"Why didn't you tell me?"

"Uh," Sam looks at you, then down to the coffee table that's now laying on its side. And all the debris that flew from it. Then a glance at your bleeding foot, and a final sweep over the broken mug responsible for the bleeding. "Well."

You're still breathing heavily, a side effect of the anger that kicked in after the few moments of silence that you spent absorbing Sam's confirmation that yes, you did sleep through a large amount of noise while she was abducted.

"I had a feeling that it might bother you. Perhaps upset you a bit." She allows her feet to dangle back off of The Sofa. Somewhere around the time that you kicked the table over, she pulled them up, as a precaution. "I get the impression that I may have been correct about that, and in hindsight, that telling you may have actually, uh, prevented the bother and the upset."

Trying to wear off some of the angry energy, you start pacing back and forth. Every other step, a sharp pain surges through your left foot. As you did with your knuckle, you focus on it. It still very much feels like an unhealthy option, but it's also very much helping, right now. You've also inadvertently settled the debate about whether or not to purchase a new carpet.

"Mm. Okay. That's… yikes. Now, Lara, I can't say that I give a shit about the floor right now but, hm. If you want to keep, uh, moving around like that," She winces for you, each time your foot hits the floor. "Would you at least let me… uh, I'm going to go find some tweezers? To, well, tweeze. The glass, that is. I'd like to tweeze the glass from your foot, if you're alright with that."

The initial burst of energy is actually starting to wear off, and choosing to ignore proper seating options, you drop down to the floor. You scootch around until you're leaning back against The Sofa, and you take a slow, deep breath while you weakly give her the thumbs up.

"Okeedokiee. I'll just be two seconds." The smile that she tries to flash is more of a grimace. By the time she returns, you've started to tire, and you've slid down into a further slump. "Alright." She snaps the tweezers that she's retrieved a few times, and sits opposite you. Her hand reaches out for your foot, but pulls back before it gets halfway there. She tries again, and gets far enough to give the flat of your foot a quick poke. "Oh boy. That's quite… I'm not sure I should do this? I mean, I can. But," She sucks in a breath through her teeth. "That is really stuck in there."

Now that your outburst is over and done with, shame has started to overtake the anger, and you slump even further. You stare at your lap, because you don't think you can look Sam in the eye right now.

"It's, yeah, it's already bleeding quite a bit, y'know? I'm suddenly having second thoughts on, uh… I think I'd be breaking a dam? Like, I pull this out, and whoosh."

"I'm not going to Emergency," You mumble.

She sighs and runs a hand through her hair. "Of course you aren't." She shakes her head. "Listen, Lara, I get it. You're mad at me," Your eyes flick up, and you notice the fear in hers for the first time. "Whatever. Doesn't matter. I fucked up, and yeah, I'm sorry, and yeah, I'm trying really hard not to freak out right now, but whatever. Not really the important thing at the moment. I'll… just, don't fuck up your foot because you're mad at me. Please." She can't tap her own foot, the way she's sitting, so she rapidly taps the tweezers against the ground instead. "Look at it, please, and tell me that it's something we can fix without the possibility of accidentally making it worse."

You pull your leg towards you and look. Past your foot, you can see her fidgeting more and more. And she's right. She can't just yank out the chunk of glass that's lodged there, slap a bandaid on it, and call it a day. You've already made it worse with your pacing. You're feeling incredibly tired, now.

"You're right. You are. We'll go. I'm… I'm sitting here throwing a temper tantrum like I'm five years old. Except I'm not five years old, and I'm causing a hell of a lot more damage."

"Thank you." Sounding slightly sad, she nods subtly, and stands up. When she extends her hand, though, you don't take it.

"Sam, I'm not mad at you."

She looks over at the table. "Sure."

You might hate yourself more than you did when you were busy flipping that table. "No. Sam, no. I'm mad at me. Okay? I'm incredibly angry with myself right now. More than angry. But you? I'm just sorry. I'm so sorry. I didn't… I let him take you. That's nothing I can change at this point, and I know that, but look what I've done anyway." She glances at the table again. "Not that. Well, yes, I did that, but you. I scared you. I've gone and made everything worse."

