Title: to travel an unknown road

Disclaimer: not my characters; title from Gilgamesh

Warnings: child abuse, violence/death, casually handwaving things left, right, and center

Pairings: none

Rating: PG

Wordcount: 1355

Point of view: third

Prompt: any, any, velociraptors (image from the first film)

Owen spent most of his life planning escape routes. He also wanted to be strong enough that no one could hurt him again. He quietly researched, kept his head down at home and at school, and decided on the Navy SEALs when he was thirteen. From that moment on, everything he did was in preparation for when he graduated and could apply.

After he did that, he never looked back.

.

It's hard, of course, but not harder than going to school with bruised ribs (well, he hopes they're only bruised) and making sure no one knows.

.

Over the years, he earns a BS in wildlife ecology because he's always liked animals more than people. His team give him shit because instead of a woman in every port, he's got cats and dogs and goats and dozens of other animals eating of his hands and whining when he leaves. He's got women, too, of course, because he's grown into himself, tall and strong and no longer a tiny little kid afraid of everything. He can afford to run his mouth now because he can back it up.

There aren't that many women, though. He's come to realize that humans don't make much sense and while sex is fun, it's not really worth the hassle.

.

After getting a little blown up on a mission, Owen suddenly has some time to kill, so he decides to start working towards a doctorate in zoology. He's been keeping up with Jurassic World since he was a kid because, well, dinosaurs. He's always had a thing for predators, sharks and big cats and all the raptors that ever lived, and now there are some actually alive? Of course, he's never had the time or funds to visit, but he decides to focus his dissertation on a theoretical exercise of working with velociraptors as though they were wolves.

Even after he's all healed up and back in the field, he keeps chipping away at it but he never does finish.

What he doesn't expect is that some headhunters from InGen will actually somehow get access to what he submitted and track him down.

.

It's experimental, of course, and just as classified as his missions, but it comes down to deciding between what he's been doing for fifteen years or working with raptors.

.

While waiting for the raptors to be ready, Owen is moved around the park, seeing how the whole thing works. He's introduced to his team and they figure out how to work together, and he and Barry compare what they know. When he gets drunk (which is rarely), Barry will rant about inaccurate dinosaurs but Owen doesn't care so much about that.

.

The first batch are not given names. The oldest kills the youngest and tries to eat it, then attacks the remaining sibling.

The second batch are not given names. They don't survive infancy due to some hiccup in their genes.

Owen is there for the third batch and after the firstborn claws her way out of the egg, he cleans her, dries her, croons nonsense. He names her Blue. The second and thirdborn follow swiftly and he helps them, too, soothes them, and then the fourth.

"You named them?" Wu asks incredulously as Owen shows them around the first enclosure, their little room in the lab.

"Of course," Owen says, touching the tops of their heads as he says, "Blue, Charlie, Delta, and Echo."

.

Each of the species of dinosaurs at the park have their own keepers; the herbivores have dozens, since there are so many more of them. The keepers have a floor of the resort for whenever they're on-site, but after the first time Owen nearly stabs someone for waking him up, he decides to bring in a trailer and keep to himself.

Pretty much the only human at the park that Owen can stand for long periods is Barry, who damn near memorized everything known about raptors way before he applied to Jurassic World. He was an expert on the extinct species before they stopped being extinct, and he teaches Owen in a way that's far less arrogant than the scientists in the lab.

"What we're doing is crazy," Barry tells him, but then Blue chirps and Echo tries to pounce on Charlie and Delta rubs against Barry's legs like a cat, and Owen watches Barry fall in love with them, too.

.

It's not that he forgets what Hoskins said when he offered Owen the job, he just… he gets caught up in raising raptors, in making sure they're socialized, that they treat each other with respect and view him as the authority, and maybe sometimes he treats them like they're less-furry and a little more aggressive dogs, but he always keeps in mind that they don't have thousands of years of domestication in their DNA. They have no years of domestication.

Dinosaurs. Owen works with dinosaurs. It's the greatest thing he's ever done.

But yeah, Hoskins. He hired Owen for a research project on raptors, to see how smart they are. Wanted weekly reports, which Owen let slide as he watched his girls grow and become individuals with distinct personalities.

Owen loves all of them, but his favorite is Blue. He doesn't trust them, really, not the way he'd trust a dog because they're wild, they'll always be wild, even if Blue used to curl up in his arms and sleep. But they're his, and he trusts Hoskins less than he trusts any dinosaur in the park.

.

He never hates the Indominus. He can hate Wu and Hoskins and everyone who okayed the project, but he never hates her. None of what happened was her fault; she just didn't know any better. She was exploring the world like a little kid.

Someone has to be held accountable for what happened, and Hoskins and Masrani make easy targets. They're dead, after all. They're dead and Wu hasn't resurfaced, and Claire is held up as the hero who scrambled and did the best she could. The media tries to make Owen out as a hero, too, but he doesn't give interviews. He never talks about what happened.

Jurassic World will reopen and Owen has discovered over the course of his life that, on the whole, people never learn. Previous employees of the park are given the option to return; Claire doesn't.

Owen does. Three months after 'the incident,' 'the disaster,' whatever term is being used this week, Owen is on the ferry back. There have been containment crews and every surviving dinosaur is accounted for but one. No one has seen Blue, not since Owen sent her away.

He's done a lot of shit in his life, but sending her away like that is what he feels the worst about. But he had two kids at his back, Claire tensed to run beside him, and he had to decide in that moment what was most important, and he chose the human kids over her.

.

Barry meets him at the dock. "I'm not surprised you came back," Barry says and offers Owen a ride out to his trailer.

"There's talk of creating more raptors," Barry says and Owen grits his teeth. Barry changes the subject to who all has come back and who hasn't yet, who probably won't.

.

"Your bike was salvaged," Barry says as Owen climbs out of the jeep. "I'll have it delivered later this afternoon. I'll also stop by with some dinner tonight."

"Thanks," Owen says.

He notices the tracks around his trailer as Barry drives away, that the door has been forced open. He smiles, slowly reaching for the knife at his back, just in case. "Heya, girl, you there?" he calls.

There's an answering chirp from inside the trailer, inquisitive. "Blue?" he says. "Eyes on me."

Her answer this time is a greeting and then she's in the door, watching him.

"Hey, girl," he says again. She slowly approaches, head lowered, and Owen re-sheathes the knife. "We're gonna be fine, aren't we, Blue?"

She gently nudges him with her snout and he rubs at her jaw, and he says, "Yeah, we'll be fine."