InsaneJournal

I feel like a part of me is missing. Like it never came back after you... brought me back...
Who: Lara and Sam
What: Talking about dream related anger issues
When: morning of 3/4
Where: Croft Manor
Status: complete
RAting: Pg-13
triggers: Talk about assault and similarities to assault




Lara was attempting to cook. Of course she was actually half decent over a campfire but give her an oven and she'll start a fire. She stared at the ruins of dinner and then picked up the phone to dial take out. "So much for a romantic dinner...."

Sam had been kind of quiet ever since their most recent dreams, and it worried Lara.

"Is the toaster on fire again?" Sam shouted from the stairwell. She'd been taking a nap but the smell of something burning had woken her up nearly immediately. It wasn't that commonplace a smell in their house unless something Lara'd tinkered with was exploding or otherwise malfunctioning.

That was usually because no one ever tried to cook.

"No, I tried to cook! I'm just going to order takeout, hon." She watched Sam walk down the stairs, smiling apologetically. "I'm sorry I woke you up. I'd hoped to surprise you with a romantic dinner."

“Oh, sweetie…” Sam sighed, and shook her head at Lara. Her smile was adoring as she walked into the kitchen, and she patted Lara on the cheek, “I love you but you really shouldn’t try cooking when we’re inside a house. It’s the thought that counts, though!”

Lara supposed it was. "How are you feeling?" She brushed hair out of Sam's face. "You've been a little...down lately." It was her way of trying to get Sam to open up a little, if she wanted.

There was a tiny part of Sam - so tiny that she could almost ignore it most of the time - that rose up in anger every time that someone got near her, lately. She didn't know if it was some kind of instinctual reaction to all the crap dream her had to deal with, or what.

She didn't really like it, though, especially when it happened around Lara. She stepped away from her fiance and walked towards her Keurig, acting for all the world like she wasn't pulling away from Lara and just really needed some coffee, "Yeah, I'm just... processing, you know?"

Dropping her hand to her side, Lara followed Sam with her eyes, then folded her arms as though she were defending against bad feelings. “I’m dealing with this a little better but....” But then her heart hadn’t stopped so there was that. Lara felt a little helpless. “Is there anything I can do to help?”

"You don't know what it was like!" Sam replied. She'd been about to get out a coffee mug but instead slammed the cupboard door shut, "God, why is this so hard for you to understand!?"

She took a breath, then, and shook her head, "I'm sorry, no, I totally get it now. It's like the tables turned on us and now I'M acting a little nuts while you stare at ME funny. This is crazy ironic, when you think about it."

She managed to not quite look like she’d been slapped. “Sam, no, I can’t know what it’s like to go through that ritual. It was one of the most terrible things I witnessed on that hellhole of an island. But you’re not alone. You have me, and Dani, and your friends.” She’d kill a hundred more men if it meant Sam didn’t have to deal with this. She wouldn’t even hesitate.

"You want to know what it was like?" Sam thought maybe she could try to describe it to Lara, then she'd at least understand. Maybe. A little bit. Though there was still a chance she wouldn't understand at all - Sam knew that, since she'd had such a hard time understanding Lara.

Still, she tried to make an effort. She waved her hands up and down in front of her body, "Imagine that your body is actually empty, like your skin is the sides of a pot, and your soul is this water inside the pot. Then this bitch comes along and starts shoving her own water into the pot. But the pot already has water in it, so you suddenly feel like you're full to overflowing and that the water inside you that was supposed to be there is being forcibly boiled or ripped out of you to make room for the rest."

That actually didn’t help Lara as much as she’d like, but she thought she got the gist. She approached her again, but kept her hands at her sides. “But we stopped her, before she could push you out.”

"And it nearly killed me," Sam pointed out. She didn't even have any of the kind of brain cells that could deal with this. She wasn't Lara. She didn't have a crisis mode. Up until now the biggest crisis in her life had been things like... a run in her pantyhose on a night out, or forgetting the condoms, or running out of the best shampoo for your hair type the night before something important.

"Okay? It was like she stuck her hand in my chest and said 'If I'm not getting that body, no one is' and she'd already TOLD me that it was her body and she was claiming it."

More than once Lara had done a quick condom run for Sam. Both in the dreams and in real life, for that matter. “It’s...well I know you don’t want to hear this, but it’s pretty akin to being sexually assaulted,” Lara said, voice quiet. It was something she was more familiar with now than she wanted to be. The thing with Vlad had been far too close to comfort.

"What?" Sam had been about to reach for a coffee mug again, but she stopped herself mid-motion to look at Lara like she had three heads. Sexually assaulted? What?

"She was a girl, and it wasn't even sexual in like... any remotely possible fashion."

“It’s still a violation! I don’t think Vlad was all that interested in sex, just power and violence,” Lara grabbed Sam’s bicep. “No matter what you call it, it happened and it was a violation of….everything you are. It’s okay to freak out, okay to be angry! You don’t need anyone’s permission to feel that way.”

Sam's arm twitched under Lara's grip, and tears rimmed around the edges of her eyes. She hated when Lara grabbed her like this, even if she was just trying to get Sam to stand still long enough to listen. Which was usually the case.

Something inside of her reacted, though, and it was that same kind of violently angry reaction she'd been trying to fight back since the dream. It felt like thunder was striking down inside of her or something snapping, and Sam took a deep breath, then let it out, "I don't feel violated I just feel... really, really edgy. Like a caged animal or something."

