AN: Looks like we're back for round three. A couple quick announcements: this is technically a crossover between Outlast 1&2, but 2 doesn't have a category on fanfic yet so I improvised. Also, Blake is a main character here, but there wasn't a way to select that when listing characters. Anyways, I'll be updating every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. Please enjoy.

.***.

It had been a long night in hell. I held Lynns daughter - my daughter - in my hands. I watched Lynn die, oh god. She... she said that there was nothing there. Her last words were "there's nothing there". I can't blame her, I'm not so faithful after seeing all the shit Knoth and his fake Christians did. But, why would she say there was nothing there? She had to have meant there was no heaven. Not after what they did to her, there's no God that would let that happen.

She said there was nothing there and then died.

Lynn died.

I had to keep myself from breaking down, I wasn't safe there. A storm fit to flood the earth raged outside. I crumbled to the floor, my legs no longer having the strength to stand.

I don't know how long I was down. It couldn't have been long. I had been running for my life for half the night and now the sun was rising. That fat bastard Knoth was there when I woke up.

He told me to kill my daughter. He said to crush her to death. He slit his throat.

Was I safe now?

Lynn's cold, bloated, and bloodied body laid on the table to the left.

I couldn't save her. I couldn't save Jessica. I couldn't save anyone.

I stood up and staggered through the storm ravaged temple.

The bundle of cloth in my arms didn't cry out at the movement, instead she was silent as a little angle. The town -Temple Gate- was in shreds. The sun, the red looming sun, sat on the horizon across the hills and canyon.

I picked my way through the rubble.

I couldn't save Lynn. It wasn't my fault. None of this was my fault.

The ground shook and ripped itself skyward. I found myself flat on the ground with an exploding sun above me. For a split second the night-cooled desert sand was all I had below me then I was gone.

No, that's not right. I was back at school. It was the fourth grade. I was with Jessica in the cafeteria pantry, she asked me to pray with her.

Right, that's it. She asked me to pray…

"Mister Langermann?" The doctor had stopped scribbling notes into the pad in his lap, "Blake?"

"What? Oh, was I rambling again?" I buried my face in a hand to try to wipe away the memory.

I was at the psychiatrist's office. I was in Phoenix. I was safe here.

I looked up from my palm to find Jessica holding a little bundle of rags just behind the doctor.

"It's okay. You're here to talk about whatever you need to talk about." his words were reassuring, almost fatherly.

"I'm sorry- I just." I took a few deep breaths and tried to look away from the phantom "I just keep going back there. I… I can't get it out of my head."

The doctor hummed knowingly and scribbled away, "are you keeping up with your medication?"

I had a nearly empty bottle of pills rolling around one of my pockets right now.

"Yes, of course." I had too, they were the only things letting me sleep at night.

"And how is the therapy for your hands going?" He was trying to steer the conversation onto something lighter, something less likely to take me back to Temple Gate.

I appreciated the gesture and tried my best to curl my hands shut "it's slow, but I can almost type half as fast as I used to."

"That's good progress." The doctor mindfully wrote something more.

I let a small silence settle before I went back to speaking.

"Doctor Benson," he looked up, his hand stopped moving across the page, "umm… my daughter, I know… I know no one found her, but… she was there. I know she was there."

The doctor looked at me with a carefully hidden clinical gaze.

He took a heavy breath out "Blake, we've been over this"

"I know!" spoke a bit faster and louder than I head meant to "I know. But I saw her, I don't know how it happened, but other people saw her. I…" I thought I had it on camera, but I hadn't actually gotten her on tape "No. No, she was there."

"Blake, when we go through extreme trauma, our brains try their best to make since of it. You spent the night in terrible conditions. There were people there saying and doing terrible, terrible, things. It makes sense that you would try to rationalize it. And that might mean inviting a child to help you cope with Lynn."

He was walking on eggshells with his words. I had heard this speech a dozen times before; I knew he sounded sane, really I did. I knew that I was rambling, I knew that.

But, "I know what I saw."

Doctor Benson looked back at me with pity.

"I…" I had to change the subject "how much time do I have left?"

Benson shook his sleeve back from his wrist to get a look at the watch underneath.

"About fifteen minuets Blake."

Jessica still stood behind the doctor. He noticed that I was staring off into the distance.

"Is she here again?"

I tried to blink the image away, Jessica stared back at me.

"Try the breathing exercises we talked about."

