InsaneJournal

NO Lara, I don't think you should walk near that.
Who: Sam and Lara
What: Renji is missing. Sam and Lara go searching for him and find misadventure in a storm
When: 3/29
Where: Costa Rica
Status: complete
Rating: PG-13 for creepy critters and ancient artifacts



The storm was a growing concern to Lara. It had been raining all morning, and the clouds were getting angrier and angrier, with lightning cutting across it like fingers in the sky.

“Renji!” Lara shouted, hacking at some foilage as she led Sam through the dense undergrowth. This was hopeless, but he had to be out there somewhere. “Bugger, we need to find shelter.” She turned to look at Sam. “Sam? Where are you?? SAAAAAAAAAAAM!”

"LARAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA?" Sam cried out. It was hard to hear things in this rain. Sam was seriously starting to resent rain. Storms, rain, anything like that. Water in general that didn't come out of faucets sucked, she'd decided.

And now Renji was missing. Damn it, Renji. Sam was going to strangle him when she found him. She was so going to. "RENJIIII!? I AM GOING TO STRANGLE YOU WHEN I FIND YOU BUT DON'T LET THAT KEEP YOU FROM COMING BACK!"

Lara heard that, and ran to where Sam was. “There you are. I was afraid I’d lost you somehow.” She hugged her lightly.” We need to find shelter. Come on.” She grabbed Sam’s hand and started to pull her towards what looked like a cave.

“No WAY you’re losing me again, Lara. Promise!” Sam squeezed her fiance, then held up a small GPS radio. There was also a flare gun in her pack, just in case, “I have all KINDS of stuff for you to find me by. But what about Renji!? We can’t just leave him out here in this storm, he might be hurt or something!”

“You’re going to be a Croft some day, so you better keep that promise.” She turned on her torch and flashed it in the cave as they entered it. “We can’t find him if we’re drowning, Sam. We can shelter here until-”

And that’s when the ground disappeared beneath them. Lara found herself tumbling down a muddy incline, propelled by swiftly moving water. And then she was freefalling through the air. She grasped blindly, catching Sam’s hand and jamming her climbing axe into the cave wall and stopping their fall. Her shoulder strained painfully when Sam jerked to a stop.

At first, Sam wasn't even sure what the hell was going on. It felt kind of like a slip n slide, something she'd had a lot of fun on when she was younger. But this was a slip n slide of mud and nasty things. Her arm scraped against sharp rock, there was dirt all over her clothing, and then she was falling through the air.

Sam couldn't help it, she screamed. She screamed at the top of her lungs, and then Lara's hand caught her, and she looked up at her woman with eyes the size of dinner plates, "HOLY SHIT LARA."

Lara’s arms flexed as she pulled Sam up a bit. Clearly the dreams had done wonderful things to her biceps. “Grab..onto something. Are you all right?” Her first concern was Sam’s safety. Her second concern was seeing how far down the drop was.

Her arms shook a bit as she grabbed onto the edge of a rock ledge, and Sam thought for sure the scraped up arm was going to fall off of her. She was scared, muddy, and her whole body was quivering...

"Oh my god Lara, I've never felt so alive in my LIFE! This is awesome. So awesome!"

Lara panted for breath and shot her best friend a look that was a mixture of exasperation and adoration. “Now you know why I need to do this. Just follow my lead. Just like that time in Spain when we lost our rope while we were climbing.” The water was pouring down in such a way that she didn’t think they could make their way up, so the only way was down.

"That time was way crazy, and I had climbing stuff then!" Sam replied, starting to worry. She didn't even have a climbing axe on her like Lara did. How was she supposed to get down without slipping and breaking her neck?

But that was kind of fun, actually. Playing with her life, laying it in Lara's hands. Hoping her lover found good footing for them both. It made her blood pump faster, and somehow brought them closer together in a way that not even sex had done before.

Sam grabbed onto the rocks around her, and tried to scramble closer to Lara so that she could follow her more closely, "Okay, Lara. I trust you. We'll be okay. I believe it!"

“Just put your hands and feet where mine go,” Lara explained patiently, as she started to descend. Between keeping an eye on her footing and on Sam’s, she couldn’t focus on anything else. Just step after step and handhold after handhold. Once or twice she moved Sam’s hand or leg. It felt like the whole of her being was on Sam and getting them down safely.

There was water at the bottom. “Hold on a moment.”

