We really are efficient. I'm patting myself on the back when there's a rumbling and Lara disappears. I feel this sense of acute panic - we'd just found each other all over again, I can't afford to lose her. Not now, not ever. I steel myself and try to look down to where she fell. There's only an inky blackness. The ground shifts and then I tumble into the void.

I hit an incline, and roll. I can't see where I'm going, or even where I've come from. The light on my camera is spinning around with me. I catch glimpses of faces. Laughing faces, crying faces, downright evil faces. It was as though the builders of this place wanted to mock those of us who dare to intrude. What's more disturbing is the laughter I can hear. Distant and echoing, a thousand voices reverberating through the stone caverns.

Daylight! I see it and then I'm in it and there's nothing between me and the ground but hundreds of feet of air. I'm screaming. Somehow, over my own voice I hear my name and then Lara is grasping onto my hand. The sudden stop sends jolts of pain shooting from my shoulder. I look up.

Lara has her fingers digging into a ledge, her stance wide as she tries to distribute the load of both our bodies against the face of a mountain. Her muscles are straining, bulging in her arms and neck. She really ought to be shaking but the only trembling I feel right now is my own. "Sam…A little self-help would be appreciated right now."

Where she finds the strength to even speak right now I don't know. All I can say is she's beautiful. My beautiful, badassed goddess. I could go on about her biceps right now, but instead I make some kind of wise-crack about going on a diet, grabbing onto the mountain with my other hand and securing my feet. I realize that they're holds. Hand holds, and foot holds, weathered by time. I look up at Lara again, then hazard a look down. "Hey Lara, there's a temple."

"I think we've proven ourselves worthy."

I give her a look, and she just smiles at me. My arms suddenly feel less tired. "Well there's only one way to go, Lady Croft."

"Sam, what did I say about calling me that?"

We start our descent. One of the things we started doing after Yamatai was rock climbing. Lara had spent so much time scaling cliffs and leaping across chasms that she'd developed a sort of fondness for it. It was a way of coping, I think and because I didn't want to ever be a burden, I went along with her. My best friend… scratch that, my girlfriend was motherfucking Assassin's Creed or something.

Lara and I call out hand holds and encouragement to each other as we go. Normally we'd have rope and safety lines, so we're extra careful, but with the strain in my muscles, and the feel of the wind and sound of Lara's voice, I'm able to forget all the weird things that happen to us. Sun Queens and moving statues and laughing faces… It's just us and the mountain.

It's kind of weird. Between the silence and the climbing talk, there's joking and chatting. Sure, it's a little breathless and short since neither of us can spare much breath, but it's still there. I won't lie, I worry about what we'd be like after this trip. If we'll still be friends, if things will still be easy and fluid between us. It had gotten rough for awhile. There was a whole week we didn't talk to each other. Lara broke first, and after we'd talked things went back to normal. The crazy sort of normal a couple of globe trotting adventure seekers with major PTSD could get up to anyway.

But the way we're talking, it makes me feel like everything will be okay. It'll never be the way it was before Yamatai, but I'm okay with that. I like the person I've become. I love the Lara I see now. Confident and strong, yet still having that core that I first saw way back in the day. She's still Lara, she's just a little weathered now.