I got tagged by the awesome @leysendris go check them out when you have the chance!!
Just posted a new chapter but, luckily, I had and idea yesterday at like 6.34 am before going to sleep (yeah, you read that right 😅) so here it is:
For context, this is my Tomb Raider fic (I'll go back to the ME universe, I swear, but I need to finish my TR madness first). Just the ush~ u know, Jacob and Lara about to spend the night together for the first time.
Lara freezes, staring at her old cot.
There are two beds... Maybe he wants us to sleep on our own. Or not. Better if not. But, what if it isn't 'not'. I can't just assume it’s 'yes' just in case it’s 'not'... But if it's 'not' and I'm not there and I say 'yes', isn't that somewhat worse?
She loses sight of Jacob, more than lost in her inner rumbles, so when he approaches her from behind it takes more effort than usual to avoid melting as his hand places gracefully on her hip, taking a moment to follow her gaze before speaking:
"We don't need to pretend any of us is considering sleepìng in different beds, do we?"
Ended up being longer than intended... ups
edit: shit, I forgot to tag people lol that's what happens when you post stuff at 5 am lol.
Been away from tumblr for too long and such and my social anxiety is at new lows so believe me when I tell you: please do not feel preassured to reply to this and feel free to ignore me. I understand if you're not up for it 😗😗
She hears him laughing at his own comment, needing a second before turning to look at him.
Jacob is emptying his pockets, slowly, basking in his own glee as he waits for a comeback.
“Why shouldn’t it?”
And what a comeback, indeed.
“It’s just a mere substitute. A stand-in.” His smile breaks a little in expectation, knowing what the coat truly means. “Something to hug and embrace me until I could have the real thing around my arms.”
--------------------------------
You cannot expect me to not make a big deal about that jacket after giving me the option of wearing it too in the 3rd game... I mean... I had no choice.
Was this supposed to be the intro to Chapter 15 and somehow turned into a chapter of its own because I was having way too much fun writing this shit and realized I was already on page 23? Perhaps...
Do I regret it? Never.
Should I be working instead of posting this? Of course.
Yet here we are!
Hope you like it <3
Summary: The truth is out, and Lara and Jacob must navigate a normal day in the Valley under the weight of everyone knowing about their relationship.
Words: 8276
Rating: Teens and up
Warnings: Mild language and stuff
All Chapters -> [link]
Read in AO3 -> [link]
-------------------------------------
“I’m gonna kill you.”
~
They looked at each other for a while. The ‘what on Earth do we do now?’ atmosphere engulfing them after they stopped laughing.
“So…” Lara's voice trembled with uncertainty. “How am I ever supposed to leave this cabin after THAT?”
Jacob smiled at her.
“I’m serious!” She reaffirmed.
“I know…” He closed the gap between them, loving eyes set on her as he reached for her hand. “I know.”
She fought the urge to kiss him, although now she’s not really sure why, biting her lip for a few seconds before asking: “So… What now?”
His mouth closed for a second with pensive demeanor written all over his face but, after a few seconds of introspective research, everything faded, letting glee coat his features once again.
She could tell his mind had found the perfect reply just by it.
“Funny you should ask…” He started saying, his mellow voice coating the air as if it were a brush painting around her. “Right now I should be doing my rounds…” He echoed his own words from months ago, from the first day she set foot back into his life, and she didn’t know where to start either. “Checking the valley, the storages, hunting areas…”
Lara almost cried in happiness. The inner corners of her mouth raised towards heaven as she witnessed him do what he does best: speak.
“You could accompany me…”
Speak to her.
“If you wish to.”
No matter how much he insists he’s lost for words when he’s with her, he always seems to find a path straight into her soul when she needs it the most.
“I’d love to.” She replied, just as she did three months earlier.
All of his obligations were already taken care of, and she knew it, but exiting the cabin with a path in mind made everything easier and, this way, she could focus on Jacob.
Once they set foot outside he offered his arm, all gentlemanlike, patiently waiting to see if she would take it.
She did.
Her hand linked around him and, after granting her a moment and a look, making sure she was ready, he started walking towards the Lowlands.
The path from her old cabin to Jacob’s couldn’t be any bigger, set almost in opposite sides of the Western Village, and Lara cannot help but to blush a little just by imagining Sofia carrying all her possessions, plus a fully assembled cot, from one to the other.
The feat had caught many eyes indeed and, if that wasn’t enough, she was quite sure that the two of them, walking together just like that, would certainly catch any rmaining attention that Sofia’s impromptu move had not managed to obtain.
It should have been, without any trace of doubt, the most embarrassing moment of her life.
But, against all odds it wasn’t for, after a few steps, Jacob started talking.
Nothing very significant, nothing that needed input either.
Just talking.
And, just like that, Lara was lost in him, and nothing else seemed to matter.
How could anything else matter?
A few of the villagers started whispering. She laughed at something he was saying.
Some of them pretended they didn’t exist as a show of respect. She nodded at something in agreement.
A couple of the children tried to run up to them before their parents stopped them. She asked a follow up question about what he just described.
