AN: Writing drunk is no way to write. But god, is it fun. More Thursday and Friday, we hope.
"What is that," Vines said, alarmed, moving towards the water without any of the trepidation they'd had before. There was no point. Snake and Lara were both looking in every direction, heads swiveling to and fro for the sign of the scent. They didn't answer him.
"Lara," Snake said. "Once Vines is across, I'm going to come over. They probably counted on us following their path."
"Right. If we had any guns, I'd say don't fire unless you had to considering the gas, but I don't think that's an issue." She was already hurriedly reaching her arms out to Vines, for encouragement as much as aid. The water felt more insistent. She wasn't sure it was all in her head. "Vines, move it, for god's sake!"
"I'm trying, there's rocks all over the bed, keep sticking in my boots—" He stumbled, tried to right himself at only knee-depth, falling to the side. Lara snatched at his arms, missed, then his ribs. Mercifully, he managed on his own. "Christ, and you're walking this barefoot? Fucking hurts underneath here."
"I've had a touch of practice I'm afraid. Sort of cheating, isn't it?" And she looked to Snake, feeling queerly guilty, angry and worried at once. It felt like someone pushing inside her chest to get out, someone outside pushing down to get in. It wasn't the adrenaline. She knew that well enough. "Snake, once Vines is over—"
"Yeah, yeah," Snake said. Between Lara, the post on her side, and Snake holding tight the rope, Vines was able to navigate close enough to her that he could use her for purchase in otherwise violent waters. While Vines passed her, hesitantly but hurried, Snake said "Once he's shortside, get over there with him. I'll grab the rope, you two can pull me across."
"He's too heavy," Vines said, before he'd even made the trek to the opposite shore.
"It doesn't matter, we'd rip open that leg wound if he so much as grazed one of the rocks underneath here. Even standing on them is hurting my feet," Lara said. Vines had reached sand, and was strongarming his way ashore. "Snake, come on over. I'll take you across, and—"
From the corner of her eye, she spotted the light simmering into life. There was first a thin line of reddish light, then it was a blistering fury, a sprint into the triple digits of fahrenheit. There was an explosion to her left, and to her right the drowning gurgle of water tumbling into forever was dead. The explosion rocked even the stones beneath her, seeming to tremble from the threat of flame. She knew that it was impossible to feel water evaporate so quickly, but Lara could have sworn her skin retreated from the steam further upstream. She smelled gasoline, ammonia, and other snatches of odour she couldn't identify.
"Snake!" She shouted, but her voice sounded as an esper to her own ears. Tinny, and small, and thickly meek. Adrenaline snarled in every vessel and vein. All the aches and pains she had felt accumulate like boulders shattered, and there was only the water, and the heat, and the beating thunder underneath her breasts, her chest, her skin.
The clear river bloomed reddish light around them, seeming to swallow wholesale the miserly blue that the sky had provided. The sound of gunfire had sliced itself through the filtered soundwaves in echoing vagary. Lara yanked the rope as fast as she could without snatching it from his hands. Snake moved like he w as rappelling through the water in reverse slow-motion. Their eyes engaged in nothing else save the other's. Venomous blades of orange licked at her periphery. She paid them no mind. The organ beneath her chest blasted out plasma, hemoglobin, anaemia. It felt like a revelation, sacrosanct. Everything fell into place, and nothing was wrong with the world. Every nerve had a purpose, every pore was opened to its purpose, and the derma of her life had been peeled back to something more real.
Snake stumbled, voice screaming through the cage of his teeth.
Her heart halted, breath evacuated. Another explosion somewhere bloomed. Vines yelled from a million miles away. His head went under for a time, and she could see the agony ripple across his features as his legs gave way beneath him, stolen by the current.
She caught hold of the cloth around his chest and yanked him upright.
Distantly, she heard Vines' voice.
Close enough to press skin, Snake spoke to her through the vacuum of sound. "Get to shore! I've got the rope!"
She looked at him once, held the moment, heard Vines scream again, and turned.
"Lara!" She saw Vines' lips move more than she heard him. When he tried shouting communication, she lost it to the sounds of falling debris and ragged fire. She shouted back, and Vines pointed to her right, away from the waterfall.
As she looked up, she saw the team of them, a dozen or so on either side. Some were running back and forth, but most of the men and women were the same would-be soldiers they'd encountered before. Armed with assault rifles, their firing was hardly concentrated. Most were providing sustained fire in an attempt to ignite the barrels and tanks they were booting over the cliffside.
When she looked to the sky, contrasted against faint blue and bruished clouds, Lara saw flames and guns and hell.