Do you have any ideas for that eco-terrorist team-up au (Zlaire + Brooklyn) that you made a while back? I wanna know how Zia and Claire ended up together here? Also what's up with Maisie? (It's a lot at once I know)
i am so excited to have someone ask this.
my vision for it goes pretty canon compliant with the sole exception that clawen is purely platonic and don't get back together in 2018. this is a "claire catches major feelings for zia during the dpg" au. i imagine maisie being a little like the daughter zlaire and owen co-parent. kind of like she's the child of amicable divorce where one parent remarried. zia isn't maisie's other mom as much as her step-butch. her bonus momdad who plays baseball with her during their week with her. they all live in the same area of cali so maisie has a lot of access to her whole found family. but zlaire would be closer to san fran proper while owen stays in the countryside.
zlaire have a very traditional best friends to lovers story. it starts the same as canon, or what i imagine is canon. zia is one of the first people claire recruits for her mission of saving the dinosaurs. zia is SO passionate about extinct life and she believes firmly in treating them as you would any other animal. claire admires this passion and thinks she's the perfect teammate. franklin comes along soon too but zlaire have this special lesbian bond. zia isn't afraid to challenge claire at all, unlike franklin. they get along 90% of the time but zia isn't afraid of losing claire when she puts her foot down in that small 10% where they're at odds. and claire needs someone who challenges her. she gets bored otherwise. they bond very naturally as they pull long nights and longer days. claire woos donors while zia gives her facts to shoot off. before claire even realizes what's happening, she's thinking stuff like "i saw such a cute dog today. i should text zia about it". meanwhile, zia realizes what's happening but she's all "nothing will come from it. claire isn't into me like that."
i think they'd get together in the aftermath of fallen kingdom because claire is having the worst time ever and zia is just being too supportive about it. she needs her best friend and the lines blur between what a best friend would do and what a girlfriend would do. they definitely kiss a few times without putting a label on it. claire is very avoidant and tries to evade that conversation as long as she can because if zia says it's just a trauma thing she will actually become suicidal. so zia has to broach it first and be like "look. claire, youre my best friend. but you need to stop doing this because i have feelings for you. it's not good for me" and claire pounces to make zia her formal girlfriend. but the deeper the relationship gets, the more they kinda encourage each other's freak. they dont intend to do eco-terrorism to begin with. it starts really small. online posts kind of stuff. but it doesnt feel like enough. so now theyre putting up anon posters. but that's not enough either. which is how they end up doing actual crimes to save dinosaurs.
brooklynn comes in a while later. one of the things claire mentions for why she does what she does is the dpw feels useless. i think that'd impact her here too. zia and claire (and franklin) are sick of how slow and unresponsive the government response is to dinosaurs and they're doing something about it. i dont think they have much mainstream attention but dark jurassic is catching on to this mysterious group who works in the california area. and you know who else lives in cali? darius. it'd be so easy for brooklynn to do the same 'using darius as cover for her journalism' thing but for trying to track down zlaire.
in this au, i think either they'd rescue brooklynn from the allo or they'd be allies of ronnie who help the recovery. i lean towards the latter because i like ronnie. i could very easily see them being at the scene or ronnie calling zia for backup on a "sensitive emergency case". but instead of fleeing to the dln after the dpw gets suspicious of ronnie, she flees to the zlaire residence. there, brooklynn has back up in all of her investigating. and, unlike anyone else in this franchise, claire has experience keeping someone off the grid. she has a clone daughter and understands the importance of being undetectable. but i also see brooklynn eventually cutting them off too out of fear that maisie will get dragged in. and oh boy. when she gets to malta with soyona and hears "lockwood female".... that, along with her friends, makes her really realize how deep she's gotten herself in this mess
