Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

link to the podfic because i forgor how to hyperlink :(

Group: Darius Bowman, Brooklynn, Yaz Fadoula, Sammy Gutierrez, Kenji Kon, Ben Pincus

Status: Alive, uninjured

Supplies: stockpiled on boat

Goal: get to the mainland, give hard drive to authorities, go home

When the camp fam first hear the plane, they hide. Dr Wu, no one says but they all think, panicked looks rebounding between each other like ping pong balls. They're coming for that hard drive. And us too. They barely rescued Brooklynn, barely made it out alive from the whole encounter, and they are not risking their chances with him again.

Curse him, and his men, and his helicopters. They should've sailed away from this damn island when they had the chance. And now, they're buried in the bushes with the well practiced urgency of a group who's hidden like this many times before, and deciding which course of action would be the least catastrophic.

Darius looks upward, and points wordlessly at the plane approaching, like a dark speck of mould against the brilliant blue sky. The campers watch it circle around the sun like a vulture, and approach the stretch of tarmac right near where their (okay, Mitch and Tiff's) boat is docked. They all tense, readying their fists for battle, fear hanging in the air like fog. They've had enough bad experiences with people dropping from the sky for a lifetime. And their plan is done! They tricked Wu, they have the hard drive full of Wu’s research, his laptop is destroyed, and all that's standing between them and Costa Rica, is a boat ride. They're so close. Soon, they’ll all be home, and this will all be over. They hold that thought like a comfort toy cuddled to their chest, and clutch it tight.

“Who is that?” Brooklynn whispers.

Darius says, “I don’t know. But let’s not stick around to find out.”

The others lean back from the bushes, and instinctively huddle closer to discuss. “We can head back to camp and lie low for a couple more hours,” Sammy suggests.

“Oh, no way, I am not going back into that jungle.” Kenji puts his hands on his hips. “I say we face whoever’s on that plane, and get the hell home.”

“Oh— we can feed them to the mosasaurus!”

Everyone stares at Ben, and he shrugs. “I’m telling you, we should really get our use out of the mosasaurus.”

“I, for one, am not keen on another encounter with a mosasaurus,” Yaz says, shuddering. “Or any other dinosaur.”

“Yaz is right,” Brooklynn says. “We should lie low.”

“But what if they come for us?” Sammy says, her voice wobbling with fear. “We just need to go back to camp, and—”

“We need to get to the boat!” Kenji insists.

Darius’s eyes widen at the sight through the bushes. Dread sinks like a stone in his stomach. “Guys... I don’t think we can get to the boat right now.”

And the campers can only watch as the plane purrs onto the tarmac, grinding to a halt. Right in front of their boat.

Yaz swears under her breath.

“Okay, we don’t have much time, but if we run to the boat before they can get out of the plane, we can make it,” Darius whispers.

And the others race after him with the kind of trust only gained from placing their lives in each others’ hands, time and time again. It’s the kind of trust they’ll never break. Their legs fly down the hill, feet tumbling after each other, keeping an eye on the others’ whereabouts in their peripheral vision. No one trips, thank goodness. They all keep each other close, moving as one frantic body, through the jungle, and onto the dock.

The tarmac is far easier to run down, and they break into a sprint, making a beeline for their boat. Just a bit closer... a bit closer.

But then, the plane doors slide open, and two people step out. Two faces the campers know.

They skid to a stop, and gasp.

Finally, after six months of waiting, the island looms in sight: a hopeful, green bump against the pencil–flat sealine — everything Roxie remembers it to be. Still overflowing with jungle, still teeming with an impression of life, still brimming with the wonder she first felt stirring in her chest on that ferry ride there. Before it all went wrong...

“We made it, Rox!” Dave lets out a whoop of joy, punching the air, and Roxie can only sigh with relief. This is what they worked towards for months. This is what every wrinkle on her forehead, every shadow under her eyes, every desperate email, call and letter to anyone who could help her, has all been for.

But her relief is overcast with guilt. It's shrouded her every second since they left the island on that ferry. She left the kids unattended at camp on that fateful day. If they were there, with them, maybe...

She takes a breath, and tries to refocus her mind, like her therapist taught her. Think about the mission. Think about the next steps of action.

“Are you clear on the plan?” She asks.

“As clear as the last five times you asked,” says Dave.

“David, now is not the time!” Roxie snaps, steady breathing gone. “We don’t know where the kids are, if— if they’re injured, or... or something, and we have to focus.”

“Okay.” Dave frowns, curling into his seat, and Roxie sighs.

“I’m sorry, Dave. I— you know how important this is.”

“It’s okay.” He nods, a bond deeper than understanding in the motion. “Those are our kids in that jungle.”

Roxie pinches her forehead. “You’re right. They're our kids. And— and they’ve been in the jungle for months, all because we had to speak to Claire bloody Dearing about the bloody camp while a bloody indominus was rampaging across the island!” Her voice rises on every word, until she’s shouting, anger badly masking the anxiety pulsing in every fiber of her body.

“Rox, we’ve been over this.” Dave says gently. “We told them to stay indoors, and we only expected to be gone for an hour. They’re old enough to follow orders. And don’t forget that we were the only two people on the whole island who even tried to rescue them at all.”

“Don’t remind me, Dave, I’m livid just thinking about it,” she thunders, letting out a deep sigh that burns in her throat. “But... you’re right.”

“Can I get that in writing?” Dave asks animatedly.

“No.”

Roxie steels herself, and focuses on the rapidly approaching island. Her fingers tighten on the hem of her shorts. Her and Dave's conversation with the parents when they first started planning this mission echoes in her mind in circles.

“You really... think they’re still alive?” Darius’s mother dared to ask.

Roxie squared her shoulders. “Yes. And we won’t come back without them. We’re getting those kids off this island and back home safe if it’s the last thing we do.”

She should've felt uncertain, making such a hefty promise. But in that moment, she hadn't felt more sure of anything in her whole life.

If only that certainty could've lasted. Because a tiny, tiny part of her expects to find six dead bodies somewhere in that jungle.

Dave steers the plane down to the grey, concrete dock, and the plane rolls to a stop. All of a sudden, the air is too hot, the plane too loud. The vibrant jungle flashes bright, almost neon, green, like a poison dart frog. As if it was trying to warn her all along. Roxie’s heart pounds even harder in her ears than before. What if they’re hurt? What if she and Dave can’t find them? What if they—

What if they really are dead?

Roxie doesn’t realise how loudly she’s breathing, until Dave lays a hand on her knee. Her head snaps up to meet his concerned, puppy–soft gaze. “Breathe, Rox. Breathe.”

She does without question. He’s always been able to ground her like that. She seems like the stable one out of the two, but really, it’s him. He can smooth back her flyaway anxieties like little hairs with a gentle touch of his hand.

“You ready?” He asks.

“I’m—” she stops. Her words die on her lips. The breath is stolen from her throat. Because six people just appeared from the bushes, and began sprinting towards the plane. Six people she feared she’d never see again.

“The kids!” Roxie and Dave chorus, and unbuckle their seatbelts, wrench open the doors, and jump out in unsteady, frantic movements. Their feet pound the dock — they’re uninjured, Roxie thinks, or at least physically healthy enough to be running — and at first, their terrified eyes miss her and Dave entirely.

But then, they see them, skid to a stop, and gasp.

The kids... they’re really alive. Roxie blinks several times — just to be sure — but they don’t fade from her eyes, or warp into blood and bones like the other times this has happened. They stand very, very still, some of their mouths open wide, some just frozen with shock. All of them lug a bag or two each on their backs, and are covered in dirt and horrifying amounts of blood like they took a bath in it.

But they aren’t horrifically injured. They aren’t dead.

Roxie’s dreams lied to her.

Darius breathes, “oh my...”

Pure, unfettered joy strikes Roxie like a lightning bolt, and she cries, “kids!”

“Oh, come here!”

She and Dave open their arms wide, and the campers stand there, unmoving, mouths open.

Roxie falters. She honestly didn’t know what to expect, finding the campers after the six months she and Dave had been frantically searching for them. They’d be irreversibly changed? Yes, probably. They’d be dea— goodness, she tried not to think about that. She knew they’d be completely different from the innocent, naive, wide–eyed, fragile–seeming little kids her and Dave were forced to leave behind. Tougher, harder, stronger; they’d had to have been to survive, and in the process, must've forsaken anyone who left them in that situation in the first place. It wouldn’t surprise her if they didn’t want anything to do with—

The campers barrel into Dave and Roxie’s open arms, clamouring and laughing and crying, spewing a symphony of overjoyed noise. Roxie hugs the three nearest kids tight, whispering you really survived, thank goodness into their hair, relief pounding at her bones. Dave, for once, doesn’t crack a joke. His words are gone, and all he can do is hold the campers tight.

“I’m so sorry we left you, we never should’ve abandoned you, we’re so sorry, we—” apologies carelessly spill out of Roxie like a river, the bottled–up words uncorked and spilling into the messy puddle of emotions that are the campers.

The campers all reply at once, but the words, it’s okay, push through the web of voices.

“We forgive you,” Darius says. “It was one mistake, and we understand why you made it.”

Roxie gazes at him fondly, ever the wise one despite his young age. If she recalls correctly, he’s twelve — or thirteen now? Odds are some of the camp fam had their birthdays on that awful, terrifying island... maybe they can all have a proper party once they get back. Catch up on lost time.

“Well, we’re here now,” she says determinedly. The campers all untangle themselves, readjusting their clothes.

“When did... how long were you trying to get here?” Sammy asks hesitantly.

Roxie’s eyes cloud over for a moment, lost in thought. “Since the ferry got back to the mainland,” she settles on, but it’s not technically the truth. She doesn't tell them how, the night after they got off the ferry, she curled up on the bare wooden floor and listlessly stared at the wall and let guilt swallow her like it was a shadow growing from the dying light. Not even Dave, no matter how much he begged her, could snap her out of it. It took her a month before she was even able to face the campers’ parents, and start planning their rescue. It was another five months of balancing therapy with stockpiling supplies, planning the mission, choosing a plane to use, and pulling off the heist required to steal the damn thing. Goodness, they were close to getting arrested. At least they made it here. And if the kids’ safety means she spends the rest of her life in jail, so be it.

“The helicopter pilot said Jurassic Park fell six months ago, so we’ve been here that long,” Darius says, tapping his index finger on his thumb to help him think. Roxie’s stomach twists again, thinking of them all alone, waiting for rescue, their hope fading fast...

“It’s been six months and one week since the ferry got back,” Roxie says. She’d know. She was counting every day. “We came here as soon as we could.”

“Thank goodness you did,” Sammy exclaims. “The scorpios rex—”

“Mitch and Tiff’s boat—”

“We almost died—”

“I twisted my ankle three separate times—”

“One at a time please!” Dave shouts over the chaos. They all quiet down. Roxie is almost unsettled by how quickly the campers listen to them. Maybe having the recklessness literally chased and frightened out of them gave them obedience. If only that wasn’t what it took...

“We built our own treehouse at camp with the destroyed materials,” Darius says. “We stayed there most of the time.” Pride swells in Roxie’s chest. The clever, clever kids!

“We found a bunch of canned food we’ve been eating,” Brooklynn says.

“It kept us alive, but I for one am so sick of canned fruit,” Sammy exclaims, and several people murmur their assent.

“Oh— I ate grubs!” Ben says triumphantly.

Roxie frowns, scrunching her nose. Wasn’t Ben scared of whipped cream, or something? Something drastic must’ve happened to make him resort to eating grubs, and a selfish part of her doesn’t ever want to know what. This is all so much to wrap her head around.

“Then, we came across these people called Tiff and Mitch,” says Kenji. “Long story short, they were evil dinosaur poachers.”

“And I was right about them being evil,” interjects Brooklynn. Kenji elbows her playfully.

“And we kinda... took their boat for our own use,” Sammy says carefully, a pleading look in her eyes that begs Dave and Roxie not to tell the campers off.

Roxie considers scolding them — she was raised to believe stealing is wrong in all circumstances — but then decides, ah, what the hell. Her and Dave are having all their safeguarding privileges revoked after this no matter what they say. So Roxie winks. “We took this plane for our own use as well.”

Some of the campers give her an impressed look. Kenji murmurs, “you really tried to rescue us, huh?”

“Of course we did,” Roxie says gently. “We knew you survived.”

The campers smile back at her, and Roxie is almost giddy with relief. Her heart swells proudly in her chest. The campers really made it. They survived. And they can all go h—

A helicopter growls its way into the sky, and the campers freeze, their bodies tensing, and all that joy is forgotten in an instant.

Dave opens the plane doors, and Roxie swears, she’s never seen anyone launch themselves at anything quite like the campers do at the opening. Roxie and Dave follow them in, and Dave makes a beeline for the cockpit. Roxie helps strap the campers in, when it’s apparent their hands are too injured or shake too badly to do it themselves. “No one panic,” she says. “We should be able to take off in a few minutes.”

Darius grabs her wrist with alarming urgency. “No! We need to go now.”

“Why? Darius, what’s—”

“That’s Dr Wu in that helicopter!”

Roxie frowns, dread slowly sinking through her stomach. Dr Wu... so he was on the island with the campers. But if he was... why didn’t he help them?

“Why is Dr Wu bad?” She dares to ask.

“Because he kidnapped Brooklynn!” Darius bursts. “He and Hawkes tried to kill us.”

Pure, burning fury sweeps through her. Dr Wu — one of the most powerful and influential and trusted men involved in Jurassic Park — almost killed six innocent children? She trusted him, looked up to him — and he... through her rage, she pushes out a thundering, “he did what?”

Brooklynn opens her mouth to explain, but Roxie shakes her head, as if to shake away the anger lodged in her brain. She’s lost the kids before and goodness help her, she won’t lose them again. “If he tried to have you killed, and he’s still on this island somewhere, we need to leave. As soon as possible.”

Yaz digs in her pocket for something, and hands Roxie a flash drive. “We stole Wu’s research from his laptop and deleted it. That’s why he's following us; he’s figured out we tricked him.”

She takes the flash drive, and shoves it in her jacket pocket. The relief of seeing the kids alive is fading fast, replaced by a gnawing dread that sits in Roxie’s stomach like a tumour. What have they been through...? What horrors has the island carelessly subject them to?

Well, she has to start unpicking it somewhere.

“We’ll deal with that when we get back to the mainland. More importantly, I need to know how injured you are.” Because there’s no way they’re completely unscathed. Honestly, she's glad she has something practical to put her hands to work with, something to occupy her mind from the horror of knowing Wu tried to... God. She could punch a wall, but she doesn't. The kids are more important.

She grabs a first aid kit from the compartment above her head, thankful beyond comprehension that there are alive bodies to heal on this plane. “We packed all these supplies, just in case you were badly injured, but you all seem in pretty good shape, all things considered.” She zips it open and rustles through it for the antiseptic wipes. “If any of you need anything bandaging, or cleaning...”

Sammy shyly raises her hand. “I got impaled by three scorpios rex quills.”

Roxie lurches, torn between crying or throwing up. Her mistake let a fourteen year old almost get killed— no, the park did that, a voice in her head reminds her. It sounds like Dave. She meets Sammy’s eyes, trying to bury her horror, and says, “have the wounds closed up?”

“Brooklynn and Kenji bandaged me up, but I think I might need stitches.”