The blacksmith nudged his wife with his elbow, an ‘I told you so’ smile plastered in his face. She held his arm even tighter.
There’s even the sound of a group of young girls, doing their best to keep their voices as low as possible as they scream at each other. Excited to see their wished coupling take form in real life after thinking it would never happen.
Lara heard none of these.
Instead, they just walked, happy to be in each other’s company and left the village just like that, their minds set on a mundane task that didn’t take them too long to accomplish.
~
Sofia cannot help but laugh.
“I’m serious… I’m gonna fucking kill you.”
Despite her words, so does Lara.
~
The excuse they used to be able to return to normality was effective, but extremely short to her liking, having Jacob done everything already before the whole cabin scene happened.
“I wanted to free my morning so we could spend it together.” He confessed with a smile, rubbing the back of his head.
It made her feel like she was melting.
Nevertheless, something came up in the Southern Settlement that claimed his attention and, being the only one ahead on his duty, he couldn’t say no and parted ways with her.
She cursed herself for not waking up earlier and doing the same, but he seemed so happy that she decided to rest, or attempted to, that the pain got quickly diluted.
“See you tonight.” He said, before kissing her on the forehead.
Whatever was left of the pain, got quickly erased.
“See you tonight.”
He left right after, in silence, duty pulling them both in different directions.
Lara couldn’t ignore hers either.
She headed north, replaying her entire morning inside her mind and: yes, it wasn't as easy to do it without Jacob by her side.
The news spread like wildfire, as they always do, and she had a long way until she reached the tomb she was supposed to inspect today with Sofia, which meant crossing paths with a lot of people on her way there.
“It wasn’t as bad as she had expected—just curious looks, at most.”
No negative comments or expressions, at least that she could witness, which was more than enough for her.
In fact, the bulk of the people she encountered seemed even happier than before with her presence in the valley.
And then, of course, there was Levi, to whom ‘happier’ was far too mild a word to describe him.
“I had to restrain myself from applauding when I saw Sofia marching to her father’s cabin with your cot.”
Lara covered her face with both hands.
“Sorry, sorry.” He added, shaking her by the shoulder a couple of times, which managed to make her smile a little. “It’s just that… Wow.”
“Yeah…”
“You and Jacob…” His tone of voice was almost a contradiction, both shocked by the news but not that surprised, either. “Should’ve seen it coming.”
“Meaning?”
“He never came to my morning practice before I started to feature you in them.”
They both started laughing.
~
“You’re not really mad, aren’t you?”
Lara huffs, taking a moment to think before she answers.
“No…” There’s hesitation, which alarms Sofia for a moment, so she tries one more time. “No.”
~
She and Levi said goodbye as he headed towards the Abandoned Mines to do his part in the cleaning effort. Lara continued north, finding Sofia a few minutes later at the entrance of the tomb.
“Took you long enough.”
Sofia smiled at her.
“Gee… I wonder why?” Lara asked with as much irony as she could summon, getting inside the tomb while her friend followed her trying very hard not to laugh at her comment.
~
She tries again.
“I’m not mad…” She explains, no hesitation now in sight. “Ask me in a few days, and I’ll probably tell you it was epic.”
She takes her boots off the ground, now that her feet are finally dry after sinking them in the water for so long.
“And you didn’t see the reactions.”
“Thank God.”
They both start laughing again.
Sofia mimics the gesture after rolling down her pants, now the risk of getting them wet is no longer there, tying her shoelaces in record time in order to catch up with Lara so they can walk side by side as they head for the exit of the ancient baths.
“Sure you’re okay?”
She insists after a while, sunlight already reaching them even before Lara and her make it to the entrance of the tomb.
“Yeah…” Hesitation once again. “I mean… I guess.”
Sofia stares at her, now on the outside, letting the sun warm her skin as she waits with the patience she knows her friend needs.
“It’s…”
Just enough of it.
“Complicated?”
“Yeah…”
That’s an understatement. Lara thinks, unsure of what else she should say, busying her hands with the end of her jacket.
“Wanna talk about it?” Sofia offers.
“Wanna hear about it?” She instantly replies, finally manifesting the obvious awkwardness of the situation. “I mean… He’s your father.”
“So?” It takes her a second to process the idea. “Oohhh.”
“Yeah…” This one is more playful, or ironic, but there’s still a tint of worry in it.
“Still… If you’re in need of a friend…”
“I know, I know… But there are things that I don’t think I’d be able to survive if you knew them…” Lara hesitates for a bit, an intrusive thought squirming around her courage, but eventually summons enough strength and just asks: “I mean, how much do you know?”
“Not a lot… Mostly about my father…” She laughs a little. “I’ll ask for details once I’ve had the opportunity to process what I do know.”
“Heavens…” Sofia laughs even more.
“Speaking of which, I meant to ask you: Are you okay with me having read your letter? I mean… It was…”
“Not mine.” Lara states, with surprising confidence, no matter how much her heart wants her to switch to a different topic. “Not anymore. It’s Jacob’s now, and if he decided to show it to you...”
