Disclaimer: I do not own the characters of Lady Lara Croft, Sam Nishimura, Lord Richard Croft, Conrad Roth or Slenderman.
Author's Note: It's worth mentioning now that this isn't the final chapter! I decided to split it in two so that the wait for a new chapter wouldn't be as long and so I have a chapter left to tie up the loose ends, followed by an epilogue. Please review or PM your thoughts on the chapter and enjoy. Thank you!
"Shit," Lara whispered to herself. "Oh shit."
She stood frozen to the spot, trying to encourage her eyes to adapt to the darkness by widening them. Already the temperature seemed to have dropped since the lights went out and Lara felt a chill run down her spine. She pulled her thin jacket round her and let her wrists shrink back into her sleeves. After a few seconds, her eyes were able to make out some shapes in front of her so she started forwards cautiously, taking small steps and rolling her feet from heel to toe. She held an arm out in front of her and made her way to a tree where she waited until her pupils dilated further.
Okay Lara. You can't hide forever.
She set off. Lara decided it would be wise to walk further into the woods before straying off the path. Despite this usually being the most dangerous option, Lara figured it would be the most practical: she hadn't seen any pages on the way in and Cow Blood wasn't likely to station them in plain sight.
Walking further into the trees and greenery, Lara found herself speeding up. She could see a strange object in the distance; it didn't look like the result of nature. Squinting, Lara worked out that it was some kind of wall so she continued, breaking into a run for the last few steps.
"Interesting," Lara murmured. "Some kind of shelter."
Lara stroked the pale beige structure. It was made of brick and appeared to be crumbling on the edges. The flat peak of the building stood only as tall as Lara's waist, perhaps a centimetre or two higher. It couldn't be more than 3 metres in length, Lara decided, and looked like a place someone would only come to in an emergency. A hiding place, perhaps. Lara had never seen it before and wondered if it had been put there for the purpose of the game. Then again, Lara had never been this far into the woods, nor had she strayed off the path before.
Walking round the perimeter, Lara found an entrance to the shelter on the width of the wall. She would have to crawl and even then she wasn't sure she would fit. It was a narrow entrance which led Lara to believe it may have been assembled by a child for recreational purposes: a secret den, perhaps?
Back when kids actually used to go outside instead of playing video games like Slenderman all day, Lara thought.
Lara kneeled down and positioned herself to go inside. As she did so, she found a torch by the wall. It had soil sprinkled over it, but it was obvious that the torch had been put there for her to find. She picked it up and brushed the soil off before switching it on. A feeble beam of yellow light leaked out of the end and Lara sighed, exasperated. Why did Cow Blood have to tease her?
Leaning forward, Lara pointed the beam of light, if you could call it that, across the den towards the opposite wall. Sure enough, a page was pinned there.
"One down, seven to go," Lara muttered, crawling in so only her legs were exposed before reaching across and ripping the page down. She crumpled it up and shoved it in her jacket pocket before dumping the torch in on top of it. She backed out through the way she came in and stood up, sighing.
"Okay… Where next?"
Lara looked around to work out where she had come from, but as she did so she caught a glimpse of white to her left hand side. It was him. A crackle-much different to the one she had heard when Cow Blood spoke- came over the speakers and Lara could see him apparently floating towards her. As she watched, he seemed to disappear before reappearing metres in front less than a second later. He was gaining on her quickly and the white noise played louder.
"Bollocks," Lara muttered.
She bolted to her right, pushing through shrubs, vaulting over logs and dodging around tree trunks. She managed to knock her bad wrist a couple of times but didn't stop to observe the damage; the white noise was still there and stopping would only make her a sitting duck. Instead she continued to run further into the forest, certain this was the way Cow Blood intended her to go. To Lara, it felt like she was being herded into something.
As her surroundings got darker and she had come into a place where the trees grew thicker and there was no longer a path, Lara was able to stop and get her breath back. The white noise had subsided and, after a brief scan of the surrounding area, Slenderman was no longer in sight. Lara leaned over with her hands on her thighs, gulping air like her life depended on it- then again, it practically did.
"Too… bloody… close, Lara," she said to herself, shaking her head. Why hadn't she run away at the first sight of him?
Just keep going, Lara told herself. The sooner this is over, the better.
Walking onwards, Lara found herself in a busy area of the woods- the thick bushes and trees crowded her and she was forced to squeeze between tree trunks on several occasions. As she approached trees with wider trunks, she checked them eagerly with the hope of finding another page but was disappointed each time. A good half hour had passed before Lara found anything remotely interesting. As she grabbed onto the branches of an overhanging tree and pulled herself up and over a spiky thorn plant of some kind, Lara came into an opening. Though there were no longer trees here, the area was still pitch black and Lara had to squint to make out distant shapes. There wasn't much to see across the field, but one thing Lara could see was a pick-up truck parked at the other side where the trees started again. Strangely enough, Lara recognised the truck, the whole scene even. Perhaps she had seen it on one of Sam's video games?
Feeling inside her pocket to make sure the torch was still there- though it had proved to be a poor tool so far- Lara zipped up her jacket and started across the grass. Her instincts told her to run, but she knew she would have to save her breath in case there was another page here. That's when Slender would come.
