"So, what do we do with the rest of the day?"
Sam's still comfortably moulded against you. So comfortably that you're starting to feel a little sleepy again. "I'm not sure, but we can't stay like this or I'm going to fall asleep again."
Somewhat reluctantly, she pushes away from you and sits up. "We probably don't need a fucked sleep schedule on top of everything else, do we?"
"Not at all. I sleep badly enough as it is." Even though it was your suggestion, you delay moving for a little longer, and you're still laying down when you ask, "Sam, how is that you keep yourself together so well?"
She looks at you over her shoulder. "I do what, now?"
"Keep it together. Keep things under wraps? I mean, you've been telling me to stop apologizing for things all the time, but it took me until now to figure out that you're sharing some of the same guilt with me. I guess guilt manifests in different ways, but still."
She actually laughs. "Oh, sweetie. You keep saying that you've been, what? Oblivious to everything going on? Give it another day or two. I doubt I'm keeping everything as well hidden as you seem to think."
It's a lot less funny to you than it seems to be to her. "Today is still open. If you want to talk about anything…"
"Where's the fun in that? Random breakdowns are much more dramatic." That answer does not impress you, and your expression passes on the message. "I know, Lara. I know."
You've thought about it many times over the past few days. "It's impressive, but it also scares the hell out of me, Sam. I can't- I don't know how to help if I don't even know what's wrong. If don't even know that something is wrong. If I don't know that I need to help."
"And you can't stress about things that you don't know about." She looks dead serious, but seems completely unaware of her implication.
So you try to think about anything other than how it's your fault that she's bottling everything up so much. You don't do a very good job of doing so. "You need to stop putting me first. You're every bit as important. And, uh, I don't want it to be my fault if… I don't know, if something happens because you're keeping things secret for my sake." You push yourself up to sit beside her.
She visibly deflates. "I never thought about it that way. It wouldn't be your fault though, because it's my choice." However petty it might be, you've started to notice that silence is sometimes the best way to get Sam to admit something. Sure enough, when you don't respond, she looks away from you and quietly acknowledges, "But not everything works the way I see it, does it? Barely anything is actually the way I see it." She's starting to look and sound guilty, which is not what you intended.
"And that's okay. Because you're aware of it now. It's not like I wasn't- that I'm not doing the same thing. So now we both start to work on seeing things from perspectives beyond our own. The more we talk to each other, the easier it'll be to do that, I think."
"Yeah. Talking." Her leg starts to bounce, and she looks down at it. "It's hard? It's bad enough thinking about it, but saying things out loud makes them feel more real. The realer stuff feels, the harder it is to ignore. It's hard. Kinda scary."
"It is."
"I don't know what to say, y'know?" Her hand runs through her hair.
It's like she can't seem to apply anything that she's told you to herself. "Yeah. I know."
She smiles at you, a sad smile. "I guess you do." Not quite subtly enough, she leans her weight on her leg to stop it from tapping. "There is one thing we could do." It looks like she's struggling with whatever it is she's going to suggest. "Should we watch it?"
"What, the documentary?" You don't know if you want to send her into another rampage of phone calls.
"Nah. Well, we could." She pauses for a response. You wait to hear what it was that she was originally going to suggest. "No? Okay. I meant the camera. That you? That one."
Oh. "You want to do that?"
"Not at all. But we probably should." You're not sure you agree. "I mean, you don't have to, it can wait. It's just- it feels doable to me right now, and I think that maybe I should take the opportunity before it passes."
She sure as hell isn't going to watch it alone, that much you know. But maybe you should first? Other than your stupid journals, you don't know what's on there. "We can watch it. But do you want me to go through it first? I don't know what all got recorded." What you mean to say is 'I don't know how much footage there is of me brutally murdering people but even five seconds of it is more than I want you to see'. And that's only one of many possible things that she could end up seeing.
"I'm gonna go out on a limb here, and say that watching it is the only way to find out."
