Before she left in the morning, Sam warned you that she might be out longer than normal, in order to make up for some of the things she had to cancel yesterday. You, of course, feel slightly guilty about this, because you were the one who went and had a breakdown in a public broom closet. You've covered The Sofa with a blanket and are laying on it, playing catch with yourself with a stress ball that Sam seemed to have materialized out of nowhere. You have a feeling that it's meant to keep your hands away from your stomach, and you wonder just how obvious it's been. You don't even notice it half the time, which you realize might actually be what would have made it obvious. You try not to think about how long Sam's been waiting to gift you the bright yellow stress ball with a shaky smiley face permamarkered onto it, if you do, you might figure out how long ago she noticed.

You're laying there, repeatedly throwing the little ball up in the air, and listening to the sound of the television being off. Not only have you no desire to go back to your documentary series, you aren't all that keen on watching any TV at all. You've done enough of that. What else there is to do, you aren't sure. You wouldn't say that you want to go travel the world right this moment, but you are feeling a little restless. You didn't recognize the feeling at first; it's been awhile.

You fumble the ball, and it bounces off of your forehead and rolls a few feet away from you, smiling the whole time. Your arms flop down beside you in defeat, and you check the time. A few minutes past eleven, which is about eighteen minutes since you last checked. Brilliant.

There must be something you can do. You've been spoiled the last few days, having Sam home with you. Maybe that isn't quite the correct word, as they haven't been the most pleasant days. They weren't complete shit though, and you weren't all alone with your thoughts, so yeah, you decide, 'spoiled' is correct. You heave yourself up, and look around.

There is always the matter of The Sofa. But you'd rather Sam have input on its replacement, as your only requirement is 'wider'. There is the carpet as well, but neither of you have decided whether you care enough to replace it, or to just rearrange. You move on.

You peek into your study, as if it isn't your own room. Tentatively, you step in and walk over your desk. It's still littered with random notes and papers about Yamatai that were inconsequential enough for you to leave behind. It's almost funny how the small, unimportant things are what survived. You shuffle them into a neat pile, doing your best not to read anything. Tidied. Looking around the rest of the room makes you tired, and you figure that maybe you shouldn't even try any reading. You'd just get frustrated. You tidy the already tided papers again, and it's almost a shame that the room is so neat, because at least you could occupy yourself with that. You brush a light layer of dust from a bobble head of a character from some medical soap opera show that Sam watches. (She said she bought it for you because the character reminded her of you, and although you aren't sure why she thought you'd want a wobbly pseudo-you on your own desk, it's become a permanent fixture there). It bobbles when you touch it, and another little puff of dust poofs out from its head. People don't actually dust, do they? It's just one of those things that everybody lies about, surely. You move on.

Your bedroom is… your bedroom. As it has been of late, your laptop is plugged in here, but that's about all there is. You absently fluff the pillows on the bed. If dusting was real, you could do it here as well, and making up beds is definitely another thing that people lie about. You move on.

You stand at the door of the bathroom. Bathroom cleaning is actually a real thing. After glancing around too quickly to actually get a good look at the room, you decide that yes, it is certainly clean enough. Without even stepping in, you move on.

Sam's camera slash editing slash junk slash sometimes dining room is cluttered and organized in a manner that only Sam can decipher. Still, you can find key items. Such as The Yamatai Camera and Memory Cards. You nudge the camera to the edge of the desk it's on, but push it back when you realize that you would accomplish nothing other than probably start filming your sabotage attempt. Instead, you pop the SD card out of the camera and twirl it in your hand as you contemplate. You shouldn't… but. You could. It'd be a bad idea though. Sam would know better than to just assume that somehow the card just died on it's own. Especially after having already seen that it was working. It could go missing. That would be handy. It would also be incredibly obvious that it didn't just walk away by itself. You set the card down on the desk, and stare at it about as intensely as you would at one of those hidden picture eye illusion posters. This card is one of the few actually tangible things that can help you open a more direct line of communication with Sam. And you're finally starting to realize how little sense it makes to be here together, but on a separated basis. If you can't share what's really going on in your head with Sam… then what the hell is the point? You slip the card back into the camera, and think back over how much you've actually been self-sabotaging. A pinch at your side snaps your attention to the fact that you're picking at your stomach again. You move on, making a side stop to pick up the stress ball.

