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It was storming again.
Really, Yaz had come to expect this from time to time, given Isla Nublar's tropical location, but that didn't make it any easier to bear. Living in a rickety, salvaged-from-rubble treehouse, all of the Camp Fam had come to fear extreme weather, lest the heavy rain and high winds threaten the structural integrity of their barely stable home.
But worse than that, not every dinosaur minded hunting in the rain. Too many times, and too close to their shelter, Yaz had heard the death cries of hunkered down herbivores snatched up by predators eager to take advantage of their masked presence. She lost sleep to it every time, terrified that one day she and her friends would become the poor, unfortunate prey cornered in their place of safety. Even if their treehouse was too high to be reached, she didn't doubt a determined T. Rex could knock it down with enough effort.
Or that some unnatural, unpredictable creature could simply make that jump and would just because.
With a clap of thunder came the memory of a long, haunting howl so disconnected from anything Yaz had ever heard that it didn't sound real. Through the downpour she could still detect the stalking footsteps below. It was only a matter of time before the thing looked up and realized what easy pickings they were. It would scale the tree, invade their home, and shatter any remaining illusions that they would ever be safe anywhere.
In a flash of lightning, several things shot through Yaz's mind at once. Running at full speed despite the burning in her lungs and muscles, desperate to cross the island as fast as possible no matter the danger. Deep, resonating agony in her ruined ankle that robbed her of her speed and threatened more than just her own life. A horrifying amalgamation standing over her prone form, and the absolute certainty that this was what death looked like.
As the next arc of electricity illuminated the face of her killer, Yaz opened her mouth to scream out a challenge.
The sound of her own voice finally woke her, and she bolted upright in a haze of lingering fear and dread. It took about five seconds of staring into the darkness for her to process that there was no Scorpios Rex in front of her, and then another two to realize she had approximately no idea where she was.
"Yaz?"
Yaz twisted around and very, very nearly struck the source of the startling noise. Her hand did move in that direction, but was quickly seized and brought into a gentle grip before it could gain any momentum.
"Hey- it's just me!" The familiar voice spoke with no frustration and little surprise, as if this were a common, long-accepted occurrence. "It's okay. Nothing's gonna hurt you."
Yaz fought to pull her arm back, but she couldn't seem to get it free.
"Yaz!"
Slowly, Yaz's mind sharpened, and Sammy's kind, gentle face came into focus. Heart still racing, Yaz realized with something of a jolt that she'd been looking right at her and yet hadn't seen her at all until now.
"You with me, babe?" Sammy asked softly, her too-hard squeeze of Yaz's hand the only indication that she, too, had just been scared out of her mind. How could she not be, having woken up to Yaz's terrified scream?
"Y-yeah..." Yaz wheezed out.
It came to her at last that she wasn't on Nublar, and hadn't been for about ten years now. She was in Texas, in the cozy house on the ranch she owned with Sammy, tucked safely into bed beside her wife.
The differences couldn't have been any more apparent. A comfortable, undamaged surface to sleep on instead of a salvaged Camp Cretaceous bunk. Actual walls offering some semblance of protection from the outside. No little natural sounds like the chirping of night bugs or babbling of the nearby creak that had become such a constant that, when she first returned home, things had felt almost painfully silent.
No tropical storm, either. It was raining, but not that hard. Nothing like that awful night. That night of pain and terror which continued to haunt her a decade later.
But it wasn't usually this bad anymore. Of course, she still had nightmares from time to time, and she tended to get antsy during storms, but her reactions had grown much tamer. Usually, she would wake up and be able to soothe herself back to sleep relatively quickly. At worst, she would start crying and eventually wake Sammy.
It had been years since she'd screamed herself awake like this, and even longer since she'd taken so long to fully come out of a nightmare. And she'd only ever struck out in fear once before, barely two years out from her experience on Nublar. She still cringed to this day at the memory of whacking Sammy in the face for asking if she was okay.
Though her tense muscles couldn't quite relax, Yaz leaned back against the headboard with a slow sigh.
"I'm sorry," she murmured.
"Nothing to be sorry for." Sammy slotted into place beside her. "You wanna talk about it?"
Yaz shrugged. Usually, when she didn't want to talk, it was because everything had already been said over the years. But with this, she had the opposite problem. Even all this time later, Sammy had no idea exactly what Yaz had gone through that night to retrieve the Scorpios antidote and save her life. Yaz had never told anyone; not even any of her therapists. The memory just felt too intimate. Too close to her soul.
