Work Text:
There are two things that make
the conscious world move,
decision and desire
(sharp teeth, toby barlow)
-
It probably shows a remarkable lack of foresight, but who makes a backup plan when playing God? A bigger and better God, it should be said; one who wiped away Hammond's haze of idealism to create something efficient and fool-proof and without the same pitfalls as its predecessor.
Of course, later, there are shaky iPhone videos of the carnage running on a neverending loop everywhere: major news networks, obscure cable tv shows, an elaborate SNL digital short with Andy Samberg as a misunderstood Indominus Rex, and of course the requisite youtube remix using a mashup of Ke$ha and "We Didn't Start The Fire." It's a public relations nightmare because the only question anyone has (why, why, why) is the one no one can answer without making things worse.
-
One of the last strings Claire pulls as operations manager is getting Karen and Simon on the first flight to Isla Nublar after The Incident. She says that she's doing it for the boys, but Claire has never been that selfless. When she finally sees Karen at the hangar, something in her breaks. It's like she had to be strong for the boys ("It's going to be okay. Everything is going to be fine," she must have said a million times during the night, every repetition somehow less convincing than the last) but the moment she can hand over the reigns and pass that responsibility back to someone who is more capable, Claire's insides crumple with relief like an unstable Jenga tower, the adrenaline depleted in one final rush.
"Thank you," her sister whispers in her ear as she hugs her fiercely, Claire's solitary sob muffling into Karen's shoulder. She feels like there was a bomb strapped to her and now that it has been diffused, all she can think about is how close it had come to going off.
She could let Karen do what Karen does best and take care of everything, but Claire reminds herself to be an adult and not collapse in that moment. She leaves her sister to inspect her nephews' cuts and summons the last of her energy into moving. One more step. One more step and then another and another and another.
"What do we do now?" she asks Owen when she spots him. He looks as tired as her, but Claire doesn't feel the guilt she felt a moment ago when she thought about Karen having to hold her up. When Owen tells her that they should probably stick together, it's comforting in a way that she can't quite place. Their shared culpability is like an anchor. This is as much his disaster as it is hers.
-
In the aftermath, the soundbite making the rounds is the pubertal kid they hired to work the raptor cages less than twenty four hours before the proverbial shit hit the fan telling Larry King, who temporarily comes out of retirement to cover this story, that no one could have seen this coming.
Claire knows that it's a lie, of course. No one wanted to see this coming so they all wore the cloak of ignorance like a second uniform. She should have known better, maybe not shut her eyes so tight. Wasn't she the one who tried glimpsing into the future with spreadsheets and polls and surveys and market research? After all, Simon had hired her because she was the only candidate who wasn't satisfied with maintaining the status quo.
"The future is more," she had told Simon in her interview, the job hers a handshake later.
There was no profit margin in disaster.
-
There is something daring (stupid?) about getting on the back of Owen's motorcycle when they step outside with the remnants of carnage still all over the island. Although the public may not be aware of it, Claire knows that there is still a T. Rex out there and, if she's being honest with herself, there are probably still a dozen highly dangerous assets out there that would not spare a second thought at ending her life.
"Go fast," she whispers as Owen guns the engine. She's not sure where he's going, but it's almost liberating not to care.
And then it's just air hitting their faces as he peels away from the makeshift home base, the motor too loud to think or speak or do anything but hold on. They pass the demolished Innovation Center and weave left and right through Main Street. Claire closes her eyes and tries not to see beaks flinging people into the air like cheap toys, their excruciating screams cutting through her denial like a laser beam. She feels a bump under her and then they're off-road, the tires spinning faster and faster over acres of green grass and soft dirt until the awful memory is dimmed to a dull roar.
Owen stops at a cliff on the eastern part of the island, the jungle a few thousand feet to the right of their location and nothing but the promise of a steep drop into the ocean on their left. The wind has picked up by now and the sky is the exact shade of steely gray that precedes a storm. The only mark on the ground is that of Owen's tires, one of the few parts of the island that remains untouched by disaster.
