ahsdghg so I got involved in a ship week for another fandom and I'm kinda just posting this so I can have more freedom to work on that and not leave this fic abandoned for too long. So close to getting to the more exciting stuff in this fic aaaaaaa

The envelope sits heavy in his hand, the edges wrinkled from where he'd nervously fiddled with it, one side torn open from where he'd ripped it open to fetch the letter from inside. He doesn't know why he reareads it so often, taking it in and out of his mail drawer to rove his eyes over words he'd long since memorized. It's the exact same as the other letters they've sent over the years, crisp black print relaying the polite, professional tone of a business hell-bent on pretending that they're squeaky-clean, no need to look at the blood in their coffers.

And yet, he'd agreed to go this year. So many years of avoiding that damn island and he'd gone and ruined that. And for what? A rumor that there was a man who could actually work with goddamn raptors. Raptors. If Robert Muldoon, a man who's abilities far surpassed his couldn't work with raptors, he has serious doubts that whatever poor kid they suckered into being a raptor handler has any chance of it.

Alan Grant has been in the minds of raptors.

More accurately, he's had his mind flayed open like a fish fillet by raptors, their minds greedy and eager to take everything from him, cursed animals who would have hooked him into their pack link if only to have the satisfaction of feeling his utter terror as they eviscerated him. It's what they did to Muldoon, anyway. Alan remembers, intimately, even now, what it was like to have the raptors slice into his mind, examining every corner, his crooks and crannies and found him wanting. The raptors had found every single one of them lacking, weak, and what could Alan do to disprove that when the raptors proved to be so deathly efficient.

The raptors of Isla Sorna hadn't been much different. Their minds had brushed against his mind, and it was the feeling one had if someone held a particularly sharp knife to their throat. They were clever and restrained in ways the original Nublar Raptors could not be, too new, too unsure of their place in the new land they now inhabited. Not the Sorna Raptors, who'd had time aplenty to adjust to their existence without human interference.

He sighs.

And yet all this time later, he'd been drawn back in for the reason he had gone the first time- curiosity (and okay, admittedly money. A large check went a long way in the business of digging, these days). Alan supposes that his nature would always get the best of him; he's just glad that he's not alone in this madness. He knows Ellie's going, because for all that she is smart, she has the same damn vices and he's pretty sure Ian's going, if for nothing else than to give an ominous warning about how little control they all truly have. Then again, Ian had not only survived Isla Sorna before him (avoiding the spinosaurus all together, the lucky bastard) but also managed to rally a very angry tyrannosaurus through San Francisco and back. Okay, perhaps that didn't make him so lucky.

The kids are going too. They're not kids anymore (Tim is thirty now, god) but he still thinks of them as kids. It's kind of hard not to when he's known them as long as he has. Those islands really have made them all go mad, he thinks.

…

Tim's hands are stained with charcoal. The letter in his hand is also now stained with charcoal and his sister would probably scold him if she saw the mess he's made of his invitation. He doesn't really care though, he knows all he has to do is call and they'll send him a brand new invitation and a gift basket to boot because they want to make sure they'll all go. This is the first time he'd ever decided to attend the anniversary though Lex had gone twice if only to make sure the park's computers functioned well, for her own peace of mind. She hadn't talked about what the park was like and Tim hadn't asked, though the pallor of her face had been enough to tell him that no security measure would ever be enough for her.

She'd still been brave to go, he thinks.

He looks back at his hands, smeared over in varying degrees of dark gray, his charcoal pencil sitting on top of his sketchbook where he'd half finished a sketch of brachiosaur, the thing bringing him comfort as one of the grandest memories of his childhood. Scarring as the whole ordeal had been, he would never forget those creatures, taller than life, their large, dark eyes so docile and so ancient. Like a big cow, he'd called them, as if a single cow had the strength to shake the earth with a single footstep.

The letter had caught his attention, sitting abandoned next to his tv, on top of a box of colored pencils that he'd been meaning to replace, most of them run down to the nib now.

Tim had looked up pictures of the park at one point, at it's different than what it had first been. On a different location of the island, accessible by boat rather than chopper, the structures changed from their natural verdant greens and earthy browns to futuristic silvers, with more attractions than the original. The first park hadn't had a website. The first park had covered up the deaths of several people. Tim supposes he has… very mixed feeling about it all.

He puts the envelope down and picks up his sketchbook again, looking into the benign eyes of his brachiosaur and wonders what it would have been like to see it from Dr. Grant's point of view. The memory's begun to fade around the edges, but he remembers the vibrant smile on his face as he'd fed them, remembers that they'd only respond when Dr. Grant howled at them, completely ignoring Tim. It had bothered him back then, that he could experience the world like those people who could feel just beyond them, who could connect with animals in a way that few other people would ever understand.

It had bothered him until he'd seen how Dr. Grant reacted to the raptors.

If there is one thing that scares Tim more than raptors, it is their minds, engineered by stupid, greedy human hands to learn and devour, the ones of the first park nigh on sadistic monsters that had tormented them all before attempting to to go in for the kill. He almost doesn't mind that Rexy is still alive, that they have new raptors.

As long as the old ones are gone for good.

chapter title from as it was by hozier

by the way it's like 4 am so apologies if none of it makes sense lmao