Frozen

by Asynca

Set AFTER The Dreaming. It's Christmas, Min and Bree are visiting, but Lara is still haunted by events of The Dreaming and is unable to forgive herself for what she did to Sam.

Frozen - Lara/Sam (Min/Bree) - SFW

For Miniasherz for being such a generous supporter of my novel Under My Skin.

"something in London with Lara and Sam and Min and Bree, and with Frozen. And singing."

Not sure if this was quite what they were after, but I hope they enjoy it anyway :)

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I knew I shouldn't keep checking the clock. It only made me worry more about the sleep I wasn't getting and then I lay there, knackered, counting how many hours left until dawn and wondering if… five or so hours sleep would be enough. I looked over at the time again to check my calculations; 2:41am. Four and a half hours, perhaps. I was going to be tired in the morning again.

It wasn't that Sam wasn't completely used to me being tired – and after last December, Min and Bree had certainly seen me loads more tired than I'd be tomorrow – it was just… I sighed heavily. It was just that yesterday I'd helped Sam put up all the Christmas decorations for when Min and Bree arrived and my arms were sore, and if I didn't sleep, they'd just get sorer and they'd ache and Bree was really excited about seeing London tomorrow and we'd probably do a lot of walking about in the cold… and I wanted to enjoy it. I just wanted to be able to enjoy it.

I turned over carefully so as not to pull the duvet and wake Sam. She was sleeping, at least, with the duvet bunched up in two loose fists under her chin. I lay there and listened to her gentle little snores for a few minutes, watching her chest slowly rise and fall. There was something hypnotic about that. She's safe, I thought. We're safe. There's nothing at all to worry about. I can sleep, I can.

I closed my eyes and let my head sink back into my feather pillow. Bree and Sam had had their heads together all evening planning our itinerary for tomorrow, and I knew it included the British Museum. I didn't generally do the tours for people, but I'd been involved in researching and writing the material and I think both Min and Bree were interested in having a real archaeologist show them around some of the exhibits. There were some brilliant things on display at the moment, actually. I wasn't that fond of the Tutankhamun collection – I thought too much focus had been on making the displays look flashy and there wasn't enough real history in it – but the Norse collection was very interesting, and—something brushed my leg and was that a creature, or a spirit, it's a spirit!—

—SHIT!—

—I sat bolt upright and threw the duvet off my leg and wrenched up my pyjama pants, looking all over my skin and it was dark, and the shadows from the windows fell on my legs and—God, not again, not again!— I kept thinking I saw spirits ducking under the material and pretty soon I had hurriedly taken the whole lot of my clothes off, pulling my flesh this way and that at any second expecting to see one, at any second expecting to be staring down at what I felt in my heart must be there: a spirit. One that Old Johnson hadn't removed. The one spirit that was stopping me from sleeping all the time.

It was crazy, and it was stupid, but every second I looked under my knee or across my stomach or felt around desperately on the skin of my neck and face for that swimming, brushing feeling of having them move along my flesh I expected to see one and I could just imagine what that would feel like, looking down at those lines on my skin. Lines with the power to kill with a single touch. Lines that meant I'd slept next to Sam every night – that I'd kissed her and touched her and hugged her and made love to her – and any of those times I could have killed her. That mouth of hers I knew so well could have opened like that mercenary's when the fish spirit had swum onto him, and buckets and buckets of water could have poured and gushed out of her lungs as her eyes were wide in panic and she clawed at her throat and her chest and her ribs heaved as she tried and tried to breathe but couldn't—God!—did I check under my arms yet…?

After I felt every single inch of myself and checked and checked and checked and re-checked… my heart pounding and each breath feeling like it wasn't giving me enough air at all… my skin was clear. I didn't find anything.

It's okay, Lara, I told myself. There's nothing there. There's no spirits left.

I sat there on the bed with my clear skin, trying to take deep breaths.

And that's when it hit me how ridiculous I was being. I was naked, and it was freezing in our room, and I had red marks on my skin from pulling it about. I was sitting there naked in the bed thinking I had spirits all over me. But of course there weren't any spirits left, it wasn't the spirits I'd felt. The duvet might have brushed my leg, or maybe Sam was shifting in her sleep like she was right now, or… anything.

Sam mumbled something that sounded like, 'It's okay, everything's okay', and, semi-conscious, reached out and brushed my bare arm affectionately with her knuckles. After a few moments, she was snoring again. At least she never woke up properly anymore when I did this.

I swung my legs over the side of the bed, still feeling my heart against my ribs. I sat there for a moment, staring at my bare feet and all the healed scars on my legs before I put my pyjamas back on and then stood up.