“Still…”
“I know, It’s fine.” She smiles at her, before shrugging her shoulders, with the answer brewing in her head being way too clear to reply anything other than: “We’re family.”
The concept comes out way overly natural, the truth flowing out of Lara to simmer into reality, for any of them to consider the depth of her last sentence, or pay it enough attention for it to spiral into complex hesitation.
Instead, they just stare at each other with glee in their eyes, letting it float around them and dissolve into thin air.
“That we are.” Sofia seals it with words, cementing what her body has already said. “Besides, in terms of love letters, yours was far from embarrassing, if that serves you of any help.”
“It does. Luckily you haven’t read the one he…”
Lara covers her mouth with both hands, censoring herself, but Sofia doesn’t need to hear it to complete the sentence on her own.
“Dear Lord, he wrote you a letter too?”
The tone on Lara’s skin migrates instantly into a reign of vermillion shades.
"Shut up." She reprimands Sofia once she starts laughing, her tone of voice resembling that of a teenage girl.
"Sorry, sorry…" Her friend attempts to tame her smile, fixing the upper corners of her lips with her fingers. "Sorry."
But, as always, curiosity makes a rapid comeback.
"Can I read it?"
"No!"
The answer is so fast and loud that Sofia cannot help but laugh her heart out, missing little complaints as Lara hits her ever so slightly, pushing her into the path she needs to take any moment now.
"Okay, okay…" Sofia keeps laughing, understanding her intentions. "I’ll leave you be."
"Thanks."
"For now…"
By the time Lara is ready to reply to that last comment Sofia is already too far to see her reaction, but not hear her reply.
"I hate you." She half screams with a loving tone in her voice.
Sofia lets her have the last word, feeling like she’s more than earned it. So, instead of replaying, furthering their distance as she walks away, she lifts one hand and waves goodbye a few times, not even turning to look at her, hiding from Lara the glee coating her expression while she fades into the distance.
~
The sun was starting to fall from the sky.
Despite having eaten not that long ago, still carrying in her pockets the empty containers she and Sofia devoured mid their tomb exploration a few hours ago, she is starting to feel peckish already.
Having just exited the Baths of Kitesh, being now at the entrance of the upper village, Lara contemplates, for a moment, the idea of entering it in order to get something to eat, not sure she’ll be able to wait the couple of hours that separate her from the beginning of the dinner.
The thought never gets to fully form.
People had remained close to respectful, as long as Sofia stays talking to her, but the moment she disappears into the horizon to carry on with her daily duties, a horde of young girls manages to corral Lara in record time, snatching both the idea and the hunger right out of her mind.
"Heavens Lara! You and Jacob!" The leader of the group half screams as she grabs her hands with passion. "I was telling Nikia the other day what a wonderful couple the two of you would make, but I was not expecting it to come true."
Of everything she imagined happening once the truth was out, Lara has to admit, this wasn’t even an option.
"I told you sooner or later it was going to happen, Rhea." Says Nikia, Lara deduces from the prior statement, as this one catches both her arm and attention with enthusiasm and redirects her words towards her. "You have to tell us everything."
There’s more than emphasis in the way the young girl says that last word.
The screams that follow that statement, despite coming all from a respectful place, or as much juvenile female gossip is able to summon, engulf Lara little by little into a fog of excitement and cheers.
"Now you say you knew, instead of explaining how you were plotting for it to happen." Rhea’s attention switches momentarily to her friend, annoyed by this one taking the spotlight.
"Plotting? How dare you? I was manifesting it. And look!"
The group doubled before she could even inhale, girls coming out of nowhere and targeting Lara with way too many questions to answer any of them while simultaneously screaming at each other and discussing the entire topic out loud.
"I…"
And, of course, any attempt that Lara makes to leave is immediately squished by the energy of the group.
"How long have you been together? Did you propose? Was it Jacob?"
"Well…"
"Thena swears it was Jacob but I know she is talking without knowledge."
"I know what I know!" A faceless voice replies, two girls on her left. "Tell her I’m right, Lara."
“Erm…”
Even if she wanted to reply, she never has the chance.
"Shut up you two, don’t you have any shame?” Kiah opens the way with her elbow, or at least she is almost certain that’s the name of this one, pushing Nikia away so she can face her. “So immature…” She huffs under her breath. “Lara, don’t mind them, okay? Just tell us the overall story as you want?”
“Wh…?”
“Oh, yeah, and that was the mature thing to say, no Klea?”
Right… Klea. Not Kiah.
“What!?” Klea turns with anger, hands moving to rest on her hips. “More than anything that’s ever left your useless mouth you ignor…”
Luckily for everyone present, and the overall wellbeing of the Remnants as a society, the sentence dies as fast as it was ignited, with a powerful yet melodic voice impacting against the entire group with a precise strike.
“Girls!” As if it was the Red Sea, the group is quickly divided in two, a familiar figure walking in between, arms on her hips, making it all the way to where Lara is before turning to face the rest of them.
What Lara thought would come out with anger, or at least with a stern disposition, is closer to tiredness and disappointment than she would’ve expected.