"Lara, you-"

"Yes, I did.

"Lara-"

"Sam, I saw it. Don't give me the 'you wouldn't hurt me' lecture, because I can scare you other ways. And I did. Again. Second day in a row. And I wouldn't… couldn't blame you if I did scare you… if you were afraid of me." She doesn't interrupt this time, and you don't know how you should interpret that. "Girlfriend of the year, yeah? Wrecking everything?" You huff at yourself. "I'm sorry. Don't think I'm upset with you, okay? It's all me. This is all me. It's me, and it's a mess. I'm a mess. I don't know what I can- I don't think an apology is enough, for all this." You don't think you have the energy to monologue anymore, so you lean back and look up at her. "But still. I'm sorry. I'm so sorry."

She tilts her head and silently watches you for a few minutes, and you sit there letting her judge you—or whatever she's doing—all she wants. You deserve it. Still silent, she walks away. You follow with your eyes until she's out of sight and then hang your head. "It's all me," You mutter to yourself as you try not to consider all the possibilities of what Sam could be doing right now.

Something bounces off your chest and you snap back to reality. A roll of gauze is laying on the ground beside you.

She was only leaving to get bandages for you.

You don't deserve this.

"Go hobble out to the car. I'll make a few calls and try and figure out the least busy place we can limp into." Her phone appears, and she starts tapping at it. "We'll price out carpet samples in the waiting room," She tells you as she starts dialling a number.

You smile weakly at her. You've not even started fixing this disaster (and you've barely touched yesterday's), and it seems that she's going to pretend it never happened.

You feel ill again.

What are you doing?

You really have no idea.

You're doubting that you ever did.

Sam opens the car door for you. You look at your foot, which is severely over-bandaged. It's more of a bloodied club right now. You have a blood-stained club for a foot, and you can't walk on the club. You can't walk on the club and you don't have crutches, because who keeps crutches around, just in case? You don't have crutches and you can't walk so Sam is going to have to help you hop into a waiting room full of people who are going to stare at your club foot.

And then, you get to tell some doctor that you not at all delicately walked around with a shard of glass lodged in your foot for what could be considered—in most situations involving glass-impaled feet—an absurd amount of time.

Words can't describe how thrilled you are about this situation, and even though Sam's waiting, you linger in your seat.

You had been mostly silent during the drive. A result of the residual anger over how you let Mathias just take Sam away like that, yes. But mostly? You were silent because of the incredible shame that's hanging over you, shame about what you've just done.

Sam's still standing in front of you, waiting for you to get out of the car. She was also pretty quiet during the drive.

"I'm sorry." You stare down at your club foot.

There's a brief delay before she sighs. Even though you're outside and there's nobody around, she whispers when she says, "I know." She half-pulls you from your seat, helps you balance yourself against her. "I know you are, Lara. I know." Not only is The Look on her face, but you swear you can its vocal equivalent in her voice as well. "C'mon." She jerks her head, pointing towards the door with her chin, and you start hopping towards the entrance.

You honestly did think that you had been making progress.

You're second guessing that now.

After checking in, you end up seated across a man with an arrow inexplicably lodged in his shoulder, which he seems far too happy about. The child sitting beside him—his son, presumably—looks nearly as guilty as you feel. For whatever reason, you feel can empathize with this kid, and you try to force a quick smile at him. He's looking back at you with a pained expression when Sam shoves her phone in your face.

"What do you think about Calico?"

The ten shades of brown in front of you look nearly identical, and you've no idea which one is Calico. "I think it's a type of cat."

She pulls the phone back and grumbles.

"How about something darker? Probably does a better job covering stains."

Rubbing at her temples, Sam makes a show of looking around the waiting room. "Lara. Do you really want to do this here?"

You look around as well, far more subtly, then glance over at her phone. "Well, we're not getting anything like that polka-dot one." You swipe the screen to the next page.