Maybe I should just do something else for a while, I thought. Rather than lying here for the rest of the night and worrying about the fact I'm not sleeping.

I hoisted myself up off the mattress and tip-toed downstairs with my bare feet. We'd put a spare bed up for Min and Bree in the back hallway by the laundry, so as I passed by I stopped to listen and see if I could hear anything. I didn't want to intrude on them. When all I heard was slow, peaceful breathing, I went into the living room.

This Christmas tree lights were still flashing; red, blue, green, yellow – I watched them cycle through all the colours a few times and then sunk onto the couch. The leather felt warm.

Someone must have stoked the fire well after Sam and I had gone to bed, because it was still slowly burning in the fireplace and the room was lovely and warm as a result. Snow flurries blew against the window, melting when they touched the glass; the glass that Sam had, ironically, sprayed fake frost all around the edges of. Without the fire in here, it probably would have been real frost.

There weren't many places in the living room Sam hadn't managed to squeeze in some reminder of Christmas into, actually; there was tinsel hanging from ceiling, mistletoe over all the doorways and the central beams and on every flat surface there was a nativity scene, or some candles and holly, or wooden angels. The Christmas tree filled the whole room with the fresh smell of pine, and under it there were loads of presents, too. They weren't all Sam's doing, though, not all of them. I'd put three of them there, and I think Min and Bree had added a couple, too. The other dozen or so were from Sam, and she'd had them professionally wrapped and then she'd spent ages filming herself arranging them while she talked into the camera and I'd watched, smiling.

Sam just—a knot formed in my throat—Sam loved Christmas. It was her happy place. When she'd been dying—no, when I'd shot her— it was the talk of Christmas together that had comforted her.

You have your tree, now, Sam, I thought, watching the pretty lights strung on it cycle through all the colours. You have your beautiful real tree, with your beautiful decorations and your beautiful presents. You came home with me. You got better. And even though I shot you and you were cold and shivering and dying, you're here with me, and together, we decorated your lovely tree just like you wanted.

I shot you, I thought again, the thought reverberating around my head. I shot you. Those words sounded so alien to me; they fell apart into weird, disconnected sounds and syllables. It wasn't until I thought, I shot you because I was so bloody tired and I had no idea what was going on that they meant something again.

I lay back on the couch, looking up at the tinsel overhead. 'I shot you because I was so bloody tired I had no idea what was going on'…? I was always so bloody tired these days I had no idea what was going on. It didn't matter whether or not the spirits were still on me, did it? They hadn't been the reason I'd shot Sam. Lack of sleep had done a number on me. It made me jump at shadows. It made my whole body tense up with loud noises or sudden movement. It did nothing to smother my lightening reflexes but dulled my ability to reason with them.

That unspoken question lingered in my mind as I tried desperately to reassure myself: how long before I was tired enough to make another mistake, given how bloody little I slept these days? How long before I would be spending all my Christmases alone?

With that in my mind, I was up for quite some time. But even despite those awful, circular thoughts, I was tired enough that I actually did get some sleep towards dawn.

I startled awake at – I first thought – an unfamiliar voice, my hands automatically clutching to my hips where my holsters were. They were bare. Someone had taken my weapons! I opened my mouth and took a deep breath to shout a warning to Sam, and then I…

…recognised the person who was talking to me with her blonde curls and her blue bunny-print pyjamas and closed my mouth, exhaling.

Bree. "You can't wake me up like that," I said, and then realised how bloody grumpy I sounded.

There was a chuckle from the doorway. "I see nothing's changed in a year," that was Min's dry voice. "Good morning to you, too."

"Sorry," I mumbled, rubbing my eyes at sat up. "I really am sorry. I didn't get much sleep, and you really have to be careful about waking me up, because…" I stopped talking when I realised Bree was standing a good two or three feet away from me with a steaming mug in her hand and a bright smile on her face.

"I know," she said simply, like what had just happened was the most normal thing in the world. She stepped forward and handed me the mug. "Tea," she said. "I can make you some breakfast, too, if you want? Maybe pancakes? I'm pretty sure you have all the things for them."

I opened my mouth, and then closed it. "Thanks," I said, and then took a sip. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean to snap at you like that. I just really didn't get my sleep."

"Neither did we," Min said with a secret smile, rolling a little into the room. She was manoeuvring her wheelchair into a particular place on the floor with careful attention to the ceiling above her.

