Laura's fight in The Evil Within 2 concludes the developments of the archetype and metanarrative. To appreciate how it works, we need to review her appearances in the first game. Laura acted as Ruvik's lieutenant in STEM, making Sebastian, personally, a target. Anima, who summarized the full force of Sebastian's trauma, borrowed her features. If any fear lingers in Sebastian's heart from The Evil Within, it is hers, and she is a prime example of the game's inconclusive resolution.

Sebastian fought Laura twice, each time attacking her with gas flames through industrial grates, fire spumes from broken pipes, furnace maws, and the occasional burning corpse. She succumbed to flames the first time, but environmental hazards alone could not take her down during their second meeting. Under normal circumstances, Sebastian never forcibly killed her, making their last run-in a particularly desperate memory of running away.

Players could kill her after planning ahead, saving a lot of ammunition, and plugging all of it into Laura after exhausting the room's defenses. However, many players earned the achievement for killing Laura, "Bathed in Flames," during New Game+ runs. For a first playthrough, resource scarcity and the level design strongly encouraged flight.

Sebastian set the area on fire, not to kill her, but to clear a path to an elevator. Meanwhile, every opened furnace shrank the level's usable space. Success forced him closer to an enemy who killed on contact.

If Sebastian fled into the elevator, Laura died off-screen. She strangled him through the elevator's bars until Sebastian sent the carriage to a lower floor. The machinery mutilated her, and Sebastian rode to safety sitting next to her severed arms.

His escape has two takeaways. First, as before, Sebastian didn't win; he merely got away. Second, he never confirmed her death, only her injury. She returned from her first defeat to harass Sebastian again, but she just disappeared after the elevator. We didn't get a body. We got a shoulder to look over, wondering when she might return.

The flow of events — conclusive victory followed by inconclusive escape — forms the background of their rematch. As Laura claws from The Keeper's carcass amid a spindrift of gore, Sebastian intends to re-write his escape at their last meeting. When he says, "I burned you once. I'll burn you again," he refers to the first victory that he did not follow-up. He declares his confidence to do, now, what he could not during their second encounter in The Evil Within. He intends to win again.

During the previous rematches, Sebastian adopted bolder, more confrontational strategies that used his enemies' vigor against them. Against Laura, we gauge his resolve, as before, through level design and optimal strategy.