chuckled again at her thirst for answers. He kinda loved this kid.

"It wasn't sonar," Owen admitted, "but they do vocalize with each other."

Maisie sat back with a big grin on her face as she processed this new information. Glancing down at the sketchbook in her lap, she flipped a few pages backward from the new one of Stiggy to a drawing she kept returning to over and over again – a raptor with streaks of blue along her sides and an inquisitive gaze in her eyes.

Owen side-eyed the sketch and shook his head. Maisie was obsessed with Blue to a degree he couldn't have imagined for a girl who'd only narrowly escaped being viciously torn apart by the animal's indoraptor cousin. Then again, Blue had saved her life…and his. Pulling into the intersection and checking his Garmin for where to go next, Owen sighed and thought about the old girl. He sure hoped she was staying out of trouble. "You know," he remembered something, "I think one of Grant's research assistants made some kind of raptor call. He used a 3-D printer and scanned parts of a skull they found on a dig to–" Owen paused and looked aside. Maisie had stopped listening. Instead, her eyes were fixed on the dashboard and her face had gone pale. Only then did Owen realize that Bob Dylan had faded out and the broadcast had moved into its top-of-the-hour news report:

"...amazingly this is the first fatality we know of since the animals escaped from the home of Benjamin Lockwood two months ago. Since then, we've had scattered reports of–"

Owen reached for the dial to snap it off. "Maisie, we don't have to–"

"No!" she thrust out her hand to stop him, breathing shallow and staring intensely. "I…I want to hear."

Slowly, Owen pulled his hand back and turned the camper into a strip mall parking lot that was fairly empty. He put the camper in park as they listened together.

"...with a tour group through Big Rock National Park. Mr. Benson was reportedly trying to take a selfie with his girlfriend when the rogue ankylosaurus rammed into the group's jeep, ejecting Benson from the vehicle and landing him in a pile of branches, some of which pierced his side. Xander Benson was taken to Mad River Community Hospital where he succumbed to his injuries hours later and was declared dead by emergency physicians at 3:12 pm this afternoon. Benson's girlfriend, Lara Dunn had this to say."

Owen watched Maisie as she listened to the story, his hand hovering near the radio dial, though he could tell she wasn't ready to let him snap it off. He took a deep breath and wiped a bead of sweat from his brow as the interview continued.

"I just can't believe he's gone, you know? We…we're from Ohio! This was the first trip we ever took together and he…he…we get attacked by a *BEEEEEP* dinosaur?!"

"Officials from the US Fish and Wildlife Service have issued a warning to residents in Humboldt County that this could be just the beginning of–"

"That's it," Owen pulled rank and turned it off. "We've heard enough." The two of them sat in silence as the camper's motor rumbled quietly beneath them. Maisie seemed to have gone catatonic while Owen struggled to find the words…any words to say. Cautiously, he reached over and gave her shoulder a little shake. "Hey," he started.

"It's my fault," she whispered fiercely.

"Maisie–"

"I let them out. I let them out and now that man is….is gone." Throwing off her seatbelt, she climbed out of the seat and back to the main cabin, curling into a tiny ball in the farthest corner of her mattress where it formed a tight corner with the camper's kitchen unit.

Owen watched as the little girl wept silently, hugging her knees to her chest and just…staring. "Hey," he moved to join her and then stopped mid-stride. She'd left her sketchbook in the passenger seat, her picture of Blue looking rather…tossed aside. He picked it up, tucked it under his arm, and then settled next to her on the sofa.

For a while, neither of them spoke. They'd heard the news stories before of course, about various dinosaur sightings and close calls. But this was the first actual death attributed to a dino attack…and Owen knew more were coming. In fact, he was kinda shocked it had taken ''til now to begin with.

Maisie's breathing quickened and she started rocking back and forth, and soon Owen began to worry that she'd hyperventilate or something. Shit, he thought, wishing like hell that Claire was here. Do ten-year-olds have anxiety attacks? He wasn't sure, but he needed to do something. On instinct, he grabbed a plastic cup she'd used earlier off the counter, stepped over to the kitchenette, and poured her some water.

"It'll help," he urged, handing it down to her. The girl looked doubtful but did as she was told. Owen sat back down and watched her drink, relieved to see her breaths slowing between sips. "Listen," he started again. "You made a choice." Maisie finally looked over. "Was it the right one?" he shrugged, throwing his hands in the air. "I honestly don't know. We could probably argue about it 'til the cows come home and it wouldn't make any difference." He met her gaze. "You can't go back."

Maisie chewed her bottom lip, looking kind of…deflated. And Owen didn't blame her. God, he sucked at this–

"What…cows?" she asked suddenly.

Owen's eyebrows shot up. "What? Oh–" he shook his head. There was simply no rhyme or reason as to what things Maisie Lockwood had been privy to and what things she'd never seen or heard of in her life. "It's just an expression. It means, uhm–" and he paused again, brow creased. "Actually I have no idea what it means."

Maisie frowned and looked away. Owen said lots of things, it seemed, that were just…expressions. And each time she heard one, she felt less and less part of this world.

"But if I had to guess?" Owen continued, reading her disappointment well, "I'd say it probably has something to do with…opening the doors and letting all the animals out of the barn."

Maisie looked over, quizzically. Owen didn't always try to explain his idioms. And something told her he wasn't doing so now. Letting all the animals out of the barn, she thought it over, then added quietly, "or the dinosaurs."

"Or the dinosaurs," Owen repeated with a small smile. "And maybe that's the point, kid. The cows don't come home. And the dinos?" she looked up at him. "They don't have a home. The home they're lookin' for died 65 million years ago. And they didn't ask to be here any more than you did."