You sigh. "Right. Well, you aren't watching it without me." At least if you're there, you can cover her eyes or something. Because that would go over oh so very well.
Pulling you along with her, she stands up. "Should I make some popcorn?"
Even if you did want any food, you're not sure it would stay in your stomach long enough to be digested. "You're quite funny."
She stands up to leave, and shrugs. "It keeps me going."
As you watch her walk away, you get a strange feeling that you just missed something important.
"Okay, last chance to back out" After an excruciatingly long wait while Sam connected approximately seventy-two cables to about five devices, she's sitting beside you on The Sofa, remote in hand.
Your feet are ready to take you somewhere else, but your brain tells you to stay. "I'm not letting you watch this alone."
"Oh come on," She shoves your shoulder. "It can't be… no, it probably is that bad. Fuck it. Here we go." She presses play, and you brace yourself for whatever you're about to relive. In glorious HD, no less.
The beginning is just the first of your many one-sided conversations with the camera. "So this is it, huh? You didn't want me to see your diary?" You wish that's all it was. It must show on your face, because she hits pause to explain, "I'm sorry. I know I said I felt like I could do this, but I don't know if I can without making jokes."
You hope for the best. But every time you were thrown around, knocked down, beat up, any of that, any of it could have turned the camera on without you knowing. "Just start it."
Your curt, not-quite-a-request sobers her. "Uh, 'kay." She hits play.
You tilt your head back and stare blankly upwards while you wait for your first monologue to finish. This was probably a terrible idea. Possibly the worst idea.
When your recorded voice stops, it's followed by loud ruffling noises from the camera presumably being banged around. It's not loud enough to cover your shouting though, and you look back to the TV to see what's happening. Without audio, you'd have no idea, because the video is wildly jumping around, which is actually a little nauseating. Hopefully the rest of the footage is like this. Potential motion sickness is more appealing than having to properly watch almost anything you might see. While you're listening to camera-you struggle, Sam's watching real-you instead of the screen. You pretend not to notice. You have nothing to say.
"Just… along with… whatever they say."
Thanks to the noise of the camera being jostled around, as well as your own voice being much closer, you can only hear snippets of Whitman yelling at you. You're not missing anything, though. This is enough of a reminder for you to remember everything clearly. There's some distorted Russian voices, and you hear yourself protest one more time before you see the pause symbol in the corner of the screen.
"I didn't know that that asshole just… gave you to them so willingly. He didn't even try to stop them?" Sam's looking at you, making it too obvious for you to not acknowledge this time.
Your hands go up in a weak 'so what?' fashion, but you end up just dropping them limply back down when you decide you still have nothing to say. You shrug at her. Yeah, this was an absolutely terrible idea. Sam's still watching you, and you wave your hand at her in a 'carry on' motion.
"Ohh-kay. Are you sure that you're fine with this? I wasn't really thinking about how you already kinda rewatched some of this yesterday, if you know what I mean? It can wait."
Why is she delaying so much? This was her idea. "Jesus, Sam. Just fucking start it. If I end up in a closet, you can drag me out again. Okay?"
She continues to watch you, blinking a few times. Eventually she glances away from you for a moment. "Okay…" She picks up the remote.
You look back to the TV to watch the ground sway around sickeningly again.
"Who are you people? What do you want from us?" Your voice. Then more Russian. Then your name from one of your crew mates that they had captured. He isn't on screen, obviously, and Sam quickly peeks over at you, but you don't identify him for her. She doesn't need a visual.
The same Russian voice again, this time speaking English. And much clearer, since you aren't being thrown around on the ground anymore. "If they give you any trouble, kill them."
You know this movie word for word. "Don't hurt them, please!" The camera is swaying much gentler now, and you can see your feet and the very edge of the base of a tree.
"I said, silence, girl!" The camera almost stops swaying as the voice switches back to Russian. You try to ignore the sudden phantom feeling of his hands on you.
The camera jolts and your crew mate's yelling now. "Let go of her! Lara, run!" Then you hear the gunshot.