It took all the effort I had to turn my head and close my eyes. I took a deep breath and counted to five before letting it out. I repeated this two more times.

The room was bathed in the same thin gray light that I had left it in. There was no one behind doctor Benson.

"There you go, better now?"

I gave a half hearted answer of "yes"

"You mentioned a new job earlier? How is that going?"

Here we went with changing subjects again.

"Well, I'm still working at the same paper I always have. I'm only freelancing for the police" Benson knew that already. He just wanted to fill the time up and get me talking. I was just going to leave here to sit in my empty house, so I should be thankful for the conversation.

"Yes, photographing evidence and such. That's very important work you know, they need someone to do it."

They need someone to do it. They shouldn't rely on me. No one should. I couldn't save them. I couldn't save any of them.

"Right, right. It's important work" I rubbed a stiff hand across my temple.

"How has it been going with the other doctors?"

"I finished treatment if that's what you're asking me. They've got me on painkillers and a penicillin regimen, but I'm doing fine." As fine as I could be after getting nailed to a cross and force fed syphilis infected blood.

"That is what I'm asking. It's good that you're doing well." He went back to scribbling down notes.

Speaking of, I had to pick up my prescriptions from the store.

Doctor Benson opened his mouth to speak once more, only to be interrupted by the chirping of an alarm.

"Oh, well it looks like our time is up." He laid the pen on a table that sat to the side of his chair.

I made my way to standing before he had the chance to turn off the alarm. The doctor followed suit and was walking with me towards the door before long.

"Have a nice day Blake. I'll see you next week, and please, if there is anything you need to talk about before then don't hesitate to call me." he held his hand out to shake in goodbye.

I returned the gesture, though my hand didn't grip very tightly around his.

"Thank you Doctor, I'll be in for my next appointment."

I left for the main lobby.

It wouldn't take long to pay for the session and then be out the door.

The waiting room was empty when I got there, the only hint of life was the receptionist behind the window along the far side of the wall. I walked to her, she spoke with quick and impatient words, like she was just there because someone expected her to be.

You and me both lady.

I wrote a check for the same amount I had for each of the other twelve weeks I'd been here. Without much ceremony I slid the piece of paper to the woman behind the counter. With equally little comment she took it and recorded the payment in a ledger.

"Have a nice day ma'am" I said before turning to leave the building.

She hadn't answered before the door swung shut behind me.

The sun sat bright in a clear blue sky, despite that there was still a slight chill in the air that said it was winter time in the desert. I walked across the nearly empty lot to my car. The inside of it was sun warmed and nearly hot enough to be uncomfortable, I slumped into the driver seat regardless. I twisted the keys in the ignition and the engine rumbled to life, I took a look in the rearview.

Jessica looked back at me.

I took a breath and started counting.

A baby started crying.

I took a breath.

Lynn was screaming from the back of the car.

I took a breath.

When I opened my eyes, there was no one in the back seat.

I dug around for the bottle of medication in my pocket. One dose in the morning and one in the evening, that's what the prescription said. It was passed five now and I needed it.

I swallowed the pills with a mouthfull of warm water form a bottle in the passenger seat. There wasn't much traffic on the street when I pulled out of the parking lot. I had to go to the pharmacy, then I would go home.

.***.

A man stepped past yellow plastic strips that warned of a crime scene ahead.

Cold night-time wind sliced through the desert canyon and cut deep into the man who said nothing as he walked by the moonlight. The town in the canyon below had no living souls to call it home, instead only broken boards and a few sun baked stains were left to speak of the people that had once farmed the land and worshiped in the steeple church.

The man that walked through the night did not stop to consider the lives that had once been here. Instead he stepped through a roped off town square and up a cobbled path that lead to a locked building. The padlock fell like dust before the man was close enough to see it, the tape on the door demanded that no one pass that point. The man did not listen.

A gash in the ceiling let moonlight flood the building. A few numbered tents sat on the ground here and there. In another lifetime the man would have been searching for meaning behind the numbered clues, in another lifetime he would have scribbled notes and collected images. He was here for something bigger than that now, something that brought him to a stop at a rusted stain on the ground just below what could only be described as a medieval torture rack.

This place reeked of madness and something else. Something that pulsed and throbbed under the withered floor boards.

This place reeked of a madness that lay hidden even from him.

The man in the moonlight left the abandoned town of Temple Gate. The man in the moonlight had sworn to stop this madness.