You can see into the laundry room, where all the bottles have been cleaned up. Tossing the stress ball back and forth between your hands (not exactly how it's meant to be used, but you figure that it's still serving its supposed purpose), you tell yourself not to bother with an excuse, and to just ignore any dirty laundry. You pull the door shut, and move on.

The kitchen. You've been ambling around long enough that it's a decent time for lunch, now. The stress ball (Otis, you've decided. His name is Otis.) is tossed onto the counter, and you open the fridge to find not much of anything at all. You could scramble together enough random food to resemble a meal. You could go out to buy groceries, or to some sort of restaurant. Still holding the door of the fridge open, you click your tongue while you consider your options. After a large amount of cold air has escaped, you remember that you should close the door of the fridge, and you walk back out to the living room once you've done so. You approach the front door, and grab the handle. It takes you another minute to actually turn it.

You stand in the doorframe, wearing your dirty pyjama pants and egged bunny slippers, and watch the rest of the world live its life. It isn't even that there's all that much activity going on, you live in a quiet area. It's the fact that people are living their lives so easily. It doesn't… it isn't fair. You went through hell only to end up standing not-quite-outside your own home, watching a woman jog down the street, and envying her almost to the point of actively, unwarrantedly, but actively hating her for how easily she's, well… for how easily she's existing. And you know you shouldn't judge her life based only on how she's outside, jogging. There are so many other facets, other things that you don't know. But she's outside, and she isn't having a nervous breakdown, not that you can tell, at least. You'd say that you'd kill for that, except that's part of what's keeping you from putting on some real clothes and strolling out your door.

It's like you're a small child with a security blanket. Except your blanket is a living human being, and that human the only thing keeping you together right now. It's the concept that's the same: can't go anywhere without her and god forbid you lose her, because all hell would break loose (and you can do a lot more damage than a toddler). You close your eyes and lean against the doorframe for a minute before you take a forced step out. After shuffling forward a few more half steps, you sit on your front step. The fresh air is nice. You plant your elbows on your thighs and lean forward to rest your chin in your hands.

When you went out with Sam, you would have lost it on the sidewalk outside of the first shop. What exactly you would have done, you aren't sure, but you wouldn't have made made it into the store, at the very least. Then you went out all on your lonesome, like a grown-up, and promptly locked yourself away in a closet. In your defence, it was the flashbacks that caused that. For all you know, you could have had a nice day in the museum had you just been there looking at an exhibit. Though if you were walking through an exhibit, there would also be other people doing the same and… you're edging yourself towards self-loathing. You stop focusing on thinking.

Instead, you focus on not thinking at all. It takes much more conscious effort than it should, and you can still feel the fresh air, but you're not able to really focus on any of the scenery. That's okay. You're okay with doing nothing but breathing right now, because you're doing it outside. Two steps away from your front door, but still, outside. You lose track of time, somewhat, and your stomach is trying to tell you to eat, but. Outside. Calmly outside.

And then a dog barks.

And you shoot to your feet and you're grasping for your bow which isn't there and you don't have time to question that so you go for a gun instead and when you find that your pistol isn't where it should be you reach for your shotgun and end up grabbing thin air. You look around for anything, anything you can find that you can use to keep yourself alive and the nearest thing to you is an obviously neglected planter with some pretty sad looking flowers planted in it and… you planted them yourself. You're holding your own flowerpot. You're standing in front of your flat, wielding your own planter that no longer has your flowers in it, as they were so withered that they gave up the ghost when you whipped them up from the step. You're standing defensively, in your yard, ready to bash somebody or something's head in with a rectangle of dirt and flowers that you couldn't even keep alive. With that assessment, the rush of adrenaline leaves you, and that self-loathing that you warded off earlier comes back. With friends, even: some anxiety, a little bit of shame, a drop of fear, and what is probably an 'enough' worth of embarrassment.