Bree groaned. "Ignore Min," she told me. "We weren't having, like, wild sex or something in your hallway. It's just that we're a bit jetlagged and we didn't sleep on the plane, because the plane was so cool and you can sleep any time, you know? But how often are you bumped up to first class on a really awesome plane? Actually sleeping would have been a total waste of it. Anyway, the hostie was really nice, and we were just talking about where she was from because I've never been to Thailand, and then she invited us to visit her there."

"She was just being polite," Min commented, having settled in the centre of the room for some reason. She looked a tad smug.

Bree wasn't having any of Min's attempted reality check. "She added me on Facebook," Bree pointed out, as if that was evidence that the air hostess' invitation was genuine. She was about to say something else about that, too, but then didn't, noticing the ceiling above Min. "You're right underneath some mistletoe," she observed.

Min pretended to be surprised. "What an incredible coincidence," she said flatly, and then gave Bree a wink.

A big, bright smile spread across Bree's face and she abandoned her monologue about the air hostess with me to bounce over, wrap Min's head in her arms and plant a firm and exaggerated kiss on Min's forehead. "I'm going to make pancakes!" she announced, releasing Min and trotting off to the open kitchen. Min watched her go with a wry grin, her bed hair tussled by the hug.

I looked back at my tea in my hands. Those two were always so silly together; even Min's back injury hadn't changed that. And here I was, in one piece, not in a wheelchair, not permanently injured forever, and still I couldn't sleep and I was snapping at people. I felt a thousand years old.

Min cleared her throat at me and looked pointedly upwards at the ceiling above her.

I gave her a look.

She laughed, abandoning the mistletoe and rolling over beside the couch. She considered me quietly for a couple of minutes, but she didn't say anything at the end of it. She just gazed thoughtfully at our empty walls.

Min's were covered in her paintings; really, mine should have been, too. She'd done a couple for me: one of the spirit cave, and a really sweet one of Sam and I asleep on the hospital bed in Darwin, all cuddled together, safe and sound. They were incredible; she must have spent so much time on them for us.I couldn't put them up, though. Not yet, especially the one of Sam and I peacefully asleep together. It felt like I was tempting fate, like it would lull me into this false sense of security where I thought that what I'd done to Sam was okay.

"Did you want something that goes better with the rustic, earthy colours of this room?" Min wondered aloud, confirming she had been thinking about my walls. "Now that I've seen it I can probably paint something that compliments it. I brought all my gear with me, just in case you wanted to work on the Tomb Raider game concepts."

I winced. That. I'd gotten her to sign a contract to help me design it and sort of… well, I'd sat down one night to write down everything that had happened so I could decide what should go in the game and what shouldn't, and I never finished it. The notebook was still on my desk, open at the page I'd left it at.

"I'm sorry that hasn't got anywhere yet," I said. "It will."

"No rush," she said with that same easy grin. "Just saying I have it here if you're interested."

I was about to thank her when I heard footsteps on the stairs, and Sam's voice say, "Oh my god, Min, your hair!" and then laugh. "You look like you've been electrocuted!" When I looked over the back of the couch at her, I saw she had her camera out, of course.

Min pretended to flip her hair for it. "Anime characters hate me," she told the camera. "Find out my secret by clicking the link below."

Sam was grinning and watching the screen, "So, Min, do you have any tips to help people suffering from tragically flat hair?"

Min nodded sagely and said in an infomercial voice. "Why, yes, Samantha, actually I do: My secret is living with someone who makes me want to do this 24/7." She mimed wailing and pulling her hair out.

"I can hear you and I know what you're doing!" Bree called faux-sternly from the kitchen.

Sam and Min were laughing, and, actually, I was smiling, too. That was until Sam swung the camera over to me and... god, I didn't want to ruin her fun. No matter how bloody awful I felt. I swallowed. "Well, that explains my hair problem," I said and forced a smile, and gestured at my own bed hair.

"Oh, shut up," Sam told me, coming over and hugging me around the shoulders for a couple of seconds. "You totally love me. God, what time is it? I'm starving. Please tell me whatever Bree's cooking is nearly done."

It was, but before Bree would bring it out, she made us all sit at the dining table which she'd set and then she insisted on wearing Sam's apron – which looked rather odd over her bunny pyjamas, I might add – and then she served us all before sitting down herself.

Sam was still gazing at me. "Your hair is getting kind of long," she commented. I'd braided it too keep it off my face while I was eating. "Pretty soon you're going to be able to strangle someone with that thing." She reached over to me and lifted my braid off my back to waggle it about in the air like a rope.

Min glanced up at it. "Looks like something you should be throwing out of a tower for someone to climb up."