“I’ll clean and re–bandage the area, but I can’t stitch you up, I’m afraid.” Another thing Roxie is helpless to fix. “You’ll get proper treatment as soon as we’re back on the mainland, okay?”

Roxie is — rightfully — horrified, but she plasters on a smile. “Anything else?”

As the plane soars into the sky, the camp fam go through their injuries, one by one. Roxie gets the distinct impression they aren’t being entirely honest, glazing over events and offering vague recounts of how their scars ended up where they are, but they can deal with it properly on the mainland. Right now, their priority is getting the kids as far from the island as they can.

Midway through cleaning a nasty scrape on Darius’s hand, he asks her, “have you and Dave spoken to our parents since you got back?”

“Yes— we have, actually.”

The others all gasp, and turn towards her, eyes expectant.

She chooses her words carefully. “They’re... obviously, they’re heartbroken without you. They miss you a lot...” her face begins to fall, but she blinks the look away. “But they know you’re not dead! Dave and I knew you lot are tougher than you look.” She smiles proudly. “We promised them we’d get you lot back home safe, and that’s exactly what we’re going to do.”

“I miss Brand and my mom,” Darius says quietly.

Ben, next to him, squeezes his uninjured hand. “I miss my mom too. I miss her hugs.”

“I miss my mom’s high fives,” Yaz says, eyes on the ground.

“I miss hanging out in the garage with my dads,” Brooklynn adds.

“I just wanna see my ranch and my sisters again,” Sammy says sorrowfully. “And Bessie.”

“Oh, you poor dears,” Roxie coos, rubbing their cheeks like they’re her own kids. Normally, before all... this, they’d bat her hand away, and laugh at the posh way she’s always been told she talks. Now, covered in dirt and scars from that hellish jungle, they only lean into her. “You’ve been through so much, and you’ve all been so brave. Most adults, let alone kids, wouldn’t have done this well. And Dave and I are both so pr—”

Boom!

The campers shriek, steadying themselves against each other and the walls of the plane.

Roxie’s words die on her lips. This can’t be happening. No— this was going so well. She and Dave just have to get the campers home, and—

“Roxie?” Kenji cries, more scared than she ever thought she'd see him. “What’s happening?”

She pushes through her lips, “just— stay calm, okay? We've got this under control.”

She darts into the cockpit, and slips into the spare seat beside Dave.

“Rox, you take the throttle. I’ll steer,” Dave commands. He’s the better pilot of the two, but they need all hands on deck here. The kids all clamour behind her, searching for answers she can’t give. Ignoring the terror twisting in her stomach, she turns on the intercom, and says, “kids, don’t worry. Nothing’s wrong. We don’t want you to worry, okay? Just a minor hitch. Everything will be fine, okay? We promi—”

The interior of the plane glows red, and an alarm begins pealing a relentless beep–beep–beep that hammers at her skull. The campers scream, and Roxie flinches at that sound more than the alarm itself.

The plane lurches to the side, and there’s the sickening sound of crates and boxes and bodies toppling into each other. Whatever safety feature kept the seatbelts in place is long gone. With a cacophony of scared shrieking, the plane rocks from one side to the other, and everything is tossed around like rag dolls. Roxie clings to the throttle lever with all her might, tensing all her muscles to shield herself from the impact. But there's still blood, and bruises, and the horrifying crunch of something breaking.

For a moment, the plane steadies out. Roxie unclips her seatbelt, and rushes to the campers, desperately swallowing the aching pain rocking her whole body. “Kids!” She shouts, panic beating raw and primal against her chest. They all look to her, hope in their eyes, all asking the silent question: are we about to die?

Her voice is coarse with tears as she says, “hang on, okay? Just hang onto t—”

Then, the sky gives way, and the plane flips onto its belly — hopelessly thrown about, uncaring to the people trapped inside. The world turns to screaming and thudding and torture, overlaid by the ever–present droning of that horrible, wailing alarm, on and on and on and—

The world is swallowed by darkness.

The alarm stops.

And hell begins.

Chapter Text

audio recording here

Group: ????

Status: ????

Supplies: ????

Goal: ????

It’s a rare moment of paradise. He’s sprawled flat on the ground, the sun beaming in scattered spots across his body. The camp fam laugh and yell around him, and the soft weight of his field guide rests on his chest. Bumpy faintly roars to his left, but mostly, it’s quiet. Still. Safe.

He lifts his hands. Click.

One hand doesn't move. Why?

It’s a fragile, beautiful, butterfly snapshot that he holds close to his heart, tucked between the pages of his field guide. They don’t get moments like this often. They’re not running for their lives. They’re not afraid. They’re... happy. Just them, and the forest, and the sun...

The sun turns dark. Or is he just blinking? Blinking, definitely. That would explain the darkness. That would explain the blur. Or maybe it’s just an eyelash.

Blinking an eyelash off his cheek, Brooklynn swiping it away, telling him “make a wish.”

‘I wish I were home,’ he thinks. Home.

Home. This isn’t home. Home has eyelashes, not smoke. The day is beautiful and there is smoke drifting into his nose. The sun shines bright, almost glaring, into his eyes.

People are laughing and yelling. No. That can’t be right. The camp fam do not laugh and yell at smoke; they run away. He needs to run. Why isn’t he running? Why aren’t any of them?

Where are his camp fam?

Why aren’t they running?

He can’t move; something is crushing his legs, keeping him from running. Panic bolts through him; he’s easy pickings for dinosaurs. He needs to run. They all need to run. Why aren’t they getting away? Why are they making so much noise? That will just draw the dinosaurs in. The racket grows louder and louder in his ears... laughing and yelling—

Not laughing; crying.

Not yelling; screaming.

The screaming does not sound happy.

A bird streaks across the sky, its wings stretched wide and white like a plane — and with that, Darius Bowman remembers everything at once.

“Darius? Darius!”

“H— hello?” Darius shouts. His body shifts with the effort, and agonising pain shoots through his arm. From the time (minutes? hours?) he’s spent pinned to the forest floor, he’s identified a slab of grey metal lurking in his peripheral vision. Right underneath where his left arm should be.

At least he can feel something there. But if he’s being honest, he’d rather feel nothing. The pain squirms and scrapes through layers of muscle and fat and tissue, right to the bones, tracing its memory along the periosteum. It’s the kind of pain he longs to run away from and never look back at. The pain in the rest of his body throbs, but it’s not serious. That’s good, at least. He isn’t screaming, but someone else is. The horrible sound tears their throat apart. It’s one of the girls, but Darius can’t tell who. From his limited peripheral he can’t hear or see Ben either, and Kenji...

“Darius! Brooklynn!”

“Kenji, I’m here!” Darius twists around as far as he can see. He listens for footsteps, but they’re drowned out by the screaming. “Kenji?”

Kenji’s face enters his vision, bloody and grinning and covered in ash. “Darius! Thank goodness.”

“Kenji! Kenji, I’m stuck,” Darius gasps. “There’s this piece of metal...”

“Yeah, I see it.” Kenji’s voice twists with worry. “I’ll try to lift it, but I can’t move my right shoulder. It’s, uh... I landed on it when we— when we fell. I don’t know what the word is but it really hurts.”

“Uhh... broken? Dislocated?”

“It feels like it’s misplaced, or something. Anyway, don't worry. I’m gonna try to lift this off you, kay?” Kenji stands to Darius’s left, and grabs the metal with his arm. “Yell if this hurts, okay?”

“Oka—” he doesn’t even finish, before a scream rips through his throat. “Stop, stop!”

Kenji gently puts it down. “Sorry! I’m sorry.” He kneels beside Darius, and awkwardly pats his cheek. Darius leans into the curve of Kenji's hand like it was built to fit. “You’re pinned under a bit of metal, and I think some of the shards are stuck in your left arm,” Kenji says. “Can you... feel it?”

“Yeah. It hurts. A lot,” Darius says raggedly. “We won’t know what’s wrong until we lift it off.”

“You sure?” Kenji’s voice wavers.

“I’m sure. I’ll scream, but you have to do it.”

And Kenji does. There’s a sickening riiiiiip of flesh and skin, muscle fibers snapping like popping candy, and Darius roars and sobs with pain. Kenji flinches, but makes himself carry on. Even though Darius screams until his throat all but bleeds, and what little of him he can move writhes with blinding pain, Kenji does it. And when Kenji manages to lift it a foot off the ground, and wedges his knee underneath the metal to hold it in place, he says, “uhh... D?”

Darius does not like the dread steeped in Kenji’s voice. “Wh— what?”

“Your arm is, uh... it’s covered in blood, dude.”

“Get the— the metal off me so I can see— see it,” he says.

Throwing his whole body weight into it, Kenji heaves the metal off the ground, and flips it onto the earth with a dull thud. Darius gives one final shriek of pain, before letting himself cry. His tears roll off his face and soak into the dirt.

Kenji swears under his breath; he never swears loud enough for the others to hear, not since Yaz told him off for—

Yaz... that screaming sounds like her voice. But it can’t be her. Maybe they found more people, one of whom just sounds like her. Because they’ve endured enough tragedy for one lifetime. This can’t be happening to them.

Darius’s stomach constricts with terror.

Kenji sucks in air through his teeth. “That looks bad, Darius.”

“I don’t want to look,” he says, eyes fixed on the trees swaying lazily above him: his paradise. Already, he can feel himself slipping into the soft, loving arms of unconsciousness. He wants to go back to that paradise. That sunny, endless place where the camp fam are all happy and carefree and nothing else matters but each other.

“Darius? Darius, stay awake!” Kenji yells, verging on anger. Darius blinks himself awake. “Look. I don't know medical stuff, and I don't know if you do but... I can't help you. I'm sorry.”

“Don't be.” Darius smiles up at him. “It's not your fault.”

“Yeah, but...”

Silence ticks between them.

“You have to look, Darius. If for no other reason than for me, because all that blood is really freaking me out.”

“Okay fine, I'll—” Darius almost throws up. Where there would be smooth, dark skin, is a glaze of thick blood. His blood. Underneath the torn–open skin is a mess of ripped muscle, tendons, and an intricate web of glistening, oozing flesh.

“Darius?” Kenji clicks at his face. “D man? Oh, please don't be squeamish.”

Darius firmly shakes his head, and forces his eyes away from the bloody, mangled mess that is his arm. “I'm fine, I'm fine. Help me up?”

It's awkward, with two functioning arms between four of them, but Kenji drags Darius to his feet, and they help dust each other off.

Darius’s eyes sweep Kenji up and down. Sweat streaks lines through the mud and ash on his face, and a pinkish mark buried under the stubble of his jaw signifies the beginnings of a bad bruise. He’s covered in dirt from head to toe, to the point trying to scrape it off would just make him look less dirty, and not the cleanliness–adjacent the camp fam managed on Nublar. His usually gelled hair sticks in haphazard directions, and patches of it are thick with clumps of blood.

Kenji’s bleeding from several places, but they look like surface wounds. Darius can apply plasters, obviously, and bandages. His mum taught him to do sutures on fruit — he asked once, and she is an advanced practice registered nurse (a title Darius is proud to attach to the woman who raised him) — but he’s never sutured on skin. That knowledge is better than nothing. But he can’t suture, not with his arm...

The most worrying of all the injuries, is Kenji’s arm, hanging by his side like dead weight, and very out of place. “That is definitely dislocated, Kenj,” he tells him. “You need a sling.”

“It's fine, Darius.” Kenji walks on past him, in the direction of the plane. “Brooklynn? Ben?” He calls, cupping his hand to his mouth. “Yaz? Sammy?”

No one responds, but the screaming doesn’t stop. The sound is horrifying, but it has to belong to someone. Someone else has to be alive.

“Kenji, slow down!” Darius walks towards him as fast as he can, back up the hill they must’ve fallen down, but his legs feel made of jelly. Being trapped under a plane has consequences, after all. They’re probably badly bruised, but he dreads to look. It hurts more to look, and see the blood staining his skin. The distinct coppery smell is getting hard to ignore, and the smokey smell of the plane barely offsets it.

“Ben? Brooklynn?” Kenji keeps calling. “Brookly—”

Kenji stops suddenly, and Darius catches up to him, laying his eyes on the horrifying sight that reduces Kenji’s body to a statue.

“Man, that’s bad,” Kenji gasps. The plane burst open on impact, and the metal is wrecked. All the plane’s supplies — and, presumably... people — are flung everywhere. Darius scans for a pink jacket, a white vest, any other remnants of his friends, but... nothing. Either his friends were rocketed someplace else, or...

Darius chokes down bile for the second time today, and shakes the thought off. They’re alive. They’re just somewhere they haven’t looked yet.

“C’mon.” Kenji nudges Darius, his injured arm swinging by his side like a dead thing. “Let’s check the cockpit.” Kenji starts walking, tracing the edge of the clearing the plane landed in. “Maybe Dave and Roxie are—”

A gasp snatches his words away.

The cockpit is blasted clean off. There’s no sign of Dave and Roxie anywhere around it.

Darius and Kenji meet each others’ eyes. This situation has transcended horror.

This is not paradise.

This is a living nightmare.

Sammy’s fingers can’t go far enough into her ears to block out the screaming. She can stuff her fingers in her ears, and curl in, shielding her ears with her shoulders, and hum indistinct tunes to put her mind off it... but nothing will block it out. Even if she could push her fingers right to her eardrum, that wouldn’t be enough to rid her of the horrific sound. It reaches out with great, ugly talons, and scrapes along the surfaces of her bones. A sound like that will live in her brain forever.

Oh, everything hurts. Her arms and legs throb with pain, and even the tiniest movement sends worse agony vibrating through her body. Where is she? And what happened to her? Where are her camp fam—

The plane.

The memories are outlining themselves already: being tossed around in her seat like a rag doll, then the sky splitting apart, being flung from the plane, something sharp grazing into her side, and—

Oh, God.

Carefully, slowly, she unplugs her ears. The screaming hits her with full force, and the agonized sound beckons tears from her eyes. Hesitantly, she reaches one shaking hand towards her torso, and grazes her hand across it.

Her fingertips touch something slippery and soapy, and she whimpers, recoiling like her hand was electrically shocked. That’s not her skin. That can’t be her own skin. Maybe someone else is jammed next to her and they're just very— still. Like a lifeless body.

Whatever it is, she’ll have to look at some point. Or maybe... maybe, someone will come and save her. The campers were saved from the island by...

Dave and Roxie! She calls their names, her voice weak and shaking. They don’t show up.

“Please... Dave? Roxie? I need you.”

You can only be a hero once. Then, you just...

Summoning all her strength, she pushes herself up onto her elbows, dislodging the metal she somehow only just realized she was stuck underneath, and looks around. The plane is destroyed, the wreckage still smoking. The only sounds are the trees rustling above her, her own sobbing, and the repetitive thump, thump, of her heartbeat in her ears.

And then, she realises. The screaming has stopped.

Somehow, that is eons more terrifying.

She doesn’t want to look. She really doesn’t. Looking means knowing, but her daddy always said that ignorance is a coward’s bliss.

So she makes herself look.

The outline of a person lies, sprawled out near the plane wing. There’s a familiar smudge of grey; slivers of purple; a pool of not–quite–black hair; warm, light brown skin stained with—

Oh God.

Oh no, oh, please, God, please don’t be real... Sammy screws her eyes shut, curls back in on herself— can’t she cower back in that blissfully ignorant state and push everything else out of her mind?