She exhales in relief.

Having a glass-free foot allows you to put pressure on it without the sharp pain that you had started getting used to. However, you still don't really want to put too much pressure on it, so you limp exaggeratedly from the car and into your flat.

And when you enter your living room, you see it all again. The physical mess you made. Seeing it makes you think about the figurative mess. Not that you had forgotten about it, not even close. You had just compartmentalized it, after Sam convinced you to stare at an endless series of carpets. You limp over and start cleaning things up.

Sam isn't far behind you and she stops short when she sees you righting the table.

"What are you doing?"

You pick up a few of the larger pieces of glass from the floor and place them in a pile on the table. "Cleaning?" It seems pretty obvious to you.

"Right now?"

"Yes…" You don't understand what's so confusing. "Should I be doing something else?"

She walks over and pushes your pile of glass further down the table, out of your reach. "You could rest." There's another relatively large shard on the ground, and you consider starting a new pile. Sam must see you eyeing it, because she grabs both your hands, possibly to help comfort you but also effectively preventing you from doing much of anything. "Stop. We can clean this tomorrow. You have another large, stitched up hole in your body, so please, can you relax for at least the rest of the night?"

"I… I should fix this."

"Just. Give yourself a break. Please." She gently nudges you, and you hop sideways a few times. That godawful paisley blanket floats down over the glass pieces, the blood, the debris. Does a good job hiding everything.

It can't hide what happened, though. "You can't fix everything by throwing a blanket over it, Sam."

"You can remember to step around this for half a day, can't you?"

You sigh. "Sam, you know that's not what I mean."

Her hands appear to go on nervous autopilot; they run through her hair, and end up linked behind her neck. "I don't- Lara, I don't know what you want from me."

You look down at the blanket and decide to leave it. It's not worth the fight right now. As Sam instructed, you "rest" by dropping yourself down onto your bloodstained spot on The Sofa. "Nothing specific. Just a reaction? Any reaction. Almost anybody would be telling me to get out, now that I'm all de-glassed. Maybe even before." She's about to reply, and you know exactly what she's going to say, so you don't allow yourself a pause. "I know. That's the last thing you want, I know that." Your hands go up as if you're surrendering. "Alright? I know that. But Sam, seriously." You watch her tug on the back of her neck while she shifts her weight back and forth between her feet. She's nervous, you know, but you feel it's for the entirely wrong reason. "What I did, none of it was okay."

"You aren't okay." She frowns and the nervous shifting stops.

"That doesn't… I'm not. I know that too. But that doesn't make any of this okay. It doesn't excuse anything. All it does is help prove that fact. That I'm not okay."

Again, she silently watches you for half a minute or so. The way she does that is starting to become slightly unnerving. She ends up on The Sofa beside you, and she considers you for another few seconds before rearranging, winding up laying with her head in your lap. She looks up at you. "It… I want to say 'shit happens', but I know you don't want to hear that. It's just, I don't know. I don't know. You said you've been having some, uh, anger issues? I think maybe we found one of the stems of that, y'know? Which is helpful, right? It's… I wanna say that you just overreacted again, but I don't think that's what you want to hear either." Her gaze drops to your foot. "I wasn't afraid, by the way. Physically. If anything, I was just trying to stay out of the way? You were kinda- I was more worried that you'd hurt yourself. Which was a valid concern, I think." You join her in looking down at your foot. You won't disagree. "I mean, I guess I was worried that you were angry with me, but. I get excessive about that, don't I?"

"I didn't just overreact, though. I… exploded. I was- I was just as angry as I was when I woke up and you were gone. Except…" You hesitate. The connection you just made, you don't really want to say it out loud. "Except here, there was nobody around who was responsible for any of that anger. Nobody I could, uh, take it out on."

"Lara, don't. Don't start thinking like that again. What you did was survival. For me and you. And Reyes and Jonah."

