She couldn't sleep. It was as if the lack of constant awareness, the threat of ambush in her sleep, made it impossible to truly shut down for the first time since the shipwreck. Her body needed it—her mind needed it—but every time she saw the backs of her eyelids, she was in the blood "swamp" or fighting for her life; sometimes, instead, she saw Roth and Alex and Grim, sacrificing themselves for them. For her.

Her nerves were frayed, setting the remainder of the Endurance, barring Sam with her silent understanding, and the rescuers on edge. Lara was grateful for the wide berth they gave her. Her pistol was under her pillow, bow at the bunkside with the shotgun and rifle under the mattress; something else that made Reyes wary and had Jonah eyeing her with sympathetic glances.

She was bandaged and disinfected with the rudimentary first aid kit, silently passing Sam the soaps to scrub her skin raw with in a vain attempt to remove the blue staining her skin: an outer sigil of their inner horrors.

The first night that found them in a storm had Lara's fingers gripping the roughness of the pistol, white knuckled with fear that they would crash, somehow, back on Yamatai and everything would start a loop again. It made her sick to her stomach in a way that soda crackers couldn't cure and so she was lurching to her feet, covered in the patchwork remains of her original clothing, and wandering the corridors like a ghost.

The thunder and the sound of the rain had woken Sam, throat closing around a scream as she fought the thin blanket as if it were hands, grasping and tightening and throwing her towards ghastly tendrils of power that shouldn't exist. She scrambled out of her bunk and stumbled past doors, counting in her head until she found Lara's ajar. Irrationally, her mind screamed that they had taken her back to that place, back to that abominable island and their awful rituals. Away from her.

It sent her on a mad dash, bare feet echoing against the metallic grating until she was slamming the door to exit the cabins open, stepping into the torrential rains that were mixed with the spray of the sea as it crashed against the side of the ship. If Sam never experienced another storm at sea, it would be far too soon.

She was soon seized by another terror, however, when she found Lara standing at the bow, too close to the prow for comfort, and holding on to one of the rigging ropes as if she may tip into the ocean and disappear beneath the waves at any moment.

"Lara!" Her voice was carried off by the wind, the whistle of it mocking her as she slowly went from object to object, careful not to slip or lose her grip lest her terror allow her to fall back into the clutches of Himako. It wasn't until her arms could vise around Lara's middle, bringing their soaked bodies into contact like lifelines, that the fingers around her heart loosened and she could breathe again.

"Lara, are you insane? Come back inside." Her lips were chapped and as cold as the slick skin of her best friend's ear where they pressed, forcing herself to be heard over the still-taunting whip of the wind. "Please, Lara. You're scaring me."

Lara's body was stiff and unyielding in Sam's embrace until finally, after a moment, her shoulders sagged and she stepped back, forcing them both away from the prow until they were moderately safer from being swept overboard. And then she was ushering them back inside as if none of that had occurred, as if she were the one who had found Sam outside during a storm and was shooing her back to bed instead.

It was, however, at testament to how they seemed to understand each other on a deeper and more primal level that Lara simply led them both back to her cabin and gently used a towel to dry Sam's skin, tucking her into bed before she lay down at her side. Restlessly, Sam twisted until she could properly cling on to Lara like a child at a bear, except that Lara curled an arm around her shoulders and kissed the top of her head.

If not for the cloud of torment that hung heavy and low around them, it would be just like it was before. But now there were scars, internal and external, with bandages and a haunted hollowness in them both. It was still for a long while before Sam spoke, the words leaving her lips as she pressed her palm against Lara's chest, feeling the heartbeat's gentle thrum.

"Why?"

It was a simple question that could be taken any number of ways, but Lara knew exactly what Sam was asking of her, but she let the reply roll in her mouth for several moments, tasting each word for its sincerity and its accuracy before she would breathe life into them and set them free.

"If it weren't for me, none of this would have happened." Her breath hitched, and she were sure if her tear ducts hadn't shriveled from the strain of their experience she would be blinking back the saline that refused to wet her lashes and glaze her eyes. "Alex, Grim, Roth…" She stumbled over Roth's name, vivid recollection of how she had watched his life seep away, the last family she had left. Her fingers brushed against the blue on Sam's arm.

"None of this is your fault. It's not your fault Mathias…" An intake of breath disrupted her speech, quickly overlooked by the both of them. "It's not your fault that Mathias was a psycho and that Whitman was more interested in his own fame than our lives. It's not your fault that those freakshows did all of this. You couldn't have known. You didn't know."

Her fingers pushed from Lara's chest to grasp her chin, tilting until the dimmed brown of her eyes were meeting hers in a searing gaze. "You didn't know, Lara. And you saved us. You saved me. Just like I knew you would."

With that, Sam shifted around again on the mattress so that her ear was over the beat of her best friend's, her savior's, heart, letting the steady rhythm lull her into a peace that hadn't been felt since before the idea to explore the Dragon's Triangle had even been suggested.

"I'll always protect you, Sam." Her voice was rough with emotion, keeping her nose buried in Sam's hair as her arm flexed around her, bringing her closer into her side. "I swear it." Lara wasn't certain if she forgave herself for Alex and Grim and Roth, especially Roth, but for the moment she could be content with the knowledge that she had saved Sam and that, for the moment, was all that mattered.

In the arms of the ocean, so sweet and so cold,
And all this devotion I never knew at all,
And the crashes are heaven, for a sinner released;
And the arms of the ocean, deliver me.
- Florence + the Machine, Never Let Me Go