With that gunshot, it occurs to you that you've just started watching a snuff film. A very, very long snuff film. And soon enough, you're going to be the star. You fight off an intense wave of nausea.
You close your eyes, but you still hear camera-you yelling, "Oh, no. No!" There's a loud 'thwack' and you flinch. Apparently he backhanded you so hard that the camera actually picked up the sound of it. It catches your cry of pain as well, then a thud. You don't need to see the footage suddenly jump around to know what the cause of the noise was. The thud is immediately followed by static, and you force your eyes open again.
The screen is blurry to you, but you can still see the telltale white blob in the corner of the screen. Sam has paused it again. You continue to stare forward, through the screen rather than at it.
"Lara, who? You had to watch them kill? You never told-"
You don't want sympathy, you want to get this over with. "Right, well, I could write a fucking novel about the things I haven't told you. You know, the less you hit pause, the quicker we can finish watching this."
Out of the corner of your eye, you see her stand up, and you turn to watch whatever it is she's going to do. She moves over to her set up, and roughly yanks out a few of the cords plugged into the camera. "No, I think we're done for now. I, uh, I think it can wait some more." She nervously straightens all the cords in front of her. "Lara?"
"Whatever you want." You're unaware of how much you're rubbing at your side.
"Lara." You don't know what she wants from you at this point. So you don't give her anything, and just stay silent. "Fuck. Lara?" She's back in front of you now, and has crouched down to be at eye level. Her fingers are tapping rapidly against her thigh. "Shit. Lara, I'm sorry. This was- I shouldn't've. I, uh… god, why did I think this was okay? Fuck. I wasn't thinking. I'm sorry, Lara. Please. I didn't know."
She didn't know. She didn't know? "Of course you didn't! That's the fucking point!" You close your eyes again and try to calm down. You take a deep breath and you're much more gentle when you tell her, "I don't want you to know. You don't need to see. There's no reason for you to put yourself through that." After a moment of nothing but silence and darkness, you feel a hand over yours, pulling it away from your stomach. When you figure out why your hand was there, you realize that she's probably going to ask you about it later. You could do without that. Still, you open your eyes once again, and she's looking directly at you. It looks like tears are threatening.
"Yeah, there is a reason. And that reason is you. After yesterday, I realized there are so many gaps in what I know about what you went through. And I just- I don't know. If you won't tell me, then I gotta find out somehow, right? You said this same thing earlier: I can't help you if I don't know what's wrong. I thought… maybe I might know a little more of what's wrong if I knew a little more of what happened to you. But I shouldn't have- I'm so sorry, Lara. Please."
She was trying to help, and you were an ass. Granted, her way of helping wasn't perhaps the most well thought out, but still. You hang your head. You'd like to take back everything you yelled at her, or change your delivery at least. "No, I'm sorry. I could have just said no from the start, but I didn't. Then I made it go even better by shouting at you." You sigh. "Do you know what watching that reminded me of?"
Of course she does. "Yamatai."
"And do you know what I did?" You hope she does.
"Panicked?"
"Yeah. Apparently it decided to manifest as anger though. I'm sorry."
She nudges your chin up so that you're looking at her again. "It's okay. I forgive you. I wish you'd tell me more, but I pushed you again. And I'm sorry for that." You're about to apologize for going off on her again, but she stops you with a finger over your lips. "We've both said sorry a few times. That's enough of them for now. Okay?"
You nod, and she pulls her hand back. "If it makes you feel better, there's a prequel to the book of What You Don't Know. It's called What Sam Knows. Because you know a hell of a lot more than anybody else does. Enough to fill another novel."
You've succeeded in putting a small smile on her face. But as she stands up, you watch it disappear for a split second when she glances at your side. You scratch at it again.
"You know, if I'm going to 'stop putting you first' in order to start to be more open, I'd really like if you did the equivalent. I don't know what you think is so horrible that you can't even mention it. But. I was there too. I'm not saying you have to tell me every single thing, and you don't have to go into exceptional detail, but I've already said this once," She knocks on the top of your head. "You can't keep everything up there. So think about it, please." With that, she turns away and starts gathering up all the camera bits that were laid out.
