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[elliesattlerae]

A Mirror Universe Story with a dark romance between Beverly and Jean-Luc.

https://archiveofourown.org/works/71853891?view_full_work=true

Check the title The Captain's Quarters

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[elliesattlerae]

A post Star Trek: PIC season 3 story

Jack Crusher, Beverly and Picard have some quiet moments before his posting to the Enterprise

The sun had just dipped behind the vineyard hills, casting golden light across the porch at Château Picard. The air was warm, the kind that clung to skin like memory. Beverly, Jean-Luc, and Jack sat in wooden chairs, glasses of wine in hand, the quiet hum of crickets in the distance.

Jack swirled his glass once, then gave it a look.

"No offence, but I still prefer whiskey."

Beverly chuckled. "That’s because you inherited your grandfather’s taste for trouble."

"Or maybe I just like drinks that don’t smell like dried grapes and existential regret."

Jean-Luc raised a brow, but there was a smile playing at the corner of his mouth. "Blasphemy. You’re sitting on hallowed ground."

They all laughed—that deep, unforced laughter that only comes when the world, for once, isn’t ending.

But as the laughter faded, the stillness settled in again. Not heavy—just present. The kind that reminded you something was on the horizon.

Jack was the first to speak. "Tomorrow."

Beverly looked at him, her eyes soft. "You ready?"

He shrugged. "I’m ready for the work. The structure. The mission." He paused, then added, quieter, "I’m not sure I’m ready to leave this."

Jean-Luc nodded slowly, sipping his wine. "That means you’re more ready than you think."

Jack glanced between them. "And... I’ve been thinking about Sidney."

That caught Beverly’s attention. "Oh?"

Jack leaned forward slightly, glass resting on his knee. "She’s… smart. Confident. Good at everything. And after everything that happened... I don’t know. I feel like I shouldn’t be thinking about someone like her. Not now. Not so soon."

Jean-Luc said nothing, letting the silence stretch.

"I mean," Jack continued, "we went through all that together, and she stood by me. But I crossed boundaries before. I was careless with people. With her. What if this is just guilt-dressed up like a crush? Or worse, what if I still can't tell the difference between what I feel and what I... pick up from others?"

Beverly reached out, covering his hand with hers. "Jack, you’re not the same man you were seven months ago. You’re trying. You’re asking these questions. That’s more than most."

Jean-Luc set his glass down. "If you're honest with her—really honest—then you'll be giving her the choice you never had. That’s how trust begins again."

Jack gave a small nod. "Yeah. I just don’t want to scare her off."

"Then don’t start with declarations," Beverly said gently. "Start with coffee. Or a walk. Something simple. Let her come to know the man you’re becoming."

Jack looked at both of them, his features softening. "Thanks. For not giving up on me."

"We never did," Jean-Luc said. "Even when you were impossible."

Jack stood slowly, stretching. "I think I need some air. Gonna walk the vineyard."

Beverly smiled. "Don’t trip over your own brooding."

He gave a mock salute and headed down the steps, his silhouette fading into the vineyard path.

As the night deepened, Beverly and Jean-Luc stayed seated. The air was cooling now, laced with the scent of lavender and earth.

Jean-Luc reached for her hand. They sat like that, fingers laced, shoulders touching, gazing up as the stars slowly made themselves known.

"We’re finally going to make it, aren’t we?" Beverly said softly.

"No starship. No emergency beacon. No war," he replied.

She leaned her head against his shoulder. "It feels strange. Like we slipped through some kind of crack in time and finally found the version of us that works."

Jean-Luc smiled. "I should’ve asked you to marry me years ago."

Beverly lifted her head to look at him. There was warmth in her eyes, and something unreadable.

She didn’t answer. Not with words.

Instead, she stood and extended a hand, and he took it.

They moved quietly into the house, hand in hand, the door clicking shut behind them, the stars kept shining.

The Next Morning

The kitchen was filled with the smell of real coffee and toasted bread. Sunlight poured through the windows, catching dust motes dancing in the beams.

Jean-Luc stood by the stove in a robe, humming something in French. Beverly sat at the table in one of his shirts, sipping coffee, barefoot, her hair mussed but eyes clear.

Jack stepped into the kitchen, blinked once, and immediately turned around.

"Nope. Not doing this. Too cozy."

Beverly laughed. "You want eggs or are you just going to mock our happiness?"

"Bit of both," Jack mumbled, grabbing a mug.

He poured himself a cup and leaned against the counter.

Jean-Luc looked over. "Big day today. You ready?"

Jack took a sip, then nodded. "Yeah. I think I am."

