I PROBABLY SHOULD HAVE ASKED FOR AN EXTENSION, BUT I'M A GLUTTON FOR PUNISHMENT SO THIS IS WHAT I DESERVE. STILL, YOU HAVE TO AGREE THAT I'M DON'T BET

I should feel good right now.

We made it… Team Snow was the only complete team to reach the top.

That's the only thing that matters at the end of the night, isn't it? Not who looked the best, or who looked the strongest. No one cared about which one of us got the biggest reaction. You either survived, or you didn't.

I survived. My team survived.

So why does it feel like I didn't accomplish a damn thing on that mountain?

For a little while there, it was within my grasp. Everyone else was too busy treating this like a wrestling match. Rob was trying to cave Kerry Kuroyama's skull in with a whiskey bottle. Henry and Scott were already acting like disappointed parents. Cancer was eating dirt every other thirty seconds. Ivan was laughing like he'd wandered into the world's biggest toy store.

But me, I saw an opening.

Screw the fighting, there was no reason to prove that I could probably outwrestle a majority of the contenders. All I had to do was climb the damn mountain.

That was the point of the game.

I kept telling myself not to get distracted. Hit the jets, and just keep moving. Let everybody else waste energy punching each other in the face. They could continue to settle their petty little grudges after I was standing on top of the Aggro Crag with immunity in my hands.

It almost worked, too.

I was right there, close enough to taste it.

Then someone in upper management decided that having a giant minotaur involved wasn't ridiculous enough, so they put the stupid thing on a wrecking ball.

A freaking wrecking ball.

I can laugh about it now because I'm still here, but when it happened… One second I'm climbing, the next I'm airborne wondering if I just got run over by Miley Cyrus herself.

I don't think my back has completely forgiven me yet, either.

By the time I realized what had happened, Scott and Henry were already making up ground. Why wouldn't they?

That's the funny thing about being part of a team in a competition like this. You want to cheer for the other members, until they're about to take something away from you.

I wanted to be the first one to reach the top. Actually, at that time I felt I needed to be the first one to reach the top, because I needed to have immunity.

Sitting here in the locker room now, my gear still clinging to me like a fly on shit, I remember what slipped my mind in the moment.

In the heart of the moment, all I could focus on was being the first person up, because if there's an advantage available, I want it. Nobody is going to hand me anything in this game, so I know that I have to fight for every opportunity that presents itself.

So when Scott got ahead of me, my first instinct was to grab his ankle. Definitely not my finest moment, I can admit that now. But at that moment, when Henry yanked me away like I was a kid trying to cut in the lunch line, I got a little pissed off. For about three seconds, all three of us forgot we were supposed to be working together.

That's the dangerous part of being a part of this team, the people I normally consider my enemies, are the same people I need to depend on as teammates. We knew that going in, but once the chaos started our true intentions shined bright for all to see.

It wasn't until Nathan Lake slapped that button, ripping away whatever chance we had to guarantee passage into the second round, that Henry and I looked at each other and silently admitted we'd both been idiots.

With that opportunity gone, there was only one goal left.

Get everyone to the top.

That's when Cancer Jiles, friend of mine, reminded me exactly why I should never really trust that smug son of a bitch.

Terminal Cancer. Right in the face.

No warning – no reason – beyond just being himself.

There I was, flat on my back again. And what irritated me the most, was that it wasn't even personal. He wasn't trying to eliminate me, just making sure he did what he needed to do to get himself to the top amongst the madness. If chaos has a favorite child, it's Jiles.

I need to remember to thank Ivan Stanislav for the laugh that came afterward, because watching that mountain of a man catch Jiles' boot like someone tossing him a set of car keys was beautiful. The look on Cancer's face, as Ivan dumped him right back down the mountain, almost made getting kicked worthwhile.

Almost.

It wasn't like Ivan did it on my behalf, he was also just doing what he needed to do.

Seizing the moment.

He didn't seem to panic at all.

In fact, I'm sure there were times I saw his eyes light up like a kid on Christmas morning.

Barrels… He caught them.

A Minotaur on a wrecking ball… he threw that barrel he caught at it.

Standing in the midst of complete and utter madness, he laughed like only he could.

"DYAA-HAA-HAA!!!"

I don't know whether the man is fearless or simply doesn't understand consequences anymore, but that all changed when he realized Lemieux was no longer on his back. The laughter stopped immediately, and that thousand yard stare… For the first time in a while, realizing that he left one of his teammates behind, Ivan looked human.

I realized something in that moment, something in the way Kenny looked at Ivan and how angry he was, the armor was starting to crack. As loyal as Freeman is, he knows Ivan has never felt that way in regards to any of us in the Red Army. Either way, Steve wasn’t moving, and Ivan wasn't going to risk heading back for him.

So that left us with two teams that could win it all, and my team was one of them.

With Hunter and Williams already at the top, it was just me and Keyes left from our team… But after Cancer managed to reach the top it was only Kerry who was left from Team Troy. As much as Henry and I had our moment earlier when Lake nabbed the shot at immunity, I had a feeling he'd rather see Kuroyama up there with him at the end instead of me.

When this all started I was inches away from having immunity, and there – at the end – I was moments away from going home.