Bree made a pained noise and hurriedly swallowed her mouthful of pancake. "Oh!" she said. "I love that movie! It was totally amazing how it's supposed to be this fairytale where the prince saves Rapunzel but Disney mixed it up and made her the hero. Did you know there's a new one out at the moment? It's supposed to be really gay."

We all squinted at her. It took us a second to catch up. "A gay Disney movie," Min repeated slowly.

Bree made a face. "Well, not like, two girls fucking for an hour on-screen or something. But apparently it's obviously implied." She sat up. "You know, I think it comes out here sooner than in Australia. Oh my fucking god I bet it's already out here and we can all see it together! I am, like, dying to see it. I'm going to check!" She jumped up out of her chair and raced off, completely abandoning her breakfast to presumably go find her phone.

Min sighed. "Hey, guys, guess what we're doing today."

Sam snorted. "Okay, I have to say it," she said, and fluffed her hair and imitated Bree's hyper-energetic voice with even more energy and excitement than even Bree usually managed. "'Two girls fucking for an hour on-screen!'" She relaxed again. "You know what she's like? Like…. This tiny, cute, fluffy little dog with huge eyes who comes bouncing up to you and you're like, 'Oh, you're so adorable' and the little puppy is like, "'Hey! You know what would be really, really adorable? Hardcore porn!'"

Min snorted out her coffee and then coughed a couple of times as her eyes watered. "She's all bark," she told us. "I bet the two girls who she thinks are gay say maybe one thing to each other in the whole movie."

Apparently we were going to find out how much talking the two girls did, because Bree zoomed back into the room over to the table with her phone out. "It is released here already!"

While the three of them had their heads together about theatres and sessions times, I took everyone's plates into the kitchen and put them in the dishwasher. I could hear them all chattering excitedly and laughing across the other side of the main room, and I leant against the counter and watched them under the pots and pans.

Sam had pulled the phone off Bree and was scrolling through it, and Bree shrieked, "No! Don't look at my photos!" as she cast a nervous glance at Min and then wrestled the phone back from Sam.

They were all excited and looking forward to two weeks' holidays together gallivanting around England. They didn't keep waking up at night, drenched in sweat and wondering if they'd done anything awful while they were unconscious. They didn't keep feeling spirits shifting on their skin and need to take off all their clothes just to make sure they weren't there. They were able to look in the mirror without staring into their own eyes and expecting their reflection to move of its own accord.

Most of all, none of them, none of them, had shot the one person who meant the world to them with their own hands. I looked down at those hands, and then closed my eyes for a second.

Sam calling my name startled me. I opened my eyes; I could hear her footsteps jogging towards the kitchen.

God, I—just needed to stop this, didn't I? Our friends had flown ten thousand miles to visit us, and I was hiding in the kitchen wallowing over what happened more than a year ago. They'd all put it behind them, even the one who had a permanent spinal injury.

"Hey," Sam said, hanging off the doorway. "Those guys want to know if it's okay if we do the museum thing tomorrow instead? Because Bree's really excited about this 'gay' Disney movie and—" she stopped, sobering up. Looking concerned, she let go of the doorway to come over to me. "Hey, Sweetie, are you okay? You look kind of…"

Don't ruin her day, Lara. "No, no, I'm perfectly fine," I said in my most cheerful voice. "I was just clearing up."

She wasn't having a bar of it. "Sure," she said. "Clearing dishes makes me look like I've seen a ghost, too. Come on." She circled my waist. "What's up? Are you worried about all the Christmas shopping crowds in London or something?"

God, I hadn't even thought of that. "Gee, thanks for reminding me," I said dryly, but I was smiling.

She kissed my nose. "Don't worry, I'll protect you from the hordes," she told me. "Or at least, I'll try. I can't promise anything, though: when they see you in the awesome new jacket I bought you, they'll all want a piece. I was thinking about it this morning, actually. Everyone's going to be totally checking you out."

It wished that had been what I was thinking about this morning. Still, it was a very nice jacket and Sam was very excited about it. "Hah," I said, still feeling odd about people being able to recognise me. "Well, in that case, I can't wait to try it on."

Sam dragged me upstairs to dress me like her own personal Barbie doll, and after we were all dressed and Sam was done parading me around in front of Min and Bree, we headed off.

It took Min a couple of goes to transfer into the front seat of my car from her wheelchair, which Bree then expertly collapsed in under five seconds and stowed in the boot. I watched Min shifting around in her seat as I backed out of the long driveway. "Not comfortable?"