“Why is no one at their assigned post?” She sighs. “Come on, Sofia is waiting for half of you to join her in the mines.” She rubs the back of her head. “As for the rest, we’ve been waiting for you for almost an hour now.”
“Sorry Nadia.” A few of them say at the same time and, before anyone has the courage to complain, she speaks one last time.
“Now go.” Half the group leaves right away, with speed. Lara suspects more in fear of Sofia than to the order itself, but she doesn’t question it for too long.
The other half has one last attempt.
“But Nad…”
An unsuccessful one.
“But nothing.” She shakes her head. “My grandmother has little patience, if you really want her to train you all you should not test it.”
“Sorry, Nadia.” They say again.
“We’ll apologize to Serafima too.” Klea remarks.
“That’s more like it.” Nadia smiles, before sending them away. “Now go, on your way.”
Just as it was formed, the horde of people vanishes in no time leaving Lara alone with her.
“Sorry about that.” Nadia turns towards her. “You’ll have time to catch up with them later if you wish to…”
“Oh hell, no.” Lara brings one hand to her mouth, forcing the rest of her thoughts to stay in there. “I meant: no reason to apologize, really.” She insists: “Really.”
“I… See.” The young girl attempts to tame her smile. “I…”
“In fact I should be thanking you, for saving me from… Well… That.”
She doesn’t succeed. Nadia laughs for a few seconds before even realizing that she’s doing it, forcing herself to stop the moment she is aware of it.
“They’re quite a handful, right?”
“Yeah… You could say that” Lara smiles a little. “So, thanks… For the rescue.”
“My pleasure.” Nadia pats her on the arm. “Glad to be on this side of the bargain with you for once.” She starts laughing. “But, alas, duty calls. I’m tasked with collecting herbs in the valley, only diverted myself to search for the apprentices, but I should get going now that’s done, before it is too dark. It’s really a shame, we haven’t had the time to talk that much since you came back.”
“Well, that has a quick fix.” Lara feels somehow shy to even ask: “Need some help?”
“Always...” Nadia looks at her, a bit confused. “Aren’t you too busy for something so… Erm, trivial?”
“I’m free right now and… To be completely honest, I could use the distraction.”
Words seldom felt so natural slipping from Lara’s mouth, especially having in mind the sentiment behind them, so she is pleasantly surprised of how easy it was for her to formulate them just now.
“Though day, huh?”
Nadia interprets the grunt that Lara gives her as a yes.
“Not much for talking, either?”
“You know me.”
“I sure do.”
There’s nothing in her tone that resembles a reproach, Lara knows as much, but the comment brings back a forgotten memory that, once unburied, she isn’t able to ignore and, willing to see if this will come out with the same ease, she decides to at least give it a try.
“Yeah… Sorry about that, by the way.” Nadia looks at her with confusion, until she clarifies. “Three years ago, shut you off, as I often do… While you were talking to me on the radio.”
The young girl keeps staring at her, expression morphing into deep concentration, doing her best to recall the situation.
“The whole ordeal with the Soviet Weapons facility, remember?"
“Oh!” It seems to cost an inhuman effort for Nadia to remember the occasion, a smile replacing the confusion once she does. “Right… Completely forgot about that. Just assumed you were trying to concentrate.”
“Well, that too.”
“Nothing to forgive then…” She pats her shoulder with glee. “And happy to have you back. And for so long… You’re spoiling us.”
“Right…” Lara smiles back at her, fidgeting her hands, not knowing what else to do.
“How are things out there? Heard you saved the world… But that’s about it.” She laughs a little, not sure why. “Something worth mentioning from outside our little haven?”
“Not really…”
The silence sinks for a moment and Lara wishes she was better at this. Her conversational skills, that never were that great to begin with in a heightened environment, really pale when put into a relaxed and easygoing context.
Nevertheless, she seems to be with an expert in the area and, the moment Lara runs out of things to say, Nadia is quick to set an example on what a normal exchange between two people sounds like.
“I guess you wouldn’t be here if you found it interesting.” She laughs yet again. “Glad that you’re, of course. Here, I mean.”
Lara stares at her, truly thinking about her own reply.
“So I am.” Short but true.
She smiles too, satisfied, after taking the small step. Nadia cannot help but to reply in the same fashion.
“Glad to see you’re doing fine.”
Her head turns to focus on the task at hand, so she isn’t able to see Lara stop for a few seconds to think how to follow the conversation.
She figures it out quicker this time around.
“What about you? How’s the family?”
“Oh, better than ever. Spent all morning with grandpa helping him before heading to the apothecary.”
“Western village?”
“No, the new one, well… It’s actually the oldest but… ” Nadia halts herself mid rambling. “On the Southeast Settlement.”
“Right.” Lara smiles. “Still cannot believe what you’ve managed to do with the castle ruins.”
“It’s a work in progress… But yes. Now it’s been halted for a while, they’re focusing on the mines.” She switches to a new patch of flowers. “Not my expertise, but we all help when they need extra hands.”
“Seems you don’t stop all day…”
“Look who's talking?”
Lara laughs.
“I meant, your grandfather this morning and now you’re helping Serafima with the inventory, and the trainees… Must be a handful.”
