Twists of Fate

Calming The Chaos

So, here we are. I've officially declared Like a Reflecting Pool dead and while it will always hold a place of importance with me, my writing style has moved on. I think I let it go two chapters longer than I felt inspired to do just because I felt an obligation to continue it, but in the end I couldn't do it. So, like I did with some fics I wrote for Fallout and like what I plan to do in the future with other stuff I wrote when I first joined this site I'm converting it into something I'm more comfortable writing now. Unlike the Fallout fics however it is not as conducive to straight up reworking and transferring so I could only get one chapter to where I was comfortable with it. Some stuff like Sam and Mike having siblings, suicide, and Sam killing Josh might show up here in the future but we'll see. I also have some stuff centered around other characters, Emily especially, that I will hopefully write soon. And if I ever replay the game again who knows what might hit me. Anyways, I hope no one's too disappointed. I was listening to Thunder by Boys Like Girls while writing this.

Mike was cracking, everyone could see it as plain as day. Whether it was the pressures of leadership finally getting to him or more something to do with the situation at hand no one could be sure. Whatever the reason, Emily had revealed her bite from the Wendigo and Mike had immediately pulled out a gun and pointed it at her. The situation was on a knife's edge and Ashley's constant feeding of his paranoia was only exacerbating the problem. In another time, a few years or even a few hours ago, Sam wouldn't have known how to handle the situation or Mike in general for that matter, but their time on the mountain both together and separately now gave her some insight.

Mike was a lot of things, or at least put forth the image of being a lot of things. The "cool guy", womanizing mask that he constantly wore hadn't ever made him her favorite person, but even that guy that he wanted everyone to see him as wasn't cold blooded enough to shoot someone he cared about without hesitation. The Mike that she had caught a glimpse of as he peered at her through the grate, a comforting smile on his face that told her that he was going to do everything he could to get her out, was something else entirely. What she had been able to see beneath the veil in that moment still wasn't something that she could entirely understand, but it was enough to tell her that for all the bravado he was currently putting on, he cared too much to just kill someone without exhausting all other possibilities. It was her job to remind him of that before Ashley pushed him over an event horizon he could never come back from.

"Mike," she said his name calmly. "You don't have to do this, we're not even sure how this whole bite thing works."

Mike's hand suddenly started shaking at her words, but Emily still wasn't entirely out of danger as long as the gun was pointed in her direction.

"You're not this guy Mike," she said.

For a brief period of time Mike just sat there staring at the gun in his hand, now safely pointed away from Emily. Sam was about to approach him and remove the weapon from his hand for good, but a sudden grunt followed by Mike exiting the room with a haunted look in his eyes stopped her in her tracks. She took stock of the rest of the room and noted a grateful look on Emily's face and a dissatisfied one on Ashley's. After weighing the options in her head she turned to follow Mike with the hope that Ashley and Emily could remain civil and act like adults without her supervision.

She found him sitting on a crate with the same haunted look in his eyes as he continued to stare at the gun. She approached him cautiously, not wanting to do anything that would put her on the other end of that gun. Her movements didn't draw any reaction from Mike one way or the other until she plopped down on a crate next to him. His eyes briefly darted over, met hers, and then returned to the gun. She hoped that he wouldn't just shut her out. They were in this together now and if they weren't on the same page none of them were going to survive.

"Don't feel bad," she settled on saying to break the silence. "We're all under a lot of stress given the circumstances."

"You didn't just point a gun at one of your friends," he said sounding dejected.

"No, but if it ever came down to that I trust you to do the same thing that I just did," she said. "This kind of situation can make us all forget ourselves sometimes and it's important to have someone who can remind you about who you really are."

"You're a good person Mike," she continued.

He wasn't so sure about that. He had just pointed a gun at one of his best friends with the full intention of pulling the trigger. He wasn't sure if he could have actually done it, he had slowly began pulling the trigger back while he continued to debate with himself internally. If time had run out on the debate and he had actually ended up pulling the trigger completely, would he have been certain that he had made the right choice? He would never find out the answer to that because through all of the chaos raging inside his head and in the room as a whole he heard a voice that overpowered everything around him and brought him back to reality, Sam's voice. If she hadn't been there to stop him Emily would more than likely be dead.

"Thank you," he said. "For not letting me shoot Emily."

"Thank you," she said. "For not letting this fucked up situation make you do something you'd regret."

"We're in this together Mike," she said after several minutes of silence. "We need to make decisions together so it doesn't turn into what happened in there again."

"Yeah," he said.

"I'll continue to call you out on your bullshit if you call me out on mine," she said sticking out her hand. "Deal?"

"Deal," he said taking her hand and shaking it.

"Here, you should take this," he said handing her the gun as they walked back towards the room that still contained the others. "I don't think I trust myself with it anymore."

The tension in everyone else's shoulders visibly dissipated at the sight of the two of them entering the room as a united front. Emily and Ashley still looked like they wanted to tear each other apart, but they were putting their personal feelings aside for the time being. It was as good a time as any to discuss what to do next.

"I'm going after Josh to get that key so that we can get off this mountain and back to civilization," he said.

"I'm coming with you then," she said.

"No," he said. "We shouldn't risk any more people than we have to."

"Well I don't think it's a good idea to have someone going off on their own given the situation," she said shooting him a look of disbelief. "Besides, I am the one with the gun now."

"Fine," he relented before slinking away towards the door.

"Don't kill each other while we're gone," she said directing her attention towards Ashley and Emily.

"Make sure they don't kill each other," she directed this at Chris.

With no protest from anyone she moved to follow Mike out of the room. As they walked back towards the sanatorium and the mines where he had already experienced one Hell, Mike felt a calmness that he couldn't quite explain. With Sam by his side he felt like he could take on the world. Whatever sick and twisted creatures crawled out of the world's dark reaches next they would figure out how to deal with them, together. Standing only a few feet away gun at the ready Sam couldn't help but feel the same way.