He glanced at his parents and saw the ease between them, the kind of quiet love that doesn’t need to prove itself anymore.

And he smiled.

For once, the galaxy didn’t feel so heavy.

[elliesattlerae]

Fossils and Fire Light

Summary:

After the BioSyn hearings, Ellie and Alan escape to the quiet of the northern forests, hoping for peace after months of public scrutiny. But as the fire burns low and the night settles around them, Ellie can’t shake the parallels between the planet’s distant past and its uncertain future. The Devonian extinction wasn’t caused by a meteor or volcano — it was caused by life itself.

As the two reflect on the cycles of creation and destruction, they realize that humanity hasn’t escaped those ancient patterns… only accelerated them. In a fragile world teetering on the edge, the couple find comfort in the one constant they’ve always shared — each other.

Notes:

This story came to me after watching a bizarre ad on Netflix about BHP. They were boasting about mining about pot ash. It's a component in fertilizers It gave me the idea to do a short Grantler fluff piece talking about the Devonian Period.

Trust me it's not going to be apocalyptic.

The fire had burned down to a soft glow. Alan sat cross-legged near the embers; he rubbed his hands over it, trying to get more heat into them. Ellie sat opposite him, unperturbed by the cold. Her hair was curling loose around her face in the night breeze. The forest was hushed except for the low crackle of the dying fire, and somewhere they could hear insects croaking close by.

A soft wind blew through the pine trees. Above them, the stars shone in the sky. Orion was dancing overhead.

It had been a long time since they had done something so simple. It had been years — in fact, it had been decades since they had gone on a camping trip. Since Alan had decided to give up being a paleontologist, there had been no time for just the two of them. It was a relief to be alone. They wouldn’t have to worry about politicians and reporters for a while. The Senate had paid attention when they had spoken about giant locusts and dinosaurs, but they weren’t interested in the seemingly little things that could mean Earth was facing another mass-extinction event. Ellie was an environmental scientist, and her other findings about soil science had been completely ignored. That was frightening.

After everything they had been through, it hadn’t dawned on them how much they’d needed a camping trip until Alan casually suggested they take one, so almost on a whim they’d driven north, off the grid and into the quietest place they could find.

“When I started tracing the soil chemistry behind the locust swarms,” Ellie said after a long, comfortable silence between them, “I couldn’t stop thinking about the Devonian Period.”

Alan glanced up at her. “The Devonian Period? You mean the Age of Fishes? Like those huge armoured things that would give you nightmares. I’m surprised no one tried to clone them. Thank God they didn’t.”

She shook her head. “I mean it was the time when the first forests appeared — the time when plants took root and changed everything. Before that, the land was just rock and a few plants desperately hanging on for life. But when forests evolved, their roots broke down minerals, the nutrients flowed into rivers, and poured into the sea. It was too much of a good thing. The Earth wasn’t used to so much life on land. The algae thrived, oxygen crashed, coral reefs died. Paradoxically, it was all that life which caused the mass extinction.”

“You’re right, but I of all people know how dinosaurs get all the glory, and how that meteorite wiped them out. People forget about things like that or don’t know.”

Alan could almost sense her thoughts. She was becoming frustrated because she had said the same thing too many times to too many blank faces. The hearings had lasted for weeks — endless questions from people who had bothered to learn the science, but it was inconvenient. A let-someone-else-deal-with-it attitude.

Alan leaned closer to the fire. “I remember you talked about the soil problems at the hearings.”

Ellie gave a small, humourless laugh. “Yeah. I said it three times. I even brought slides. Ian tried to help — if you can call it that.”

Alan smiled faintly. “He was in fine form.”

“Oh, he was,” she said, eyes gleaming at the memory. “He compared the entire BioSyn operation to Pandora’s box — all the evils unleashed upon the world at once. And then he called one of the senators ‘a fossil.’ I thought security was going to drag him out.”

Alan chuckled under his breath. “You have to admit that was funny.”

“He wasn’t wrong, though,” Ellie said softly. “They only wanted one villain, and Dodgson was it. But the truth is, the villain’s the same as it’s always been — hubris. We’ve learned how to rewrite DNA and exploit the planet. We never learned wisdom.”

Her tone quieted. An ember from the fire popped.

Alan studied her face in the light. She looked tired — but the fire in her eyes was still there. Someone who would never accept defeat. It was one of the reasons he fell in love with her. He wanted to say something comforting, but words felt clumsy at the moment.

“You did well,” he said finally. “You told them the truth. That’s more than most people can do.”

Ellie exhaled slowly. “It didn’t feel like enough.”