“I like to spend time with my grandmother… Has tons to share.” She cleans her hands on her pants. “And I’m not that good as a herbalist, but I have good enough memory to do this.”
“Don’t mind the work, then?”
“No… I like to help.”
Lara turns to look at her, wanting to check that she doesn’t see in Nadia the way too familiar pattern that she got tired of finding in every mirror.
“Do you do anything, outside of helping?” The tone, and intentions, do not lean towards concern, but there are hints of it hidden in both. “What do you do, around here, in your free time?”
“You know, the usual… ” Nadia, unaware of the sliver of worry on her friend’s heart, quickly erases it by being her usual self. “Talking, reading… I like to draw, too. I’ve been sketching the local flora, but in my free time I like to paint whatever I feel like.” She laughs, quite pleased with the summary. “We eat together… On special occasions we dance. You were there for the last one.”
“Yeah… I quite enjoyed it.” Lara smiles, battling her body to avoid losing herself into the hypersweet memories. “Like dancing too, then?”
“Not a lot, I prefer the food, but a few friends insisted… So my feet hurt more than expected at the end of the night.”
“They must have been worthy of the effort, then.” Lara comments without giving a second thought, following the natural flow of the exchange. “Someone special?”
“Eh? No, no… Just friends.” Nadia laughs. “Haven’t met anyone who was worth that much effort, if you know what I mean.”
Lara breaks into laughter, Nadia follows right after.
“Heavens…” The first replies after a while, cleaning an almost tear from her eye.
“What about you?” Nadia asks, as she composes herself too, looking for something to distract her from the laughter so she can go back to her task. “Anyone special?”
She’s in for a distraction, indeed.
Lara’s immediate response: is choking. Exhale and cough mixed with surprise as she turns to look at Nadia with confusion in her eyes.
The reaction to her question should’ve definitely given her a hint of the answer, but reality escapes Nadia as social skills usually evade Lara and so, she just stares at her friend, looking even more confused than her.
“What?”
Lara, on the other hand, after increasing to new found heights the span of her embarrassment tolerance, thanks to this morning’s events, is surprisingly ready to provide a reply with an unseen level of ease for the first time in her life.
“You mean you don’t know?”
Perhaps she would’ve been more embarrassed, if the surprise of finding someone able to elude the news of Sofia’s blessing into domesticity in the most unhinged way she could’ve ever conjured wasn’t there to catch her full attention.
“Know?”
She finds it almost comical: Of course the one person I decide to confide in is the only one in the entire valley who hasn't heard.
“About me and Jacob…”
The sentence comes out even more natural than she had expected, having the long years of waiting and longing rooted the feeling into reality too long for her body to cast them away as foreign.
“You and Jacob…” Most people would’ve instantly questioned their doubts. “Yeah right.”
Most people.
For Nadia, an additional second is required.
“Wait… WHAT!?”
But that really seems to do it.
“Heavens, you’re not joking.”
Lara shakes her head.
“I am not.”
Nadia gets closer to her, the basket of flowers completely forgotten for a while now.
“And everyone knows?” She grabs her hands. “How come I don’t?”
Lara cannot help but laugh.
“Of all the questions you could ask…” Shakes her head again, and cannot do anything else than answer. “We told Sofia this morning… Well… Jacob did. I think. Wasn’t there for the whole show, thank God, but if I had to guess, I think she figured it out and Jacob just filled in the blancs.”
Nadia nods, hyperfocussed, not wanting to interrupt the explanation.
“And then, well… Sofia decided to move all my belongings to Jacob’s cabin, cot included, and everyone got the overall gist after that.”
“I… See.”
“That’s why I got cornered by your apprentices… They had questions.” Lara sighs, remembering the experience.
“Uf…”
“Yeah.”
Unlike the young girls, Nadia’s comments don’t add anything close to a sentence for a while. A collection of ‘aha’s and ‘right’s serving as a placeholder until her mind is able to process all the information.
Lara, on her part, cannot do more than give her the needed time. After recovering their baskets, she decides to set foot to the apothecary, on the Southeast Settlement, imagining that’s where they’re meant to deliver them.
Nadia follows her initiative and, eventually, is able to say more than three words in a row.
“Sorry… Perhaps I haven’t had the best reaction.” She apologies, revising the last few minutes of her life. “It more than took me by surprise.”
“Oh, you're handling it way better than most, so don’t worry.”
“I’m trying…”
The words cause Lara to laugh again but, this time around, Nadia doesn’t follow her.
Instead, she stares at her.
“What?”
“Nothing.”
Lara’s expression morphs, but the glee remains.
“Do not ‘nothing’ me… Come on.”
Despite her words, the hesitation is still there.
“It may be too much for you… So I won’t say it.”
“Nadia…”
Almost there.
“I…”
Almost.
“I was tempted to ask… If you were happy.”
There.
She stops walking, her will and feet halt in unison to finally leave room for her words.
“But now… Kinda seem unnecessary.” Their eyes meet. “I can just see it for myself.”
