Disclaimer: I don't own Saw or any of the music or movies I may reference.

I can't believe that I am down in this hole
Always paying the toll
For having found my way to you
It doesn't matter that I pushed you away
When you wanted to stay
I have to find a way to make you talk to me
-Ra

PRESENT DAY

Adam courteously allowed Lawrence to go ahead of him up the stairs, and didn't rush him as the older man struggled to ascend.

"I guess now we're on the ground floor," said Lawrence once they reached the top of the flight of stairs.

"We started in the basement?" Adam asked rhetorically.

"Yeah. No telling how many floors this building has," Lawrence said, just trying to make conversation.

"Any idea what this building is, or was?" Adam asked, also trying to avoid silence.

"Just a warehouse," Lawrence shrugged.

They opened a door and stepped into another hallway. It was dimly lit and had a dozen chains dangling from the ceiling. At the bottom of each chain was an object, and at the end of the hall was a locked door with the words THE RIGHT CHAIN IS YOUR WAY OUT spray-painted on it.

Adam and Lawrence stepped closer, curiously examining the chains and the objects attached to them.

One was a primitive Nokia cellphone with its batteries removed.

Another was a rubber tub stopper.

Then there was one that was the handle of a hacksaw.

One had the focus adjustment of a camera attached to it.

Another had a rubber pig snout—the cheap kind with a string on it to wear around your face.

Another chain had the broken off neck of a beer bottle tied to the end of it.

There was one that had a toilet flush handle.

One had a very large spool of black thread.

One had an empty cigarette box.

One had a penlight.

"Someone knows us pretty well," Adam said in almost a whisper.

"Still, this is amateur," said Lawrence. "So far none of these obstacles have required the complex engineering skills of a true Jigsaw trap."

"How is it you know what constitutes a 'true Jigsaw trap' anyway?" asked Adam, studying the assortment of pull chains around him.

"I make it my business to know," Lawrence said with a smile.

Adam couldn't tell if he was joking or not.

"Oh," he said. He then remembered all the books that had been written about John and shrugged off what Lawrence had said.

The two game participants turned around and around and looked back and forth among the many choices dangling in front of them, and when they didn't make a decision, the perpetrator decided to intervene, and their voice came on over a loudspeaker.

"Remember."

"'YOUR WAY OUT'," Lawrence read off the door. "The saw!"

"NO!" cried Adam, but it was too late.

Lawrence grabbed onto the chain that had the hacksaw handle on it and pulled it as hard as he could. There was no indication that the door was unlocking, but before either of them could notice it, an assortment of carving knives and saw blades came plummeting down from the ceiling, slicing, stabbing and bouncing off of the two men.

"AAAAAAAAGHHHHH!" screamed Lawrence.

"JESUS FUCKING CHRIST!" yelled Adam.

They both screamed for a few more seconds until all the blades had stopped falling. They looked around themselves, panting, trying to catch their breath as they took in what had just happened.

There were huge kitchen knives all around them—some had fallen point-down and were sticking handle-up out of the floor, while others had broken once they'd made contact. A few cleavers just lay on their side, and there was blood dripping from both men's bodies.

"WHAT THE HELL WAS THAT?!" Adam demanded. His eyes shifted upwards as he felt blood trickling down his forehead onto the bridge of his nose.

"It said 'your way out,'" Lawrence explained. "Back in the bathroom, that was our way out: cutting off our feet. My way out, at least."

"Yeah, but after you left, the guy got up and told me that the key to my chain…" Adam looked around among the chains and objects. His eyes fell on the rubber tub stopper. "…was in the bathtub."

He pulled the chain with the tub stopper and was rewarded with the sound of a lock clicking.

"Oh," Lawrence sighed. They went up to the door and opened it. "My bad."

Adam muttered some curse words as he and Lawrence crossed over into the next room. Once inside, Adam knelt down on the floor and took off his outer shirt and began tearing it into strips.

Blood was seeping out of cuts on his shoulders, soaking his white t-shirt. His left arm was slashed in various places, but the most profuse injury was on his scalp, where a knife had bounced off the top of his head.

"Help me out," he whined, breath coming in short little gasps. Lawrence wondered if Adam was having a panic attack, or if he was just trying not to cry. Maybe both.

"It's OK," Lawrence tried to sound reassuring as he took strips of fabric and tied tourniquets around Adam's arm. Bandaging the wounds would only result in the fabric becoming soaked with blood—tying them off was a better shot.

"For an amateur, this is still pretty fucking dangerous," Adam growled.

"Yes, I know. I'm sorry. I shouldn't have pulled that chain so fast. I should have discussed it with you."

Adam hissed in pain as he bunched up a wad of fabric and pressed it to his head, hoping to stop the bleeding.

After a minute of heavy breathing and watching as Lawrence unbuttoned his own shirt to examine wounds, which, thankfully, were not very deep, Adam decided to speak again.

"What did you mean, you make it your 'business to know,' what Jigsaw traps are supposed to be like?"