You place the pot down, somewhere in the general vicinity of where it came from, and back into your flat through the door that you're glad you left open. When you're fully back inside, anger courses through you and you slam the door shut. You punch it, hard, for good measure, and then drop yourself down to sit on the floor, leaning back against the door. Your hand is throbbing, a knuckle was scraped, and you sit flexing your hand through the pain while you try to let the anger go. The pain in your hand actually helps a bit, distracts you. It's not enough, though. If 'seeing red' was more than a phrase, everything in your sight would be crimson right now.

You're angry at Yamatai. For what it did to you. You're angry at Mathias. For what he took from you. You're angry at the Solarii. For what they forced you to do to them, for the instincts they ingrained in you. You're angry at Himiko. For not actually being just a legend. You're angry at your father. For being right about legends not being just legends. You're even somewhat, ever so slightly, angry at Roth, at Alex, at Grim, at Whitman, even. For leaving you.

Mostly, you're angry with yourself. Because you feel so out of control and lost and you can't fix that. Because you aren't who you used to be and you can't fix that. Because you can't seem to function as a human anymore and you can't fix that. Because you are so, so, incredibly fucked up. And. You. Can't. Fix. That.

You want to.

You don't know how to.

At one point, after you sat down on the floor, you must have forced yourself to start breathing deeply. The thump of your pulse is losing volume in your ears, and your head is starting to feel a little less light. You also must have started picking at your knuckle, because it's slightly more than a scrape now, and a few of your fingers as well as the other knuckles beside it are sticky. There are probably plenty of better options, but you choose to focus on the pain of that as your body allows you to start registering it again. You sit, eyes fixed on your knuckles, watching the minuscule seeping of blood, and you try to block out everything but your breathing and the minor pain in your hand.

When you're finally able to start thinking clearly again, you replay what just happened and end up shaking your head at yourself. You just want to go outside. Is that really too much to ask? You briefly entertain the idea of seeking proper professional help, and then decide to forget that you ever considered it. Why it seems so off-putting, you aren't sure. But you don't like the idea of it.

Also, your anger worries you. Not necessarily that you're experiencing it, because you feel you have a right to be angry about what happened, to a certain extent. What worries you is the fact that you're noticing it now. Like yesterday, when you almost exploded at Sam. Maybe this isn't the start of some potential anger issues. Maybe you've just not paid attention to it before. And god, you hope it isn't, but what if it's at least part of the reason Sam is so afraid of saying the wrong thing?

The concept of that doesn't calm you down, per se. You've, at this point, now settled down enough that that isn't an immediate issue. It's more that the concept of it pushes you to decide to at least start to work on controlling your emotions. You aren't sure how you're going to do that, but there's probably at least one crap WikiHow on the topic.

When you eventually stand up, one of your knees pops. Sam's right. You need to start having breakdowns in more comfortable places.

Sam. You look at your hand. Sam deserves better than to come home only to find you covered in blood again. It's dried and flaky, sure, but it's still blood. On your way to the bathroom, you check the clock. Half past two. You don't know how all that time was split between outside and inside. It's not like it really matters anyway.

When you wash your hands, your knuckle starts to slowly turn red again. Normally you'd leave it be, as it isn't bleeding enough to be much of an issue. But you'd rather bandage it; the fact that you were picking at it is pretty easy to see. Between that and your stitches, you don't want Sam to think you have some sort of problem. You slap a bandaid over it and head back to the kitchen.