Lara blushes, of course, but takes the comment with much more ease than expected.
“Right… Right. Well…” She clears her throat. “You’d be right, it seems.”
“It seems.”
Now they both laugh, once again, exorcising the nerves out of their bodies, resuming their walk as the sun starts to fall.
“I really admire you, Lara… Even more than before.” Nadia remarks, after giving the situation a second thought. “I think I’d die from embarrassment if I were you.”
“Got close… At least the worst is now behind me, I guess.” She smiles. “And the pros more than outweigh the cons so…” The sentence doesn’t need an ending, so she doesn’t bother to create it. “Yeah…”
Nadia sighs, with an overwhelming feeling of ease.
“I’m glad to see you like this… I mean…” This one doesn’t need one either. “Yeah…”
“Yeah.”
The rest of the path is quite calm. They deliver the flowers and, after a quick and unnecessary exchange, they confirm they both want to go back to the Western Village, so they more than agree to travel there together.
With the sun now close to set, the valley is almost empty, giving them the perfect canvas to keep drawing their precious conversation.
“I assume you and Sofia are okay… After, you know…”
The comment surprises Lara for a second, but she quickly realizes why she’s asking.
“Yes, of course. Even closer, now… I guess.”
“She really guessed it on her own?”
“Well..” Lara shakes her hand a couple of times. “Half and half… Had no idea about my feelings, that’s for sure. And also the length.”
“The length?”
“Oh yeah… She thought it was recent.”
A moment of silence.
“It isn’t?”
Lara turns a little, smiling, something closer to mischievous than shyness but still in between the two.
“No.”
Another moment.
To process it, Lara guesses, cause she never hears a comeback about it.
“Must be difficult, I imagine, to talk to her about it.” Nadia says instead, trying to picture what they are discussing.
“It’s quite easy, actually… Or I’ll be, in no time, I think. For most of it, at least.”
“And the rest?”
There’s a flicker of hesitation on Lara’s eyes.
“The rest? Well…” She tames it in just a moment. “I’ll figure it out on my own, I guess.”
And still, its trace is still there, glued to her smile.
“You don’t have to… You know?” Nadia fidgets with her fingers. “Even if you don’t know where to start… The only thing for you to bear is to ask.”
Lara nods, feeling honored, understanding the depths of the offering and the understanding Nadia must possess of her to even offer it in the first place.
“Thanks.”
Just ask.
No unnecessary banter, no awkward conversation: just ask. It is almost as if Nadia had listed all the things she despises in the equation just so she could erase them in order to ease all her troubles.
Just ask.
“Really… I…”
Could it be that simple? It never really is.
“...”
Her words make it simple, or at least simpler, which is all she can ask for: to forget about the overcomplicated form and focus for once on the matter.
“...”
To erase second-guesses and discuss what it matters.
“...”
Just ask.
And so she does.
“You think I’m silly… After everything… For being nervous?” Lara's voice trembles as the words come out of her. “About tonight… With Jacob.”
It takes a moment for Nadia to respond.
“No.” She gives it a second one. “Seems like a big deal to me.”
“I feel like it shouldn’t. I mean, we’ve talked about it… We are on the same page, you know. Letting things grow little by little. I’m not expecting anything.” She sighs. “And still…”
“You’re still nervous.”
“Yes.”
“It’s still a step Lara. A big one.” Nadia explains, like it isn’t something completely foreign or from another galaxy. “It's still intimacy… Emotional, which is even deeper than physical.”
“...”
“It’s okay to be a bit nervous, you wouldn’t be human otherwise.” She laughs a little, Lara follows the tone. “Don’t worry too much about it. For what you tell, and knowing Jacob, it’ll be okay.”
“I guess you’re right.”
“Course I am.”
Nadia’s words float on Lara’s mind as they climb the steps towards the entrance of the village, coating and soothing her hesitation as she internalizes them.
It isn’t almost until the end of the long path of stairs that she finally breaks the silence.
“When did you get this clever?”
Of course, the comment quickly makes Nadia burst into laughter, considering her words for a few seconds before answering.
“I’ve always been this clever… It’s just that you now have the patience to wait until I’m done talking.”
As one can only expect, Lara starts laughing too.
~
The morning had been glorious. Jacob thinks.
Feeling accomplished by doing all his tasks even before the sun had put a halt on its rise, ecstatic to spend some time with Lara, he marched to her cabin and, despite not finding her there, the conversation with Sofia, being finally able to stop pretending there was nothing between Lara and him, gave him a sensation of peace he never expected to find, if one is being objective, in the more than awkward encounter.
The truth was out and, to top it all, he got to spend his time with Lara after that, so he could not be happier about how the day had started.
Noon was uneventful.
He headed to the Southern Settlement, forced to leave Lara behind as his help was needed elsewhere but, despite the walk where he cursed the skies for being separated from her, he found enough distraction in his work, and the promise of their reunion after sunset, to keep a normal disposition for how the day was developing.
Everyone was being normal, or normal enough, to keep away from his personal matters but, the more the day stretched, the more he could sense the difference in the way people acted around him.
By afternoon, it was impossible to ignore it.