But her mind is connecting the dots, drawing them up like the constellations she used to map from the roof of the barn on her ranch. She knows those colours, she knows that outline, she knows that scream...

“Y— Yaz?”

Chapter Text

link to audio recording

Group: Darius Bowman, Brooklynn, Kenji Kon, Ben Pincus

Status: Unclear, mostly conscious, all injured

Supplies: clothing fabric for bandages, sticks for tourniquet

Goal: find the other campers, fix Kenji’s shoulder, bandage up Brooklynn's leg

Ben finds her. Or rather, he finds flashes of pink sticking out like a sore thumb against the brown–green wash of the wilderness. But he knows it's Brooklynn. What else would be that dizzyingly vibrant on this barren, nowhere island? A gasp grates through his throat, and he drags his aching, throbbing body closer. Every step hurts, but at least now, his steps have purpose; he's been wandering through the trees for ages, but they’re so tightly packed together, he seems to make more wrong turns than right ones.

He barely remembers what happened: just that he was thrown about, hitting branch after branch, rolled several times, and eventually scudded to a stop on the forest floor, jammed against a log with his left fingers bent against it. The impact of the crash, though not as bad as the initially incapacitating feeling it was, still makes his body pound in protest to every movement. He can’t bend or straighten his left fingers, and his bruised legs shake painfully.

The pain builds and builds, so he tries to focus his mind elsewhere. He can see... nothing but trees, honestly. He can hear screaming, but not enough to decipher anything informative. Not enough to know who in his family are alive. Not enough to quell the rising terror inside him.

And now, as he comes closer, he realises the pink is marred with red. Blood red.

“Brooklynn?” Ben sprints towards her, pain be damned, and kneels beside her, his hands shaking as he jostles her shoulder. “Oh, please wake up.”

“Ben? What... what happened?” She pants, like every word exhausts her.

“I think the plane—” Ben stops abruptly, realising he hardly knows what happened himself. “I'm not sure,” he says honestly. It must've crashed. Otherwise they'd all be safely on board and close to Costa Rica now. But... how did it crash?

His eyes widen to saucers as he looks properly at her. She's covered in bruises, and a few tree branches must've hit her on the way down, leaving several long, but thankfully shallow, scratches dashing across her skin. But they’re not what makes him sick with dread.

By far the most terrifying of her wounds, is a piece of metal wedged in her leg, and steadily pouring blood.

“Uhh, Brooklynn?” Ben's voice wavers. “Your leg...”

Her eyes trail down her body, and she gasps, blinking slowly, as if waking up from a dream. “Oh...”

“It's— it's gonna be fine!” Ben plasters on a forced smile. “We just need to plug the bleeding.”

“I know, Ben— I’ve done first aid courses before. You need to apply pressure to the wound, and find something to use as a tourniquet, because I—” she's cut off by a groan of pain, “—am out of commission.” She blinks, looking at him properly, and gasps. “Ben! You're inj—”

But before she can finish, someone yells, ragged and desperate, “Ben! Brooklynn! Somebody?”

“Hellooo?”

“Kenji! Darius!” Ben yells back, their voices as familiar to him as his own. “We're here!” It's not until the words are out of his mouth that he realises how ridiculous that sounds. Where is here? Where is anywhere? Where are they?

“Follow my voice!” Ben shouts. They come closer, twigs snapping under their feet — until they burst through the trees at once with a joint cry of “Brooklynn!” 

“Thank goodness you're both okay,” Kenji's words tumble out of him, “I couldn't find anyone, and I— I thought...”

Ben looks at them: they're covered in a layer of grime, only broken by pinkish–reddish scratches, both as bruised and bloodied as he and Brooklynn are. Kenji's shoulder hangs wonkily at his side, and Darius—

Ben almost throws up at the bloody sight. God. That's bad. The blood is bad enough, but Ben can see chunks of something distinctly more... solid in the mixture. Almost like— like flesh. Ben’s not a squeamish person, but the sight of his best friend’s arm torn to shreds makes him want to crawl out of his own skin.

“Uhh, Darius?” Ben tries to point to the sight with his head.

“I'm fine, Ben,” Darius says insistently. “Brooklynn, I need you to hold still, okay?” He peers closer at her wound, grimacing, his eyebrows furrowed in concentration.

“I'll try,” she says, teeth gritted.

“Can you take off your jacket?” Darius asks. We can use it to plug the bleeding temporarily.”

She does, and Darius and Kenji wind it around her leg, carefully avoiding the metal, and press down on either side of the wound, but she still hisses and winces. Darius's eyebrows are taut and furrowed, and Kenji looks on the verge of tears at... Ben doesn't know what. Probably everything.

After the bleeding slows slightly, they tie her jacket sleeves in a knot to hold it in place, and Darius says, “we need to get back to the plane; there's Dave and Roxie's first aid kit there, and we can clean up our... wounds.”

Ben is admittedly relieved to not be in charge. Anxiety has been hammering at his chest since the plane went down, and it's been multiplying with every second since. He doesn't trust himself to make a good call.

“Brooklynn, you can't walk with your leg injury,” Darius says, thinking aloud, “so someone will have to carry you.”

“But you and I don't have two working arms,” Kenji says. “And Ben—”

“I'll do it,” Ben says, raising his right hand. This, he can do. This, he can trust himself with.

(Besides, his sprained fingers feel like a tiny bruise in comparison to Darius’s... God)

Darius and Kenji both look at him, eyebrows slanted, with that I don't know what's going on but I'm worried about you look. 

Ben blinks. “Why are you looking at me like that?”

“Dude... your headband is soaked with blood.” Kenji buries his terror in a laugh. “And your, uh, your vest.”

It's then that Ben looks down.

There's a rip, trailing jaggedly down his vest like a dinosaur took a talon to it. And beneath that rip, tinging the edges of it, is blood. A lot of it. He doesn't even look at his head, but if Kenji's terror is anything to go off... Ben knows Kenji never shows fear unless he physically can't keep it in. And the way he looked at Ben, like he was a walking corpse...

“Oh.” Ben chuckles. “Must've scraped myself on the way down. Guess I missed it.”

“Does it not... hurt?” Darius frowns.

Ben shakes his head. He honestly can’t say he felt it, but now it’s pointed out, tiny insects of discomfort gnaw at his skin, spreading the prickling pain all across his body. His usually comfortable, sensory–safe vest itches against his exposed skin. “I'm fine, I swear.”

“If you insist. I trust you, Ben.” Darius beams at him, and Kenji helps him to his feet.

Ben kneels, and Kenji eases Brooklynn upright. She leans against Ben’s back, her chin digging into his shoulder, and hooks her left leg around Ben's waist. Then, Kenji grabs her right leg, ready to lift it. “On three, we lift you up, B,” he says. “One... two...”

Brooklynn's scream of pain startles Ben so much he almost drops her. He might've done, if her arms weren't latched onto his neck. The three jolt around, and Ben almost loses his footing. “Sorry.”

“It's okay,” Brooklynn says, her voice pained, but strong. “Just keep going.”

And that, he does. His left fingers scream at the movement of holding her so tightly, and it’s only the presence of Brooklynn’s breath against his neck as a constant reminder of her anguish that keeps him from dropping her. Brooklynn's hands tremble against his skin, and the tiny whimpers of pain audible only to him betray the confident smile he's sure she must have on full display. Darius's hand lingers on Brooklynn's left shoulder, slipping on and off with the group’s erratic movements, but always returns to her. The touch seems to quiet the stifled sobs, but it's not enough. The pain grows worse and worse with every step, until she practically begs them to put her down.

“But we’re not at the plane yet. The first aid kit—” Darius objects, but Kenji shakes his head in Ben’s peripheral, and he gently sets her down.

Brooklynn shuffles into a seated position against a tree. “If you can patch up my leg, I can deal with all of your wounds,” she says. “I do know—”

“—first aid, you said,” Ben finishes, trying to sound teasing but his voice comes out snappish.

“Oh, would you rather I leave you to bleed out?”

“No!” Ben scoffs. “Obviously not.”

“Then don't take that tone with me!” Brooklynn scolds like Ben is a grumpy child.

“Guys, stop fighting!” Darius says, raising his hand, as if to ease them, like they're wild dinosaurs. “We're tired, hurt and scared. But we're also a team. And we need to rely on each other now more than ever. We can't start fighting over nothing.”

Ben nods. “You're right. Sorry Brooklynn.”

“I'm sorry. I'm kind of in a lot of pain right now,” she laughs nervously, “but that’s no excuse. I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay. We'll help patch you up,” says Ben.

“Yeah! I actually know a lot about medical stuff,” Darius says, his eyes lighting up with the infectious enthusiasm the others have learned to love. “I went to med camp every summer for a few days where I learned basic medical stuff about the human body. My— my mom wanted me to go…” his voice hitches on the mention of her, but it brightens when he proudly says, “she’s an advanced practice registered nurse. She thought it was important for Brand and I to learn this stuff.”

Brooklynn gives Darius’s shoulder a supportive squeeze. “She sounds like a great lady.”

“Yeah. She is. I can’t wait for you guys to meet her.”

Kenji looks noticeably uncomfortable, and he forces a smile and says, “I am so glad I'm stuck on a nowhere island with you guys.” Kenji laughs. “Otherwise I don't know what I'd do.”

“Probably perish,” Ben teases, carefully bumping Kenji’s uninjured shoulder.

“Hey!” Kenji pushes him back, avoiding his injuries, and for a moment, with them teasing each other and playing around, it’s easy to forget where they are. Easy to forget how close to death they could become.

.o0o.

Exhausted, the four sit in a row along the back of a tree. Brooklynn’s bare arms press against Darius and Kenji on their uninjured sides. Making it back to the plane seemed impossible in “our condition,” Darius had said, but she knows they mean her's. In the meantime, she and Darius managed to tourniquet her wound with Ben's headband and patch it up with the sleeves of Kenji's top, which slowed the bleeding from a pour to a trickle.

Brooklynn’s iconic jacket is now Kenji’s arm sling. Pink kinda suits him, and Brooklynns told him as such after Ben and Darius finally got Kenji’s shoulder back in place. Kenji scowled, but the teasing took his mind off the pain for a moment. He still shifts and fidgets next to her, and his breathing comes raggedly through his teeth.

Darius’s right hand clutches Brooklynn's left as tightly as he can, squeezing and unsqueezing like a heartbeat, as if to remind himself he needs to stay conscious and alive. Darius's injured arm is bandaged with strips of Brooklynn’s jeans, secured with Brooklynn's hairband. Thanks to all the blood, the material sticks to his skin and doesn’t unravel. It would be helpful if it weren't so horrifying. Unlike Kenji, he's quiet. Too quiet. His hands sporadically go slack, and Brooklynn has to nudge him awake.

Ben's headband around her thigh is stifling, scratching mercilessly against Brooklynn's tender skin, and she wants nothing more than to rip it off and relieve herself of the horrible texture. But it’s keeping her from bleeding, probably to death, so she sucks it up, and tries to think about something else.

“So what actually happened?” Brooklynn dares to ask.

“The plane crashed,” Kenji deadpans.

“No— I mean, how did the plane suddenly crash? It could've been a— a technical issue, or something. What do you guys think?”

“A technical issue doesn't explain the explosion we heard,” Ben says.

“Maybe the fuel tank could've blown.” Darius suggests.

“Fuel tanks don't just blow out of nowhere, D,” Kenji says.

“But how would a plane just randomly crash? Unless...” Darius's eyebrows furrow, his face scrunched in concentration. “It was crashed on purpose.”

A darker air shrouds the four. Now he's laid that possibility bare for them all to see, they can't draw their eyes away, can't work the facts into anything but the horrific truth.

The plane didn't crash out of nowhere. They were followed off Nublar by a helicopter carrying gun wielding men. That can only mean one thing.

“Dr Wu.” Kenji spits his name like a slur. “And that— other guy.”

“Hawkes,” says Brooklynn. The memories sting her like a wasp.

“Yeah. Him. Or— or, whoeverthefuck else shot us down!” Kenji throws his hand up. “I mean— what have we got ourselves into, that a world renowned geneticist is hunting us down? How did we end up in this position?”

Brooklynn and the others let him vent. It's not doing any of them any harm; in fact, Brooklynn reckons, by the way his eyes flash with something other than pain, it distracts him from the current, unmedicated agony of his shoulder. So Brooklynn lays her head on his shoulder and listens. What relief can she offer? It's not like comforting words will get them home safe.

“We should get back to the plane,” Brooklynn says soon after Kenji stops venting. “Yaz and Sammy might be injured.”

“You’re injured too, Brooklynn,” Kenji says. “You need to rest.”

“You were in so much pain you drew blood,” Ben says, pointing to a nail scratch along his shoulder.

“Oh. Sorry.”

“Eh, I've had worse.” Ben laughs darkly, pointing to his blood–soaked head.

“Still. We shouldn't risk it,” Kenji says decisively.

“Who put you in charge?” Darius says, almost snappy, and so unlike him.

“I appointed myself leaders when it became clear our old one didn't give a sh— damn about our friends’ lives.”

“Kenji!” Brooklynn lightly smacks his thigh, and he jerks away.

“I'm well within my right to be angry. Because of Darius, we almost lost you!”

“I told him to leave me. So be mad at me, okay?”

“Fine! Then I'm mad at you!”

“Fine!”

“Fine.”

The air becomes ten times thicker. It doesn't take long for the anger to fizzle out, and for it to be replaced with hot, heavy guilt. Brooklynn started this whole mess. She drove a wedge between Kenji and Darius. She made the group risk their lives. Guilt swamps through her, and constricts her torso, like a python is slowly squeezing the feeling out of her mouth.

“I... I'm sorry,” Brooklynn says after a while. “But Darius only did what I told him to. You can’t be mad at him for that. And we got out, didn't we? That's what matters.”

“We'll talk about this another time,” Kenji says coldly. “If you insist, let's head for the plane.”

Traipsing through the wilderness is even more agonising than before. Kenji grips her leg so tight, his nails leave crescent moon marks when he readjusts his grip. It's partially misplaced anger, partially raw fear. Because what if they can't fix her leg? What if they can't find Yaz, Sammy, Dave and Roxie? What if—

What if they all die?

They've faced death before. Hundreds of times, hundreds of close calls, hundreds of sets of jaws and teeth that will haunt her nightmares forever.

But they can't outrun this. They can't strategise or out–think their way out of the wilderness.

They're stuck. Trapped.

All of a sudden, Darius freezes. The others follow his lead without question.

“Listen,” he whispers.

At first, Brooklynn doesn’t hear it. The silence is too big, too unnerving, she almost tells him, “it’s probably nothing” just to get rid of the feeling.

But then—

“Kids?” A voice weakly chokes out, cutting through the silence like a knife.

Their heads snap towards each other like magnets. The familiar nickname tugs on Brooklynn’s heartstrings. No one but two people call them that...

“Roxie? Dave?” Darius calls, rushing ahead.

“Darius, slow down!” Kenji cries, stumbling after him. Brooklynn hangs onto Ben for dear life — bracing for the pain of suddenly jolting around, and muffles a scream in his shoulder as her injured leg throbs.

“Roxie? Dave?” Darius shouts, rounding a corner and pushing past tree branches. Brooklynn winces as they snag on his exposed flesh. “We need you, we're injured! I'm—”

Darius freezes to the spot, and the three skid almost comically to a stop behind him. Brooklynn bites back another scream. Or maybe dread does that for her.