And, really, it was just hard to admit out loud that she would've gone into that dinosaur's mouth screaming but not fighting if Ben and Darius's distraction had been a second later.
"I know you get kind of jumpy on nights like this," Sammy began cautiously, "but this seems... a little worse than normal?"
"Nightmare I haven't had in a while," Yaz replied, shifting uncomfortably in her now sweaty t-shirt. "Pretty bad one."
"Nublar?" Sammy inquired, because their experiences with the Broker and Biosyn had left scars of their own in Yaz's mind, and now she dreamed of drowning in Wyoming or Senegal, the teeth and claws of raptors, and a rain of flaming locusts about as much as anything else.
"Nublar," Yaz confirmed.
"Indominus?"
Yaz shook her head, and Sammy seemed to take it as a cue of some kind. She moved closer and pressed her forehead to Yaz's temple.
"You don't have to tell me," she murmured. "Is there anything you need right now?"
Whatever she asked, Yaz knew Sammy would do anything her power to make it happen. She would get out of bed right here and now to make tea or fetch anything Yaz wanted, or stay up all night so Yaz wouldn't have to be alone with her thoughts, or just hold her and whisper gentle reassurances until she managed to fall back to sleep. She'd done of all it before, readily and without complaint.
But Yaz didn't ask. Some nights, there wasn't much to be done to soothe the crawling, itchy feeling her dreams left behind.
"I don't think so," she said softly. "I might just have to bring it up in therapy next week. See if there might be anything that brought this one back to the surface."
"How long has it been since you've had that dream?"
"Three years, I think," Yaz replied. "It's usually the Suchomimus that gets me these days. Or that giant blind one in Biosyn Valley."
"God, that one was freaky," Sammy agreed. "Wasn't it Toro last time?"
"That was the time before," Yaz said. "I don't think I woke you up last time."
"I wish you had. You know I'm always here for you." If it were possible, Sammy tried to nuzzle closer still. Her warm, gentle breath tickled Yaz's face, and her sweet, murmuring voice seemed to unlock something in the latter's chest.
"I know." Yaz took a deep breath, then slowly let it out. "It was the Scorpios Rex tonight."
Sammy lifted her head slightly, her eyes full of sympathy. "Had plenty of those ones myself."
Yaz knew she could leave it here. That first encounter with the Scorpios had been traumatic enough for everyone; more than enough to explain continued nightmares. Sammy had no reason to pry or think it ran any deeper, and Yaz had no obligation to elaborate. But, after ten years of keeping the details of that night to herself, maybe it was finally time.
"It almost got me, too, y'know," she murmured.
Sammy's brow furrowed, but she didn't ask. She waited, giving Yaz the time and space she needed to decide what, if anything, she wanted to say next.
"After it attacked you, it went back toward the lab," she went on. "I had to go there to get you the antidote, and I ran right into it. It chased me back to the river. Busted the shit out of my ankle jumping across. I thought I got away, but it managed to get behind me. Or maybe it was the second one. I'm not really sure."
She had more to say, but needed a moment to gather the words properly. In the meantime, Sammy's face had shifted from concerned to horrified.
"That's... the dream, right? The nightmare?"
Yaz let out a bitter chuckle, completely involuntarily.
"I wish."
Instantly, she regretted saying it like that. Sammy sat up, her eyes wide and hands twitching like she wanted to reach out and help in some way, but there was nothing left for her to do.
"Yaz-"
"Sammy, it's okay," Yaz murmured. "It was ten years ago. I'm fine."
"...how did you get away?" Sammy asked almost cautiously, like the potential of an answer somehow scared her. Like she knew, somehow, she wouldn't like what she was going to hear.
"I almost didn't." Yaz leaned back and tilted her head up, because staring at the ceiling was easier than looking Sammy in the eye. "I was cornered, and even if I could've gotten past the thing, I couldn't run. I... I really thought I was going to die."
She squeezed her eyes shut as tears began to prick at their corners, feeling Sammy's hand gently grasp her shoulder.
"But what did you do?"
"I screamed at it," Yaz replied, already burning with shame, "to hurry up and kill me."
"You what?" Sammy didn't yell. Honestly, Yaz thought it might be better if she did. Instead, she just sounded completely devastated.
"I know," she said quickly. "It was stupid, and it wasn't just my life at stake, and I should've at least tried to find some way out. But I was so scared and tired-"
"Yaz." Sammy lightly squeezed her shoulder, her voice a bit more even. "You don't have to defend yourself. I'm not mad at you. I'm just... I'm so sorry."