She shrugged, buckling herself in. "It's just kind of cramped in here. I don't think I fit."

I double-checked the seat was extended all the way and wondered if the angle of it was bad for her back or something. "Do you think you'll manage?"

"Yeah, but I can't feel my legs." She winked at me.

Sam was groaning. "You are not funny, Min. Oh my god." She grabbed my braid. "I'm just going to borrow this for a second, okay?" she said, and then looked across at Min. "To strangle the person sitting next to you."

Min twisted in her seat with a grin. "Oh, come on," she said. "I didn't even get to, '..would you mind feeling them for me?'"

Bree wasn't paying any sort of attention to what was going on around her because she was glued to her phone. "Hey, guys, did you know Idina Menzel does the voice for one of the lead chicks in the story?" she said. "That proves it's gay. She always plays gay characters."

Bree treated us to a whole host of other helpful information 'proving' the movie was gay while I struggled to find a park nearby the cinema – which took ages, I might add, since it was a few days before Christmas and everyone was out shopping – and when we finally managed to make it into the movie theatre, there was no wheelchair access to the bloody place, despite the fact there were disabled car park spaces right out in front of it.

Bree had to be restrained from storming off to go absolutely mad at management about it, but Min just looked up the flight of stairs and sighed. "It's okay, I'll walk up them," she said. "But you're going to need to give me a few minutes. You go on ahead, I'll join you inside."

We didn't of course, but she wasn't exaggerating. It took her quite a long time. If you've never seen someone with a spinal injury that you practically caused struggling up a flight of stairs, red in the face, arms shaking with the strain of supporting them, and their knees wobbling… I could hardly watch. Poor Min, and she wasn't up at night feeling sorry for herself, was she?

She wasn't at all, and she flopped back into her wheelchair that Bree had folded out for her with a sigh of relief at the top. "And that's why I have these now," she said, flexing. You could see muscle definition in her arms and shoulders through her jumper.

"Open carry isn't allowed here," I told her. "You'll need to put those away."

She grinned at me and was about to say something else, but Bree put both her hands over Min's mouth and smiled oh-so-sweetly. "She can't talk now, but she says thank you for letting her know and wasn't going to flirt with you, and we're missing the movie and we need to go in right now."

We only ended up missing the previews, and then I missed the very beginning of the movie because we were seated up the front of the cinema and having a hundred people behind me was making my skin prickle.

It was only went Sam murmured, "The cinematography is amazing," that I realised I was supposed to be paying attention to what was going on up on the screen and not what was going on in my head.

Min made a noise in response to Sam, and Sam looked across at her and whispered, "What, you don't think so, Ms. Artist?"

Min shrugged, and Bree leant towards Sam and said, "She's a traditional animation snob. She only likes the old Disney movies."

"I just think 3D animation is better suited to realism," Min told us, with a touch of distaste about how the two children who'd just appeared were modelled.

Bree snorted. "That's because you're a million years old and have lost your sense of joy. I think they look cute!"

I was already feeling quite odd, so irony of what we were doing struck me. "I love how we're discussing the pros and cons of stylistic choices in a children's movie."

Someone behind us hissed, "Shhh!" and made me jump, and then I was back to trying to ignore my head and focus on the screen.

To be honest, I didn't care that much about what was going on with the two girls playing – I was thinking about the snow outside and how it reminded me of Yamatai now, especially when the howlers started mid-January – when one of the girls accidentally shot the other in the head with her magic and her little sister rolled to the ground, lifeless.

That made me sit up. I glanced across at Sam; she was still eating popcorn and looking relaxed and entertained. She hadn't noticed the parallel.

There was more than just one parallel, too. Just like Anna, the little sister, didn't remember what her big sister Elsa had done to her, Sam didn't remember anything about the shooting, either. As the older sister's fear and guilt escalated and she locked it away, even her father the King wasn't really about to help. And then they both died, like my parents both had, and the two sisters only had each other like Sam and I effectively did. Roth might have helped me if he'd still been alive; I wondered what he'd have said about last year; 'These things happen, Lass,' maybe. Or, 'We all make mistakes, what matters is that everyone is alright'.

Everyone wasn't 'alright', though. Sam's kidneys were better, that much was true, but she had to take medication now because of her spleen. And Min… I looked over at Min in her 3D glasses, casually eating popcorn and watching the movie from her wheelchair. Min had a spinal injury. These things did not just 'happen', I wasn't supposed to just brush them off.

As I was watching Min and worrying, Bree leant over to her with a big, cheeky grin on her face. "Told you they were in the same scene. How cute are they together?" On the screen, the two sisters were standing side-by-side at a ball or some such and one of them was acting quite shyly about the other.