Brooklynn peeks over Ben's shoulder, spotting what made Darius freeze, and swears that, for a second, her heart stops beating.

There, weakly smiling, paling fast, and hopelessly trapped under the torn–off cockpit, lies Roxie Malhotra.

Chapter Text

link to audio recording

Group: Darius Bowman, Brooklynn, Yaz Fadoula, Dave Fisher, Sammy Gutierrez, Kenji Kon, Roxie Malhotra, Ben Pincus

Status: Mostly conscious, all injured. Roxie, Yaz: critical

Supplies: fabric scraps for bandages, medical kit on plane

Goal: stop Yaz and Sammy from bleeding out (Dave); rescue Roxie (Darius, Brooklynn, Kenji, Ben); keep kids safe (Roxie)

Through his barely–conscious state, Dave knows four things:

The plane crashed.

He was thrown from the cockpit.

He bashed his head on the way down.

And, there is not a sign of anyone else anywhere.

He’s been lying on the forest floor for the better part of an hour, winded and dazed, his head throbbing like his brain turned into a sentient lump of flesh and pounded its fists against his skull. At least he's not bleeding. He doesn't think.

But the kids might be. Roxie might be.

He has to help.

He stands, his legs shaking unsteadily like a baby deer's, and he calls, “Roxie? Kids? Roxie?”

No reply.

His heart squeezes so tightly, it sucks the breath from his lungs. Could they be—? No, they can't be. They’re just somewhere he hasn't looked yet.

“Roxie? Roxie? Kids? Yell if you can hear me, okay.” He shouts their names so many times, the words begin to feel weird on his lips, like they're not real words anymore. Like they're ancient incantations or prayers. His prayer, to whoever's listening: help us.

“Hello? Dave, is that you?” Someone calls.

The breath hitches in Dave's throat.

“Hello? Who was that?”

“It's Sammy. I'm bleeding, and so is... Come quick! Please!”

He dashes through the forest, fast as his legs will take him, his body crashing haphazardly against trees. The kids... oh, God, they're bleeding. They're injured, and bleeding, and frightened, and everything he and Roxie willed with all their might they wouldn't be on Nublar.

They learned emergency first aid in the hopes they'd never have to use it. He bandaged Roxie's arm, wishing it would never be an actual wound he was bandaging. He pumped the chest of a CPR dummy and hoped he'd never be resuscitating an actual person. He could barely stomach that — and now it's time to test his skills on real human bodies.

What if he screws up? What if he makes them worse? The instructor's voice at the back of his mind reminds him, “doing something is always better than doing nothing,” but these aren't CPR dummies and practice bandages, these are human lives. Young, human lives. His hands have been slick with blood and his shoulders broken by the weight of guilt before. He can't take it happening to him twice.

What if he doesn't know what to do? What if he can't help?

What if, by the time he reaches them, he's too late?

Then — he finds her, lying on the ground, one hand curled weakly over her sliced–open stomach, blood pulsing from between her fingers.

“Oh my gosh— Sammy!” He sprints forward, and drops to his knees. “Sammy, talk to me, can you hear me?”

“I'm... I'm okay,” she chokes out. Dave almost laughs at the absurdity of the statement. “But— Yaz...” she points at a torn off bit of the plane, “she's not moving.”

All the blood drains from Dave's face.

“Please, help her,” Sammy begs.

It's an impossible choice. Stop Sammy from bleeding out, or help Yaz. Sammy has a much better chance of survival if she's conscious, for now, but he needs to try to save as many people as he can. Even losing one kid would break them all.

What he needs is another person.

He needs Roxie.

“Please.”

“I'll be back,” Dave tells her. “Just keep your hands over the wound and put as much pressure as you can on it, okay?” Sammy gives a tiny nod, and Dave rushes for Yaz.

He gets closer, close enough to see finer details, and almost throws up.

Yaz's left leg is trapped underneath a fragment of the wing of the plane, all twisted and crooked. He can't see clearly underneath, but it's swamped with thick, dark red.

“Don't look, okay?” Dave tells Sammy. “There is a lot of blood. You don't want to see that.”

“Okay,” Sammy squeaks, and squeezes her eyes shut. Dave swallows, wishing for all the world that he wasn't horrifically squeamish, and forces himself to lift the wing of the plane off of Yaz's left leg.

He immediately wishes he didn't.

He grew up watching videos in church, detailing the torture that happens to people when they go to hell. He's listened to actors screaming as they were burned alive by CGI fire, and been unable to sleep for weeks afterwards.

Still, this — Yaz's leg, broken open midway up her thigh, flesh and muscle and— oh God— bone— exploding from the wound like a fountain — is by far the worst thing he's ever seen. Because this is real, and this is a fifteen year old girl who could die if he doesn't do this right.

He takes a deep breath, imagining Roxie beside him: her quiet encouragement, her soft smile, her stern, kind words in his ear. You can do this. Just focus, and you'll be fine. Focus. What about bleeding wounds do you know?

Get a first aid kit. Stop the bleeding. Put pressure on the wound opening. He does all of those in fast, steady motions, desperately squishing down his panic, but it's like playing whack–a–mole: every time he tames one anxiety, a new one flares up, and he throws everything he has into bandaging up Yaz's wound. It's a horrific process, stuffing all her insides back into her leg, and putting as many bandages around the wound as he can.

He should realign her bone, but Sammy is losing blood... Roxie, now would be a great time for you to show up, he thinks. What would Roxie do? Prioritise, probably. What's the most urgent? He asks himself. Who's currently bleeding the most?

He turns around to Sammy, and she is staring at him, eyes wide open, hands hanging limply in front of her, an expression of unparalleled horror on her face.

“Sammy, I told you—”

“Is Yaz going to die?” Sammy blurts.

Dave splutters, “no— no, I don't think so.”

“Are you sure? Because that's a lot of blood— and I've seen baby animals lose a lot less blood, and still die, and—”

“Sammy.” Dave steps towards her, placing a hand on her shoulder. “Listen to me. You're bleeding— a lot, and you need stitches.”

Sammy digs her fingers into the ground, bracing for the pain. “Go on then.” She gives a thin chuckle. “Sew me up.”

“I need to lift the bottom of your vest up, is that okay?” He asks.

Sammy nods. “Just get it over with.”

The sight of her flesh, slick with blood, almost makes Dave throw up for the second time today. Not only has she been sliced cleanly across the torso, but there's a trio of puncture wounds that are leaking blood and pus.

“Stay—” he stops himself. Telling her to stay there, when she can barely move, feels utterly pointless. “I'm getting a needle and thread, I'll be back in a sec.”

He gets to work. There's not enough time to sterilise the needle in boiling water — a risk he almost doesn't dare take, but remembers Sammy could bleed to death if he isn't quick. Ideally, someone else would hold her wound shut, but there is no one else. So he makes do with the rubbing alcohol in the first aid kit, thoroughly sloshing it over his hands and wrists, before peeling on gloves, and soaking the needle and thread in it.

He returns with the needle and thread tightly pinched between his thumb and index finger, the bottle of rubbing alcohol in the other. If he drops them, he'll have to start again, wasting time. Time he doesn't know if Sammy has.

“Okay. I'm just going to clean the wounds,” he tells her. “This will sting.”

He underestimates just how much it stings. Because the scream of agony that rips from Sammy's lungs chills him to the bone. She writhes, curling in on herself, and more blood begins to ooze.

Dave pins her wrists down with his elbows, careful to keep the needle and thread sterile, and pushes down on her thighs with his knees. Sammy whimpers in pain, and Dave almost rolls off, just to make the gut–wrenching sound stop, but she faintly chokes out the words, “do it.”

He slowly removes his elbows from her wrists, and slides the needle into the flesh at the middle of the wound. Sammy cries out, but bravely buttons her lips tightly shut. Dave pushes the needle through the flap of skin on the other side of the wound, and pulls the thread, until the two skin edges meet. His fingers are clumsy, too big for the delicate work required — Roxie would be better at this than me, he thinks. I need her — to tie the knot. But he manages, using four throws in the knot like he was taught, and ties it off.

“How's that feel?”

Sammy grunts, “painful.”

“I know.” Dave smiles sympathetically. “I'm so sorry. I wish it didn't hurt so bad. But I don't have any anaesthetic, or anything... we didn't pack any.” And why would they? They planned for an hour–long plane trip from Nublar to Costa Rica; who would have expected this to happen?

“I'm gonna keep stitching you up, okay?” Dave says hesitantly. “It's gonna hurt. A lot. You can scream, and if you want I can get you something to bite down on.”

“I'm... okay.”

“Sammy, now’s not the time to be a hero, I can get you—”

“Just get it over with!” She shouts, and the anger is so unlike her, that it startles Dave back to action.

He carries on stitching her up, even when the blood keeps soaking through the thread, and he loses track of how many stitches he puts in.

“Just a few more,” he says.

“You know I grew up on a ranch, right?” Sammy tells him through shaking breaths.

“I... actually didn't! Tell me more,” he says, feigning enthusiasm to combat the terror beating wildly at the walls of his stomach. Anything to keep her mind off the pain.

“Well, a lot of animals were sent off for slaughter,” she begins. “But a few of them, we had to kill ourselves. Well— I never did. It was always my mamá or daddy doing it. But I was ten years old, and I once walked in on my daddy, shotgun in hand, and Bessie's momma dead by his feet. God, there was so much blood. You really don't think about it until it's spilling everywhere, but we have a lot of blood inside us. A cow's got more than a person, obviously, but still... that's so much blood. So much...”

Dave listens to her repeat that in circles, his knees still pressing on her thighs to keep her from writhing around. To her credit, she's trying her best to stay still. He can see it in the tenseness of her muscles, the pulsing veins in her forehead, the way her fingers grip the soil like it's a ceiling she's hanging from. But every time the needle pricks her skin, she lets out a high–pitched whimper of pain that burrows right to Dave's heart.

I'm saving her life, he reminds himself. I'm stopping her from bleeding out.

But by God is it horrible to do it.

When he finally finishes the stitches, he cleans, and bandages the wound. Dave rolls her filthy vest back over her stomach, and Sammy is too weak to sob. Not sure how else to safely dispose of the needle, Dave digs a hole in the soil and buries it inside, then stuffs the remaining bandage and thread in one fist, and peels off both gloves so the waste is safely contained in the gloves. Sammy's head rolls to one side, and Dave runs his fingers through her hair. His sisters used to do it for him when he was sad, or his head hurt — oh, he'd die just to have them here with him, and run their fingers through his hair. He hasn't seen them in months. Years, even. And he'd give anything to hear them say—

“Dave!”

His head snaps up, his heart swelling with hope — and draining as fast as it came, when he sees it isn't his sisters.

But it is Kenji.

He says to Sammy, “I'll be back in a moment, okay?” before carefully standing, and rushes over to Kenji. He’s terrified, stumbling wonkily over branches and debris, and his arm is in some kind of sling, but he seems relatively uninjured. Relief floods Dave's chest, and he gives Kenji a tight hug. “Thank goodness you're okay.”

Kenji luxuriates in his hold for a few seconds — it's then that Dave notices how much he's trembling — before he pushes Dave away, and tugs on his arm, pulling him in the direction Kenji came from. “We need your help! It's an emergency!”

“Kenji? What's—”

“It's Roxie.”

.o0o.

“Hang on, Roxie!” Darius cries. Brooklynn slides off Ben's back and hops over to the cockpit, all four getting ready to push it. “We’re gonna get you out of here.”

“Darius, wait!”

But her desperate plea is drowned as the four teens grunt with effort, throwing everything they have against the cockpit. It doesn’t even dignify them with budging. “Again!” Darius shouts, and they all push once more, digging into the plane as hard as they can.

“Kids...”

Brooklynn’s leg wound spurts blood, and she screams, collapsing to the ground and clutching at the wound.

“Brooklynn!” Darius cries.

“What do we do?” Ben says.

“Kids.” Roxie tosses a stone in front of their eyeline to get their attention; her voice is too weak to be heard otherwise. “There’s the... first aid kit. On the... on the plane. Proper tourniquet in there. Sanitise... and bandage.”

“Ben, you go find it,” Darius says. “Kenji, find the others. We’ll need all the manpower we can get.”

“Darius...” Roxie sighs, her head rolling to the side. “Come here, you two.”

Darius shuffles on the spot, reluctance tugging him every direction but forward— but makes himself anyway. Brooklynn drags herself next to him.

“Darius, sweetheart, listen. You are so smart. Smarter than you realise. And brave; you have so much bravery behind your brains. I’ve always admired that about you. And Brooklynn. You're so resourceful and clever. You all are. Just stay strong and resilient, and you'll make it.”

“Roxie... why are you saying all this?”

“Darius, you were in charge on Nublar, right?”

His heart bursts at the seams of his chest. What he thinks is about to happen can't happen. Roxie has to be okay. “Yeah... but now you’re here. You and Dave are in charge. And— and we'll get you out from under there, and then— we can signal for help, or something! There has to be something in the—”

“Darius.” Roxie smiles sadly. “Even if you got this off me, it won't help. Most of my body is crushed under this plane, I can’t feel my legs, I’m bleeding internally, and I think my lungs are punctured. There is nothing you can do. So you kids have to be strong for me. Do it for me, okay?”

Tears flow in waterfalls down Darius's cheeks, and his chest groans under the weight of expectation. How can he think of doing this when half their hope is fading fast before his eyes? But he nods, plastering on the bravest smile he can. Brooklynn's shaking hand squeezes his own.

“We packed emergency supplies; they’re in the back of the plane. Go through the door behind where you were all sitting, and you’ll find food and water; ration them out. We have flashlights, a lighter, matches, insulated coats and space blankets to keep you warm, and tarps you can use for shelter. There should be a knife as well as two tranquiliser guns. Use the knife to hunt food with if you have to. Be sensible,” she says sternly. “And look after each other; you’ll need to.”

Darius can't even push words from his mouth anymore, let alone arrange them into a sentence that makes sense. All that's left is a resounding mess of Roxie and dad and don't go and please please please, pounding at his ribs. He lets go of Brooklynn's hand, and begins to brush Roxie's hair out of her face with his fingers.

“Thank you, sweetheart,” Roxie says.

“Roxie...” Brooklynn starts to cry from a horrific combination of pain and heartache. “Please... try to hang in there.”

“I will, sweetheart.” Roxie smiles up at her. A tear rolls down her cheek. “But should something happen, you kids will be fine. You've survived this long.”

“That's why we need you!” Brooklynn cries. “We've been surviving for months and we're tired.”

“Oh, I know, dear. You must be.” Roxie tries to lift her hand to caress their faces, or wipe their tears away, but it falls to the ground. She’s losing blood. Fast.

“Dave! Kenji!” Brooklynn screams. “Please, hurry!”

The silence booms around them. The birds twitter above their heads, mockingly cheerful. Darius flaps his hand, impatience rumbling like a dormant volcano in his belly.

Then Kenji shouts, “we’re coming!”

“Come quick!” They cry.

Kenji appears from behind the plane, picking his way over the scattered debris, and dragging Dave by the wrist.

“Roxie? Kenji said—”

Dave stops, his mouth falling slightly open.

“...Rox?”

“Hey... David.”