You appreciate her patience with you, but. "I don't want blind forgiveness for everything that I've done, and will do!" Her eyebrows shoot up, and perhaps you said that a little too forcefully. "Sorry. But I just don't understand it. Why is nobody holding me accountable for anything? It's always 'it wasn't your fault, Lara'. And fine, I'll accept that getting us all into that mess wasn't my fault. I'll accept that a lot of things were out of my hands. But my actions were entirely my own. I chose to do what I did on Yamatai."

She does the silent staring thing again, and starts chewing on her lip. Like she's deciding what to say. After a minute or two, she sits up and faces you, pulling her legs up under her. "Lara. The circumstances you were in. Everything you did was under extraordinary circumstances." Her hands travel up to cradle your face and she rests her forehead against yours. "Everything you're dealing with now is a result of what happened due to those circumstances. The aftermath. It's what those circumstances did to you. Okay?" You flick your eyes away from hers. "Hey. Please. I don't know why you think that you shouldn't be forgiven for your actions. It's not blind forgiveness if there's a reason for it, and it's not a brave or noble act to take blame that you don't deserve. I also don't understand why you seem to want to carry this weight around with you. Actually, I don't even think that you do want to; maybe it's just more that you don't know how to completely put that weight down. I know you've been trying, we talked about some of it. I can forgive you all I want, and I will, but in the end? You have to forgive yourself."

You stay silent and allow your eyes to wander back to hers.

She sighs, and kisses your forehead as she drops her hands and pulls back. "You can't go back and change things. You said that yourself. It's in the past. I think you're gonna have to accept that before we can fully move on. I thought you were starting to."

"Fine. But that doesn't mean that I can do this." You look over at your mess. "I don't think that's part of the process."

"I think the process is whatever it needs to be. So long as you don't hurt anybody in that process. You haven't. You've hurt yourself," She gestures to your foot. "And I'd rather that not be part of the process, but whatever." You glance down at your stomach. "Can't change it now, right? I want to help you get past this. I want to help myself get past this. Right now, we're just doing the best we can. I don't know what else to tell you. We've barely started, and you know this is going to take time. It's going to take time, and it's going to be bumpy. Why don't you… I don't understand why you suddenly don't know any of this."

You don't want to talk about this any longer. You just want her to yell at you, or something. Act like she should, after what you did. Because it wasn't okay. You can't just go around losing your temper to that extreme. It really doesn't seem like she's going to, though.

"I'm going to… I'm tired. This was all really tiring, yeah?" You stand up and shuffle a few steps away. "And it's, well, it's getting late. You told me to rest. So, uh, I'm just going to go lie down. I'm- I'll be in bed, okay?" You're limping away before she has a chance to try changing your mind.

"Lara." She still follows after you, though. "Lara." There's footsteps behind you, but when you don't even look back, they stop. You don't feel all that bad about it until you hear her muttering to herself, "I don't know what more I can do."

Turning around is still an option, an easy one, but you honestly don't know if you can keep listening to her try to convince you that everything is fine when it clearly isn't. So you choose the even easier option and keep hobbling towards your bed.

Sam has to coax you up and out of bed in the morning. You don't understand why she does.

After a quick shower that's more out of habit than anything else, you drop some charred toast onto a plate and settle down on the sofa. Just as you hit the little red button on the remote, Sam walks by and sighs when she see the buffering Netflix screen. "What are you watching?"

"Anything but that documentary show." You force a bite of toast.

The remote gets plucked out of your hand and you watch the recommend shows flicker away. "Okay, Lara, go ahead and sulk. I honestly do not know what else to tell you right now. But the delivery clones are showing up today, so please can you go back into cleaning mode before they show up? I'll help you, and then you can work on going back to how everything was a week ago."

Her tone jars you. It isn't hesitant, it isn't tainted with fear, and she doesn't seem fidgety or worried. She seems frustrated. "I don't…" You mumble at her, "You don't have to help. It's my mess. I'm the one who screwed up."

She closes her eyes and pinches the bridge of her nose and maybe she is frustrated with you. "Lara, I don't understand how you make one mistake—yes, maybe it was a rather drastic mistake—and just give up. Say you're done."