Min had her mouth full when she realised what Bree meant. Pausing mid-chew, she turned slowly towards Bree and directed her the most fierce, stern glare. "No," she said clearly, after she'd swallowed.

Bree was smirking and went to help herself to some of Min's popcorn. "Come on, tell me that's not even a bit sweet. Look how excited she is that Elsa's talking to her!"

Min didn't even look at the screen, she just kept glaring at Bree and pointedly moved the popcorn out of Bree's reach. "You just lost popcorn rights."

Sam bent her head towards me. "Is Bree saying what I think she's saying?" I nodded, and Sam started giggling. "Oh my god."

I watched the screen. Despite all the commotion happening beside me, I was more interested in the movie. When Elsa and Anna fought and Elsa revealed herself as… well, whatever it was that you called someone with ice powers in this movie, watching her flee in panic and being confronted by crowds of people and having them go from seeing her as this idol, this figure of worship to a monster who could kill people…

It only got worse. Anna, having no memory of what Elsa had done to her, and no understanding that Elsa was as dangerous as she worried she was, stridently stood up for her and kept saying, "Oh, don't be silly, everything will be okay! My sister's not a monster!" She was just like Sam. Sam didn't know to be afraid of me and what I could do because she didn't remember being shot.

Sam should be afraid, and Anna should be afraid, too. God. I just kept thinking about how I'd stood there, frozen solid to the ground while Sam gaped at me, her hand over her stomach as blood ran out of it. The look on her face, the shock and astonishment, and then she'd collapsed. I hadn't done anything, I couldn't do anything. I'd just stood there with Bree screaming and Min shouting and trying to help Sam stop the blood.

That scene played over and over in my head like an endless nightmare where I couldn't move and I couldn't reach Sam and I could stop it and I couldn't escape.

Someone coughing next to me at some point startled me back to reality, from the climax of events on screen it looked like it was near the end of the movie. That was a shock, the end…? I had no idea what had happened in the last hour… Oh, God, I really had no idea what had happened in the last hour at all. That wasn't a new feeling for me. It was a feeling I knew really well, and it had always meant something. Everything in my head converged in on itself and settled into place and made sense and I came to a terrifying realisation:

I've lost time again, I thought, remembering how it had felt in Australia when I'd blacked out. I've lost time. It's happening again. It's all happening again. I'm losing time again!

I inhaled sharply, but didn't feel like any of the breath in my lungs contained oxygen, so I took another one, and another one, and the skin on my nose was tingling like there was something on it, and I knew it was just because I was hyperventilating, but I still wanted to see. It felt like spirits. I felt like I had spirits on me, and I wanted to see. I should go to the toilets so I can check, I need to check!

If I got up, though, hundreds of heads would turn towards me, and if I had a spirit on my face, they would see it. It would be glowing. Could I see it glowing? I looked down towards my nose and felt dizzy doing it and none of my thoughts made any sense, and, god, what if it isn't all over? What if Old Johnson didn't get them all and I had to go back there again and what if I was still enslaved? Amanda freed me, I thought, but what if it wasn't really her who enslaved me in the first place? What if I was still Natla's slave and Natla wasn't dead, and what if she could still control me? She knew Sam was the person who mattered to me, she knew it, and if she wanted her revenge…

I could imagine her sultry voice as if it was whispering in my ear, and she'd say, 'Kill the girl. Kill her, Lara. Take your hands and wrap them around Samantha's neck,' and I would helplessly watch my hands rise like they did when I wrapped my fingers around Bree's tiny throat and I'd squeeze Sam's neck and feel all the ligaments and bones and pipes crunch in my hands while she clawed desperately at my fingers—

I couldn't hear anything except my pulse hammering in my ears and my flesh was swimming and I could feel spirits everywhere and my head was dulled and fuzzy and muted because I was tired and everything around me was throbbing with the pulse in my eyes and then, on the screen…

…Elsa sobbing because Anna was dead. Because she'd killed Anna. It was only the sound of her tears, and…

…I'm going to kill Sam. I need to get out of here.

I stood up, muttered something about being right back and just sped out of the theatre, my muscles singing like there was someone chasing me and I ran towards the toilets and ran inside them and put my face right up to the mirror to look for the spirits and—found myself face to face with my reflection.

Hello, it had said. I'm Lara Croft, as it had stepped out of the mirror frame and held up a gun towards me.