Her feet are killing her when he helps her off the bike. Claire supposes this is the kind of betrayal that results from no longer being in a life or death situation, but it still feels like mutiny when she winces as her feet hit the ground.
"You okay?"
Claire doesn't bother to answer as she holds onto Owen's broad shoulder with one hand and pries the Manolos off with the other, the cool air a small comfort against her bloody feet.
"Impressive," Owen says with a whistle.
"Told you they weren't ridiculous," Claire replies, letting go of him with a smirk.
Once he's sure that she's not going to topple over, Owen walks a few feet closer to the edge of the cliff to look down at the foamy waves of crystal blue sea below them. He says something about being afraid of heights when he was a kid before sticking a foot out into the air in front of him like he's testing his bravery now. Before Claire can tell him how inconvenient it would be for her if he jumped (please don't leave me alone. please don't leave. please, she will never say), Owen seems to have snapped out of whatever that was and steps away from the edge to face her.
"So I think I'm probably homeless now," he says, running a hand through his hair, "which, you know, sucks for someone whose only marketable skill is training dinosaurs. I'm like the guy who used to make floppy disks."
Claire laughs. She knows the feeling. She spent seven years moving up the food chain of a now-extinct closed system.
"At least 3M went back to making post-its. You and I? We're fucked."
-
They estimate that it will take up to thirty six hours to get all the visitors and most of the non-essential personnel off the island. Karen insists that Claire has given them enough when she begs her to get on the first boat with them, to come home and put this behind her. The Masrani Corporation would be inclined to agree. They send in some big wig in a fancy suit who doesn't know the first thing about the park to take control of the clean up situation. Claire kind of hopes that she didn't look like this much of an asshole when she watches the man in Armani sunglasses get out of the helicopter and introduce himself as Mr. Ross. By then Claire is wearing sweats and a Jurassic World t-shirt that Lowery rescued from the gift shop wreckage. The irony is not lost on her.
"The Masrani Corporation would like you back in the states immediately," Ross says when she greets him coldly. "We will need to debrief you, of course. Figure out where this operation went wrong."
"Playing Frankenstein with dinosaur DNA is probably as good a place as any to start," Owen mumbles.
"I'm not leaving until this mess gets sorted out," Claire tells Ross, more of a command than a negotiation. Thankfully, he is not awful enough to tell her that there is no sorting out this situation. He simply nods, almost like he's relieved when his hand goes to the sat-phone on his hip a moment later to inform their bosses of the new plan. Claire isn't sure what that plan actually is, but she knows that there's less of a chance that the company will napalm the whole island if she's heading up the skeleton crew.
-
"Why weren't there better contingencies? Why wasn't there a plan in place—"
"There was."
"An effective one, Ms. Dearing. One that didn't involve thousands of people dying."
-
The last passenger boat off Isla Nublar leaves at sunset, leaving behind a handful of employees who are scheduled to leave the next morning on the company helicopter. There is talk of relocating the remaining dinosaurs to Isla Sorna, but no one is too keen on hunting down a T. Rex for the ride over. At any rate, they're not sure how animals bred in captivity would do with dinosaurs who have been allowed to roam free in the wild for ten years. The company decides to leave well enough alone – this mess is enough of a nightmare already without drawing the public's attention to Site B – and deal with this problem when they inevitably pick up the idea again after the dust settles. Despite the very vocal detractors, there are just as many, if not more, people clamoring for a reopening.
"No one blames you, of course," the board tells her over Skype. "You're indispensable to the future of Jurassic World, Claire."
Claire heaves into the garbage can by Vivian's impeccable workstation the moment she ends the video conference call, the bile rising up in her throat as she thinks about how they'll probably pin this entire thing on Simon.
"Goddammit, Cruthers! What did I say about giving me a minute?" she shouts when she hears someone clear his throat behind her. "I'm going to shove this—"
"Actually," Owen says, his voice startling Claire, "he's looking for souvenirs with some of the others. Something about making a killing on eBay?"
Owen drops into the office chair next to Claire without asking if she wants company. He produces a bottle of tequila that Barry liberated from the kitchens before he left and a pair of novelty shot glasses with cartoon pterodactyls on them.