“It never does,” he murmured. “But it still matters.”

For a while, they listened to the forest — the sigh of wind through dry leaves. Somewhere far off, a coyote howled once and then was silent.

“Ian’s right about one thing,” Ellie said finally. “Chaos always finds a way. BioSyn wasn’t the first, and I have a feeling it won’t be the last. Someone else will try again and just add yet another layer of destruction.”

Alan rubbed his hands together, feeling the sting of cold air. “That’s why we’re still here — to clean up after them.”

She gave him a gentle push, and she laughed.

The fire burned even lower. Ellie reached out and dropped another stick onto it. Sparks flared, lighting her face for a moment. Nothing could stop her, even when she was occasionally melancholy like tonight.

“You’re saying what’s happening now,” he asked, “the locusts, the crops… it’s the same pattern?”

“The same pattern,” she said softly. “Just faster. We’ve learned how to control genes, but not consequences. Every discovery reshapes the world a little more than we meant it to.”

Alan watched her, chest tightening — admiration and ache in equal measure. She was talking about mass extinction, but all he could think about was how alive she looked, firelight caught in her eyes. That counted for something.

The silence returned. Above them, the constellations were in a different position now, and they had seen life come and go before returning again.

“You are the most amazing woman I have ever known. If you need the power put back on, ask Ellie Sattler. If you need someone to rescue you from an island full of dinosaurs, then you call the marines. When there’s an ecological crisis, you call Ellie Sattler.”

She smiled at what he had just said. Those few words made her feel important.

Now that she was more at ease, Alan sat beside her. He fumbled around the pocket of his thick jacket and found a piece of fossilized coral he’d picked up near the creek earlier while they had been hiking together. He gave it to her.

She examined it closely in the firelight. Its ridges were faint but distinctive. “You didn’t tell me you found this. It’s amazing. I can’t believe it. This is from the Devonian.”

His eyes lit up in satisfaction. “I thought you’d like this because despite all the destruction this planet has seen, nothing ever really dies.” He paused for a moment. “Life finds a way.”

She gave a gentle laugh at hearing Ian’s words coming from Alan.

They had spent decades apart, but when Alan drew her in for a kiss, their lips met with the same ease as breathing. They were just two people who felt like the weight of the world on their shoulders had been lifted.

“Let’s go to sleep,” Alan suggested.

He led her into the tent; they both got undressed. Alan gestured for her to go into the double-sized sleeping bag with a small smile. She smiled back and went in, with Alan quickly joining her. He spooned her from behind and kissed her forehead.

“I love you, Alan. Never forget that.”

Alan replied, “I’ve always loved you, and I always will.”

They both yawned, falling asleep quickly. Despite all the problems in the world, this was something special.

[elliesattlerae]

Chapter 1 of More Teeth (2 more chapters)

Also on A03 under the same title.

Ellie ie and Alan had a busy day. After the fallout from the Dolomites, the Senate hearings, and dealing with reporters, they hadn't had much time for themselves. Though Alan moved quickly and decided to ask her to marry him, he told her now that they had a second chance, he was not going to waste it.

Alan had been fixing a fence for the eventual horses they were going to get, and Ellie was cleaning up the house for when they could get more furniture and move in their volumes of books and fossil samples.

A few years ago, Alan had decided to buy a small farm that needed a great deal of work — a real fixer-upper. He told Ellie that he had decided to buy it in case he wanted to retire, and because Snakewater had so many good memories, and that it was the perfect place.

When he first told Ellie about the place, she was excited. She had told him about wanting a small farm too. A place where she could grow organic vegetables. She lamented that she hadn't been able to do that in the suburbs of Washington. Ellie's environmental work was still important, but she decided to work on it part-time, so she could spend more time with Alan.

This place was a great way to take a break from this hectic world. It was just after sunset on her and Alan's small farm. Ellie was enjoying her cup of tea, revelling in its warmth on this chilly night. She could hear Alan making a noise on the porch. It was a noise she always dreaded. She set down her tea and glanced at Alan - he was cleaning his shotgun. They both hated guns, and they never expected they'd need one on a remote Montana farm, or even a town for that matter. Ellie also owned one, but she was never as "enthusiastic" as Alan about them.

“You expecting trouble tonight?” she asked.

He gave her a dry look as he continued to clean his gun. “We live in a post-dinosaur world, Ellie. Trouble tends to show up whether we expect it or not."

"Compys are just about the worst. If you get a couple of them then it's fine, but they are usually in packs. When they are in packs someone could get killed. So far we have been lucky."

Ellie agreed. "What makes them worse is that they breed like rats."