"I haven't-" You try to rebut.

"Look." You try to, but you're not sure what she's referring to, because all she's looking at is you. "Look what you're doing. The same thing you were doing before we started trying to fix ourselves. Watching Netflix and ignoring the obvious."

"You're ignoring things just as much as I am."

Another sigh, and she's sitting beside you. "No, I'm not. I'm trying to tell you that what you did isn't the end of the world. You were angry, you went overboard. I acknowledge that, and I forgive that. I also acknowledge that these things are going to happen. We aren't going to get through all this without our emotions flying all over the place. In fact, they already have. They've been up and down and up again since the beginning, and I don't understand what about this particular incident is pushing you to give up."

You say nothing.

"I don't want to… I can't watch you sit around like this, wasting your days thinking about things that you can't change or decisions you could have made differently. So please, Lara. Give me a reason, and maybe it might make sense. Maybe I might let you go back to this shit again; let you keep dwelling on the past. But tell me why what happened yesterday is apparently the breaking point."

Your brow furrows as you think. Giving up isn't what you thought you were doing. Now that you're thinking about it, you don't really know what you think you're doing. "I don't know." Yeah, you were quite angry, and you acted on that, but really, that wasn't the first time. "I…"

"Exactly. I think you're punishing yourself, condemning yourself, because I refuse to. Because you didn't mean any of that. I know that for a fact, just like I know you would never do something like that intentionally. Ever. That's why we're doing this Lara. How are we supposed to fix things without finding out what we're fixing?"

You say nothing. For a different reason, this time.

"So now we say, 'alright, Lara is obviously bothered by the fact that she didn't notice Mathias carting Sam away, how do we move past this?' Like we've been doing with everything else. You lost your shit over it, sure. But can we actually say that we've been calm about anything so far?"

You blink a few times before a small smile appears on your face. "When did you become the logical one?"

"When you needed me to be. And hey," She smiles back. "It's not like I haven't knocked shit over before." You chuckle and she catches you off guard when she kisses you.

Maybe you were right, in thinking that you're making progress. Maybe that was just a minor bump in the road.

By the time the delivery clones show, everything's been cleaned up, minus the blanket covering your carpet blood. After the clones announce themselves, they haul your new Brooka into the living room, and you see them exchange a glance when they see The Sofa. You find that you're not really bothered. You're just glad it'll finally be gone.

Sam stares at you like you're absolutely mad when you suggest rearranging the entire room to cover the blood on the carpet. You figure you'll leave it to her to pick out a new one, and settle on pushing the Brooka into a somewhat suitable spot for the time being.

Then the two of you collapse onto it, after agreeing that you should take a day off.

It's a depressing thought that you need to take a day off from your life, but curled up with Sam and a bunch of blankets, you end up not really caring. Despite her initial reaction to the red Netflix screen, you end up marathoning terrible disaster movies for hours. You start to feel yourself actually relaxing around the time you start the second volcanic catastrophe movie of the day.

When you finally haul yourselves to bed, you end up snuggled together about as close as possible, as per the norm.

"Thank you."

You feel the rumble against your shoulder blade when Sam replies, "Hm?"

"Don't act like you don't know what I'm talking about."

"Oh." Her arm wraps a little more protectively around you. "You mean ordering a pizza with vegetables on it? No problem."

"See?" You chuckle. "There you go. No need to shrug it off as nothing."

"Guess you're right. Lara?"

"What?" You grin. "You have something else to confess?"

"Love you."

"Oh. Well. I love you, too."

Sam nods off fairly quickly, but you stay awake a little longer, replaying the day. Feels like it's been forever since the two of you have been able to comfortably huddle together and laugh and joke and watch movies like you did today. It was almost as if Yamatai never happened.

Problem is, you think you might have watched one too many disaster movies. Because you can't shake the weird feeling that this was just the calm before the shark infested tornados start raining down.

In the morning, you've got breakfast made and on the table before Sam makes it out of the shower. She smirks. "Now, that's more like it."

