Author Note: The title of the story come from a Bear's Den song. This is based primarily on the relationships and characteristics I saw from my playthrough, as well as the fact that Bisexual Sam is very important to me. When I played for the first time, I tried to make the choices that were as true to characters' starting stats, relationships, and their three main descriptor words as possible. This means that most of the characters are not quite as awful as you can potentially make them. I love them all and they're all trainwrecks, so... yeah.

This will likely have violence and sexual content later on. I'll be sure to put warnings in the chapter notes when it happens, in case that's not your jam. If ends up being too graphic or explicit, it'll have a modified version here and the more intense version on Ao3.

Chapter One:

Come Into My Lair

Sam had learned to tell when she was dreaming, to remember to look for the things that gave it away. It didn't make the nightmares easier to bear, but it helped her to keep from screaming aloud. The trick was to assess the reality of the situation, to ask yourself if it was possible. What was true? What was real?

The mines were cold, yet warmer than the woods high above. That was true, especially in winter. Her hands were dirty from her journey into the mine but she was at least wearing shoes. Her old trainers, filthy from what they had been through. That had been true and could be true again.

And Josh was standing five feet from her, watching her silently, back straight. He was wearing jeans and a dark green sweater. His face was clean and there was no blood on him.

That had never been true. It couldn't be true. Proof. She was dreaming.

"Hey Sammy. Finally decided to come visit my new digs?" He looked around at the tunnel, spreading his arms expansively. "Nice, right? Much better than a burned-out ruin. Or a padded cell."

"This isn't real." Her voice was flat. She put her hands on her hips, standing firm.

Josh shrugged. "Probably. But then, not much is real these days. Was anything ever real?"

"Shut up."

"I'm not real, remember? So I'm not here. So there's no one to shut up, right?"

"Shut up!" She pressed her palms against her eyes, willing herself to wake up.

Silence.

She glanced up. There was no one there: just an empty, echoing mine and the sound of dripping water. Much further down the tunnel something clanged, making her twitch. Sam looked around, trying to figure out where in the mine she was and to find another piece of proof that this wasn't real.

"Hello?"

The mine echoed it back. Then, from far away, another clang. Instinct seized her and she took off, feet pounding on the rough ground as she hurtled towards the sound, heart pounding. There was someone down there, someone who needed her. She could feel it in the pit of her stomach.

"Fuck! Hello?" Her feet were loud enough. Anything down here could hear her, whether she spoke or not.

She rounded a sharp corner and slid to a stop, sending a shower of pebbles skittering down the tunnel. There, next to the elevator shaft and barely visible, was someone lying on the ground. Sam approached carefully. "Hello?"

"Another fucking hallucination, huh?"

Her heart lurched painfully in her chest. "J—Josh?" He lifted his head to watch her approach. The Psycho's overalls were nearly rags, hanging on a skeletal frame. That would be right. As much as she wanted to find evidence that this wasn't real, she couldn't pinpoint anything as a red flag.

"Will you warn me before you dislocate your jaw and start shrieking, please?" He laughed wildly and shoved himself up to sit against the cage support. "Or if you're planning to melt this time, try not to get it on my clothes. They're designer, you see."

"Josh, you're alive?" Sam took another step, every muscle in her body trembling. Not real, right? It couldn't be real.

"Am I? That's surprising. I figured I'd be dead by now."

She gave in and darted forward, crouching next to him. "Josh? Look at me, Josh."

His head rolled around to the other side and he opened his eyes, watching her lazily. An amused smile twisted his lips. It was so familiar. She searched for something to prove that this couldn't be real. "Josh, you've been gone for weeks. How are you alive?"

He didn't answer and she touched his shoulder gently. Josh jerked violently at the contact and his head came up. He stared at her. Slowly, ever so slowly, he lifted a hand towards her face. He hesitated, then rough, dirty fingertips brushed a blonde tendril of hair out of her face to touch her cheek. Emboldened by the contact, he cupped her face with his hand. "I can touch you." His eyes widened. "I can touch you."

"You're alive," Sam said again, unable to quite believe it. The words felt alien on her tongue.

"You're here," he said wonderingly. "Actually you. Not the you in my head. I can touch you."

"Josh, how are you still alive? I need you to tell me."

He shook his head, still staring at where his fingers met her skin. "She didn't kill me."

"Who?"

"Hannah. Fuck. Sam, Hannah, my sister, the monster. She didn't kill me. She just dragged me back in the tunnels and left. There was… I found food, barely. But I thought—I thought you were all dead."

She let out a startled laugh at that. It had never occurred to her that he wouldn't know what had happened or that she would have to explain. "No, Josh, we all got out. All of us, actually. I don't know how we got so lucky. We – Mike and I – we burned down the lodge with the wendigos inside."

"Good." His head fell back against the post again and he closed his eyes.