Not an eye had dared to hold his gaze, everyone was way too worried about offending him to share more than a couple of words before running away and, of course, everyone pretended there wasn’t anything strange about it at all.
The respect he had commanded over the years had leaked onto this too, and the passing of the hours just managed to confirm it, for not a soul made a single remark about it.
Jacob found it amusing at the beginning, or as much as he could, with a hint of worry, wondering how different the experience must’ve been for Lara.
They won’t keep their distance with her. He guessed correctly, wishing there’s more he could do, but the works in the mines area required his attention so, after a late lunch, he headed there and joined his daughter and the rest of the team in charge of the project.
The people there are used to working with him, to talk to him, making even more obvious how much they are keeping themselves from making remarks about the subject. Levi seems like he will, but in the end, he doesn’t. Jacob attributes it to Sofia’s presence, but he never gets to know.
Perhaps she would’ve corralled him if she had the chance, but his workload was so intense that he was still deep into the thick of it all by the time his daughter had finished, leaving the place before having the chance to even exchange a word.
Jacob is in fact the last one left in the place not long after that, lost in calculations and planning next day’s advancements with care, track of time completely forgotten until a low growl in his stomach finally begs for him to stop and he decides to oblige.
It isn’t until he takes the path to the Western Village that it really sinks in how tired he truly is, being awake since sunrise and having worked without rest until the lonely star had decided to set.
A tiring day, indeed.
The evening, nonetheless, presented itself way too interesting to even think about it coming to an end.
It’s quite late when he makes it to the village, people already dining, seated around the big table, composed of many different ones, that extends throughout the center of the village.
Jacob spots her instantly, although no one else would’ve been able to do so, surrounded and covered as she is by her friends. Sofia has her in a permanent hold, a half hug, one arm embracing her shoulders as the other overworks itself with many movements and gestures, completely lost in what he assumes can only be a passionate speech.
Like father, like daughter.
Nadia is on the other side, both hands grabbing Lara’s, extremely excited and giving many comments to whatever Sofia is telling them.
He cannot avoid smiling at the scene. There’s something more than comedic in the contrast of their over-effuseness compared to the way Lara just listens to them, without interfering, with a relaxed expression on her face, similar to the one a proud parent adopts when they witness their kids talking about something they’re truly passionate about.
There’s a moment where he considers interrupting: make his way there and sit by her side. He’s sure none of them would mind, even if that meant breaking the lovely image he finds himself lost into. But the place is overcrowded and most of the food is already gone so, instead, he decides against it.
His eyes remain on the small group, nonetheless.
“...”
Someone talks next to him, but he doesn’t react.
At first, at least.
“Right?”
Jacob shakes his head ever so slightly before turning it to find Levi standing next to it, a big grin painted on his face as he witnesses the overall reaction.
“Everything fine?”
They both know the answer, and why he asked such a question, but Jacob pretends not to and simply replies: “Of course, why’d you ask?”
Perhaps courage has built inside the young man since he last saw him, perhaps the lack of Sofia’s presence is enough to let him be completely honest.
“You look… Distracted.”
It requires more effort than he expected, but Jacob manages to suppress his laugh after hearing his comment, or most of it, with a small smile betraying him as the way Levi just said ‘distracted’ hangs around them for a few seconds before he’s even able to give him the answer a comment as such truly deservers.
“One is only distracted when their attention roams away from their original target.” Jacob finally replies.
Unlike him, Levi isn’t one to hide his emotions, so he just laughs and marvels at Jacob’s comeback for a few seconds and hits him playfully on the arm right after.
A gesture he’s adopted from Lara, no doubt.
Jacob smiles too, warmed by the reaction and extremely proud of his own words, to the point of almost feeling embarrassed by the sentiment.
And you wanted to keep all that to yourself. His mind offers with Lara’s voice, unburying the memory as if it was happening again. Shameful.
“Shameful…” He whispers to himself.
“What?” Levi looks at him, half confused, half amused, not knowing what is going on in his mind but guessing the overall cause. “Sure you’re okay?”
“Yeah… Hungry.” He says it, and then he hears it, but despite not being fast enough to see the double implication of that statement before it comes out in the air, he’s sure quick enough to stop Levi’s comment about it.
Jacob’s hand rises with an accusatory finger, not needing words to draw the line he’s not willing to let him cross.
Despite his smile, Levi discards his comment, raising his hands as a gesture of innocence, faking he doesn’t have the faintest idea of what caused that reaction.
The only thing Jacob can do is sigh, but the smile remains, suddenly understanding a lot better how his daughter’s feeling came to be.
“Come, join me.”
Levi smiles too and nods, following him to a distant part of the table where there’s still some food left.
The young man remains quiet for a while, staring at the three girls from the distance, but instead of questioning it, Jacob takes the unusual manifestation of his silence to start eating. He’s almost mid dinner when Levi decides to finally break it.
“You think we are in danger? You know… They’re surely talking about one of us.”
Jacob smiles, at ease, more sated now that his stomach has something in it, a true meal, or half of it, unlike the quick bite he grabbed for lunch before resuming his work.