"So that's it. You only wanted me out of bed to provide an edible breakfast."

She shrugs before grabbing a piece of bacon.

To switch things up, you sit on the counter beside Sam as she washes the dishes. You're sure that you're far less intrusive that she is, though that doesn't stop you from pointing out multiple spots that she "missed" on various dishes.

When she finishes, she spends an unusual amount of time watching water swirl down the drain. She continues staring at the drain as she says, "I want to take another day off."

"Yeah."

"I don't know if we should."

"I know."

"We could end up taking days off until we're back where we started."

"Yeah."

The rag she was holding wetly plops into the sink. You look down at her from the counter. "So what's on the menu for today, then?"

After a moment of thought, you hop off the counter. "I don't really want to go out. I don't… it's too much sometimes. I don't want that today. When we're outside, we have to make it back inside before I can calm down."

"Camera?"

There's nothing else you can think of. Might as well stir up some more shit.

"Guess so."

Sam's camera set up routine takes a little longer again, as everything had to be cleared away during the couch moving procedure. You take the time to prepare yourself for whatever you might see. Beyond Vladimir, you can't pick out events that would have jolted the camera to life. Time to find out.

"You're sure?" Sam's poised with the remote in her hand again.

"Please stop asking me that every time." You take control of the remote, hit play, and toss it back into her lap. The footage you see is very still, and you think you can see one of your feet.

"It's not that bad." Oh, god. His voice. You haven't heard it in so long. "Where does a young lady lake you learn to do a thing like that?" You've told yourself that you'd do anything to hear Roth's voice just one more time, but you don't know if this is the way you want it to happen.

Sam peeks over at you. You look back at her and hope that she can't see the tears that you can already feel welling. "Must have turned on when I sat down." She nods, and doesn't say anything further, which you're grateful for.

"Late shift at the nine bells. A wolf's got nothing on a broken bottle." You smile briefly, when you hear his laugh.

"Hey, you got it. Nice work."

"The radio," You tell Sam. She acknowledges you with a hum.

"So, I assume the plan is to take that up to the radio tower?"

You already know the words to this, so you zone out slightly and just listen to the sound of Roth's voice. God, you miss him.

"Lara?"

Sam's voice startles you—you were quite invested in not actually hearing words—and you look over at her.

Naturally, The Look is on her face. "You're okay?"

"I miss him."

She hums an acknowledgement at you again, and sniffs once before turning back to the screen.

"-do it Lara. After all, you're a Croft."

You wince.

"I don't think I'm that kind of Croft."

You're starting to take uneven, shaky breaths, and you try to focus on staying calm.

"Sure you are. You just don't know it yet."

Your shaky breath hitches as you feel a tug at your side. It's different, a little sharper than you're used to, and you pull your eyes away from the screen and look down. You look down, and you see blood. You look down and when you pull your hand from under your shirt, you see a tiny, tiny, stitch between your fingers. A stitch from the set you were meant to have removed relatively soon. You've done the job yourself, but far too early. That breaking point that Sam mentioned? The one that you hadn't actually gotten to? You think that you may have just blown past it.

You crumple, quicker than normal, and your head skips your hands and drops behind your knees, when you pull your legs up. Your arms wrap around your shins, and if you weren't already on the brink of tears, you would be around the time you start swearing to yourself. "Fuck." Sam looks over at you, and you drop your voice to a whisper, as if that'll cause her to shrug it off. It might have, had your voice not cracked on the single syllable. "Fuck."

"Lara? Are you- no, let's skip that. You aren't okay." Ignoring her, you swear to yourself again. "I know this is maybe one of the harder clips we'll have to watch but, uh… I don't. What's wrong? Did I miss something big?"

You can still hear the recording going, and you really don't want to. "Can you pause that? Mute it? Can you stop it, somehow, please?" Her hand instantly flies to the remote, and everything goes quiet. "Thank you." She abandons her end of the Brooka, but you stop her, with one word and without looking up. "Don't."