Dave sprints forward and falls to his knees. Darius and Brooklynn scramble to the side, helpless to do anything but watch. Dave lifts a shaking hand to her head, and smooths back her flyaway hairs. “Oh, Roxie...”

Roxie gives a weak smile. “Don’t be sad, Dave, I’m alright. It doesn't hurt. And we got the kids off the island, didn’t we? They're away from the dinosaurs. And you can get them the last bit of the way there, alright?”

“I will.” Dave nods, but tears roll down his cheeks. “I promise.”

“Thank you...” she says, her eyelids fluttering shut.

Darius and Brooklynn let out gasps of horror, and Dave shakes her shoulders. “Roxie? Roxie, I need you to wake up. Roxie, please! God, no, please don’t go...”

For a terrifying moment, she doesn't move. A sob hitches in Darius's chest. No, no, no no no, this can't be happening... this can't—

Wearily, Roxie blinks awake, murmuring, “kids? Davey?”

“C’mon, Rox... you have to stay alive.” Dave lifts her hand to touch his cheek. “Please don’t go. We— we have to protect our campers, remember? I can’t do it without you, Rox.”

“I’m sorry, Dave.” She rolls her head to the side with all the effort she can muster, her eyes glistening, and smiles. “Take care of our kids, okay? I know you will.”

“I will, Rox. I promise.” Tears roll off Dave’s jaw and slither down Roxie’s wrist. In a final moment of crushing weakness, he breaks down, shoulders shaking with sobs, lifting her fingers to his mouth and presses a soft kiss to them, whimpering, “please don't go. You believe in reincarnation, right? Please come back. You have to come back. You can't leave us... I love you, Rohana.”

“I...” but the breath is stolen from her throat, and her body goes still.

Chapter Text

Group: Darius Bowman, Brooklynn, Yaz Fadoula, Dave Fisher, Sammy Gutierrez, Kenji Kon, Ben Pincus

Status: all conscious, all injured. Roxie: deceased

Supplies: Roxie's jacket, medical kit, scraps of fabric for bandages, metal shards, packed lunches, tupperwares of pav bhaji, water bottles, sleeping bags

Goal: keep watch (Ben, Brooklynn), work out what's happening (Yaz), keep kids safe (Dave)

Despite everything happening around her dead body, Roxie's face is calm. Peaceful. Oblivious to the devastation left in her wake. Dave’s fingers graze over her eyelids, sealing them shut, and Brooklynn is struck by the realization that her eyes will remain that way forever. They'll never crinkle into a laugh, or crease into a smile, or  roll in annoyance— God, Brooklynn would kill to see her roll her eyes at the camp fam one last time.

Dave stays crouched beside her for the longest time, shoulders silently shaking with sobs. Brooklynn clutches her bleeding leg so tightly, pain pounds at her skin. But hanging on stops the... other pain from sinking in. And if she had to pick between the two, it would be her leg without question.

The underwater sounds of Ben, Darius and Kenji breathing shakily behind her echo through her ears. Ben is itching to run away from this, she can tell. Darius clutches his stomach in her peripheral, beside himself with grief. Kenji's breathing grows louder, more hysterical, until he's openly sobbing, the grief-stricken sounds wrenching themselves from deep within his chest.

Brooklynn's head is spinning with disbelief. Roxie... gone? She can't be gone gone. She's just unconscious for a bit. She isn't gone. She isn't dead.

But then— Dave whispers, “goodbye, Rox,” and reality crashes around them like the plane falling from the sky.

Roxie is dead.

Darius starts to cry, and Brooklynn pulls him into his chest, letting him sob. She waits to cry— wants to— tries to— but for some reason, her eyes are dry as the dust beneath her feet.

Ben stays standing, his back to them, his eyes sweeping the surroundings. He's taking first watch. Inviting them all to grieve safely.

Kenji staggers backwards, shaking, his arms shielding his head like the truth is a bullet designed to smash his overtired brain to pieces. “No... She can’t be gone.” He lets out a hysterical laugh that turns into a sob.

“I’m sorry, Kenji,” Dave says, his voice breaking. “I’m so sorry.”

He stands, and hugs Kenji to his chest, letting him cry into his shirt. He extends one arm out, wordlessly inviting Brooklynn and Darius to join the hug. Brooklynn untangles Darius's arm from her neck, and he stumbles into Dave and buries his face in his side.

Ben and Brooklynn glance at each other. Brooklynn points to Dave with her head, and Ben gives a tiny shake of his head. She points firmer, and he turns away. Brooklynn sighs, giving in to Ben's apparent desire to avoid comfort at all costs, and drags herself to her feet against the plane. Still clutching her leg, she hops towards Dave, and crashes into him too.

His arms barely fit around them all, but she leans into him anyway. They all need to lean on someone, because Roxie is dead, and their world is falling apart. Roxie is not supposed to die. Not like this. She was supposed to live, and she and Dave were supposed to get them home. This isn’t how it was supposed to go. Of every dinosaur and demon they've had to face, death is a new one, and it's ugly and horrifying, with a new kind of pain shaking them all to the core.

And Brooklynn still can't cry.

A soft footstep crunches through the leaves, and Ben, Brooklynn and Dave's heads whip to the source of the sound. Ben sprints towards it, and stops.

Then, he gasps.

Brooklynn's heart jumps into her throat for a harrowing second, before Ben cries, “Sammy! You're hurt.”

Her voice floats towards her, not enough to decipher distinct words but enough to know Sammy is conscious and talking. Big sis is okay.

But if she's here, and her other joined-at-the-hip half Yaz isn't, then—

“Sammy?” In a sudden surge of panic, Dave lets go of the three, and they all lurch to catch each other. Kenji and Darius catch Brooklynn under her armpits and gently lower her to the ground. Dave disappears around the side of the plane, where Brooklynn assumes Ben and Sammy are. A few moments later, the trio hobble forward, Ben and Dave holding Sammy on either side of her. Sweat rolls off her forehead: she's weak and exhausted, taking small steps and relying entirely on Ben and Dave's support not to collapse to the ground.

Brooklynn looks down and realises why.

The bottom half of Sammy's vest is covered in a big, ugly red stain.

Brooklynn throws up in her mouth.

Sammy's mumbling gains coherence, and Brooklynn catches the words, “what happened?”

Ben falls silent, and Dave falters. They skid to a unanimous stop, and Sammy wriggles in their arms. “Why— let me go forward!” She feebly protests. “What's happening?”

Dave makes a tsk sound, and squeezes Sammy's hand. “Roxie's... she got trapped under the plane when it crashed.”

Sammy gasps sharply. “No...”

“She didn't make it. She's...” Dave gestures to where Roxie lies, unmoving, her pink jacket splayed around her like a flag.

An awful cry of pain escapes Sammy's mouth, and her legs collapse entirely. Ben and Dave gently help her to the ground, where she rolls onto her side, curled up like an animal, and sobs. Ben crouches beside her, laying a hand on her shoulder, equal parts protective and caring.

Dave's knees bend, like he's about to sit down and join them, but changes his mind, and moves away. The camp fam love their camp counselors dearly, they'd trust them with their lives — but they haven't seen them at their worst, most destroyed, most vulnerable, and now is not the time to start.

Roxie will never see us like that, Brooklynn realises. There's so many things she'll never get to do.

Eventually, Ben says to Sammy, “I'll help you get back to Yaz.” He lifts her with both arms, and she leans against him, but manages to stay a bit more upright this time. Ben shoots Brooklynn a firm look behind his shoulder, expectation ringing through his piercing gaze — her turn to keep watch over this group. She nods firmly.

“Dave? Can— can you at least get— uhh... get her out from— from under the plane?” Darius asks, his voice shaking. Dave nods silently. His usually cheery demeanour is gone, as if Roxie was the warmth that kept his flame lit, and without her, he’s snuffed out.

Darius and Kenji shut their eyes. Brooklynn watches with morbid curiosity as he digs around the earth with a hunk of metal, freeing the soil, until he can get Roxie out from underneath. He drags her forward by the shoulders, his touch very careful.

Then he gasps, clapping a hand to his mouth, and steps away in horror.

Brooklynn peers closer, her heart pounding as she, against all logic and reason, tries to look. Dave turns around, shaking his head. “No. I need you kids to look away.” His face is more serious than Brooklynn has ever seen him. “If there’s one time you’ll listen to us— to me, then you’ll look away. Trust me... you don’t want to look.”

The others nod, but they do as told. Kenji’s hand slips over Brooklynn's eyes, and she silently thanks him; she couldn't have looked away otherwise. They stand there, stuck in terrifying darkness, until Dave tells them, “you can open your eyes now.”

Roxie's body is covered by a blanket, from head to... Brooklynn doesn't want to think, but Roxie wasn't that short last time she saw her. To confirm her suspicions, Dave’s arms, thighs, torso, and, well— most of him, really— are covered in streaks of blood that are clumpy with something Brooklynn doesn’t want to know what it is.

Clutched in Dave’s fist, is Roxie’s pink jacket. “Here.” He offers it to Brooklynn. “She would’ve wanted you to have this. To protect you from the weather; you'll get a sunburn in that tank top.”

If she's wearing Roxie's jacket, that means Roxie is not here to wear it.

She doesn't take it. Roxie's blood is chunky like soup, coating Dave's legs in a sickening sheen, and she can't stop staring at it.

Kenji takes the jacket, and wraps it around her shoulders with his left arm. “Thanks.”

Dave nods, and sits beside Roxie's corpse. “You kids go... I don’t know,” he sighs, slumping his head in defeat. “I’m sorry.”

“Me too,” Kenji says, keeping a hand on Darius's shoulder.

“Let’s search the plane,” Darius says softly. “We might find something.”

They don't search the plane. They wander until they find the main body of the plane, and sit on the torn off ledge where the cockpit was ripped from, and stare numbly at the ground. Brooklynn forces herself to stay alert, blinking rapidly, but exhaustion flickers dangerously at the edge of her mind. The past few days have been a nonstop haze of danger, fuelled by adrenaline plastering over their lack of sleep. It was bound to wear off eventually. She just expected (hoped for) it to be when she was on the mainland, safe and sound in a hotel room, like the ones she and her dad's have been staying in the past year.

All her travels have taken her to all the corners of the world she could touch. She's been on a mission to unbox everything she saw and it's gone on for so long, she never found what she was so determined she was looking for; if anything but what she knew deep down was missing. All that travel was missing the anchor of a home to return to.

But this is too far. After this, she doesn't want to travel anywhere ever again. She'd be content staying in a quiet, safe house with her dads in some small town somewhere, and only leaving to see the camp fam.

But that's only a distant dream of peace and solitude, as out of reach as the sun beating down on her neck from millions of miles away.

After a while, Dave reappears on shaking legs, bracing himself against the side of the plane. “Are any of you injured?”

“Nothing we haven’t already dealt with,” says Darius, his left arm tucked out of tight. “We just need to find a first aid kit.”

“Kay.” Dave wanders into the plane without further explanation. Kenji steps onto the plane, and shoves a crate aside, letting it clatter to the floor. The noise makes Darius and Kenji flinch. Dave doesn't react.

“Are you injured, Dave?” Darius asks.

“I hit my head when we landed, but it's just a minor concussion. And some broken ribs, but it's nothing. Honestly.”

Void is his voice of his usually jokey, casual tone. He's not sad, or even angry; it's just nothing. Like it's AI talking. It's too uncanny valley for Brooklynn's taste. Like Dave was turned into a cyberman: a plot from that freaky sci-fi show with some kind of alien doctor she used to watch back in England.

Darius and Kenji wordlessly search the plane with Dave, and Brooklynn remains by the entrance. She scans the ground for anything that could be used as a weapon, and she spots some shards of metal, blasted off and frayed at the edges from the explosion. That could be useful. They won't be lethal, not to thick dinosaur skin, but they can deter whatever they might encounter well enough. That's good.

She starts collecting them, dragging herself by her butt to get around. Her leg pounds with pain, and the glaring sun only makes it feel worse.

She also spots a few branches she can attach the metal to — and use as a walking stick — but they're too far for her to drag herself. To get the sticks, she'd need to walk, and to walk, she needs a stick.

It was a bad idea. There probably isn't any string to attach the two anyway.

She stays sitting, gathering the sharp bits of metal, and piling them beside her. The hot surface scorches her fingertips until they blister.

The grunting and thumping sounds of the others searching behind her echo through the eerie quietness of the woods. At some point, Dave thunders past her, and sits against the plane, putting his head in his hands. His skin is pressed to metal that's spent hours in the direct heat of the sun, and all he has is a T-shirt. It must be burning him.

Maybe that's the point.

Darius looks lostly after him, like a baby duck to its mother. The look on his face is laced with so much desperation and pain, it makes Brooklynn's heart twist, and twist, and twist, until her warm blood is wrung out, and leaves her cold and jaded.

She trusted every adult on the island. They left them.

She trusted Tiff and Mitch. They turned out evil.

She trusted Hap. He died.

She trusted Wu and Hawkes. Look how that turned out.

She trusted Dave and Roxie. Roxie died. And so help her, she won't lose Dave too. She won't let him betray her like everyone else.

“You know what?” Brooklynn’s head snaps up suddenly. “No. No! No!” With that, she drags herself to her feet, leaning stubbornly against a tree, and hobbles towards where Dave sits, head in his hands. “Dave! You are the adult here. And I know you’re heartbroken about Roxie, but so are we! And we are kids, and we need you.” Tears roll hot and fast down her face. “We’re injured, tired and hungry over here, and we need someone to help us. So step up, get your head out of your ass, and be an adult.”

Dave stares numbly at the ground for a few seconds, blinking in shock. The air itself seems to shake, and for a moment, Brooklynn fears the fragile atmosphere will splinter into anger.

But something shifts in his face. Something that looks like the expression he made whenever he saw Roxie: a hint of the smile that used to spread across his face now ghosts his features. Dave steels his jaw, leans on the plane for support, and stands. He breathes in, his chest and shoulders firm up, and holds the position there, even after he exhales, as if to remind himself to be strong.

He walks towards them, a solemn look in his eyes. “You’re right. I need to look after you now. It’s... what Roxie would’ve wanted.” Brooklynn slowly follows him back to the others, and Dave carefully touches her shoulder, in a display of pride. “Thank you, Brooklynn. I needed to hear that. I’m mourning Roxie, but I’m still responsible for you. She would want me to take charge.” A sad shadow casts over his face. “I swear, on everything I am, I’ll do better to take care of you kids until we get off this island.”

Darius sighs gratefully, and slowly ambles towards Dave. His head tiredly leans against Dave's chest, and he slips an arm around Darius’s shoulders.

Brooklynn catches Kenji’s eyes, and she knows instantly, he’s wary too. Not a conscious decision, but an eons old instinct, as primal as life itself, beating the same frantic rhythm in their chests. She sits, and watches Dave with cautious eyes. He’d better keep his promise. Or she’ll break even more of his ribs.

Something creeps into Yaz's vision: a darker shadow amidst the flood of sunlight. Panic kicks through her, rising above the ocean of pain she's already drowning in. She's fighting everything she has to stay conscious, but by goodness is it the worst battle she's ever fought.

She opens her lips, trying to push words out, but they die like puffs of smoke. The something comes closer, and Yaz starts to make out familiar objects: the brightness of printed pink flowers, the frizziness of dark hair, the curve of hips she knows from endless hugs.

“Yaz? Yaz, it's me, Sammy. You're okay, you're okay.”