"Still on that diet?" he asks as he pours out two shots. He has barely finished before she picks up the glass and downs it.
Off his look, she shrugs. "I did plenty of cardio yesterday."
Owen pours them refills and holds up his glass for a toast. "Here's to a better third date."
"Was that a second date?"
"I didn't wear board shorts and you didn't get super intense about Dave & Busters—"
"For the last time, that is not a legitimate place to have a date if you're above the age of fifteen!"
"Debatable," Owen replies. "Those metallic claw games are actually really fun and if you would've just stopped looking at your watch for five seconds…"
Claire's face gets red with anger as she thinks about their disastrous first – and only, if they're being completely honest here – date. It was a veritable disaster in part because Simon made her go on it, practically threatening to take away her security clearance if she didn't take herself off the clock and have a relaxing night. And, yes, she had made an itinerary but only because she had a very important conference call with Tokyo at midnight that she definitely couldn't miss because Simon would not be able to handle it on his own. By the time Owen had arrived at her hotel to pick her up, twenty minutes late and wearing shorts and flip-flops, she knew that the evening was a lost cause. He was handsome in that aimless way that she had found to be attractive in high school, but grew out of enjoying by the time she stopped drinking cheap booze from red solo cups so the entire night felt like being involved in a stop motion car crash.
"I had a meeting with Sanrio!" she shouts now.
"That cat isn't even a cat!" Owen yells back, which is the dumbest thing anyone has ever said during an argument. It's stupid enough to abort whatever explosion was about to take place. They go back to their drinks.
The control room is silent for a few beats before Claire says, "I'll have you know that cat is a multimillion dollar—"
"Lie! That cat is a girl who looks like a cat. You can't tell me that's anything short of creepy."
"You are weirdly knowledgeable about this," she comments, taking the bottle from him.
"I keep up on world news," Owen huffs before continuing with, "Look, the point is that you saved my life and we made out."
"Unintentionally."
"How do you unintentionally make out with someone?"
"In the heat of the moment, I would've made out with a coat rack," she justifies weakly. Claire should say that he was the one who initiated the whole thing and she was just going along to spare his feelings, but even she doesn't know if she could get all that out with a straight face.
"With tongue?"
"There was no…" Claire throws one of Lowery's toys at his smug face, Owen barely moving out of the way in time. "Oh, shut up."
"You know, your sister told me that you were emotionally challenged."
"Oh, for fuck's sake, why is my sister talking to you about my emotional well being at all?"
"Her kids think we're dating."
"Yes, well, they've been through a traumatic experience. Their worldview is very skewed."
"Not enough that they don't see that this," he motions at the space between them with the now half empty bottle, "is practically a Nicholas Sparks movie."
She works at a dinosaur amusement park and yet the thought of Owen watching a Nicholas Sparks movie is probably the most ridiculous thing she has ever heard. It feels like she should mention something about managing expectations and relationships based on extreme situations, but all she says is: "That's a pretty low bar, Mr. Grady."
Claire doesn't mean for it to sound flirty (or maybe she does, she doesn't know; they might both be a little drunk), but when he corrects her with "Just Owen," his voice is low enough to make her traitorous stomach do a stupid little flip like enough terrible decisions haven't been made already. The air between them is so charged that she almost wishes Lowery would walk in right now.
"So you're just like this casual Ryan Gosling fan on the weekends?" Claire scoffs. She refuses to acknowledge their close proximity, staring at the scratched Jurassic World emblem on the other side of her shot glass instead. Claire picks futilely at a corner of the design with her thumbnail as if it were really that easy to erase it from her life.
"Yes," he finally says. Claire can feel his eyes on her as his chair rolls soundlessly closer. It's a bad idea, it's such a bad idea, and she's about to tell him just as much when she swivels her chair to face him. Owen is watching her with all the intensity of one of his raptors. He just misses his pack, she wants to think, but Claire knows it doesn't work that way.