She dangled down, and felt the floor of the cave. The water wasn’t too deep, and wasn’t moving quickly enough to be a danger, but they probably shouldn’t tarry long. She didn’t want to get bashed against rocks. “Okay, it’s safe.” She hopped down and then reached up to pull Sam down as well.

"Oh man, how bad would it have been if we'd just jumped down into the water? Like... Yay, water will break our fall! And then nope, there's only like an inch of it." Sam joked, while letting Lara pull her down. She looked around the new area they'd climbed down into then, and laughed as she pointed her finger at something.

"Oh my god! My backpack totally fell down here with us! Awesome. It's still in one piece even."

Lara wasn't sure if Sam was just chatting to hide nerves or if she was genuinely enjoying herself. Regardless, she felt a rush of adrenaline and if the situation wasn't so serious...

She bent over to pick up the back pack, and held it out to Sam. "We're lucky it's waterproof." She also found her flashlight, which was also still intact, and picked it up to flash it around. There was a tunnel and it looked like it led up, and then another tunnel that led down.

However, there were some of those contorted face carvings on the latter, and so she walked over to examine it.

There was mud caked along one side of the pack, and Sam brushed it off while making a face. At least the nearby water could be used to wash her hands and arms off, which she did right after cleaning herself and her pack of any mud she could.

The scrape on her arm wasn't too bad at all now that it was clean. Sam rummaged around in her pack for some salve while Lara did... what was she doing? Inspecting more old funky things? Sam squinted off in her lover's direction, "Those things are creepy, Lara. I mean they actually make my skin crawl, that isn't even the sweat from the jungle or the bugs or anything."

"I'm not sure what they mean yet. They aren't normal." She had gloves on, so she pressed her hand against one. "They're ancient. And I mean they're not normal for this part of the world. I've never seen their like. I'll have to do some research when we get home." The thought was exciting. Libraries! "Maybe even take a couple of days in London..."

She started down the tunnel, careful of the water flowing past her feet.

"London is way far away from here or home," Sam pointed out, while watching Lara disappear into the tunnel. No fucking way was Lara leaving her here alone in this creepy cave with the faces. Uh uh. She got to her feet and grabbed her pack, then rushed to join Lara in the tunnel.

Which was even creepier than the cave had been, "Why are you walking even further into the creepy tunnel, Lara. This isn't good. I have a star wars level bad feeling about this."

“But..research,” Lara murmured. She shook her head. “I just want to see where this leads. It’s only a cave, Sam. There’s nothing to be afraid of.” What happens in dreams stays in dreams.

Still, there was a thrumming in the air, and Lara’s arm hair was standing on end.

The tunnel opened up into a cavern. She flashed her torch around, there were more carvings, and an altar.

It was the creepiest cavern to ever creep, and Sam just wanted to get out of there. She wasn't alone. Not just Lara... but that part of her, that part inside of her that she rarely spoke about anymore, felt just as threatened.

Lara might have thought there was nothing to be afraid of, but that someone inside of her didn't agree at all. It felt like part of her soul was suddenly snarling and baring its teeth, "No. Oh no. This is not cool. Uh uh. No. No no no no no want out we leave creepy altar cavern now yes."

“Just a moment,” Lara held out her hand towards Sam. “Stay there.” She cautiously approached the altar, seemingly unaware of Sam’s freakout. It was like she couldn’t focus away from what she was discovering. As an afterthought, she added, “Keep filming.”

"Well if the camera attached to my shoulder is still working, then we're filming, but... Lara, no. NO Lara, I don't think you should walk near that. It's dangerous. I have a bad feeling. A really bad feeling. Epic Obi-Wan Kenobi Spider Senses tingling feeling about that altar, and I think you shouldn't be anywhere near it!" Sam cried out. Bad. This was bad. Bad bad bad.

She felt like something horrible was swirling right on the horizon and completely out of her control. That feeling in the back of her mind only intensified it.

When Lara picked something up off the altar, the entire cavern rumbled. A blast like a hurricane blew through the tunnels and there was a shriek like some unearthly banshee. Out of the water, black, inky human figures formed. The blackness faded, until only bone-white skin remained, sunken and shallow. Where their eyes and mouths should be, were starfields, a night that stretched into eternity.

Lara cut one down with her axe, grabbing Sam’s hand and dragging her back up the tunnel. The others shrieked, and chased after them!