"Okay." Slight panic tinges her voice. It's not her fault, but she doesn't know that. "Could you, uh, could you maybe look at me, at least?"

No. You shake your head.

"Okay. That's… that's okay. But what's wrong? I don't understand what just…" Everything is silent again when she trails off. It ends quick enough though, but when Sam speaks up, her voice isn't much above the silence. "Your hand."

"Isn't bleeding." You drop the stitch, hoping it's visible to her.

"Wait, then what-"

"I can't do this. I can't do this, Sam. It isn't working. I can't keep doing this."

"We don't have to. The camera isn't going anywhere, we can just stop, and-"

"Not this, this. Everything this. All of this absolute fucking shit. I can't. I know you just picked me back up. You just had to convince me to keep going with this, but it isn't working. It's not working. Look at me. Does it look like this is working?"

"Okay, uh, Lara? Lara, you're scaring me a bit. I'm… I don't know what's happening right now. You're not. You promised me that-"

"You've been doing everything. You've been doing so much, and I can't tell you how much that means to me. But I can't. Just look at me."

"It's- Lara. I… You told me I could believe you. Or? I don't completely know what you're saying? Are you- I don't see what's… we're working on this. Aren't we working on this?" Panic is even more evident in her voice. "You just agreed that we'd keep working on this. You just told me that you weren't going to give up on this. That you weren't going to… give up."

"Yeah. I know I did. I did. But I'm… look at me, Sam." When she doesn't reply, you release your grip on your legs and run your hand over your side. You still don't look up, but you wave your hand, now covered with slightly more blood, at her. "Just fucking look at this."

She says nothing, and you assume it's because she is looking.

"I tore them out. Again. The stitches."

"Lara, that's okay, we can get you patched up again. It's okay, Lara-"

"That's what I haven't been able to tell you. That I ripped them out myself. And I've done it again." An utterly humourless chuckle escapes you. "I don't even know why. It just happened. Happens. Like everything else. Everything just happens. I don't know what I'm doing. Sam, I still have no idea what I'm doing. What am I doing? Is any of this even making a difference? I thought it was, and then I doubted. Then you convinced me it was but now I'm… What the fuck am I doing?"

"Lara…"

You finally look up at her. And that's when your vision starts to blur beyond your control. "I can't do this, Sam. I need help. I can't do this alone, I don't think I can do this that way. I know you're here, and I wish that was enough. But it's not. I can't do this, I can't do this anymore. I need help." You curl your head back against your thighs, and take a shaky breath. "I need help, Sam. Look at me. I need…"

She exhales deeply, and takes a few steadying breaths. "Help. You're not saying that you're… Or that you want to… Okay, yeah. Some help. Yeah, we can get that." She sounds exceptionally relieved. Sounds happy? "We can get that. But right now, can I please?" You chew on your lip, hoping it might stop the tears, and nod. She scootches over, and pulls you towards her in a sort of a hug, the best she can do, the way you're sitting. Some of your blood spreading over to her, but she doesn't seem to care. "We can do that. We can definitely do that."

"Huh? We?"

"Yep. We're…" Her voice mirrors yours, and goes slightly off pitch, and she clears her throat before continuing. "We're in this together, right? And I know you can see it a little more now, but. You aren't the only one who could use a little help."

"I'm sorry."

She shakes her head. "What? What do you have to be sorry about?"

Honestly, you're not sure. You just feel that you should be sorry about this. About everything. "I just am."

"Lara, there is not a single thing for you to apologize for right now. If anything, I should be saying sorry, for letting us try to do this on our own. But we're gonna change that now." She pulls back enough to look you in the eye. "We'll start this all over. I mean, we did make some progress, and we won't ignore that. But we'll find some help and start from the beginning again, okay?"

"Yeah," You croak out.

"Good. So hey, I think this is the part of our story where we wipe the dirt and the dust and blood away and get back up. We get back up and let the bruises and the wounds start to heal. Properly." When she wipes at a trail of your tears, your feel her smudge a thicker, stickier, substance over the cleaned space. "Get back up for good. Maybe better than ever, by the end." She's trying to be inspirational while doing the literal opposite of what she's saying. She's just wiped some of your own blood onto your cheek. The sheer ridiculousness of it is what causes you to burst out laughing, in between the tears.