“Sa... Sam...” Yaz breathes weakly.

“Hey, hey, you're okay,” Sammy soothes. “Just stay awake for me, okay?”

Yaz manages a small nod, and Sammy rewards her efforts with a sunshine-bright smile. It dries a single drop away from her pain ocean.

She tries. Of all the grueling races she's run, by far the hardest thing she's ever done is keep her eyes open, when they beg to slide shut and let her slip into sweet oblivion.

But Sammy's hand combs through her hair, and her nails scratch her scalp, simultaneously soothing and awakening her. With every touch, staying awake feels a tiny, tiny bit easier.

But consciousness comes with a price. She tracks the source of pain swallowing her body to somewhere on her left leg. More sensations begin to creep in: itchy bandage wrapped around her bitterly throbbing limb. Sun blazing down on her. Mud and twigs and tiny irritants beneath her, somehow just as bad as her leg.

The sight of Sammy's twisted expression, like there's something she's not telling her, half illuminated by the glaring sun.

“Sam?” She breathes. “What... waswrong?” Her words slur out of her, as if she's drunk.

“Nothing’s wrong,” Sammy says, stiffer than usual, only reinforcing the impression that something is very, very wrong. “You're just... You got hurt, but we're gonna be fine, okay?” The words sound more like a plea than a reassurance.

Sammy is hiding things from her. Again.

“Sammy.” Yaz pushes the word from her lips, eliciting a fresh tidal wave of exhaustion to consume her. Forcing her eyes open, she searches for the familiar warm, grey eyes, and fixes her gaze on them. “Tell me. Please.”

Sammy sighs softly, bending down to look at her, dark hair lit up by the sun, and Yaz is struck by the thought that she looks like an angel.

“Do you remember Dave and Roxie coming to rescue us off the island?”

Yaz cycles through the events in her mind. A faint memory of them running from Dr Wu, resurfaces in her mind, followed by Roxie hugging her, the camp fam getting on a plane, a deafening explosion, then—

“Oh” is all Yaz can say. What the hell else is there to say, that isn't a glaringly obvious statement of how much this situation sucks?

“Your leg is, uh...” Sammy winces, and she slips her fingers around Yaz's hand. Ordinarily, Yaz's stomach would be doing backflips at the soft touch, but this time, it's for a much worse reason.

“Your leg is badly broken, Yaz,” Sammy says softly. “Now, I don't want you to worry, everything's gonna be fine, but—”

Sammy's encouraging rambles fade to static in Yaz's brain. Her leg. Broken. Badly broken. In the wilderness, with no supplies or even painkillers. Faint thoughts of track and running and competitions flit through her head, but they're drowned by the immense, relentless pain. Oh mercy it hurts. She'd do anything to make it stop. Now Sammy's said it, the agony blares at the front of her mind like a fire alarm she can't obey and evacuate from, leaving her well and truly stuck here on this island and in her body.

“Oh, Yaz, darlin’, I'm sorry! I knew I shouldn't have told you!” Sammy cries, and it's then Yaz realises her cheeks are wet with tears.

“Not... Your fault,” Yaz grunts out, her voice pained. “I'd rather know.”

“I know you would. But I'm starting to worry now, what with you, and— and Roxie, and—” Sammy's hand claps to her mouth. Her face shifts from sorrow to guilty panic, and Yaz's heart skips a beat.

“Roxie? Is she... injured too?”

“Well... Yeah, but also, not... exactly. Not currently.”

“Sammy.” Yaz's voice hardens into the harsher tones it was before joining Camp Cretaceous. She watches Sammy's face fall, like a balloon slowly dropping from the air, and guilt stabs threateningly at Yaz's heart. I need to know, she reminds herself. I have a right to know.

She takes a breath. Yelling never solved anything, and if her leg is as bad as it feels, Yaz could do with as much oxygen in her body as she can get.

“Sammy,” Yaz repeats, calmer this time. “What happened to Roxie?”

Sammy shakes her head, her bottom lip wobbling hazardously before a tear slides unbidden down her cheek.

Dread plummets through Yaz's stomach.

Is she—

Oh, God. Oh— oh, God.

“Roxie... She didn't... She got trapped under the plane in the crash, and we couldn't—” a sob breaks through Sammy's voice. “We couldn't save her.”

And all of a sudden, Yaz is back at the breakfast table with Dave and Roxie at camp, months ago, before things fell wildly apart. Roxie is asking what the kids want to be when they’re older, going around the table one by one, and after proudly answering, “a palaentologist,” Darius turns the question on her.

“I’m hoping to be a geneticist,” she said proudly. It was clear from the way her eyes glowed, and her mouth curved into a smile that radiated confidence, she couldn’t want anything else in the world.

She will never get that dream.

Yaz also remembers stiffly answering, “an athlete,” in the duh was, like it was obvious.

Roxie tutted, and said, “you're only fifteen, and you've got the whole world ahead of you. Don't be scared to branch out and try something else. If track doesn't work out—”

Yaz had scowled and stopped listening at the time — but how she could use that advice now! She would kill for any direction — any at all — now it's looking more and more likely this injury is more serious than just a broken leg...

And she doesn't just want Roxie's advice, but the simple memory of her. Some way of immortalising her in Yaz's brain, so she can at least feel like she isn't truly gone. But did anyone really know her? She must've had someone — but then again, Yaz was lonely, with only her mother, coaches, and teammates for company from day to day, and if she died before coming to Nublar, her funeral would've been a very quiet affair. What if Roxie dies with no one to remember her? For all her talk on not needing anyone, Yaz can't think of a sadder fate in the world.

“She's... dead?”

Sammy nods, still sobbing.

“Oh.” Yaz doesn't know what else to say. Every intricately spiralling thought in her head is gone, and the pain is back.

Sammy crawls closer, and lays a hand on Yaz's shoulder. The weight of it calms her slightly, and Yaz has to remind herself it's a bit better than nothing. Especially when marginally better is very out of reach right now.

Ben appears, covered in blood. Yaz gasps, her muscles trying to stand so she can protect him from whatever caused this. Sammy says, “easy, easy. Just lie back down, he's alright.”

“Surface wounds,” Ben confirms. “Don’t worry, I just scratched myself on the way down. Welcome back, Fadoula.” Ben bends into her field of vision, and grins. Yaz manages a smile back.

“Are the others okay?”

“Yeah, Dave sent me over to tell you they found food. You hungry?”

Yaz had barely thought about food amidst the pain of her leg, but she could do with some food. She can't remember when she last ate, and what little in her will have been burned off on all the physical exertion of the past few days.

(How will she outrun dinosaurs with her leg like this? How will she stay alive?)

“I could do with some food,” Sammy says noncommittally, eyebrows raised at Yaz. She's clearly waiting for confirmation it's going to be a mutual decision. And Sammy must be hungry.

“Yeah. Let's eat.”

“Okay, let's go,” Ben says, making it all of three steps before taking one look at Yaz's leg and mumbling, “sorry, Yaz. We'll... bring the food over here.”

Brooklynn, Darius and Kenji all look various stages of heartbroken. Darius looks the hardest hit, but Yaz knows from experience, sometimes the people who look the most put together have the biggest storm inside them.

Dave, however, Yaz can't decipher. His face is blank, his eyes are glassy, and if it weren't for the fact he's standing, Yaz would think he's a corpse.

“Yaz,” he says, as if reminding himself she's there. “Are you— how's your leg?”

“Painful.” Annoyance flares in her chest; she really doesn't want to talk about her leg right now. Thinking about it makes it worse.

“What's the sitch on the food?” Sammy asks.

“We bought lunchboxes for you guys,” Dave says, handing them out one by one, and the kids hungrily crack the lids open. “We figured you'd be hungry, so we made sure we had something for when we found you to, uhh... tide you over. Until we got back.”

That worked out well, Yaz almost says, but bites it back. It did work out well that they have any food at all. They are so lucky Dave and Roxie were this well prepared.

“Thank you,” she says instead.

Kenji peers inside. “Goldfish crackers? How old do you think we are?”

“Aww, I haven't had these since I was a kid,” Sammy exclaims, holding a packet of pop tarts.

“You still are a kid,” Dave says with a sadness Yaz can't begin to describe.

“I meant a younger kid,” Sammy says. Dave still frowns, looking at the kids the way people look at bereaved people at a funeral.

Yaz digs through her packed lunch, finding similarly childish foods that evoke a twinge of nostalgia that isn't her's, when her fingertips graze over something papery. She freezes.

Her dirtied fingers left soft streaks of mud and blood across a gleaming white envelope, where her name is written in small, swooping writing— writing she recognises.

Most of the others, she notices, are holding similar notes.

“We had the parents write you all letters,” explains Dave. “Obviously, they thought they’d see you sooner than this, but we thought it would be nice for them to communicate with you in some way before you see them in person.”

Yaz's throat suddenly feels very tight. Her shaking hands attempt to open the letter, but all she does is shred the corners of the envelope to pieces of blindingly white confetti.

Sammy whispers, “Do you want me to do it?” Yaz wordlessly hands her the envelope, and Sammy slips her thumb underneath the seal, opens it, and passes the opened envelope back to Yaz.

She fishes for the paper inside with almost delirious fervor, and finds a scrap of lined paper with the imprint of words on the back of them. It's the same handwriting as the envelope. Mom. She opens it, and reads.

My darling Yaz,

I am so sorry for putting you in danger. I had a feeling the camp wasn't safe, but I ignored my gut instincts. I'll do whatever I can to make it up to you. I love you so much, habibti. Whatever you need from me, I'll do my best to give you. You don't have to be an athlete after this if you don't want to, I just want you to come home safe. I don't care how you come back, just come back. I miss you so much, my darling daughter. NadiYaz against the world.

All my love,

Mom

P.S. you are getting the BIGGEST high five when you get home.

Yaz clutches the letter tight to her chest. A tear slips down her cheek, and the others all act like they didn’t see it. Her mum, who wanted more than anything for Yaz to pursue the sport she loves, who was maybe a bit too pushy sometimes, just wants her baby girl back. Yaz’s heart beats in a cycle of, it's okay, I'm okay. If I don't do track anymore, I'm okay. Her left leg might have taken too many hits to be in peak running condition after this. And honestly? Track or no track, Yaz would give anything just to get home safe.

Sammy squeezes her hand, and says, “my mama and daddy said they just want me to get home safe. And that my family are all waiting for me to come home.” Her voice is laced with tears, but she sounds more stable than before.

“My mom and Brand say they love me and both can’t wait to see me,” says Darius.

“My mom told me that she knows I must be scared, but to stay brave,” Ben says with a hint of irony.

“Did you get a letter, Kenji?” Brooklynn asks.

Kenji forces a smile. “Yeah. My dad said he’s... glad I’m okay. And he’s proud of me.”

Something in his tone doesn’t convince Yaz. Like the words are a wish, rather than writing. But she lets him have his fantasy. Goodness knows he needs it. So she files that worry to the back of her mind for another day. Far in the future.

“Dave?” A thought occurs to her. “What happened to you and Roxie when you got off the island?”

From the way he flinches, she can tell it was a bad question. Sammy says, “if you're uncomfortable sharing, you don't have to,” in that kind, understanding way that makes Yaz feel warm and weird and nice inside.

“No, I'll tell you lot,” he says. “You deserve to know. And,” he blows air from his cheeks, “it wasn't pretty.”

Yaz sits up, feeling this conversation demands that level of respect, and Sammy wraps her arms around Yaz's torso to hold her upright.

“After we got off the ferry, we were given a hotel room and a flight wherever we needed. Jurassic World covered everything. We went to Roxie's place in London — and I went with her, cos I didn't really have anywhere else to go.”

That surprises her, but the more she thinks about it, it makes some degree of sense for a free spirit like Dave. But then again, to have no home at all? It makes Yaz think of her mother, who came to the States from Lebanon when she was a teenager with no family behind her, and she hopes Dave carves out a similar path of belonging in his future.

“When we had to leave you kids, the guilt ate her alive,” Dave says solemnly. “Let me be clear that none of how she felt was your fault. But it was... bad. She fell into a deep depression — again, not your fault, by the way. The trauma of Nublar — and... other things — it all triggered an illness she has— had, called functional neurological disorder, so there was... that. Which also wasn't your fault, by the way — none of this is. There was other stuff that happened to her.” Other stuff she'll never heal from, Yaz thinks. “We both went to therapy for a few months before coming here.”

“Leaving us wasn’t either of your faults,” Darius says, mature beyond his years as always. “We don’t blame you. We should’ve just followed orders for once.” The others, having the decency to look at the ground. Guilt squirms like a worm in Yaz's stomach. Although she knows nothing would've majorly changed if they stayed — if anything, they'd have got stomped to death along with camp if they did — but Yaz was the eldest there. She should've been more responsible. But she was too preoccupied with avoiding everyone to help them.

She has to do better than that now. Their collective survival depends on it.

“If you’d have stayed, you would’ve been crushed along with the camp,” Dave says, voicing what Yaz was thinking. “We should’ve just— taken you with us, or something.” A bitter shadow crosses his face. “Then maybe we all would’ve got out.”

Darius opens his mouth to say something, but eventually decides against it, and rests his chin on his knees. Dave is right, and there is no denying it. They all made a bad call. This is all of their faults.

“We can’t change the past,” Sammy reasons. “What matters is that we keep going: we pick up the pieces and keep moving forward — right Darius?”

He gives a soft smile. His words from all those months ago ring through the air, as raw as the second he spoke them. “Right, Sammy.”

Yaz is the eldest. She slipped away from them once, and she can't do it again. So she needs someone else to step in. To make sure the camp fam stays safe.

Dave is no stranger to disaster. It's followed him since he was sixteen and forbidden feelings swirled unbidden through his heart. Nublar was supposed to be an escape from it all. He'd hoped he could maybe start again, hold a job that meant something to him. Become the parental figure he always yearned for to whichever kids he came across.

Instead, he's stranded in the wilderness, responsible for six teens who probably hate him, and the one person he could talk to about it is gone.

It's evening, and Dave has no plan. Nothing to offer the kids to give them a glimmer of hope in the disorienting disaster they find themselves in.

And now—

“I’m hungry,” Kenji complains.

“Me too,” says Yaz, clutching her stomach.

Dave bites back a frustrated sigh. “Kids— we have to ration out what we have. We don’t know how long we’ll be out here.”

“We haven’t eaten a proper meal in weeks,” Brooklynn begs. “We’re starving. Please?”

“We’ve been living on canned fruit for goodness knows how long!” Sammy pleads, on the verge of full-on sobbing. “We need real food.”

And— goddammit, Dave was never able to say no to those sweet, wide eyes. Nor, come to think of it, is he able to ignore the implied horrors in their hollowed-out cheekbones. Plus, the thought of the kids— his kids— the kids he and Roxie were supposed to protect— surviving in that hellish wilderness, scavenging for food, slowly starving...

“Okay. We can have something.” He makes his lips smile, despite the guilt squeezing his stomach. But he can’t make the movement reach his eyes. He wonders, with Roxie gone, if he will ever smile again.

The first meal he finds in the plane are the tupperwares of pav bhaji Roxie made for this expedition. His heart hitches in his throat. Of course he had to find that. She’s lurking around every corner, waiting to shock him, like a shitty jumpscare in the horror films she loves— loved. He sighs, low and deep, and starts stacking the tupperwares in one hand, balancing the foil package of accompanying bread rolls on top of the stack.