Looking into the fridge again, you realize you've lost your appetite. Another worrying pattern, but you suppose it's alright for now, because nothing new has appeared in there since you last checked. The same jar of peanut butter, the same lone reject potato, the same carton of juice, the same half empty pack of hot dogs. You abandon the idea of lunch, pick up Otis, and go back to the living room to wistfully stare out your window, like that infamous doggie in the pet store window. You'd love to just go for a walk even. Maybe you could get Sam to, you're being honest with yourself when you phrase it, to get Sam to take you on a walk. Like she would with the doggie in the window. You sigh. It would be great to be out at night, see the night sky again without a pane of glass in the way, and feel the breeze. It feels different at night, for whatever reason. Out of everything, just being outside during the night is something you quite miss.

An idea comes to you, and you tilt your head while you think. You're doing a number on poor Otis, but when you turn around to survey the room, you give him a break and abandon him. The blanket draped on The Sofa is your main focus. This is something you generally do at night. Outside. But maybe you can make it work as an indoor activity.

Furniture gets pushed around and rearranged, and you leave temporarily to find as many blankets as you can gather. They fly through the air and when you're somewhat satisfied with your prototype, you dart back to the kitchen to double check in the fridge. The hot dogs are (obviously) still there. Sam likes hot dogs. Sam also likes chocolate. You dash around, opening cupboards, searching for any sign of chocolate. Sure enough, there's one of those oversized bars of pure chocolate stashed away. Perfect. You grab it, and find some cookies as well. Chocolate chip isn't exactly traditional, but it'll do in a pinch. You're missing something though, and while you kind of want to keep this a surprise for Sam, you resign yourself to the fact that you're going to have to text her and ask her to make a stop on her way home.

'buy marshmallows before you come home plz'

You get a bunch of question marks in response. 'humour me'

A single letter commits you to following through with your plan: 'k'

Back in the living room, you rearrange everything again, more purposefully this time. When you finish, you take a step back and admire your work. It's a damn fine tent, if you do say so yourself. It's really just a giant pillow fort, but you're going to keep calling it a tent because tonight? Tonight you're going camping.

Yes, it's even more pathetic than camping in your backyard, but it could be fun. Sam deserves something nice after all the crap you've been piling on her. And okay, yes, it isn't exactly a candlelight dinner, but since when have the two of you ever been traditional? As far as you're concerned, at this point? Anything that isn't about the two of you being complete messes counts as 'something nice'.

So you're going to camp in your living room tonight, and dammit, you're going to have fun while you're doing it.

You've got food locked down. You've got it all covered except for hot dog buns, and you can just substitute bread for that purpose. You've got your skewers, and you've got two thirds of your s'mores. As long as Sam doesn't bail on marshmallow duty, you're set. And your tent is fantastic. To complete it, though, you chuck a few pillows inside and seek out a sleeping bag.

The problem is that the gap in your plan is kind of the crucial component. It isn't camping if you don't burn your food over an open fire. But you can't exactly just set your carpet on fire and hope for the best. You don't have a clear plan, but you've learned how to improvise quite well. You head back to Sam's multipurpose room, and examine the junk corner to see what you can salvage. Maybe Sam still has… You start shifting things around, and it isn't long before you find the fish tank from Sam's short lived attempt at being a pet owner. For the first time, you're glad that she insisted on a fancy tank, one made of complete glass, because the plastic lining that is typical on a fish tank was 'just so ugly'. You tap your knuckles against the side while you squint at the rest of the junk, looking for the lid. You need that mesh. At least the colourful rocks are still rattling about in the tank. After rearranging a few things that were in the vicinity of the tank, the lid is revealed, and this could not be going better. So far. You still need a fire source. And a way to keep the tank off the kitchen floor, where you'll be starting the fire. You don't feel it would be a good idea to just plop heated glass on the tile.

After clearing a spot in the kitchen, you drag your components over and try to put everything together in your head. When you pick up the tank to try and find some inspiration, it feels oddly familiar. It takes you a minute, but when you figure out what it was reminding you of, you jog back to the front door. Your weaponized flower planter was almost the same size as the tank. You fling the door open, grab the planter, give it a few shakes to throw the dirt off to the side, and slam the door shut again. It's not completely dirt-free, but you can wash it. You carry it with you to kitchen and drop it down beside the fish tank. It feels like the big moment of truth as you pick up the tank and hover it over the planter. It looks like it'll fit. You lower it, and it isn't in there snugly, but it's sturdy enough to keep it raised.