She looks at you, then at her hand, and laughs along for a moment. "I don't think I phrased that very well. Those kinda speeches are probably best left for movies, huh? But really, I think this is it, Lara. One of us had to say it… admit it, eventually. That we do need help. And you just did. I think you just pushed our lives back onto the rail."

The crying is starting to slow down, and you laugh a few more times.

You're smiling when you nod at her.

we've been hurt
we carry the wounds
we keep going
no matter the cost

You're outside. Relaxed. Walking down the street. Calmly. Quietly, as well. You've been content just taking in the scenery. It's too easy to take for granted, you've realized. But when Sam tugs on the hand you've currently got entwined with hers, you look over at her.

"Hey, Lara. You ever think about all this, and just… maybe it wasn't some random horrible tragedy. I mean, it obviously was, but. Maybe it was meant to happen to us. Like, what would we be doing now if it hadn't?"

"Seriously?" Perhaps you misheard parts of that.

"Well, not the whole thing about being fucked up, but, y'know. Where we're gonna go from here. We learned things. In the shittiest fucking way, but we learned things. About what's really out in the world. I mean, I don't know what we'll do with that information, but we know it now." She bumps your shoulder. "And I think we might have learned some stuff about ourselves as well, huh? I'm not saying that I'm happy it happened, but, think about it. Where would we be right now without it? What would we be doing? Maybe this exact thing, minus the trauma. But maybe not. Maybe it had to happen. To get us on the track towards what we're meant to be doing. To becoming who we're meant to be?"

You snort. "Never really took you as the destiny type."

"I dunno. Just been thinking about things." She shrugs. "It's… easier to deal with, if it was supposed to happen. So maybe this is all just me being selfish."

You lean over and plant a quick kiss on her cheek. "Well, maybe you're right. Who knows. But 'why' is starting to matter less and less to me, you know? There's no use for that anymore. So let's just get started on becoming those people, yeah?"

"S'long as we do it together."

"Wait. You mean there's some other way?"

She smiles, and you grin at her in return.

You're going to get your life back.

new skies will find us, it seems the worst is behind us, clouds once filled with rain now separate, and start to make way
gone is the gray, the end of the thunder

took three tries to get this going without destroying their relationship in ways that i couldn't figure out how to repair and golly you have no idea how hard it was to not type "oh there goes gravity" when sam tosses the bandages at lara, although i said it in my head every time i re-read it and on that point yes i realized wrapping a bandage around something impaled in your foot would potentially just shove it in further but just go with it okay and on the topic of just go with it, please ignore the fact that sam hasn't gone to work or whatever for quite some time

So.

We're done. Gosh.

Thanks for sticking around and reading!

I believe this is actually the first time I've completely finished a story.

I never intended for them to go out and get outside help, but... that's not realistic. I know realistic is not quite the point of fanfiction, but as it strayed from my original plan, this story started to get a little closer to me than I intended, and, I don't know. I wanted this for them. They're fictional so that sounds stupid but whatever.

Sam's shitty inspirational speech partially comes from a Kelly Sue DeConnick #bgsd message, so thanks to her for that ridiculousness. I'm going to be presumptuous and credit the quote that I dropped near the end in an attempt to create an illusion of time passing to Ray Fawkes, as he wrote issue seven of Gotham by Midnight, which is where I pulled it from.

And we all get the shoulder arrow joke, right? Surely we've all seen the TR version of that tumblr post.

alternative dubstep song for this chapter, because i am trash™: Legends by Razihel, the vanilla version or the Hyper Potion remix if you prefer

(SUCK IT, CRYSTAL DYNAMICS. THEY CAN GET WELL TOGETHER, THEY CAN GET WELL TOGETHER BETTER THAN THEY COULD APART. TAKE YOUR COMICS AND [censored].)