During the course of her work as an environmental scientist, she knew the damage rats could cause. They owned chickens, and where chickens were around, rats weren't too far away, but things were changing now. You didn't have to worry about them so much anymore with the rise of the Compys. They continued to proliferate across the world. Compys were taking their place.

Their dog started to bark furiously. The barking then turned into growling.

Ellie asked him, "What's wrong, Muttley?"

He was a rambunctious Maltese shih Tzu who had a typical small dog mentality. "Death before dishonour."

A screech rang out from the coop. Ellie, Alan and Muttley tentatively approached it.

Alan asked desperately. "Grab your shotgun and get a flashlight."

Ellie raced to the cabin to get them before rejoining Alan. They gave each other a disbelieving look.

Ellie strapped the gun over her shoulder and turned on the flashlight. Alan quietly loaded his shotgun. They moved tentatively through the grass with Muttley close by.

Ellie swept the flashlight beam— Their worst fears had come true. There were dozens of tiny, green, feathered bodies scrambling in the straw. They had yellow eyes that glowed in the dark. Tiny claws tore at the hens in a bloody frenzy. Several of them hissed, jaws bloodstained. Ellie felt a pang of sympathy for the chickens. Earlier in the day they had just been enjoying the sunshine and pecking in the grass.

“Compys,” Alan muttered. “Goddamn Compys.”

One turned and made direct eye contact with them. Then, like a hive of angry bees, they swarmed to "increase" their numbers. Humans and a dog were much larger, so that made them a better target. Their confidence made them a much better target.

Both of them knew they couldn't take all of them on at the moment in such an open space, and Alan screamed, “Run!"

Ellie quickly followed Alan. They bolted towards their cabin. Muttley ran after Ellie and Alan. He started to bark and growl again.

They reached the porch. Ellie kicked the door open with Alan and Muttley on her heels. One of the the Compys had leapt onto Alan’s leg. Its claws and teeth were tearing through his jeans. Muttley made a flying leap into the air and yanked the Compy off Alan's leg. He savagely tore at it before breaking its neck.

Inside, Ellie slammed the door shut, breathing hard.

"Ellie, we'll have to blast as many as possible. I just hope we have enough ammo. Pray that some of them will retreat."

Ellie nodded grimly. "We'll stand back to back to cover all angles, and hopefully Muttley will take out the stragglers."

The compys began to smash through the windows. They nodded at each other. No words needed to be said. This was it.

There were so many of them that neither Ellie nor Alan had to worry about accuracy. Every time a shot was fired off; their ears rang. It was becoming painful, and the smoke from their gun filled their nostrils, making it harder to breathe.

Boom, boom! Time began to blur... Dozens of compys dropped dead. Some of them dying instantly, others writhing around before they becoming still. The Compys had overestimated their abilities, and some of them retreated into the night.

The blood frenzy was abating, but some of them still didn't want to give up. Ellie and Alan both knew they were almost out of ammo, and that to get more from a cabinet across the room was a suicide mission.

And just as they ran out of ammunition, there was only one Compy left. It hissed and charged—Ellie used the butt of her gun and hit it mid-leap, as it lay withering on the ground. Ellie then lifted her leg and stomped it, making a squealing sound. It moaned in pain before quickly dying.

She glanced at the bloody house, it was almost surreal. Their cabin had looked like a butcher's shop. The smell of their bodies began to make Ellie queasy to the point of vomiting, and it looked like he was going to do it too.

They were both panting, trying to catch their breath, and the adrenaline was beginning to wear off. Alan began to moan in pain, "My leg, Ellie!"

She was shocked by the amount of blood streaming down his leg. She ran into the bedroom and tore a sheet in half. Then she wrapped it around Alan's leg as a tourniquet, and it helped to stem the flow of blood, but she didn't know how long it would last.

They were both stunned into silence, Muttley was whimpering. A Compy had taken a small chunk out of him, and his leg was bloody too. Muttley's whimpering increased when he saw Alan.

Ellie said in a reassuring tone, "It's okay, boy. We're going to get him to a hospital, and I'll make sure you'll be okay too."

Muttley cocked his head. He somehow knew what Ellie was talking about, and he was relieved.

Ellie supported Alan as they walked to their pickup truck. "The Compys are going further north. We have to alert the authorities that they have finally reached Montana.

They both knew their quiet rustic area would never be the same. Through the pain, he agreed. "Yeah, and it looks like the Mesozoic has triumphed over the Cenozoic again."

After making sure Alan was safely in the truck, she tore off the sleeve of her blouse and wrapped up Muttley's leg, and gingerly put him into the backseat.