You drop your head when she leaves to dump everything back where it came from, and you see your hand, still scratching. "Shit." She's right, of course. You don't know what to tell her about your weird fixation with your stomach wound, and clearly she's noticed. Acknowledging it officially isn't really the first on your list of things you'd like to do, nor is acknowledging that fact that Sam's picked up on it. And while you know she wasn't intending to guilt trip you into immediately spilling all your secrets, you feel like you should tell her something. Impulsively, you yell out after her. "I killed him." You don't hear her respond, and you think that maybe she didn't hear you, which might not be a terrible thing. It's not quite the first thing you'd like to share, but it was the first thing you thought of.
While you're deciding whether or not to repeat yourself, Sam's voice comes from directly behind you. "What?" She sounds surprised, and you assume it's because of what you just said. The fact that you said it, not the actual content. Because as unfortunate as it is, 'I killed him' is a phrase you could use very commonly right now.
"Please don't make me say it again, not right now." You know you'll be saying it a lot in the weeks to come. "Don't want to wear it out."
She sits beside you again. "Funny."
"I'm hoping it'll keep me going?" She doesn't say anything, just tilts her head slightly. "I don't like saying that out loud." Apparently, silence also works quite well on you, because when she continues to say nothing, you sigh and tell her, "The man who was talking. In the recording."
"Alright." She bumps your shoulder with hers and swings her legs up onto the couch, and then into your lap. "So what actually happened?"
Looking at her, she seems far too relaxed for this confession, but then again, she isn't the one explaining how she killed a man. It's only the fact that you notice her scratching at the back of her neck that tells you she isn't quite as comfortable as she looks. "Well, I was about to get to that."
A foot bounces once in your lap, and any facade that she had is now ruined. "No. I meant, uh, what we watched. Listened to, more like." She winces, like she's expecting you to get angry with her. Which is understandable, given how you were acting earlier. "I- I know we weren't going to watch any more but… we've already seen that bit. We can't take it back? I can't. I'm sorry. I don't, it isn't that I want to push you more, but. If you're going to tell me about whoever this guy was, I just think- the beginning? Start there?" She's still reclined against the arm of The Sofa but her body language, her language in general, has done a 180 from the moment she began talking. "Can you just fill in some gaps? Maybe?"
You can't rewind. You can't take back what she heard. But maybe if you give it context, if you explain what happened, maybe you'll feel even just the smallest amount better about telling Sam what you did. The whole story makes it more acceptable, easier to rationalize? You wonder if she knows that, and if that's why she struggled to ask you what she did. She wouldn't have said anything if she didn't have a purpose, she's far too afraid she's going to say something that'll upset you. So if she forced herself to take a chance, she must have had a purpose. "You know, Sam, I don't think you give yourself enough credit." You gently rest your hands on her feet to stop them from twitching.
"Huh?"
"Never mind. I'll… I can try telling you some parts." You're tiptoeing a strange line between 'Sam knows' and 'Sam would like you to explain'. You think it might be easier if you were clearly on one side of that line. It doesn't matter which, because either way you'd have a much better idea of what to say. "A group of the men took my bow, pinned me down. The camera must have turned on when I hit the ground. You heard Whitman, I don't think I need to go over that. They tied my wrists and then they took me to a camp." Where you made a pitiful attempt to run. An attempt than ended up costing you a friend's life. You tip your head back and talk to the ceiling again. After laying on the bed with Sam, something about the tiles above are calming. "You heard what happened there. It was him who made the gunshot; I kind of tried to duck away, and that was when he shot… I yelled, yeah? And then there were some noises." You look back to Sam. "Do you?"
"Lara," Her voice is soft. "There was practically no video, and I wasn't there."