He remembers the first time Roxie made this for him. He’d just finished working at the pub down the road from her flat, when he came home to Roxie — not lying on the sofa, or sitting on the garden chair like usual, but standing at the stove, her hair loose from the plait Dave did every morning for her, stirring something, the smell of what Dave later learned was pav bhaji spilling from the stovetop.

He remembers the flood of relief, the instant thought of she's finally back, and the immense gratitude strangling the words out of his throat, leaving only a face-splitting grin. Standing behind her, murmuring, “do you want a hug?” and her hesitant nod. Wrapping his arms around her, the way she slowly leaned into him, the imprint of her soft curves against his body. He remembers the cadence of her soft, happy sigh. Her leaning over and grabbing a teaspoon, scooping a bit of the mixture and lifting it up to his lips, the tentative, “try some?” The mix of spices tingling on his tongue, the wave of bliss washing over him. Roxie softly saying, “my mum used to make it for me. She sent me off with the recipe when I went to uni... even though we fought about me moving away to study. She said: ‘no child of mine is going hungry if I can help it.’” The soft, reminiscent chuckle on her lips. The calm quietness of her kitchen.

A memory that will stay just that forever. A memory constantly taunting him with the fact he’ll never get to make another of those. They’ll never cook in the kitchen again. He’ll never hug her waist and breathe in the smell of her shampoo and Indian food again. He wonders if he'll ever be able to let her go, if he'll be haunted by her wherever he goes. If he'll see her in any girl in a red shirt, or a low ponytail with those adorable bangs Dave loved to play with. In the smell of curry. In hazel eyes. In the colour purple.

In the faces of the six kids, eagerly watching him approach their little circle. Roxie so wanted them to be safe. More than she wanted anything. (Maybe more than she wanted him.)

Dave has to continue that. If not for himself, for Roxie.

He hands out the tupperwares, giving them all a spoon each, saying with all the enthusiasm he can, “dinner is served! But don't dig in just yet. This dish is called pav bhaji, and you eat it with bread.”

“Bread!” Several of them moan longingly.

“I haven't had bread since Tiff and Mitch,” Kenji says.

Dave frowns, vaguely recalling the kids mentioning those names when he and Roxie first came. “Who?”

“Big game hunters,” Darius says, darkness edging his usually bright tone. “They were... not good.”

“They're dead now,” Kenji says. “The boat we stole was theirs.”

“Sounds like it deserved to be stolen,” Dave says. He would laugh at that — he tries to — but he just can't make himself.

“Anyway. Bread rolls.” Dave unwraps the tinfoil package, and hands them out. They brought six — one for each of them — and Dave knows they should ration them out, but with the way the kids ravenously reach for them, he discards that thought. They deserve this. They need a good meal. The bread will go stale soon anyway.

The kids tuck in, too hungry to notice Dave is sitting on a log a few feet away from the circle, not eating anything. There's another tupperware on the plane, but he can't stomach it. He knows the taste will make him break, and he can't break in front of the kids.

Kenji pauses eating to moan in utter relief, “Oh, we needed this.”

“This is delicious!” Sammy exclaims.

“Thank you so much, Dave,” Darius says.

“No child of mine is going hungry if I can help it,” he says. Sammy catches his eye and smiles. Kenji has an expression on his face Dave can't decipher.

He refocuses his mind onto thinking about their remaining food sources. They have four more lots of eight tupperwares — Roxie was meticulous about making sure they had miles more than enough, and thank God she was — and some snacks. If they're careful (more than they are with today) they can last on one meal a day. The kids are desperately hungry right now, so he decides to be lenient, but hopefully the additional fuel will give them strength for the next few days, until...

Until what? He has no plan here. Maybe send a group of the least injured people to scout for others on the island? He doesn't want to separate their group again. Besides, what if that group gets injured themselves when they're searching? What then?

But what else does that leave them with? Stay there and wait for their rescue? The only people who know they crashed are Wu and Hawkes in the helicopter, and they're definitely not coming to their rescue anytime soon.

He needs a plan. But until then, he has to keep the kids looked after.

Injuries. That's a good place to start. A more thorough check than... whatever he said earlier. He barely remembers anything, just a cloud of utter despair and Brooklynn yelling at him. He has to do better.

He scans the circle: Darius’s knees are curled up to his chest and he balances his tupperware on his knees as he takes small bites. Sammy is alternating bites of her own with feeding some to Yaz. Kenji is choking on the spiciness and trying to hide it. Dave gives him a pitying laugh, and silently hands him a bottle of water. Brooklynn eats a bit, then gets up to wander around the plane, limping even with the branches she uses as walking sticks, reminiscent of a soldier patrolling the perimeter.

And Ben is stacking sticks in the centre of the circle, forming a wonky triangle.

Dave steps towards him, snapping twigs under his feet to make sure Ben hears him coming. “Hey... Kid.”

Ben tenses, glancing at him, but doesn't reply. His startlingly blue eyes are almost unnerving.

“What are you doing?”

“Making a fire.”

“Oh okay,” Dave says, struggling to find something else to say. “Do you want hel— do you want a hand?”

“I'm okay.”

Dave goes and sits back down, watching Ben accumulate more sticks, grab an empty bottle and head for the plane, before returning with a bottle half full of slick, oily, dark liquid.

His heart rate kicks sharply up, and he says, “Ben, what is that?”

He looks down guiltily, like he got caught doing something he shouldn't, but mumbles, “fuel. From the plane. To start the fire.”

“That's too dangerous, Ben, I can't let you do that.”

“I've done it before,” Ben says, a little more defensive. “We need a fire.”

“Fire wards off predators,” Darius explains. “It's for safety.”

“Fire could also incinerate this entire forest, and some of your friends can't outrun a blaze.” Dave pointedly looks at Yaz, Sammy and Brooklynn.

“I’m sorry, who survived alone in a jungle for months?” Ben says, nothing but venom in his voice.

Dave reluctantly admits the kids know far more about wilderness survival than he does. Sure, Dave has three certifications in basic safety training, first aid, safeguarding, and countless other things, but the kids have survival instincts ironed into their bones that keep them more hypervigilant to danger than Dave will ever be.

“I'll supervise,” Dave compromises. Ben scowls, but lets him awkwardly stand six feet away as Ben douses the stick pile with fuel, then grabs a lighter he must've found on the plane, and clicks the button to sprout a tiny candle. The fire picks up so quickly, it terrifies Dave. Crackling embers turn to dancing flames turns to a roaring blaze that threatens to incinerate the whole boiling, arid forest they're stuck in.

“Ben— put it out!” Dave yells.

“No! There's nothing but dirt under there, it'll be fine.”

“Half this group can't outrun a fire, you can't risk it.”

“Leave it,” someone says. To Dave's shock, it's Kenji. “Ben knows more about fires than almost anyone. He's got it under control. I trust him.”

Ben meets Kenji's eyes with an expression Dave can't decipher. Clearly it's not made for him.

And if city boy Kenji, of all people, trusts the blaze, Dave has no choice.

Reluctantly, Dave sits back at his spot away from the others. He watches Sammy notice his absence, then nudges Darius and whispers something out of Dave's hearing. Darius passes it around the circle like a game of Chinese whispers, and then, the campers exchange a series of nods and glances — again, beyond Dave's ability to decipher — then Sammy says, “you wanna join the circle?”

“Uhh... if you want me to.”

“Yeah, sure, we want’cha.” Sammy smiles warmly. “No one should sit and be lonely by themselves.”

I'm not lonely, dances on the tip of his tongue. He's so close to saying it, he almost braces for the inevitable “oh, okay then” and the rest of the evening spent in empty, grey solitude.

But the truth is, he is lonely. He's been without Roxie for a matter of hours, and already her absence feels like a hole in his heart no surgeon could hope to fix. How is he supposed to live the rest of his life like this?

Then, he looks at the kids. Smiling as they eat the food Dave helped Roxie make. Her food will live forever in this memory, and that way, a part of her will never die. Maybe she'll be kept alive in the kids she worked so hard to save. Maybe no one ever dies. Maybe Roxie, and him, and his sister can all rest in peace.

The rest of the kids finish eating. Darius catches Dave's eye, and hands him his bread roll. “I saw you didn't eat anything.”

How kind, Dave thinks with a smile, and his fingers almost curl around it to take it, but he catches himself. Darius is twelve and probably on the brink of starving like the rest of the campers. Dave’s been eating regularly for days before now. He can live without.

“You have it.” Dave pushes Darius's outstretched hand back to him. “You need this more than I do. You're a growing boy.”

“You sure?”

“Yeah, course.” Dave gives an easy smile. “I feel pretty nauseous anyway.” He tries to chase the growing discomfort out of his chest, but his face must give something away, because Brooklynn asks him, “what’s up?”

“You mean the shitty situation we're in, or just in general?” Dave deadpans.

“Yeah, stupid question.” Brooklynn scuffs the ground with her foot, while a few of the campers gasp, clearly never having heard him curse before. It's a stark reminder they really are just kids.

He sighs, the weight of the world groaning in his voice, thinking somewhere in the back of his mind this is totally inappropriate to talk to children about, but abandons all that, and gives in to the wandering in his heart. “I was thinking... I told Roxie I love her, but I wonder if she felt the same way.”

“She did,” Brooklynn says instantly, smiling at the fire. “I think so, at least.”

“You really do?” His heart simultaneously lifts and plummets.

“Yeah.” And the others echo their affirmations.

Dave curls his knees up to his chest, and gazes longingly at the fire. His eyes snag on Brooklynn's— Roxie's jacket, and his heart hurts. It’s a pain he wishes he could say is unlike anything he’s felt before — but he has felt this before, and that’s the worst part. Grieving never gets easier the more you do it. Just when he’d got good at carrying the heaviness of it, Roxie died, dropping the weight of the plane itself on Dave’s shoulders.

He’d never blame her — if anyone, he blames whoever was in that helicopter that followed the kids off the island. Wu and Hawkes, didn’t they say?

Whoever it was that shot that helicopter down, Dave decides he hates them with all his heart. It's as though someone flipped a switch, coating the world in dizzying red. He wants whoever is responsible dead. If it weren’t for the kids, he’d track the bastards down and kill them himself.

That thought — that he’s willing to end a life — makes him the sickest of all. The nausea in his stomach is getting even worse. Whether it’s grief or sickness, he needs to lie down and sleep this off.

So he does what he does best, slaps on a smile, and focuses on the problems he can solve.

“Right.” He dusts off his hands. “I think it’s time for you kids to go to bed.”

“Now? It's not even dark,” Kenji says incredulously.

“I'm not even that tired,” Ben adds.

“Don't lie, Ben,” Dave says, hints of irritation creeping into his voice — but he thinks better of it. If Dave is tired, he can't imagine how the kids feel.

“I'm not lying,” Ben says — and in fairness to him, his eyes are wide open, and his muscles are taut, curled in, like a coiled spring ready to pounce. Making him lie still seems like it would be almost painful for him.

Brooklynn elbows Dave's shin. He turns to look at her, and she says, “Ben’s taking first watch.”

“First watch?”

“To watch the rest of us in the night in case something attacks us. We take shifts obviously, that's what's fair, but,” she lowers her voice, “first watch is always the worst.”

“I see.” And how he wishes he didn't. It would be easier on him if he didn't know the extent of the horrors the campers experienced, and he could bury his head in the metaphorical sand. Thinking of them running terrified from dinosaurs and fighting for survival makes his stomach twist with incapacitating waves of guilt. He finds himself thinking of Roxie, how the guilt of their fateful mistake swallowed her whole, and he realises, she doesn't have to deal with that feeling anymore. She's free.

“Maybe we could sleep on the plane,” Darius suggest. “Well, what's left of it.” Half of the back seats are blown to pieces, and Dave knows he can't stomach going near the cockpit. Thank goodness the very back — where they put all the supplies — is mostly undamaged.

“I wouldn't recommend it,” Dave says. “I don't know if the fuel from the plane might've leaked, or something. And there might still be some parts smoking.”

“So the plane could blow up on us while we're sleeping?” Kenji exclaims. “Terrific!”

“I don't think so,” Dave says, trying to quell the spark of panic — he knows how easily they can spread. “But I don't want to take my chances.”

“Besides, we can't move Yaz,” Sammy points out. It's then Dave notices she's holding Yaz's hand with both of hers. Huh. Maybe he was right, and pairing them up in the gyrospheres was just what they needed to kickstart their friendships (and maybe romance). Oh, he might win the bet after all. Roxie so owes him—

Except she doesn't. Because she's dead.

“You're right. Let's stay here. Besides, it's pretty scenic, don't you think?”

Sammy and Darius both murmur agreement, mostly out of politeness. The rest of them are silent. He supposes it's quite nice, but nothing like some of the landscapes he's seen before. Nothing like the stellar beauty of Nublar, horrifying as the place turned out to be. Nothing like the places he dreamed he'd go with Roxie—

“I'll get sleeping bags,” he says hastily, standing and practically running towards the plane. They only bought six, and they were in cases of absolute emergency if they had to make a stop for one night. Roxie was the one who suggested all the extra things, even though it would weigh the plane down and potentially make their mission to steal the plane more risky. “It's worth it to make sure the kids have everything they need,” she said. How devastatingly correct she ended up being.

Dave piles them all into his arms, craning his neck so he can see ahead of him, and returns to the campers.

“Hey, Kenji. Catch!” Dave gently throws it, remembering Kenji's injured shoulder a split second too late.

Kenji ducks, the bag grazing the side of his head, and yells, “What the hell, dude?”

“Sorry! Sorry, sorry.” Guilt stings him in the chest. “I forgot about your... shoulder.”

Despite his earlier insistence it’s too early to go to sleep, Kenji grumbles, but is clearly too tired to argue. He and Darius work together to unfurl their sleeping bags, using their two working hands between them and muttering directions to each other. Dave watches them, fascinated, wishing for a moment he was close enough with anyone to be able to do that so seamlessly. He and Roxie could've had that bond. Someday. If she wasn't...

Sammy shyly asks him to help move Yaz into her sleeping bag, and together they maneuver her in. Every step of the way, she hisses with pain, muttering curse words Dave pretends not to hear. After everything that's happened, Dave's okay with letting them swear a bit.

But soon, she’s settled — as settled as she could be — with Sammy lying beside her, curled up in a fetal position undoubtedly to protect her stomach. Dave imagines the pain pulling at her skin, and winces. If only they thought to bring stronger painkillers.

Dave goes around the circle, checking each kid is in place. Yaz and Sammy are there, as is Kenji, Darius curled up next to him, Brooklynn nestled against a tree stump, and—

An empty space.

Dave’s head whips around, panic shooting through him. How could he let this happen? How could he let one kid slip through his grasp into the wilderness? And now Ben is nowhere to be—

He spots him, standing a few feet away and standing facing the jungle, as if on guard.

Dave starts walking towards him. Ben hears him coming from twenty feet away (which is an instinct Dave definitely should be concerned about) but he pushes that to the back of his mind, and slowly steps closer.

Ben doesn't tense like last time, but still keeps a wary eye on Dave. Like he doesn't trust him yet.

Dave smiles, hands outstretched, and says softly, “hey... bud.”

“Hey.”

He notices something. “Your head's bleeding.”

Ben shrugs. “I’m fine, it’s nothing.”