You absently hack at the mesh from the tank lid while you ponder exactly how you're going to get this thing burning. There must be something around that's flammable enough. You've got the mesh cut out of the lid and you drop it down into the tank to see how it fits. It's tight enough that it should work. Now that you've finished with that, you start looking through cupboards and closets, trying to come up with at least one idea you can test. You don't know what you're expecting to find when you start looking through all your dinnerware, but when you open the cupboard that holds most of your assorted glasses and mugs, you catch a glimpse of a set of shot glasses in the back. You're rewarded with vivid memories of Sam waving a few sheets of drink recipes at you, insisting on attempting to create successful flaming shots.

You contemplate the glasses, but end up retrieving a set of bowls instead, one of them fitting nicely inside the other. After all your injuries, you know for a fact that you have some fairly strong isopropyl alcohol left over somewhere. You find some in the bathroom, and fill the smaller bowl with it. The larger bowl gets filled with cold water, and you seek out a left over pair of chopsticks from your frequent Chinese takeaway meals. This is still a test and you don't want your hand anywhere near the potential flames when you try to light this. When you find a pair, you snap them apart, and light the end of one on fire. When you touch it to the alcohol, everything goes just as you'd hoped. You're staring at a flaming bowl of alcohol on your kitchen counter. Normally, you'd be horrified, but right now it's the most fantastic thing you think you've ever seen.

You, very carefully, place it in the centre of the flower planter/fish tank combo, and put extra, empty bowls of the same size on either side of it. The mesh gets dropped on top of the bowls, which successfully keep it sitting evenly, and although the bright pink and purple of the tank pebbles ruin the illusion of a proper campfire, you lightly pour them over the mesh anyway. The flame is large enough that it flickers through the pebbles with ease. It isn't burning uncontrollably either. It's quite perfect, you think.

You pour yourself a glass of water, and start pre-skewering the hot dogs when you hear Sam stomp her way in. It's a little excessive, really, and you make a note to bring up the fact that she probably doesn't need to do that anymore. Right now though, you plant yourself beside your unorthodox fire pit and wait to show it off.

After you acknowledge her with a loud hello, Sam starts yelling out about her shopping trip. "Hey, so, I didn't know what you wanted these for, so I went a little overboard and covered all the bases. I've got your good ol' traditional marshmallows, I've got those tiny colourful ones," You can hear the rustle of a shopping bag. "And there were also these weird twisty rainbow ones, that seem pretty useless, but I've got those too. I also bought some apples so I didn't look like a lunatic at the till. I don't know if it really worked because… What. The. Hell." You assume she's seen your tent. "Oh my god, Lara, please tell me you didn't destroy the rest of the furniture."

You're almost offended. "You're not looking at it properly! Come here, let me tell you all about what we're doing tonight."

"Riiight." She sounds skeptical, but you hear her heading towards the kitchen anyway. When she walks in, she's in the middle of digging through packages of marshmallows to retrieve what you assume is a bag of apples. "I have no idea what's going on right now, but if you're having some sort of crisis that somehow involves furniture stacking and marshmallows," She triumphantly pulls the apples free, and looks up at your creation. "I have even less of an idea of how to deal with that than- Oh. Wow. Jesus. That's… wow. Ha. Well, fuck. That's. Yeah, that right there is a fire in our kitchen. It's, okay, um." She shuffles backwards a few steps.

You wave your skewered hot dog around. "I thought we could camp? Inside?" You point at the marshmallows that she's carrying. "Er, s'mores?" You're suddenly feeling very stupid. This whole idea is actually quite pathetic, isn't it?

"Ha. Hah. Wooo. Oh, god. Okay. You've got a little fire there. That looks like a fire." The apples thump on the ground. "That's, gosh, that's quite a fiery fire, isn't it? Look at those flames. Would you just look at that."