Finally, Yaz found it in herself to look at her. She found sweet gray eyes looking back at her, full of love and sadness. Yaz breathed deeply, let it out slowly, and forced herself to relax.
"It was a long time ago," she said. "I haven't even really thought about it in a while. I'm okay."
Sammy settled back down beside her, propping herself up so that they were still eye-level, so close they were practically nose-to-nose. Her expression held unasked questions, a mild anxiety brightening her eyes.
"What is it?" Yaz asked.
"You said you hurt your ankle," Sammy murmured. "It was healing before that."
Yaz waited for Sammy to continue, but the silence stretched on for several minutes, even as it seemed Sammy had more to say.
"You want to tell me what you're thinking?" she prompted.
"Do you have the space for it right now?" Sammy sounded almost ashamed to be asking. "You just had that awful dream, and I know you must be tired."
"Go ahead," Yaz replied softly. For encouragement, she pressed a gentle kiss to Sammy's head. "I want to know what's on your mind."
Sammy took a moment before saying, "you had to quit track because of what you did to save me. If you hadn't hurt your ankle again, it might've healed okay. I just... I hate that you went through all that because of me."
That was, admittedly, a little more than Yaz had bargained for. But she rolled with it anyway, because there was no way she was going to let Sammy go back to sleep blaming herself for this.
"It wasn't your fault," she said firmly. "We can't know that it would've healed right. I was still running on it all the time."
"But it could've had a chance," Sammy went on. "I'm sorry. I don't mean to put everything on myself, but just the thought that you lost the future you wanted because of me-"
"It's not true." Yaz normally tried not to interrupt such musings, as did Sammy. They often found it more productive to let everything be said and save their comments until the end. But it just wasn't true. "I was never going to last in track."
"Please don't lie to make me feel better."
"I'm not," Yaz insisted. "That was far from my first injury. I competed on a torn ACL, remember? That catches up to you. Sooner or later, I was going to have to call it quits anyway. And even if it was true, even if I was going to have the best track career in history and that specific injury ruined it, it still wasn't your fault. You never asked for that dinosaur to attack you. You didn't do anything wrong. There's no reason to blame yourself for something that was done to you."
Sammy's heavy eyes met hers, her face still burdened and sad.
"Nothing that happened on that island was our fault," Yaz whispered. "Nothing. We were just kids."
"I know," Sammy said at last. "And you shouldn't be so hard on yourself about how you reacted when the Scorpios cornered you. It hurts me to think what could've happened, but I get it. You were scared and hurt, and you were only fifteen. We were too young to be dealing with any of it."
"I think everyone's too young to spend six months on an island full of killer dinosaurs," Yaz quipped, and the tension eased slightly as they shared a small laugh.
"So, how did you get away?" Sammy asked after a moment. "You never said."
"Ben and Darius started a fire to distract it," Yaz replied. "It just forgot about me. I got lucky. I didn't even know they were planning to do that."
"Thank God they did, though," Sammy murmured. "They saved your life."
"Both our lives." Yaz nuzzled softly into the crook of Sammy's neck.
"Surviving wouldn't have been worth it if you hadn't made it back," Sammy remarked quietly. Yaz raised her brows, and she continued, "I don't mean that to be... y'know. I just can't imagine my life without you."
"I get it," Yaz replied, settling back down. "The fact that I got to finish growing up with you with you means the world to me. I wouldn't trade our time on Nublar for an easier life. I like this one, where we get to be together. That's worth more to me than running."
Sammy's lips gently pressed against her cheek.
"I love you, Yaz," she murmured.
"Love you too."
They relaxed into one another, feeling lighter. Slowly, they began to settle back into their sleeping positions.
"Do you want to try to get back to sleep?" Sammy asked.
"Yeah," Yaz replied. It was still raining, and she knew she might have a hard time falling asleep again, but she was definitely tired enough to try.
Sammy's arms wrapped loosely around her, just enough to communicate a silent I've got you. It made the task of getting back to sleep feel a little easier. Safer, knowing that if she did have another nightmare, she would wake up in the place she felt most secure and protected.
She wouldn't give up feeling this loved for anything, regardless of whatever she'd endured to get here. Injuries, terror, trauma. It didn't matter. She would do it all again in a heartbeat.
She wished she could tell her younger self that it was all going to turn out okay. That after everything, she would still get to be happy. Maybe not the way she'd always imagined, but in a way that worked for her. She would have a safe, comfortable home and someone she loved to share it with, and that would be enough.
With that in her mind, she managed to fall asleep quickly, free of nightmares for now.