Tears streamed down her cheeks as she folded her hands in her lap. "You said it would happen," she murmured, wiping away a sniffle with her sleeve.

"What?"

"At the manor. You warned Claire if she pushed the button…there'd be no going back."

Owen nodded slowly. "Yeah. Yeah I said that."

"And you were right."

He shrugged with a light chuckle. "I usually am."

"And now a man is…is dead. He's dead and it's my fault–"

"No Maisie, it's not." And Owen moved to kneel in front of her. "It's not. Look at me," he said, drawing her bleary eyes up to meet his. "Sweetheart, you might've let 'em all out of the barn, but you're not the one who put 'em there." With a flick of his wrist, he handed her back her sketchbook. "You're ten years old," he said as she reluctantly drew it back. "You should be…learning fractions and reading your mystery books and playin' baseball. Not blaming yourself because an anklyosaurous ended up somewhere she shouldn't have been in the first place."

"But that's the point, isn't it? She wouldn't have been there if I–"

"She wouldn't have been there if Mills hadn't decided to auction them off to a bunch of asshole billionaires."

Maisie's jaw dropped and her eyes went big as saucers.

Owen winced. "Jerks," he amended, a little sheepish. "Jerk billionaires."

She let out a strained little laugh in spite of herself, though the tears were still falling. Owen reached up and brushed a few away with the pad of his thumb.

"Come on, kid," he went on, "You weren't even born when this all started, you know? You weren't around when that first idiot hatched 'em outta thin air and stuck' em in a theme park for 15 years. And you aren't the navy dope who showed the world how to make raptors into trained killers."

Maisie looked down at her sketch of Blue, thinking as she did so often of the way this trained raptor burst into her room and saved them. "This isn't on you," Owen continued. "This is on me. And Mills. And John Hammond, and Simon Masrani, and Dr. Wu and…and a thousand other people." He picked up her sketchbook once more, flipped it forward a few pages, and then turned it around. "All you did was make a choice...to save this little guy," he pointed down at her drawing of Stiggy. "And that choice came from here," he said, pointing toward her heart. "You saw these animals that were trapped and dying, and you wanted to give them their best shot. And you know what?" he added, wondering if Claire were somehow telepathically feeding him all the right words to say now…or maybe he just needed to say them as much as Maisie needed to hear them. "I didn't know Benjamin Lockwood at all…but I kinda have a feeling he'd be real proud of you."

Maisie let out another strained sob, though this one sounded different. Almost relieved. She reached out to hug him and he squeezed her tight, as if he could shield her from the whole world if only he held her just a little closer. Gradually she calmed down and pulled back, the sketchbook falling open once more on her lap between them. "Now," Owen cleared his throat and grinned. "This," he pointed down, "is a pretty good likeness of Stiggy. But I wanna see a ruggedly handsome man over here behind these jail bars, all right?" he tapped the unfinished background with his forefinger. "Preferably standing next to a bad-ass redhead."

Maisie giggled, this time not quite so shocked by Owen's language. He slipped up a lot more than he realized–usually when Claire wasn't around–and she didn't mind a bit. They both could have left her there, in that huge, broken, empty house with no family. And no clue how to wrap her little mind around the fact that her life–her very existence–was a lie. But they took her in. They gave her a home. The dinos…don't have a home.

"Ok," she said quietly, holding firmly now to her sketchbook, sniffling her remaining tears away.

Owen gave her shoulder another squeeze and took a deep breath. "Aight," he winked and he arched his hand backward for an exaggerated high-five. They'd done this a couple times now, almost like a secret handshake. And Maisie liked it. It made her feel like she belonged.

Slowly he pulled himself off the floor, knees and back muscles growing old-man cranky. But as he moved to return to the driver's seat, her little voice called him back.

"Owen?"

"Yeah?"

Maisie gulped. "What's…what's baseball?"

He froze. Then blinked. Jaw-dropped. Incredulous. "What's BASEBALL!?" His intentionally dramatic reaction elicited another embarrassed giggle from the girl. "You know that a stygimoloch is probably just a baby pachy, but you've never heard of baseball?" Maisie gave another helpless shrug, but Owen was acting so goofy now, it was impossible to take his censure seriously. "Oh-ho ho ho, you are probably gonna regret asking, missy. Come on up here," he gestured for them both to return to the cockpit. Maisie scrambled back up to Claire's seat and buckled in. "We're gonna find something worthwhile on this radio," Owen was saying, snapping it back on and immediately scanning for an AM station. There had to be an Angels or Dodgers game on somewhere. After several turns of the dial, at last he heard that iconic sound of a home team crowd humming between pitches. Owen gave the dashboard a firm nod, then turned to his pupil.

"No girl of mine is gonna travel around the US in a camper and not know what baseball is, all right? Baseball…is America's pastime."

Maisie straightened up in her seat and asked with absolute sincerity, "Like Denny's?"

His next words stalled on the tip of his tongue before he burst out laughing. "Yeah, kid. A little like Denny's." He started again. "Now listen up, there are three things you gotta know right off the bat. Write this down. Number one," he held up his finger as he put the camper into gear and started them moving again. "Pitch counts…are stupid. We should be counting outs. Number two: whoever decided to start extra innings with runners already on second should be–" he paused, "-only slightly maimed by an ankylosaurus." Maisie openly gaped at the joke before he added, "too soon?"

She shook her head, blushing furiously but laughing. "No."

"And number three. Look at me, this is very important." Luckily they'd hit another red light so Owen looked directly in her eyes, with Maisie entirely captivated by his intensity. Slowly, he pointed on every word. "The Yankees. Always. Suck."