"Sam?"

"Hooo-boy, and we're all set to roast some stuff, aren't we? Heh. Wow, that is. Fire. Uh-huh. Okay. Shit. Okay, so it's time for my Captain Obvious statement right now,"

"Your what?"

"Now it's not that I don't, hah, that sure is a nice fire, isn't it? Pretty warm, I bet. It's not that I don't. See, I can't exactly say that I'm a big fan of fire anymore? It's actually maybe kinda really scary. The burning of… things, that is. Well, actually it's more like… Just fire. All of fire."

You feel incredibly stupid now, but not embarrassed stupid, not anymore. Just stupid stupid.

"And gosh, that is definitely a fire right in front of me, isn't it? Okay, I'm just going to, uh, I don't know what I'm going to. Let's, uh. I'm gonna be honest with you Lara I think I might be panicking a bit right now so I'm just going to stand right here" You grab your glass of water from the counter and pour it on the flames. They sizzle for a moment and start back up. "and try not to vomit if that's okay with you because it really would be a shame to ruin this many marshmallows y'know and it's also not really" You're trying to find something to put the fire out with, but her panic is slightly contagious. "the nicest thing to clean up and yeah I'm actually going to lean against this door here now because I'm feeling a little faint at the moment and I'm not" You're such an idiot, and why is there nothing around to put out the fire? "going to say that it's this fire's fault I mean it's not like it did anything to me it's just existing but y'see the thing is that it's existing right in front of me and wow I'm gonna just toss these marshmallows away from me" You hiss when you try to pick up the burning hot glass; taking it anywhere is out of the question. "because it would really be a shame to ruin them they are really quite tasty and I do actually want to try those twisty ones I don't know if they're new or" You grab the lid of a pot and pull everything that is in liquid form from the fridge. "if I've never seen them before you'd think I'd have bought them if I'd seen them though and you know what I think I bruised those apples but I think they'll still be edible we've eaten really brown bananas" You dump as much of the liquids into the fire as you possibly can and drop the lid of the pot on top of the tank. "and if we lived to tell that tale then bruised apples are probably fine and Lara I think I need to sit down for a moment but there's a fire between me and a chair and blankets are all" The fire is dying but it hasn't completely stopped. What were you thinking? You start filling the largest bowl you can find with water from the sink. "over the rest of the furniture so I'm just going to have a sit on the floor here if that's okay with you because that there is a fire in our kitchen" You lift the lid, splash the water onto the fire, and slam the lid back down. "ha ha oh gosh it's nice and contained isn't it but golly what a fire it is" Finally, the fire sizzles to an end. "oh and hey look look at that would you that fire is gone isn't that nice" There isn't much smoke at all, but you start fanning around the area to try and prevent the smoke alarms from going off, just in case. At same time Sam finally starts to slow down her constant ramble. "yup the fire is gone and smoke kinda sucks but I think it's a better alternative to fire don't you it certainly feels like it's better uh huh yes indeedy…" She seems to run out of steam and after a few absolutely hollow and humourless laughs, she takes a deep breath and goes silent.

You would like to punch yourself in the face.

"Sho, the thin' ish tha' I do shorta 'member thin'sh all real-like shomtimeshs. Like wif you at the musheum?" After you coerced Sam to crawl into your tent, she insisted that you retrieve at least one pack of marshmallows for her. She proceeded to wrap herself up in the sleeping bag and is now currently laying on the floor, dropping a steady stream of twisty rainbow marshmallows into her mouth.

You take a bite of the hot dog that you microwaved for far too long, and sigh. "Alright, Sam, I really do want to talk about this with you. But please, can you chew every once in awhile?" You're sitting up, leaning against an unidentified piece of furniture, and really hoping that Sam will accidentally give you an opening to squish yourself into the sleeping bag with her.