That's when Rob reached down and helped Keyes and I… He actually pulled me all the way up.

Not Henry. Me.

He didn't say a word, just grabbed me and got me to my feet. That's something I'm not going to forget. Seconds later, as Scott was helping Henry get to the top, Williams stomped on Kerry's hands and sent him crashing down the mountain. Henry and Scott hated it immediately, I could see it on their faces.

They wanted Kerry to be there at the end with them, while I just wanted to win.

Kerry getting eliminated instead of one of us… That's strategy, because Survivor isn't about making friends, it's about making tomorrow. And thanks to Rob, tomorrow belongs to us.

Henry can argue and Scott can be angry, because at the end of it all  Kerry is their friend. But they also also need to realize that neither of them are packing their bags, but more importantly…

Neither am I.

I could feel the smile curl on the right side of my lips, I welcomed it, because when Vince announced our names, I didn't hear the crowd. I heard relief. I heard another chance. One more challenge.

I had another opportunity to make everyone who came into this game expecting Tony Gamble to be easy pickings, to keep being disappointed.

That's what this changes.

People looked at our team and probably saw personalities that couldn't coexist, yet somehow we're the ones walking away with the win. We aren't built to like each other, but maybe we don't have to be. We just have to survive longer than everybody else.

Cancer, Kenny, and Ivan are still here, and Nathan isn't going anywhere soon. There are still plenty of sharks left in this water, but Kerry's gone and Steve's gone, while I'm not. That's the only scoreboard I care about.

Tonight wasn't pretty, wasn't heroic, and it sure as hell wasn't fair. But somehow, through whiskey bottles, barrels, mythical monsters, Russian giants, superkicks, and enough chaos to drive a sane man insane… Team Snow walked off that mountain together.

I'll take ugly victories over beautiful eliminations every single time.

As long as I continue to Survive.

=-=-=-=-=

I'm not sure what the hell was going on, but the kitchen was a damn mess.

There are mornings where you wake up with a certainty that the World is against you, and there are mornings that feel so absurd they almost dare you to believe them.

This may be both.

I walked into the kitchen and saw Scott's ass hanging out, a towel wrapped around him like a tunic and a tin foil helmet on his head. I'm not sure why he wasn't wearing underwear, but I wasn't about to ask either.

I just stood there at the door, watching him cook.

Rob and Henry were already at the table, which would normally leave two seats empty for Scott and I, but one of them had an old wrestling boot on it. At first, I thought nothing of it, but then Scott walked over with severely burnt toast and placed it on the table in front of the boot.

“And for thee, Tony Gamble…” Scott said, like a king honoring his loyal knight. Then he placed a bottle of syrup next to the plate, then another as if excess would somehow compensate for the fact he had reduced me to nothing more than tattered leather and worn rubber.

I found it quite humorous, but I didn't laugh because it wasn't really funny. Is that how Scott saw me, not as a villain or a joke, but as an old well-worn boot sitting there while the rest of the World carried on around me. I wanted to walk in, grab the boot, and throw the damn thing at Scott's head. I glanced over at Keyes, thumbing through his phone with all the emotional investment of a man waiting for his coffee to cool down while Scott addressed him.

It shouldn't have bothered me as much as it did, but I found myself wondering why he chose the left shoe. Why not both, and why attach a lanyard.

There were so many questions, but everything seemed to matter less when I saw Scott turn toward the shoe and stare for a moment before tossing a raw strip of bacon at it.

“That’s one for Kerry,” he said with the calm of a lake without ripples, then threw one at Rob. “That one's also for Kerry.”

I'm not going to pretend to understand what is going through Scott's mind half the time, but even this seemed out of the ordinary for him. Still, as I watched him ask Keyes if he wanted to join him in the bacon flinging I wondered if there was a bit of guilt inside of him for what happened to Kerry. As close as they were, he chose to help Keyes up the mountain instead of Kuroyama.

Hunter finally sat his bare ass down and picked up his fork.

“Eat up,” he announced. “We've got a kingdom to defend.”

Rob didn't answer, Henry turned another page, and the boot that represented me was just there with bacon on it.

This was our team.

Despite our victory, we were still just individuals working toward a common goal, and that wasn't going to get us another victory. Not with every other team seeing us as a threat. Not when all Scott and Henry really see when they look at Rob and I are obstacles.

I'm not ready to go home, but if we can't find a way to work together… I need to make sure I can count on Rob to see that the threat sitting across from him doesn't include me.

=-=-=-=-=

Tony Gamble laid there on his bed, left arm over his eyes as he wondered how he was going to survive another round when the sharp buzz of his phone caught his attention.

Bzzzt… Bzzzt…

He rolled over and looked over at it for a moment before he grabbed it. The name on the screen brought a smile to his face the moment he read it, but he realized something was wrong the moment he answered and heard the tears in her voice.

“Hey, after you okay,” he asked as the smile faded away just as quickly as it had arrived. “What's that… Your mom what… How?”

His heart sank as the words settled in, not because he had some emotional connection to her mother, but because he couldn't be there to pull her close and comfort her when she needed it most. Victoria had always been very close with her mother, so hearing that she had passed away in her sleep hurt him in a way he found hard to explain.