A headache is creeping up on you again. You pinch at the bridge of your nose and take a deep breath. You don't want to relive this again and you push out the rest of the missing footage in the breath you took. "He slapped me when I yelled and that was why I cried out and the loud noise right before it ended was me hitting the ground."
Sam's chewing on her lip, and it looks like she's struggling with something to say. She leans forward and reaches out to lightly stroke your cheek. It's a sweet gesture, but it's the wrong cheek, and you stop yourself before you point that out. There's no reason to. "Lara, I-"
You cut her off, clearly she's still trying to find what she thinks is the right thing to say. "It's fine. I'm not done yet, so you might as well wait to try and justify this for me."
"Lara."
You're starting to hate when she says your name that way. Like you're wrong about whatever you're saying. Like you don't hear what you're saying. Like you're hiding something, repressing something. This is the opposite of that, is it not? Actually telling her things? "Just listen to the rest, okay? You're the one who asked to hear this." She leans back again and mutely nods at you.
You're getting defensive, almost agitated, again. This isn't going to work if you get short with Sam every time you talk through things. You can't keep letting yourself get overwhelmed. It isn't even that you're angry with Sam; there's no reason for you to be. It's more that you're angry about this entire situation. Either way, you can't take that anger out on her. It isn't fair, and you're going to be the one who pushes her away if you do that. You pinch the bridge of your nose again and squint. "I'm sorry. I keep snapping at you. It's not fair, and it's not right. It's just everything…" You're getting off track, and while you do need to tell her this, you need to finish what you've started first. "After the camera stopped recording, he told me to stay where I was, and then left. I didn't stay, obviously. My hands were still tied so I did my best to quietly sneak through a bunch of guards." You stop to scoff at yourself. "I should have gone the opposite direction. I ran right back to them. I found a… a little crevice between some broken down huts. But that same man, he found me. He pulled his gun on me and told me to get out."
You feel somewhat detached as you replay the events. You're telling the story in short, clipped sentences, as if it's simply that: a story. Not something that actually happened to you. "I was trapped between him and the huts, and he, uh, I think he was going to… I struggled, of course. Eventually I pushed him away enough that I could get enough speed to knock him down. But since my hands were still useless, I fell too. And-" Two and two put themselves together when you listen to your own words, and you desperately hope that somehow they don't end up making four. "I fell. The camera turned on and off when I fell during that first recording. What if that is something that… no. No. No, no. You can't see that. Sam, you can't see that." You're breathing short, shallow, little breaths and you're having a hard time keeping yourself calm. "That's not. I don't want you to see that. You shouldn't have to see what I did. You-"
"Hey. Stop. Slow down." When she stops you, you turn to look at Sam. You don't remember looking away. "You need to remember, and continue remembering, that I was there too. I saw people die too. I don't know why you think that I must have completely lost my sight the entire time we were there. I saw a lot of things too, Lara." She's chewing on her lip again, and her eyes are focused on something invisible on the floor. "I mean, I watched while they- I had to watch you get beaten nearly to death. There might have been a ton of other horrible shit that happened, but… I don't think there's anything I can watch that would be worse than that. Maybe that's cold, and maybe it's biased. But it's the truth." She rapidly blinks a few times before looking back up at you. "And hey, your camerawork was pretty terrible from what we've already watched. I don't think I'll be seeing it." A smile that doesn't look quite right accompanies her joke, and maybe, just maybe, she was right about how you simply haven't noticed most of the cracks in the armour that she's adorned.
"I wish you hadn't been there for that. I'm so-" You catch yourself before apologizing for what isn't your fault. Seems that Sam's chastising is starting to work. "I don't know why I assume that. I guess I want to protect you from it all, but it's far too late for that, isn't it?" She shrugs and nods her head. "Alright. Well, we both fell. So the camera might be on for this part. I hope it isn't, but…" Before continuing, you sigh heavily one more time. "When I knocked him down, he hit the ground pretty hard. The gun flew out of his hand. I don't know exactly how I landed, but it loosened the ropes from my wrists. We both scrambled for the gun. I got there first, but he still fought me for it. He was on top of me, and it was- it was like some twisted game of tug of war. Somehow I pushed the gun up enough so it was pointing at him." The end of the story is stuck in your throat and you turn your head away from Sam. Looking her in the eye is too much right now. "So I pulled the trigger. I shot him. I shot… he was barely three feet away from me, if that. I shot him point blank in the face." That's about all there is to say, and you turn back to Sam, who is quietly watching you. You're anxious now, and it's still difficult to maintain eye contact, so you stare down at the feet in your lap again.