"Fuck," she mutters before grabbing Owen's henley and crushing her lips against his. Claire's teeth nip at his bottom lip hard enough to draw blood, the copper taste jarring him into action. Owen's fingers find their way under her shirt and slowly trail up her spine. His face doesn't betray how fast his heart is beating, a steady hum against her palm. Claire buzzes with electricity as his mouth finds her neck. She feels lightheaded and out of control, her skin vibrating wherever he touches her until it gets to be too much.
Owen laughs at the audible hitch in her throat and, God, this is literally the worst decision she has made in a forty eight hour period full of nothing but stupid decisions. Suddenly Claire can't stop thinking about everything—
how Owen smells faintly of gasoline
(we have an asset out of containment)
that she still has some of the jungle stuck in her hair
(what did you think was going to happen when you made a monster?)
the red phosphorus burning in the air and the ground shaking as the tyrannosaurus lumbered behind her, life and death settling into the space of a single misstep
(we need more teeth, we need more teeth, we need more teeth)
—and then Owen is calling out, "Claire. Claire. Claire!" until she finally snaps out of it. Her breathing is coming out in these small gasps like she'll never get enough air into her lungs. Owen's forehead is solid against hers, his index finger tracing circles over the back of her neck. Claire tries to slow her breathing by watching the even pulsations of his jugular. Owen talks in soft soothing tones, this indecipherable white noise that she can't quite make out (she thinks he's saying something about his little league playoffs?) until slowly that vicious roar out of Paddock 9 fades into the background of her mind.
"And then this kid Colin throws down a bunt, can you believe it? What self respecting little leaguer bunts with two out in the ninth? So coach is screaming, 'Grady, run to goddamn first,' but I'm standing on the mound like a moron—"
Claire cups his face with her hands and kisses him softly.
"Sorry. That was…unexpected."
"It happens," Owen assures her with a small smile. "I nearly laid out one of those InGen pricks yesterday for touching my clicker. Maybe we're a little fucked up now."
"Understatement," she laughs. A beat later: "So what you're saying is that I should keep my expectations low for the third date?"
"Better than Ed Hardy t-shirts, but not quite at a button down?"
-
The spotlight gets ten times brighter when Larry King leans in, elbows hitting the desk with a loud crack, and asks, "If Simon Masrani was not at fault, Ms. Dearing, then who was?"
He looks almost ghoulish this close and Claire wouldn't be surprised to learn that he feeds off of high profile interviews like they are unicorn blood. In her periphery, she can see Masrani Corp's lawyer nervously straightening her skirt behind the scenes. They thought it might be easier to get Claire to regurgitate the company lines if another woman was feeding them to her, but here she is going off script, oh so casually threatening to topple a billion dollar company.
"What I'm saying is that Simon Masrani gave his life trying to save those people," she says, which isn't a lie but isn't quite the whole truth either. "We should think of him as a hero."
What she wants to tell him is that they placed their trust in the wrong people; that when pitting moral fortitude against cold hard cash, even the strongest would falter; that she could have easily gone above Simon and forced operations to shut down before all those people died but she was thinking about the Verizon deal and the seven years she poured into this job; that in playing God, they created the Devil; that creating monsters made them monsters too.
"He wasn't the only one, was he, Claire?" Larry offers, so quick to become informal. She can see the guy behind the cameraman motioning for Larry to wrap up. "We've all seen the footage of you leading the Tyrannosaurus Rex to the Indominus Rex. It's really remarkable. You're the true hero here."
"I'm not a hero," Claire states firmly, her eyes not faltering at this point.
Larry laughs jovially, saying something about modest heroes before cutting to commercials. "After the break, we will talk to renowned author and Isla Nublar survivor, Dr. Ian Malcolm in San Diego, about chaos theory."
-
Karen tries to get her to stay in her spare bedroom when Claire gets back to LA, but it's enough to face her own life falling apart without having to be a spectator to the dissolution of Karen's marriage so they settle for weekly family dinners.
"You don't have to 'mom' me," Claire tells her after fielding the fifth question about how she's really doing.
"I know," Karen says. "I just want to see you. Is that so bad?"
Claire knows she means: I don't want you to go away again.