“That’s okay too. But you need to talk about it. Please don’t keep it in.” She tried to guide Sam to a seat. She didn’t realize that Sam hated when she got grabby, or she would have stopped, or done something differently. She pulled a chair over and sat next to her. “And if not to me, someone else.” Which would hurt.

"Not without a coffee!" Sam flailed her hands in the direction of her beloved coffee maker, like a cat might flail in the direction of the floor when it was picked up. Her precious, precious coffee... She stared longingly in the direction of the cabinet, in fact, as Lara had her sit down.

Lara sighed, and then got up to retrieve Sam’s coffee. She brought it over, then got the creamer, even pouring it out and stirring it, a bit like she’d used to do tea when Sam got sick. “There you go.”

It reminded Sam of exactly those moments, and she got a sappy smile on her face as she watched Lara stir. She took the mug from her fiance’s hands and sipped at it, letting out a happy sigh, “Now that’s more like it.”

“Only the best for you.” Lara sat on the table, and watched Sam drink. It was a little like the kind of watching where she was waiting for Sam to start talking but she was staring at her like she was expecting her to not talk but oh boy you better talk.

Sam had fears. She had completely irrational fears that, honestly, anyone else would probably tell her couldn't ever possibly happen in a million years. And Lara was probably the only person who would know where she was coming from, because Lara had fears, too. But she still had no idea how to talk about it.

She took a few bracing sips of coffee, wishing that she could have put some kahlua in the cup. Then, "I feel like a part of me is missing. Like it never came back after you... brought me back..."

“But you did. You’re here, talking to me.” She wanted to say you couldn’t lose a part of yourself, but she’d been so innocent and naive before, and now she wasn’t. She’d certainly lost that. She still didn’t get what Sam was talking about. About bits of that water that sloshed out and didn’t come back. Or maybe she didn’t want to make the leap.

"Yeah, I did. I'm here, I'm talking, I'm drinking coffee, you'd think I was perfectly fine. I don't know how to explain it, Lara. I just... I don't feel whole anymore. I feel like something's gone, and I won't get it back. And I feel like there's this part of me that's really angry about it."

Sam gripped her coffee mug so hard that it nearly turned her knuckles white, "It wants to lash out and hurt things and scream and throw things and I've never been that angry before in my life."

That sounded like a natural, if disconcerting reaction to Lara. “Your soul isn’t like water, Sam. Even if something got pushed out it’s still attached to you and once you’re able to deal with this you’ll notice it’s still there.”

She thought about it. “Do you want to go and smash things? We’ll buy lots of glassware and a baseball bat, and go smash and shoot it up.”

Lara reached over and touched Sam’s hand. She wasn’t going to just dismiss Sam’s problems, she knew what it felt like when everyone dismissed hers.

In hindsight, Sam felt really super guilty about dismissing Lara's concerns like that. She knew her reasons for it - It couldn't be real for Lara, because then it'd have to be real for her too - but that didn't excuse it.

The idea of smashing things and shooting them sounded like a lot of fun, though, and she lit up a bit, "Oh my god I so very need to smash things and shoot them! Maybe not glassware though because we might end up with cuts everywhere but... like... something like that."

“I’ll buy up some things to smash. Wooden sculptures maybe? Something really ugly.” Lara grinned at her. “I don’t know about you but a healthy outlet for aggression might do me some good too.”

"Maybe we should get a couple of punching bags, too. I need something to practice my kicks on," Sam had still been training with Mulan when she could. She was way better at smacking things than she was at shooting them, but she still wanted to try to learn to shoot something, "We should find some old clunky copying machines or something and go all Office Space on them."

“We’ll get those. I’ll feel better knowing you can punch a man out if you have to.” She had no qualms with her fiance getting into fighting fitness. It was actually...really kind of hot. “That might be fun. We could do it at the ranch, I think they have a range there.”

"They do! Dani used to teach there before all the stuff," Sam replied, nodding emphatically. 'All the stuff' meaning the cancer, of course, but she felt like mentioning the word might somehow summon it back again from the depths of wherever it had disappeared to.

Lara clapped her hands together. “That’s what we’ll do. We’ll even break out the shotgun and machine gun and really tear shit up! This doesn’t, though.” and she pointed at Sam, “Get you out of talking about it. But I think we need to work out some aggression first.”

She walked over to Sam and put her hands on her shoulders. It was as much to comfort her as it was to see if Sam jumped at the contact. If Sam had issues with touching then Lara needed to know now so she could put herself in a mental place to deal with it.

Sam did jump at the contact, just slightly. That angry place inside of her was the main cause, because it welled up from inside of her with all the strength of the ocean crashing against the shore. It felt like the anger was trying to physically push Lara away from her.

But Sam wanted that anger to go fuck itself. She was the one in control of her body and her mind and she was the one who got to dictate who touched her and when. Not some weird ass twitchy part of her.

She reached up and put her hands over Lara's before Lara could pull away.

Lara would have, if Sam hadn’t stopped her. She squeezed lightly, then leaned down and nudged her forehead with her nose. “You know that I never give up. I promise you we’ll get through this. You’re my… soul mate.”

Except what did it mean if your soul mate loses their soul?

Hopefully that was a question that neither of them ever had to deal with.

Sam squeezed Lara's hand, and nodded, "We're not just soul mates, we're going to be wives. We're going to belong to each other forever, and we'll get through this. We can get through anything. I believe that."