I staggered away from the glass, unable to move air through my throat. I can't be in here, I thought, I can't be in here with my reflection, I needed to—I needed to get away from the mirror. But there were so many people outside, the shopping strip was full of people who would all recognise me and be wondering what was wrong with Lara Croft and rightfully thinking that I was absolutely mad.

I'd backed far enough away from the mirror that I had my back against the door of a cubicle, so, automatically, I shut myself inside it. It was claustrophobic, it was cramped and I felt trapped and it was a toilet, but at least no one could get me in here. At least no one could see me in here. And even though I kept expecting to hear the sound of someone climbing out of the mirror and my own voice calling to me, it didn't happen.

It wasn't my own voice who called for me, in the end. It was Sam's.

"Lara…?" I heard creak of the main door opening. "Lara, are you—Oh." She must have seen my boots.

It was so lovely to hear her voice… but how long would I hear it for before I killed her?

She waited for a little while, and when I didn't say anything or come out, she knocked on the door. "Do you want to build I snowman?" she asked in a sing-song voice, and—god, despite myself, I smiled. And then I winced. Sam. My lovely Sam. Please, I don't want to kill you.

"Okay, that was probably in poor taste, sorry," she said. She waited a couple of seconds before speaking again. "Look, if this is too much, do you want to just go home? Min's back's hurting from those stairs she hiked up earlier and Bree wants to go and read Frozen porn because apparently she's into sisters doing it." She paused and giggled. "Oh, my god, though, like, why, Bree…? Anyway…" She sobered. "It's fine if the crowds are too much. I know that stuff gets to you these days."

I didn't know how to tell her that that wasn't even the beginning of what was scaring me— but I couldn't do it in a public toilet. "Yeah," I just said quietly. "I think I'd be better off at home."

Bree was already nose-deep in the Frozen porn on her phone and so she was quiet all the way back, and Min looked as white as Amanda had and was sitting stiffly with her jaw set. I probably should have asked her if she was okay, but… I just had no energy left. I wanted to sleep for a hundred years.

And when we finally got home and they all bustled inside, I didn't. I parked the car inside the garage so it didn't get snowed on, and then sat down on the edge of the back patio to try and put myself in some sort of headspace for company.

Above me, the red and green LED fairy lights Sam had begged me to help her hang up were twinkling. It was early afternoon, but the heavy snow cloud ahead made it feel like late evening. The flurries had already started, too, and it was cold enough that the snowflakes were beginning to gather on surfaces.

The weather reminded me of last winter when we'd landed back from Australia and come to see our destroyed house.

Before we'd arrived here, I hadn't really been able to believe I'd come back with Sam, alive and filming everything like she always did; I had been so sure that I'd cancel her return ticket and be driving down this very driveway with an urn buckled into her passenger seat. I thought I'd be spending Christmas standing on charred ground, scattering the ashes of my lovely Sam with the ashes of her beautiful, destroyed home, alone.

The back door gingerly opened. I knew it was Sam without needing to look. Her voice just confirmed it. "Hey."

"Hey," I greeted her, and kept looking down at my boots.

She wandered over and sat down beside me, leaning back on her hands on the patio and looking up at the sky. "I love this weather, it's so nostalgic," she said. "It reminds me of that night when you found the rings where I'd hidden them for you." She smiled across at me. When I didn't say anything, she drew a love-heart shape on the thin layer of snow on the driveway with her foot. "So, if you were wondering what happened in the end of the movie, the 'act of true love' or whatever they were on about was Anna using her last breath to save Elsa from that Hans guy. So it thawed her and they lived happily ever after."

I nodded slowly.

She watched me. When I didn't say anything, she asked me directly, "So… you booking it out of the cinema, just the crowd thing, or…?"

I shook my head. It was exactly like when I shot you, I wanted to say, but I didn't need to make her worry, too. "No… I just didn't get much sleep last night, and I was just feeling a tad—"

"—Hooo, no you don't," Sam interrupted me, shoving me gently. "None of that 'Oh, don't worry, Sam, despite the fact I'm obviously feeling like crap, I'm perfectly fine!' thing that you do." I opened my mouth and then closed it. She shoved me again. "You know how we had this conversation about you not keeping stuff from me?"

I sighed. "I'm not hiding anything from you. It's just that—"

"—it's just what? That you don't think I can handle whatever you've got to say? Sorry, Lara, but you should know me way better than that by now." Despite what she was saying, her voice was gentle. "So if you think that—"

"—it was like when I shot you, okay?" I said, and then expected to regret it. I didn't. I felt oddly numb.

Sam's eyebrows went up, and then down, as she thought about that.