"I shushposhe." The stream of marshmallows stops, and you wait for her to finish the last five or so that she's somehow got wedged into her mouth. She considers the bag while she does so, and then unceremoniously drops it somewhere off to the side. "Y'know, they just taste like regular old marshmallows. Why bother making them all fancy? I'm a little disappointed."

"What exactly did you expect? They're just dyed to be very colourful."

Her hands fly up in the air. "Colourful! Exactly! All rainbowy. I thought that maybe they'd at least taste a little gayer than the plain ol' white ones."

You sigh again, louder this time. "What would that even… tell me, Sam. What exactly does gay taste like?" She's about to respond when you realize the many opportunities you've given her. "Nope! No. Don't answer that. Forget I asked." When she raises her eyebrows at you, faux-displeased, it dawns on you that you're joking about marshmallows instead of actually discussing the minor disaster you just caused. She's too good at this. "Okay, Sam, can we stop avoiding? I know it's hard, but…"

"Yeah, fine. But honestly. I'm disappointed." She stares straight up at the blanket draped above her. "Can we also stop calling this a tent? Because it's really, really not a tent."

"Sam."

"Sorry. It's just hard. This is hard." Your mouth is full, so you hum in agreement. "I don't know- what am I supposed to say? That not only was I tied to a giant Game of Thrones-esque pole with the intent to just be casually lit on fire, but that I also had to watch you get the shit kicked out of you at the same time? Which is something that we've already established as a problem."

"Well, that is pretty accurate. And, uh, understandably a good reason to be put off of fire." You toss your now empty paper plate out of the blanket-tent-fort. "I don't know what tell you, Sam. Just say whatever you want."

You can see her feet bouncing under the sleeping bag. "Word-vomit, then. Great. So… fuck, I don't know." She looks from the blanket, to you, then back up to the blanket. "Okay, uh, can you just, like, listen to what I'm gonna say here? It's- I know exactly what your reaction is going to be, so can you please just try not to interrupt me?"

"Sure?" You're not completely sure what she means by that.

"Fantastic," she drawls in an incredibly unenthusiastic tone. "When we were talking about your flashbacks, or whatever you're calling them? After the whole closet incident? The, uh, the first one." Oh, no. "Don't!" She points at you. "Don't fucking say anything yet. I understand you did what you had to do, I get it. It's fine. But I also maybe understand the bit about begging for your life?" You open your mouth, but you don't have a chance to get any words out. "Stop. You said you wouldn't talk. I don't want you to fucking freak out every time the word fire comes up. It's not… it's not that bad." She's twiddling her thumbs. "Yeah, okay, you're right. It's not exactly comfortable either. And this is the conflict here. Because I tell you that I'm fucked up about fire, you're not going to say a goddamn word about anything that might even involve fire again." She looks back to you again.

You wait in silence until you're sure it's your turn to talk. "I… I probably wouldn't, would I?" Perhaps you've found a loophole for other issues though. "Hey, is it still self-sabotage if I'm doing it for somebody else's sake?"

"Excuse me?"

And you're trying to find excuses again. "Nothing. I shouldn't even… Right, so, what exactly do we do in this situation?"

"That's just it, isn't it? It's like you said, I guess. We went through different things." She releases her iron grip on the sleeping bag, and you crawl into it as she carries on. "Like, you do need to talk things through, right? But what am I supposed to do with this? I summed it up in what, three sentences? There's nothing to talk about. It's- I don't know. Is this a phobia now?"

As you suspected, the moment you've settled in the sleeping bag with her, she's busy snuggling up against you. Her face in the crook of your neck, of course. You don't know if that's something that you should talk about. She was fine with your hoodie. "Maybe? I think that having flashbacks, or, uh, just panicking that severely might make it something more. God, Sam, I don't know anything about this stuff. Wrong PhD."

"Oh, don't. We need to just start having consultations with the internet, I think."

It's better than nothing. "We can do that. But for now, what do we do here?"