“It’s not nothing, and you know it,” Dave says, a little more stern this time. “Sit down.”

Ben does as he's told, and takes a seat on the log curling his knees to his chest. He considers going back for the first aid kit, but he doesn't want to risk losing Ben to the depths of his claw-sharp defensiveness. So Dave fumbles behind his head and unties his yellow headband.

“Here you go, kiddo,” he says, gently but tightly winding it around Ben’s head. “This’ll stop the bleeding and keep it clean. It shouldn’t need stitches, but make sure you get a plaster on that soon. There's some in the kit.”

Dave knows he won't do that, not without prompting, but he's too tired to deal with wrangling a stubborn child into putting a plaster on.

“I know you need to stand guard,” begins Dave, “but can you please promise you'll stay within six feet of the camp, okay?”

“Ten feet.”

Dave sighs, not in the mood to negotiate. “Fine. Be safe.”

Ben wanders off somewhere close enough, and Dave looks around to make sure everyone else is in place. “Okay... one, two, three, four, five, six, and sev—” Dave catches himself, muttering a quiet “oh.” Choking the feeling down, he allows himself a moment of pride. All six kids are fed, and have their wounds treated. But it was hard enough with two of them, and now that Roxie’s... He feels like he’s juggling six balls, and each one is determined to fly out of his hands at each turn of his head. There’s always something that needs fixing, and in a way, it keeps his mind off the impending horror of the situation at large. If he starts thinking about that, he thinks his head will explode.

The kids seem to have arranged themselves in a horseshoe-type position, leaving an opening. Dave positions himself in the middle of it, wriggles his legs into his sleeping bags, and sits against a nearby tree.

“Okay, kids. Goodnight.”

A few of them mumble a ‘goodnight’, but most of them are too tired to even talk. Kenji is already snoring.

Dave shifts around, trying his best to be quiet. He drums a rhythm — from a song he can’t even remember knowing — on his knees, slowly rocking back and forth to the beat — but realises it’s the rhythm of a song he used to sing to Roxie, and suddenly, the sound of it becomes unbearable.

Sammy whispers, “if you think about it, it's kinda like a sleepover.”

It takes a minute for Dave to clock that she’s talking to him. “Well, I've never actually been to a sleepover,” he says honestly, “so now's my first time!”

“Why haven't you been to a sleepover before?” Sammy asks, genuinely puzzled. “I had them all the time with my friends back home.”

“It's a long story. I'll tell you in the morning, K?”

“‘Kay. Goodnight Dave,” Sammy mumbles, snuggling into her sleeping bag, her voice already slurred as sleep takes hold of her. “Thank you for rescuing us,” she says.

“No need to thank us. Really. I'm just sorry it took so long.”

“Don't be.” Brooklynn yawns, stretching like a cat. “You came. That's what matters.”

Dave smiles, and curls up in the dirt, waiting for sleep to claim him. It's not easy, with the hard ground digging into his shoulders, his back aching, and his head pounding a never-ending rhythm of background pain, like a ticking time bomb to something dire. But he screws his eyes shut, listens to the fire crackling, and thinks: if I get some sleep, I can help the kids.

Finally, sleep swallows him, and he dreams of hiking with Roxie in the mountains. She climbs up a peak, tall and strong and bathed in sunlight, and Dave follows her.

The night splits apart with a head-splitting scream of agony.

Chapter Text

Dear our darling Brook,

If you really are reading this, please know that we love you so much, and we cannot wait to see you very soon. Dave and Roxie swear all six of you are alive, and after all they've done for you and the other campers, we trust them. We’re so proud of you. Stay strong, fighter girl. It’s only a little bit longer before you can come home.

Lots of love,

Dad and daddy xxx

Dear Sammy,

We are so sorry, we should never have even considered speaking to Mantah Corp. We’d do anything to take it all back. We are so sorry, nuestra encantadora niña [our lovely girl], we will do whatever we can to make it up to you. We love you so much and we can’t wait for you to come home. Please. Come home. We love you so so much. Family is forever, don’t forget that. Your family is waiting for you.

Lots of love,

Daddy and mamá and your sisters (and Bessie) xxxx

Dear my darling boy,

I can’t imagine how terrified you must be, but stay brave, my lovely child. I know you will; you’re so much braver than you think. Mommy’s going to see you soon, and then you don’t have to go near a jungle ever again. I love you so so so much my wonderful son, I’m so sorry I even let this happen. I quit working for Masrani, I don’t have any more involvement with Jurassic World. They’re out of our lives after this, I promise.

Hugs and kisses, mommy xxxx

Dear Darius,

Dave and Roxie say you’re alive, and I want to believe them. I really didn’t want to get my hopes up, but I believe in miracles. If you really are reading this, please know that I love you so much, honey. I’ve missed you endlessly, and if God brings you back to me, I will thank him forever. Freddie would be so so proud of you, as am I. I love you so much.

Love mom <3

Darius,

I know you’re alive, so I’ll just say that I’ve missed you, dude. When I said to get out of your room more, I didn’t mean for six whole months! Okay, jokes over. Mom and I really really missed you. It hasn’t been the same without you, and we’re ready for you to come home. Whatever you want to do, wherever you want to go, we can go. Even if it’s the zoo (again) or the aquarium (again) or even that dinosaur museum you and dad loved... if you can even see dinosaurs the same. Whatever you want. We just missed you so much and we can’t wait for you to come back. Sending you a massive hug.

Love Brand

Chapter Text

Brooklynn is jolted awake by the worst sound she’s ever heard.

She’s bolted upright in a panic many times in the jungle at the bellowing roar of a dinosaur — real or imagined — and her head has snapped around to locate the source of her terror. The sudden screams of park workers on Nublar getting guzzled by dinosaurs in two greedy bites is glued to her memory. The camp fam’s gut-wrenching sobs as they realised no one was coming to rescue them occasionally rings through her head, like a ghost jumping at her from around the corner.

But this... this is worse.

The roar, this time, is human.

And it sounds like someone being slowly skinned alive.

In a heartbeat of adrenaline, she forgets about other dangers on nowhere island, other things that could hear her, and screams, “Wake up! Wake up!”

Ben is already awake and on his feet, his hands clenched into claws, his head whipping around to find the source of danger. Darius flinches awake, startling Kenji into life too. Yaz, poor her, can only manage to prop herself on her forearms, and Sammy shakily gets to her feet, wincing, clutching her stomach, and bracing herself against a tree.

All six of the camp fam are accounted for. That only leaves—

The flames flicker in a gust of wind, flaring its glow, illuminating a sight that shakes Brooklynn to the core.

Dave is bent double, clutching his head with both hands like his life depends on it. His top is dark with sweat, and his shoulders heave. He pants for air, like every breath is a years-long struggle he has to fight in one moment if he wants to stay alive.

“Dave?” Brooklynn tries to sound gentle and soothing, but the result is a high-pitched, strangled squeak. “What’s going on?”

He lets out a groan that might've been a word, but his voice is overtaken by another bellow of pain.

Someone starts hyperventilating behind her: short, sharp sounds that hinge on the edge of sobbing.

Brooklynn falls to her knees, adrenaline plastering the pain erupting through her leg, and leans closer to Dave, twisting so her ear is near his mouth. “Dave?”

His teeth are clenched shut, and he barely has the breath but one word pushes through: “kids.”

“What?” Brooklynn resists the urge to jostle his shoulders, knowing that would just make everything worse. “What is it?”

“Brooklynn...” Someone says behind her. Darius. She'd recognise his voice anywhere. “Give him some space.”

“But—”

“You need to keep the casu— keep him calm and comfortable. Don't stress him out.”

Brooklynn drags herself backwards, and Darius and Ben help her to her feet. She sways, clutching Darius's shoulder for balance.

“Darius...” Her voice is low with dread, barely audible over the horrible screaming. “What do we do?”

“Uhh...”

When he's silent for longer, Brooklynn screams, “Darius!”

“I— I don't know, okay?!” He bursts, and everyone stares in shock. Darius steps back, protectively cradling his injured arm to his chest in a way that made him look five years old. His eyebrows crease with sorrow — guilt, Brooklynn realises, that he genuinely doesn’t know.

“I don't know... I don't know what to do,” he murmurs, shaking his head. The edges of his cheeks shine wetly in the firelight. Brooklynn tries to step towards him and comfort him, but her legs somehow stay rooted to the spot. Brooklynn searches for Ben and Kenji, but they're a few feet away from the others: Ben is grabbing Kenji by the shoulders, and speaking rapidly, his blue eyes glistening with an urgency that only shows itself when the group are in serious danger.

Sammy, barely upright, practically collapses onto her knees, and drags herself through the dust to sit next to Dave. Brooklynn offers Sammy a hand, but she refuses. “You're injured, too,” she says and it was then the adrenaline lulls, bowing to a wave of pain that rocks Brooklynn's body.

Sammy clutches Dave's hand in both of hers and starts whispering, a mixture of English and Spanish: words Brooklynn's sure are meant to be comforting, but hinge on hysterics.

Brooklynn can't blame her. She wants to curl up in a ball and scream too.

“What do you think?” Darius asks, his voice raised in a way that makes it clear he's addressing all of them.

Yaz, who'd been stuck in her sleeping bag, says, “I hate to say this, but... I don't know if there's anything we can do.”

“Yaz's right,” Kenji says, suddenly appearing beside them. If Brooklynn didn't know better, she'd say he'd been possessed by a different person: colder, apathetic — a far cry from the frantic, confused, trembling boy who hyperventilated behind her minutes ago. “We can't do anything. Trust me, once someone starts screaming like that, there's no going back.”

“So— so, what, we just sit here and let him— Argh!” Darius shrieks. “There has to be something we can use...” His face goes scrunched in focus, and his lips vaguely moving to articulate pieces of thoughts too rapid-fire for any of the others to comprehend. “Oh! The tranq guns! If we inject him with a vial, it'll make him sleep this off.”

“The only thing that will accomplish is killing him faster!” Kenji cries, and it's not until everyone has heard that— that word, that Kenji claps a hand to his mouth, clearly wishing he could take it back. But Darius stumbles away from him with a choked sob, Ben's face goes unreadable, and Yaz says, in a low hiss clearly not meant for the others to hear, “seriously, Kenji?”

“You said it first,” he mumbles like a child.

“I didn't say it.”

“Well I'm sorry for stating the facts here, he's probably going to—”

“I got it!” Darius says, his footsteps skittering across the forest floor. He steps into the light of the fire, holding a tranq gun. “I found it in the cockpit.”

“Darius...” Yaz sighs, soft and sad. Her lips open, on the verge of saying something, but she just shakes her head.

“Ben? Brooklynn?”

Brooklynn shakes her head, suddenly hurtled back to reality. “I— shoot him. Yeah.”

“Why? He's not—” Kenji stops, reconsidering. “He's going to die no matter what we do.”

“Then let him go easily!” Darius bursts out. “Don’t let him die thinking we didn’t want to make him comfortable.”

Darius cries wretchedly, but all Kenji can do is tug the tranq gun from his hands. “We need this, D. If something attacks us, every dart will count.”

If Brooklynn's leg wasn't incapacitated, she would kick Kenji in the shins for being so cruel. Darius punches Kenji in the chest, but he’s so exhausted, it barely hits him. Kenji catches Darius’s fist in one hand, and eases his arm back to his side. “I’m sorry, D. I really am.”

Darius tiredly leans into Kenji’s shoulder. “I hate you.”

Kenji wraps his arms around him, his chin resting on Darius’s shoulder. “Yeah. I’d hate me too.”

“Uh, guys?” Sammy cries.

Brooklynn whips around, attention cruelly dragged back to the present horrors at hand, to see Dave, still unconscious, beginning to convulse.

“Oh my God!” Sammy shrieks. “Is he— is that a seizure?”

“Yeah— yeah, it is,” Darius says, his head hung. “I’ve seen a couple on videos at med camp. They aren’t usually deadly, but in tandem with what seems like a really bad headache, they can also be a symptom of a...”

“Of what?” Brooklynn asks, hysteria rising in her voice.

“Brain aneurysm,” Darius and Kenji say at the same time. Brooklynn is shocked; she expected Darius to know, but Kenji? Why would he know that?

“If it's that, there's nothing we can do,” Kenji says. Brooklynn looks to Darius, desperately hoping Kenji's wrong — but a tiny nod of his head confirms everything Brooklynn needs to know.

“And what if it isn't that?”

Darius sighs, his voice bearing a heaviness no thirteen year old should carry. “If it isn’t that, there’s... nothing we can do.”

And the camp fam can only watch as Dave seizes, until the convulsions get smaller and smaller— and stop altogether with a tiny trail of spittle from his lips.

Then,

Dave goes still.

Brooklynn probes a finger at his neck. “There’s still a pulse,” she says, hope rising in her tone. “Maybe it was just a— a really bad migraine episode or something?”

“Brooklynn...” Yaz says softly, “hold his hand. Make sure he doesn’t go alone.”

They all crowd around him, Yaz dragging herself as close as she can with Kenji's help, Ben hoisting Sammy to help her move. They tell Dave's unconscious body how grateful they are for him and Roxie, how much they appreciate their sacrifice, how they'll do their best to repay it someday, somehow.

They knew the end was coming, but that doesn't make it easy. When Sammy gently presses her fingers to his neck, finding no pulse, she gasps, “he's... Oh, God,” and starts to cry.

Adrenaline kicks through Brooklynn in an instant. “Everyone move! I know CPR!”  She shoves the others out of her way, and kneels by Dave’s side, before lacing her fingers together, and starts chest compressions. “One, two, three, four...” she counts through gritted teeth. Sweat beads along her brow. Her eyes narrow in on Dave’s chest, focusing everything she has on pushing down on Dave’s ribcage. Her body heaves with exertion. She's lost too much, and so help her, she won't lose him too.

He stays still.

Once she reaches thirty, she plugs his nose, and does two rescue breaths. It feels a bit weird, but she can’t think about her feelings right now. She halts, just for a second, to check if his chest is rising. It’s motionless.

“Brooklynn...” Someone says — Kenji? Darius? She blocks it out. Blocks it all out. She cannot think, if she is going to save him. She cannot think about losing two people she trusts — two pearls in an ocean of violence who care for her and the others — in less than a day. She cannot think about losing him, losing Roxie, losing more and more people...

Someone says something, but it gets lost in the noise.

“I have to do this!” She shouts through gritted teeth.

Blood rushes and roars in her ears, and every nerve in her brain fires on full force. She’s doing this. She’s counting the compressions, she’s shutting out the pain, she’s going to save him, she will save him, she has to save hi—

“Brooklynn, stop!” Kenji’s voice cuts through all the noise, and she’s so startled by the sudden quiet, that she stops. “He’s gone. You can’t save him.”

She looks into the darkness— realising her eyes were screwed shut the whole time— and opens them. Dave is still motionless, a tiny trail of saliva wandering out of his mouth. He doesn't move an inch. He is not breathing. He has no pulse. Brooklynn knows enough first aid to know that he is dead.

Darius inches closer, until he's next to her, and shuts Dave's half-open eyes with his fingertips.

“I'm sorry, Brooklynn,” he says. “We tried.”

“Yeah,” Brooklynn says, her voice wet with tears. She sits back on her heels, slumping in defeat, too numb to feel blood spurting from her leg at the movement. “We did. But we're really on our own now.”