After far too long of a silence, you hear Sam say a pair of words that you feared the most. "That's horrible."
"Please, you have to understand." You're mumbling weakly. You don't know how to explain. You're ready to start begging, if you have to. "If I hadn't-"
"Woah!" You startle slightly and look up at her again. "No. I'm sorry, I didn't phrase that… I meant, it's horrible that you had to do that." She shoves your legs with one of her feet. "Let me repeat that one part: that you had to do that. Unless you're twisting the truth somehow, which I'm pretty damn sure that you aren't, I don't think you had a choice, Lara." The room is quiet while she pauses. It seems like she's searching for words, but she isn't fidgeting, and the panicked look that's usually on her face is absent. "I'll be honest. I don't know what I can say to help lessen the weight that this is putting on you. I'm not even worried about messing it up, because I actually, legitimately, don't know what to tell you. I don't know what you need to hear. Not at this point, at least. So I'm not going to try right now, because it'll all be meaningless. But I will always be here to help you carry that weight, however you need me to. You did what you had to on Yamatai to survive, and I'm sure as hell not going to lose you to what that island did back. We didn't survive just to be done in by the aftermath."
"I…" She doesn't know it, but what she just said did help lift the tiniest amount of that weight from your shoulders. The fact that she didn't condemn you. "Thank you."
"No. Thank you. For telling all that to me. There's no way that was easy." She motions for you to lay down with her. You do, and make a note to make sure your replacement sofa is slightly wider. "But that was step one, y'know? That was big. You've started."
You've started. She's belittling herself again. While you take a moment to consider that, Sam starts rearranging the two of you so you're laying on your back and she can cuddle into your side again. "It's not just me. You picked your camera back up. That's a start."
"That's not the same. I just have to stand there and hold the camera. You're sitting here telling me things that you don't want to even say out loud at all." She doesn't pause for a second, not giving you any opportunity to protest. "You can't argue that. You literally said that before you started. And I what? Carried a camera around for a bit? It's not the same."
She falls silent and defaults to burying her face in the crook of your neck. You're starting to wonder if that's her equivalent of your hoodie. "It's not a race, Sam."
"Yeah." She sighs, and it feels like you should drop the topic for now. Your headache is still lingering after explaining all that, even in limited detail. Sam doesn't look bothered to move, and you've got nothing better to do. There's been enough, too much, drama for the day. You can stay here for a bit.
You do, and you do so in silence once again. The pattern of the ceiling tiles really are starting to have a calming effect on you. It's odd, but you'll take whatever comfort you can get. You're thinking about how to extend the duration of the ceiling's life when you feel Sam exhale heavily against your neck.
"It's one of the dreams I have a lot. Watching you get beaten. Sometimes they stop, like what actually happened. But sometimes, by the end? I can't even recognize you. And it loops. It happens over and over and I can't do anything. It's… I have nightmares about that a lot."
Where did that come from? "Sam, you don't have to-"
"I want to. I started thinking about telling you when I was talking about it. It felt like another case of 'say it now or it'll be harder to do later', I guess." She doesn't make any attempt to move, doesn't try to meet your eyes at all. She just continues to talk into your shoulder. Now you're almost positive that it is a defence mechanism. "I have that dream, and it's awful. I wake up and I'm scared to look at you. It feels so fucking real that when I wake up I'm terrified that when I look at you, you're going to be beaten and bruised, or worse. And it's dark in the room, so I can't really see anyway. That makes me want to like, I don't know, triple check that you're okay, even though I know it was just a dream. I don't though, because, uh," A huff of air against your neck as she chuckles sadly. "I don't want you to wake up to me groping your face. I usually end up spending a long time listening and watching you breathe. Watching you still be alive?"