"I guess…" You feel a heavy exhale against your neck. "We just set some sort of boundary? You warn me if you're going to talk about. Uh. If you… if you're going to talk about doing the killing with the fire?"

She's even nervous about asking you to consider her feelings. You hate that. "Please, asking me to be put a little extra thought into what I say? That's the least I can do. You can't- I don't want you to be so afraid of…" Me. Please, don't be afraid of me. "Of saying the wrong thing that you don't say anything at all."

"Yeah." She sounds tired when she says it. "So, then. Just… spoiler alerts if we're going to be talking excessively about fire. And no real fires. For now. Eventually I'm gonna to have to figure out a way to look at a fire without feeling it at my feet."

"Sam." You enable further snuggling (not that you're eager to stop it) and sling an arm over her.

"Maybe I can do the whole immersion therapy thing using that weird fireplace channel on TV."

"Sam, I'm so sorry."

She shrugs, or at least, under the circumstances, does her best approximation of a shrug. "It's whatever. You didn't know. Maybe I should have said something. I would also say that maybe this had to happen, but I don't think that starting a fucking fish tank on fire in our kitchen is something that had to happen."

You aren't going to disagree.

"So, is this what you were picturing when you were setting all this shit up?"

A laugh escapes you. "You want the truth? I don't actually know what I was thinking. I mean, what is this? The moment you walked in to see me standing beside a pink and purple aquarium fire, hot dog in hand, I immediately asked myself what the hell I was doing. And that was before the whole fire crisis."

"Is somebody perhaps slightly bored?"

"…Perhaps. There's not much to do when I can't go outside." You'll tell her about what happened later. "And I still want nothing to do with anything in my study, unfortunately."

"Yeah, I can see how you might be a little restless. No Netflix?"

"Wasn't interested today."

"That's good, I guess. I like hearing that. But Lara?"

"Yeah?"

"Just… no more arts and crafts, please."

in hell we will all burn brightly, having been there, man, i wish i didn't know

*I've just very belatedly realized that I've been referencing things from The Conversation Redux that are not at all obvious from the version that's in this (because we can't see what Sam is thinking, obv), so idk if you want to go read it. I'll copypaste a line for an example for you (one regarding/explaining Sam's 'snuggling defence mechanism', although there's more context earlier than that quote), I guess, and then you can decide if you want to go read it, if you haven't already: You take the opportunity to bury your face into her neck. It's comforting, and it's continued proof that she is indeed still here, in all capacities it seems.

I have been trying my damndest to fit either a cover or original song by Arden Cho (Sam's VA) into one of these fucking chapters but I think it's impossible so I'm going to just suggest you go to Youtube and at least watch her & Jason Chen's dorky-ass cover (and I say that endearingly, of course) of Shake It Off and just pretend that it's Sam & (probably drunk) Lara (who can't actually sing). A lovely contrast to Angst City over here.

Anywho, it was really great trying to figure out how the fuck Lara was going to light the fire. What I actually mean is no, it sucked and I wrote around that part as well as a little bit of the next chapter before I came up with something that kinda makes sense.

***DON'T START YOUR FISH TANK ON FIRE. THERE IS A SAFE WAY TO MAKE AN INDOOR GLASS FIREPIT BUT I HAD TO IMPROVISE BECAUSE LARA WOULDN'T JUST HAPPEN TO HAVE ALL OF THE REQUIRED SHIT LAYING AROUND. THIS IS A BASTARDIZED COMBINATION OF ABOUT THREE DIFFERENT WAYS TO START AN INDOOR FIRE. PLEASE DON'T BURN YOUR HOUSE DOWN.***

ahem.

So yeah, I think I'd be a little fucked up about fire if somebody had essentially tried to, y'know, burn me at the stake. Just saying.

alternative dubstep song for this chapter, because i am trash™: Reasons by Project 46 feat. Andrew Allen

Next time: do people still assume that i'm going to have chapter names decided on time anymore or

how much is that lara in the window?

the one with the ptsd

how much is that lara in the window

oh, i do hope she'll end up happy