"Josh, we had no idea you were still down here. We thought you were dead. They did a cursory search, but they called it off pretty quick because of the weather and what they found, but you were down here the whole time. I'm so sorry."

He was quiet for a long moment. His hand dropped back into his lap.

"Sammy?" He didn't open his eyes. "Sam, how did you get here?"

"What?"

He cracked his eyes open and looked out at the mine, the broken equipment and rocks. "You aren't here. I'm just crazy and desperate enough to imagine touching you."

"No, I'm here. Don't do that."

"Then how did you get here, Sammy-bird?" His voice turned teasing, sing-song, babbling. "Sammy-bird, Sammy-bird, fly away. Get out of my head and go away."

Sam sat back on her heels, tears stinging her eyes. She was losing him. She had to get him out of here and the best way would be to prove him wrong. Look for something unreal, prove to herself at least that this wasn't a dream. How had she gotten here? The bus, right? Like last time?

"Sam?"

The voice came from behind her and she jumped to her feet, spinning. Mike – overly tall, newly-scarred Mike – stared at her. "Sam, how did you get here?" He seemed confused.

How had she gotten here? Why was Mike here? Josh's laugh echoed around them. Not real.

She woke up with a start.

Her room was warm and dark, lit only by the orange glow of a streetlamp outside the window. A soft sound made her look over at her bedside table. A butterfly fluttered against her lampshade before landing on her book.

Her roommate was still out. Sam flicked the light on and climbed out of bed, collapsing into her desk chair. She wanted to crush the butterfly more than she'd ever wanted to hurt anything. She clenched her hands at her sides, knuckles turning white as she fought the urge. She believed in peace, she reminded herself rather pointedly. She valued life and that butterfly had done nothing to deserve her anger.

And yet.

It wasn't clear how it had gotten inside her bedroom. The little butterfly fluttered at the closed window, round, butter-yellow wings beating furiously as it tried to reach the dark campus outside the window. Sam glared at it. Yellow. Yellow was guidance, not that it had really helped her much. Sure, she'd come down from the mountain alive, but that didn't feel like much of a victory at this point.

She slumped back in the chair, digging her fingernails into the seat cushion. The butterfly landed on the sill, wings occasionally rising and falling. She'd read up on butterflies in the aftermath, although she couldn't put her finger on why she'd wanted to know. Call it a compulsion. The movement of their wings while at rest could mean many things: preventing the muscle exhaustion, adjusting internal temperature, or some experts even suggested they did it for fun. She saw the slope of its wings, the small markings breaking up the yellow. It was a California Dogface, she thought. A female one.

Hannah. Josh.

Beth.

Her stomach twisted, even now. All of it was lost to her: Hannah's easy laugh and passion, Beth's soft smile and warm hands, Josh's teasing voice and scary stories. As if having constant dreams of them wasn't torture enough, now she had to deal with the universe taunting her with butterflies.

The chair hit her desk as she shoved it backwards to stand. The noise startled the butterfly, who launched once more into the air. Sam snatched an empty glass from her roommate's dresser and trapped the butterfly, using an index card to separate it from the window. She opened the door with her elbow, nudging a shoe into place as a doorstop before she padded down the cheap carpet of the hallway. How was it that even in a stock, boring hallway, lit by overbearingly bright fluorescents and lined with identical and evenly spaced doors – possibly the furthest possible design from the lodge – she still couldn't shake the feeling of being stalked? Even knowing that it had been Josh the entire time did nothing to diminish the sensation.

She hit the crash bar on the exit door with her hip and slipped out into the southern California night. Her roommate had complained about it being freezing and it was all she could do not to laugh in the girl's face. Clearly, Tess had never truly been in the cold.

"Try wading through a pond in the middle of the Canadian winter at night," Sam had told her.

"When were you –" Tess had cut herself off, realizing.

They didn't talk about it, although it was common enough knowledge. Headlines had been everywhere in the weeks after their return. Sam had deleted her Facebook account entirely, unable to bear the messages from friends and strangers alike. She'd changed her phone number and email. She'd even toyed with the idea of changing schools. She knew it wouldn't really help, though. People knew her face now. They knew her name.

At least Tess knew better than to bring it up.

The school had offered Sam a single-occupant room, a rare luxury for an undergraduate, but she had turned them down. She didn't want to be alone. With a roommate, even one who wasn't a close friend, there was reassurance.

The cement of the landing was cool under the soles of her feet. She went barefoot often these days, tucking her shoes into her bag or tying them to her belt. She went running barefoot, ignoring the odd looks she got. Her feet had grown hard with callouses that she found as comforting as Tess's soft snores. If she was to be barefoot in a ruin ever again, she would be prepared.

She released the butterfly into the air and laughed softly at the thought. "It won't happen again," she announced to the night, turning sharply and heading back inside.

Because of course it wouldn't happen again. How could it? They were all gone now, even the damn lodge.

"Good," she whispered to herself, turning off the light again and curling up in the dark.