Lawrence looked up, and then quickly looked away again.

"Did you study them?"

"You don't have to have studied them to know what their purpose was," Lawrence said with an exasperated sigh. "It's common knowledge now, the traps are supposed to teach the victim to value their lives. Has anything we've been through tonight seemed like it was teaching us anything?"

"They're all just sick games," Adam grumbled. He stood up and tossed the blood-soaked wad of fabric off into a corner. "Come on, we've got to find our way out of here."

"They're not just sick games," Lawrence mumbled softly.

"What?"

"Nothing," the doctor answered. "Just saying."

"What? You think what he was doing was noble?"

"No, of course not, but the games did have purpose beyond his own entertainment value," Lawrence insisted.

Realization crept up on Adam like a ghost of a memory. He slowly turned back towards Lawrence who was limping behind him.

"Oh, my God—you do admire that prick!" he accused.

"He was something of a life-coach, Adam," said Lawrence. "Which, turns out, is not nearly as useless a job as I thought it was. I mean, it's no oncologist, but it's way above freelance photographer."

"LIFE-COACH? That fucking maniac?!" cried Adam.

"HE HELPED ME, OK?!" Lawrence suddenly shouted.

Adam gaped and stepped back.

"Helped you how?"

"He…he rescued me," Lawrence said softly. Adam just kept staring at him quizzically. "He found me there, in the hallway. After I…"

Adam looked down at Lawrence's artificial foot, then back up to the doctor's face.

"He helped me," Lawrence choked out in a whisper. "He nursed me back to health, gave me this," he put his right foot out into the light, then back into place. "He taught me things."

"You knew who he was?" Adam queried.

"He was my patient, actually," said Lawrence. "I was strapped to a table, barely conscious, but he told me who he was and why he did what he did."

"You knew all this time?!" yelled Adam. "Why didn't you say anything?! Why didn't you turn him in?!"

"Because he—"

"You were bitching at me for not reaching out to you, and I had my reasons! You could have turned him in, gotten him to admit everything, these games that have been going on FOR YEARS could have been prevented…"

Actually, no, thought Lawrence. There was somebody else who was orchestrating them.

"…and I could have come back to you!" Adam finished tearfully.

"The man was dying of cancer. I mean, I thought about going to the police. But then I thought…you know what? He's going to be dead before they can put him on trial. And even then, what—there's a wheezing, decrepit old man sucking oxygen from a tank in front of a jury? How could we be sure they'd even declare him mentally competent enough to have perpetrated all this?"

"Now you're just rationalizing your own cowardice!" Adam accused.

"MY cowardice?!" roared Lawrence. "You could have told me you were alive somehow! You could have sent me a clue, a message, even just a picture of yourself! And what did you do? You let me go on thinking I had killed you! Did you even care what I might have been going through?!"

"YES! It's ALL I could think about! Every goddamn day I wanted to let you know you were innocent!" Adam pleaded, tears spilling from his eyes.

Lawrence took a breath and calmed himself.

"Really?"

"Yes! All I wanted to do was run to you!" Adam cried.

Lawrence took in a deep breath stared at the young man before him. He remembered what John had accused Adam of being at the start of their game—angry, apathetic, but mostly just pathetic. Adam had only been chosen to play a part in Lawrence's game so that Lawrence could emerge a stronger person. John honestly didn't care if Adam died; he was never really meant to survive.

During those hours in the bathroom together, he and Lawrence had formed a kind of connection. Maybe Lawrence had underestimated how deep it had been. After all, he had mainly been preoccupied with saving his family. Sure, he'd hoped to save Adam as well, but it wasn't a priority.

Had Lawrence never really considered how much Adam may have valued his company? How much he had missed him? Had it never occurred to Lawrence that when Adam had screamed "I NEED YOU!" he had meant for more than just help to escape?

Lawrence had felt guilty all these years, but had Adam been feeling something else?

"I'm sorry," the doctor finally said.

"So, what does this mean? Were you getting all buddy-buddy with him after the fact?" Adam asked.

"Well, he was still my patient," said Lawrence. "Yes, I got to know him. We talked in the hospital sometimes while I was administering his treatment. I was able to see him as a more of a man and less of a monster."

Adam scoffed, though it came out in a way that indicated he was feeling more humorous than arrogant.

"Jesus. What kind of sick, Stockholm Syndrome, Beauty-and-the-Beast-type-shit were you caught up in?"

"This was not Stockholm Syndrome," Lawrence refuted. "I wasn't being held prisoner anywhere."

The doctor chuckled and walked ahead of Adam, towards the door at the end of the room. Then he looked back over his shoulder with a scoff. "Beauty and the Beast?"

Adam shrugged awkwardly. "I like movies."

Lawrence just shook his head.

"What?"

"You're such a dork," Lawrence said affectionately.

Adam only grunted in reply. They both stepped through the doorway and into the next long hallway.

END OF CHAPTER 14
Please review, thanks.