The adrenaline had well and truly faded now for both of them. There was the shock and weight of what happened. Now came the fear.

Ellie glanced back towards the broken windows, the blood smeared on the floor, the shredded feathers. The cabin was ruined, but it wasn’t the damage that chilled her. The biggest threat to the world wasn't T-rexs, Dimetrodons or Velociraptors. Ellie and Alan had faced off against all three, and they had won. Rather, it felt surreal that such small creatures could injure Alan and Muttley so much, not to mention almost destroying an entire chicken coop and a small cabin.

Outside, the first snows of the season began to fall. It landed almost silently on the porch and the ground. The snow began to cover the blood with a pale dusting, like nature itself was trying to erase the evidence of this wretched night. It felt like a portent of things to come.

[elliesattlerae]

Alan was nursing his sixth shot of whiskey. The bottle was still mostly full. It was an extremely lonely night in on his Montana dig site. Tonight Ellie was going to marry Mark Degler. He still couldn't wrap his mind around it.

A few months after they had broken up, Alan disappeared into the depths of Mongolia for a year. He had an offer to work on a dig there after some new Tarbosaurus fossils were discovered. They were Asia's version of a T-Rex.  They were smaller than a T-Rex, but impressive nonetheless.  In a way it had been a godsend because when he heard Ellie had met someone else, he had no idea if he could bear to see her getting on with her life. But he had his chance with her and blown it.  Because of his work in Asia, he never received an invitation to her wedding.  He wanted to hide there forever, but like all paleontological digs the money dried up.  Alan had only heard about her wedding a few days before she was due to get married.

After Jurassic Park, it seemed that they had turned a corner. Alan decided that he finally wanted children with her.  Ellie was estatic.  She came off birth control immediately.  But it wasn't long after that his nightmares about Isla Nublar had well and started to big. At first the nightmares were just about Ellie. He wasn't able to save her from the raptors. The images of them ripping her apart had him waking up in a cold sweat, and his heart felt like it was going to beat through his chest. Ellie would try comfort him by holding him close in their bed. Her reassuring words did nothing to alay his fears. As the months passed by, he began to have nightmares about Timmy and Lex as well. Then things took a real U turn. Alan had nightmares about not being able to protect their children. His head was filled with images of a T-Rex taunting THEIR children, and then ripping them apart. The raptors looked at this scene of carnage with patience, before chowing down on their remains. His screams would resonate throughout the apartment. She would give him shoulder massages, cups of herbal tea to help calm him down. But nothing worked.

A few months later Ellie begged him to simply talk to her about their experiences, and he retreated further into his shell. He ignored she was having trouble too, but it was always about HIS experiences not her's. Alan should have known he was being selfish, but it didn't occur to him at the time. At the time...

The sex between the two of them began to dry up. He was never in the mood for it. Alan couldn't even get an erection. Ellie was beyond frustrated with him. Ellie begged him to get some kind of help. But he was stubborn. He'd always say to her there was no one else to help. She had suggested forming a support group of sorts with the other survivors. They both acknowledged that they couldn't get outside help. No psychologist would believe them. Alan rebuffed the idea of a "support group".

They started to argue. Sometimes, they could be quite vicious, but by the morning they always made up. Ellie was becoming sick of this make up and break up situation.

Then one day something changed in him. He knew he could never have children not even with her. Ellie recognised the look in his eyes. Her eyes filled with tears. And on a beautiful day during May she decided to leave him. She wanted to move on with her life and follow her dreams of having a family. He was content to stay in Montana.

After he returned home from Mongolia, he had heard from a mutual friend that she was only days away from getting married to a lawyer from the State Department. That in itself was beyond confusing. What would she have in common with him? But the shocking news of her marriage wasn't the only BAD NEWS. She was retiring from the field of paleobotany at the height of her career, and becoming a full time mother. Though in the near future she'd probably start to write children's books. Ellie didn't even sound like the same woman.

Perhaps he should of called, and begged to give him a second chance. He knew she was settling for this man. She was giving up far too much. But he just couldn't bring himself to do it. He'd just have to accept the fact she had moved on with her life.

Alan looked at the bottle of whisky. It was almost empty now. He looked up at the stars. Orion seemed to be taunting him with his beauty. The stars were beginning to blur, but the pain was still there. Alan returned to his trailer to start on a second bottle of whisky. The bottle of whisky would be his only comfort tonight.

#AlanGrant #EllieSattler #FanFiction #Fanfic #JurassicPark

[elliesattlerae]

Hi, everyone. I'm new. I hope to have some fun.