Closer up, Lara could tell that the truck was red and the back wheels were sunk into the grass somehow. She approached it with caution, afraid of what or who may lie within. As Lara stepped closer, knees bent and eyes squinting, she could see what she was looking for- a page was pinned onto the steering wheel in the left hand side of the car. Having approached the truck from the right, Lara reached her hand out to the open window and prepared herself to grab the page and run. However, she was delayed in her actions as the headlights of the car suddenly lit up. Lara jumped back and gasped, fear and adrenalin making desperate attempts to convince her to run away. She almost submitted, but the engine didn't turn on and there was no white noise to be heard, so Lara took up her previous position and made a grab for the page. Victory.
Crumpling the page and shoving it on top of the torch in her pocket, Lara stepped back from the truck and looked around her, her ears moving as a result of listening hard.
Then it came. White noise.
"Shit," Lara winced, her eyes darting about from side to side, fruitlessly trying to spot the fiend.
After what must have been a couple of seconds, Lara caught sight of his balloon-like head, bobbing across the opening towards her. He was following the path Lara had walked, from the same direction, so he was a considerable distance away. But Lara wasn't falling for that again. She set off at a sprint, wanting to get a head-start. Flinging herself back into the trees, she ran through the green and brown and black, tripping here and there, before coming to a halt at a tree. Much to her surprise, she had stumbled upon another page, this one pinned to a tree trunk like the rules page had been. So she pocketed it and ran.
The day continued like this; it almost became routine to Lara. Walk through trees. Find a page. Run. Walk through trees. Find a page. Run. Sometimes she'd discover a page only moments after finding the previous one, like she had with the third one. Other times, there'd be minutes, even hours between one page and the next. By the time Lara was looking for the eighth and final page, she had been wandering round the woods and collecting pages for over seven hours. After another two hours of looking for the eighth page passed, Lara was exhausted. Absolutely fucking exhausted.
"Fuck it," Lara breathed, slumping down against a tree trunk and letting her legs fold beneath her. "Just fuck it. I've had enough. I'm done."
The speakers crackled. "Is this a forfeit I hear, Lady Croft?"
Lara took slow breaths, tears of anger and despise forming a hazy cloud over her eyes. She watched her own chest rise and fall, blood trickling down her stomach and across her limbs from the various trips and scrapes she had endured throughout the day. She shook her head at herself.
Look at the state you're in. How did it end up like this? How could you lose grip of everything so easily, Lara? How?
The tears ran down her face in slow trickles, burning her skin like lava streams on a volcano. She stared into space, drawing her knees up to her chest and gripping them tightly, almost angrily as she told herself this was the end. It was difficult for Lara to accept but this was the end. It had to be. She had fought all this time, dragging herself back from the lowest points to put one foot in front of the other with the knowledge that she was saving Sam, but Sam was no longer a good enough motive. Sam was no longer enough to keep Lara going. That's how Lara knew it was the end. This heartless, ruthless, pointless battle she had fought against this detestable man was so fucking stupid. So fucking stupid. She couldn't take it anymore. Admittedly, she had nothing to lose. But she also had nothing to gain. What was Sam if Lara was dead? Nothing. Neither of them mattered anymore. This was part of something bigger; something Lara didn't want to be involved with.
"Not a forfeit," Lara said at long last, her voice filled with despise. "This isn't a forfeit. This is me giving up. Not giving up to you, but to myself. I have nothing more you can take from me. You've taken my dignity, my life, my world and I have no fight left in me. I can't go on like this any longer." She paused. "Ever since I was a child, my father taught me how to deal with people like you. He taught me how to fight, how to survive, how to thrive. But he never taught me how to love and let go. The same goes for Roth. He was one of the best men anyone could ever hope to meet and he taught me so many valuable things. Yet loving was something I had to learn by myself. And now, with you, I have learnt to let go. You've taught me that life is just a game and that you can't always win. Life is a game and you have to be able to let go otherwise there would be no difference between one person's life and the next. I understand that this is a valuable skill, but don't think for one second I will thank you for it. Don't think I could possibly compare you to my father or Roth because it would be a disgrace to them and quite frankly to the rest of the human race. I just hope you had fun playing this twisted game of yours. I hope one of us got something out of it."
Lara was crying hard now, tears streaming down her cheeks and tumbling off her jawline, snot pouring from her nose and over her lips. She sobbed like she had never sobbed before, pushing the palms of her hands into her eyes and waiting for death to find her. After catching her breath back from her speech, she spoke again. This time, it was with hope and desperation.
"Sam. Sammy. If you can hear me I want you to know I'm sorry. I've fought ruthlessly for you, Sammy. But it's all too much, too soon. I wish there was something I could do for you, for us, but I know it's out of my reach. I'm tired, Sam, so tired. There's no energy left for me to love you with. I do love you. But I can't feel the love. I'm sorry. Don't be upset. We'll be united again soon. Who cares whether it's in life or death? What matters is that we'll be together. I love you-"
The white noise started.
"Lara! Lara, I love you too!" Sam's voice came over the white noise. She was screaming desperately. "Lara, please! Please don't do this to me, you have to fight, you have to go on! You're so close, Lara please!"
Lara continued to sob, clutching at her legs and rocking back and forth, letting her back bang against the tree trunk. The white noise grew louder, rapidly. Sam's raging screeches fought hard to be heard over it.
"Lara, what are you doing?! You have to get up, you have to run! Lara!"
Lara.
The last word Lara heard Sam say before the white noise erupted into a deafening explosion from the speakers.
He was here.