Since I'd started, I kept going. "And I know you've forgiven me, but I can't stop bloody thinking about it, and how easy it was to nearly kill you." My throat tightened. "And then I watched you dying. I know you don't remember any of it, but Natla kept you alive, we kept you alive by a thread for hours and hours. Your mouth was blue. You were shivering, and while I was waiting for the ambulance outside the front of that abandoned house and you were unconscious and hardly breathing, and I saw a shooting star in the sky. And," I swallowed. "You remember that traditional belief about the shooting star being the spirit of a dead person letting their love ones know they'd crossed over safely? I thought I'd go back into that house to find that it was all over. That despite all that fighting, despite the fact we'd won: you'd lost your fight, and you were gone. You were gone, and that shooting star was you letting me know that you'd crossed over and that I didn't have to worry anymore." There were tears in my eyes.

Sam was watching me. "You don't have to worry anymore, Lara."

I could hardly speak. "Until the next time I shoot you."

She shrugged. "Maybe. But you'll save me again next time, too." She held up her hand in front of us, with the Midas Gold ring twinkling on her ring finger. "See that?" she asked me. "It means I want to spend the rest of my life with you, and it's going to be a long, happy life. We're going to do tonnes of totally amazing things together, you're going to be this world-famous actress-archaeologist and I'm going to be your first class director, and then when we've won, like, every award, we'll hobble around on walking frames and complain about our arthritis. And you know how I know that's going to happen?" I shook my head, and she smiled gently. "It's because no matter what's happened last year, no matter what happens in the future, it's because I trust you."

Those words were what finally got the tears out of me, and I put my head in my hands and let her rub my back while they fell into the fresh snow at our feet.

After a little while, she said sternly, "And wake me up when you have those nightmares, or the panic attacks with the spirit things, or when you just can't sleep, okay? Stop acting like you have to suffer alone. We can both be miserable and fuzzy-headed together. We can bond over how much we hate everything."

I laughed a bit miserably at that. "Sounds like loads of fun."

She was grinning and patting my back. "Totally. And we can have hers and hers shrink sessions, and little pink pill boxes and, like, music therapy or whatever the cool new thing is these days to help people get over stuff. In fact, I know exactly the song." She sat up straight and whacked her chest with a fist, clearing her throat, and began to sing in a joking voice, "Let it go, Let it go—"

She was making me laugh and embarrassing me all at once, and when I groaned and put my hands over my face, it only made her sing louder. "Didn't Min say she wanted a nap?"

Sam stopped singing for a second, "Yeah, but she's totally not going to want to miss this. Come on," she said. "Don't leave me hanging, here…"

She did manage to get me singing, and we ended up on our backs in the snow on the patio, looking up towards the flashing LED lights, belting out whatever lyrics we could remember. It wasn't that many, and by the end of the song we were just la-la-laing anyway.

When we finished and we'd done a good deal of laughing at how stupid we both were, Sam sighed contentedly, lacing our fingers together. "I know you were just messing around," she told me. "But you have a really nice singing voice."

"Yes, well," I told her, "don't you get any bright ideas about a Tomb Raider musical."

Sam chuckled. "Buzzkill," she told me, and then leant over and pecked me on the lips. She didn't lean back, though, and it turned into a real kiss.

"I love you so much," I murmured when we broke away, watching the red and green lights playing on her face. She looked so peaceful, and so happy. "I'm so glad you're still here with me."

"Me too," she said. "Even if God probably does throw a pretty good Christmas party; you know, since it's his son's birthday and all."

I laughed. "Well I bet he probably doesn't have fairy lights as nice as ours."

"Of course not," Sam told me. "He doesn't have you to put them up for him."

She kissed me again, for longer this time, long enough for some of the snow to be soaking through my clothes. I should have cared about that, but I didn't. I was so tired, and Sam's gentle lips and her gentle hands were more important than wet skin and wet clothes.

When it started to snow in earnest, we had to retreat inside with the others. We spent the rest of the evening all eating together, drinking together, watching old Disney movies and drunkenly singing all the songs we remembered and making shocking attempts at harmony and then laughing at how terrible we all were.

And I slept. I finally slept that night, with Sam's arms wrapped around me so when I woke up at 5am with my skin crawling she was there to whisper, 'It was just the duvet', and lull me back to sleep.

Sam finally got her beautiful Christmas, too, one with the scent of real pine and gingerbread, a beautiful home covered in beautiful decorations and filled with presents, and four stockings over the slowly burning fire.

Sam got her beautiful Christmas, and, despite everything, I still had my beautiful Sam.