Like Sam, you don't know what to say. Maybe the listening is actually harder than the talking, because that phantom hand came back and reached into your chest again while Sam was speaking. "Sam…"
"You don't have to say anything. I was the one who had to." She shakes her head. "I can't keep up the joking bullshit."
"I don't know that I agree that you had to. I really don't want you to push yourself before you're ready, okay? But I'm going to say that I think you just took that first step." You crane your neck to plant a quick kiss on the top of her head. "I'm proud of you."
"It's still not the same."
Never did you think you'd have to convince her that this isn't a contest. "You need to stop comparing things, Sam. Not only does it not matter in the end, but we don't have the same things to compare. We both have dreams, sure, but you weren't running and gunning like I was. You were…" You have to stop for a moment when you realize that you don't really know what all happened with her on Yamatai.
"There. That right there. You don't know. I've barely told you anything."
She really can't tell herself the same things she's been telling you, can she? "I seem to recall something about a book of things that Sam doesn't know? I'm not going to call you a hypocrite again but,"
Her laughter cuts you off. "You kinda just did."
"Is there something about that word that makes you laugh? Anyway, what I want to tell you is that you need to listen to everything that you tell me, and then tell it to yourself. Why did you want to watch the camera?"
Any residual laughter is silenced. "So I could find out what happened to you. Because I… didn't know."
"See?" You don't get a response. "I don't know why you can't hear what you're saying and realize that it applies to you as well, but do you think you could give it a try?"
"Logical Lara Croft. The fuck would I do without you?"
A smile dances on your lips. "You'd probably still be crawling down a really tall mountain."
She flails a leg around to kick at you. "I thought that wasn't funny."
"I'm clearly just a better comedian than you are." You try to kick back, but you aren't exactly in the best position to do so, and you end up rolling Sam off The too-small Sofa. She yelps. "Shit. Sam, I'm sorry."
"Lara?"
"What?" You shuffle off The Sofa as well, and end up in a pile on top of her.
"Can I call you a hypocrite now?"
A small giggle turns into full laughter. Maybe there is something about that word that's funny. Before the two of you end up in another giggle fit, she shuts you up by leaning up to kiss you. She pulls away too quickly, and grins at you. "There's something romantic about heavy conversations about death, huh?"
You roll your eyes. "Must you try to ruin everything?" Luckily, she's trapped beneath you, and you don't give her a chance to reply before you lean back down into her.
i want to know whoever broke you, i want to know how you can grow bigger
i cannot fucking believe that i squandered my opportunity to use this song in the last chapter i cannot believe i did it i literally worked the title of it into the dialogue and i didn't even notice i cannot believe
Uh, anyway. I'm using it now. Picked different lyrics from it though to fit this chapter better (at least it still does kinda fit). Couldn't decide which version to go with (I suggest you listen to both? They both have applicable lines and I really like them both?) It's probably because I've been listening to an embarrassingly large amount of dubstep, like probably unhealthy amounts. who wants a tr dubstep mix!?
Okay, clearly I'm slightly traumatized about this lyric debacle but wow I'll stop going on about it now.
This kinda ended up all over the place because Lara & Sam kinda took over again. Mostly Lara. Thanks, fictional character who doesn't have the sentience to realize that they're ruining my super loose outline.
...Did I fluff it up enough at the end to make up for the angstfest that I started at the museum?
p.s. thank you for all the kind reviews i know i don't really respond but they make me happy when i see them aka i'm glad some of you seem to think that, to loosely quote, yeah this is good shit it's some good shit right here if you do say so yourselves
p.p.s. How bullshit was the last issue of the comic?
What's next?: a chapter with a title that pertains to the content of said chapter