-
The company gets them both condos for their heroic contributions during the The Isla Nublar Incident. They say there are no strings, but it feels a lot like a retainer. But when they mention calling on Owen for his services in the future, he doesn't hesitate to tell them where they can shove their offer.
Claire is more diplomatic, years of being noncommittal with competing businesses finally paying off. Karen tells her to consider the condo as severance pay so she does. The new CEO knows better than to push so close to The Incident so he gives it time. The image of her guiding the T. Rex is the only positive spin the Masrani Corporation has to go on so he's not about to do something to jeopardize that, but the company measures time in dollar bills so once one month becomes two, the calls start to come in earnest. Claire gets very adept at hitting the red ignore button on her phone.
"Tell them to fuck off," Owen suggests unhelpfully as he pours himself a bowl of Cheerios. Sometime between their third date (he rents a tux and takes her to the ballet; they make it to intermission before sneaking out to get take out and watch Shark Tank) and Thanksgiving dinner with her family, Owen effortlessly works his way into her life without either of them realizing that it has even happened. It's like she gave him an inch and he did so much with it that she wanted to give him a mile. A spare toothbrush becomes an extra drawer becomes it's not like you have a lot of stuff anyway until one day her nephews come over to decorate her apartment for Christmas and no one thinks twice about putting up a stocking for him on the mantle of her faux fireplace.
"Technically I still work for them," Claire reminds him now.
"Not a court in the country will hold you to that contract," he replies through a mouthful of cereal, plopping down next to her on the living room couch.
"The job offers aren't exactly raining down on me," she says. "Not all of us get to consult for Alan Grant, Owen."
"You could become a bag lady and it would still be a better choice. Besides, I thought Malcolm talked to you?"
"He told me I should put my face on Wheaties boxes and write a tell-all." Claire scrunches up her nose in disgust. "And before you say it's a good idea, it's not and I won't."
Owen is silent while she flips through Saturday morning cartoons and a Bond marathon on Spike. Claire briefly pauses at Fox News to watch Sean Hannity draw devil horns on her employee ID picture before continuing her channel surfing and eventually landing on a QVC special on bug zappers.
"What did you want to be when you were younger?" Owen suddenly asks, putting his bowl down on the glass coffee table so that he can turn his full attention on her.
"An astronaut. Too bad they shut down the space shuttle program."
"Claire…"
"I know you're trying to help," she says, taking his hands between her own, "but I'm not looking to use this as an opportunity to redefine myself."
"What are you looking to do then?" he asks earnestly.
"Watch I Love the 90s, fool around with you, crack open that bottle of red Karen brought over last week, and maybe get the tikka masala this time when we order Indian for dinner."
"That's your life plan?"
"That's my today plan."
"And that's good enough for you?"
"You mean because I'm kind of a control freak?" Claire asks, not waiting a beat before continuing, "Recently I've learned that the key to a happy life is to accept that you are never actually in control."
The man on QVC talks about solar lighting and outdoor living products as they pan across a very fake looking yard. The Westinghouse specialist looks depressed when he asks her to talk about their wonderful solar lantern (with Shepherd's hook!) before they get to the phone testimonials. Claire is about to ask Owen what kind of individual calls to wax poetic about bug zappers when he leans in very closely and whispers in her ear, "You know, I was kind of hoping you'd say you wanted to be a gymnast."
"I'm not that flexible," she grins, pulling him over her like a blanket.
"I'd be willing to test out that theory," he smiles against her mouth before his hands fly everywhere all at once.
They only make it to 1993 on the marathon.
-
There is one time when Karen asks her what really went wrong in Jurassic World. Up until that point, her sister's support had come with no questions asked, Karen's unwavering belief in Claire rivaling even her own. But that night, Claire had recruited Owen to take Zach and Gray to the movies so she and her sister could get properly drunk, one last period of mourning for Karen's now-defunct marriage before they closed that book forever. They were a case of beers in when Karen reached for Claire's hand and asked, "So what really happened in Costa Rica?"
"We were foolish enough to think that creating a monster meant we could control it too."