"WHAT THE ACTUAL FUCK ARE THOSE THINGS!?" Sam shrieked. They were following, the ink black star things were following them and Sam was behind Lara which meant if they did grab anything they were going to grab her.

"Oh this is so not cool."

She'd felt like she was about to crap her pants ever since the water slide, but Sam was certain that she was really going to do it now, any minute.

They looked like corpses. Walking corpses with starry eyes and it made even Lara's blood run cold. She pushed Sam in front of her until they were back in the first place they'd come into, then shoved Sam towards the other tunnel.

"Quickly." She unholstered her pistol and took the safety off. The water was like a fast river and threatened to knock Lara off of her feet. She turned and shot at one of the creatures. It exploded into black mist.

That's when something happened that probably should have been more concerning to both Sam and Lara, though at the time there was too much going on to even think. A wind coursed down through the open tunnel, one so strong that it pushed the skeletal creatures away from the two of them.

The black mist swirled around in the air a bit, almost like it was being held in place while some invisible person ripped through it and scattered it in a million directions around the cave.

Sam thought she could hear dark whispering in the back of her mind, but her own panic was louder, and she shouted at Lara, "RUN FASTER!"

The wind had never touched either of them.

Lara just thought it had something to do with the creatures, and the other strangeness in this cave. She’d never expected to find something supernatural, not outside of her dreams. There had to be a rational explanation for it and that was something she would study and research. Once they were safe. She had to make sure Sam was safe, and that took priority.

She burst out of the cave, still dragging Sam out. The storm was a hundred times worse than it had been before they’d sought shelter. Wind bent trees and rain was coming down in buckets. “Back to the camp!” Lara shouted to be heard over the thunder. She glanced back at Sam, half to check on her and half...looking for someone else in her eyes. Everything looked okay. It was just a coincidence.

The only thing in Sam's eyes currently was dismay over how much worse the storm had gotten. Everything she owned was going to be soaked, and her curling iron was probably screwed. She'd buried it deep in her pack, but she was still worried about it. Now that they were out of the cave and those things probably weren't following them (she sure wasn't going to look behind her to check), she headed back to the camp while complaining about the storm, "Oh my god, Lara, the camp site is going to be so super soaked and there's going to be mud everywhere... and we still haven't found Renji..."

“He’s on his own, there’s no way we’re going to be able to find him,” Lara said.

"Are you kidding me!?" Sam waved her hands in the air a bit, though it was hard to even see it, the rain was coming down that hard. Lightning struck down against a nearby tree, in fact, and storm only grew worse.

But Sam didn't stop shouting, "You killed like a hundred million guys for me and climbed a mountain three times or some shit, but we can't go find Renji!? What about Rogue?"

“I could usually see the front of my face when I was searching for you,” Lara snapped. And Renji wasn’t Sam, and she wasn’t going to risk Sam looking for him. “We’ll call in the authorities! They’ll have helis and search planes!”

Sam's eyes widened, and she held up both her hands in the traditional sign of surrender, "Alright, alright... You're hot when you're in charge, but damn, Lara..."

“You know I don’t like this,” Lara pleaded. She didn’t want anyone to think she was heartless. “But there’s nothing we can do right now, except get more lost. Unless you want to stay here. It might be better if I go looking alone.” She was already feeling guilty about calling off searching for Renji.

Would she have called off searching for anyone on the island? Of course not. But if Sam was safe here, then she’d feel better.

"Oh hells no. You aren't leaving me here!" Sam looked around. She didn't even know where the campsite was in relation to where they were. Was the tunnel they'd exited from even safe? Would those skeleton things come back?

Something in the back of her mind warned her against returning there, and she hugged herself, "We have to wait the storm out and then find him. You're right. We can't even see where we're going."

“Now I feel heartless.” She sighed, and then took Sam’s hand again. “Camp is… this way. We should probably break camp and head back tomorrow if the weather doesn’t relent.”

"It isn't heartless... I mean, I think... he'd want us to look and to be worried but in this mess he'd probably scream at us for being stupid enough to run around in this. We'll just. We'll think good thoughts. Really good thoughts, and I can get the authorities in. We'll get help. Someone will find him."

Sam took Lara's hand, and squeezed it, "Come on, Lara. It'll be okay."

She didn't really feel it, but there was nothing they could do. Maybe if they both said it enough times, one of them would start believing it.