“Who knows?” He gives the idea a second thought. “You’d care?”
“I’d care more if there was nothing to talk about.”
Jacob couldn’t agree more with that statement.
“Indeed.”
Levi looks at the small group once more, mulling something else before turning his attention back to him.
“At least you don’t have to worry about your daughter and Lara being on good terms.” He adds with a smile, pointing at their respective partners with his head. “I mean, look at Sofia… I’ve never seen her so protective of anyone. Not even you.”
He doesn’t give the comment much consideration at the beginning but, following his instructions, Jacob looks at his daughter, arm still hanging around Lara’s neck, now hitting Nadia while she laughs about something they’re way too far to deduct just from looking.
“She enjoys talking with Lara…” He remarks after analyzing the scene, not sure what he should be looking at.
“She’s not just talking... She’s shielding her.”
Jacob looks a second time, now through Levi’s eyes, seeing it as he sees it, now confused about how long it took him to see it too.
“I…”
Lara is hidden from almost everyone at the table, only visible to those who truly seek her. For the rest, Sofia’s body and joy are a magnet that attracts any attention roaming towards them, guarding his friend to allow her to be her own, to feel safe. It is surely not voluntary, not completely at the very least, but Sofia has indeed managed to create, with Nadia’s help, the perfect oasis for Lara to reside in the middle of this vast storm of people.
“...”
He smiles and nods, nothing left to add, resuming his meal even happier than before: who would’ve thought it to be possible.
Levi, on his end, mirrors his expression and, also involuntarily, mirrors Sofia’s gesture in spirit too, squeezing Jacob’s arm with playfulness before focussing his attention back to his own plate too, enjoying his dinner before redirecting the conversation to more general and uninteresting topics.
~
Lara knows it’s starting to get quite late when the temperature begins to lower. A soft chill runs through her body but she ignores it, not wanting to miss what Nadia is telling her.
She hugs herself, protecting her body from the cold.
It doesn’t help that your coat is worn-out to the point where every inch of it is paper thin. Jacob’s words echo inside her mind.
She ends up missing what Nadia was telling her in the end.
Her eyes roam away from her friend and inspect the place, a lot quieter, emptier, now that most people are getting ready to go to bed, and that Sofia is no longer present, after she excused herself to retire away with Levi when he approached them a few minutes ago.
A couple of girls are cleaning some plates, there’s some small groups and couples talking calmly over the leftovers of their respective meals. And, of course, there’s Jacob.
He’s enjoying what she assumes is some kind of infusion, talking to Mikhail about a forging technique the old blacksmith is eager to try before implementing it in the mine reconstruction project.
Seems tired. She tells herself as another shiver recovers his body.
“Any plans for the week, then?”
“Eh?” Lara comes back to reality. “No, not really… Just going with the flow.”
Speaking of which…
She smiles a little, and then a lot, seeing the old men leaving the table after wishing a farewell by the corner of her eye.
“Erm, Nadia…”
“Yes?”
“Do you mind if we continue this tomorrow?”
She could explain herself a bit further, but it’s not needed, the way she redirects her head towards the distance tells her friend all she needs to know.
“Sure.” Nadia smiles, lowering her head ever so slightly as a goodbye, not wanting to keep her there any longer.
“Thanks.”
Lara squeezes her arm with love before standing up, crossing the distance of the long table with confidence until she reaches the northern end.
~
His hands are resting around the mug, enjoying the warm sensation as he closes his eyes and brings it a little closer to his chest.
The day was longer than expected but he feels at peace, at ease, a mix of calm and tired woven into his body to distill a sensation of utter happiness as he bathes in his silence.
There’s a moment where he thinks life couldn’t be better.
“Mind the company?”
Reality is quick to prove him wrong.
The smile forms without the need of opening his eyes, but he does it nonetheless, taking his time to admire the view. Eventually, his hand moves lazily, offering a seat to his side before resting on top of the table, the other still glued to the cup.
Lara smiles and takes not only the invitation, pulling the chair closer to him as she sits, but also his free hand, enveloping it with both of her own.
His smile deepens into uncharted territories.
“What?” She asks in a nonchalant tone of voice, perfectly knowing the source of his happiness. “I’m cold.”
Suddenly uncharted territories feel short, way too familiar, to describe the current state of Jacob’s glee, too overwhelmed by happiness to formulate a mere miserable word.
Instead, he takes his own coat, grabs it by the collar, and flips it with such grace that can only be compared to a bullfighter, enveloping her with a swift gesture.
If Lara ever thinks of arguing about his own wellbeing, the complaint is instantly lost the moment his hand goes back to its previous position to find a home between hers.
How can it be so easy? She finds herself thinking for a moment. How…
“Had a nice day?” His voice derails her train of thought with ease, somehow even more mesmerizing than she remembered after spending so many hours without hearing it.
“Yes.” She tightens her grasp. “And you? Extremely busy? Tons of work?.”
He laughs.
“You could say that.”
She doesn’t.
“Is the mine project doing okay?”
There’s some worry burning in her words, but by now he’s become an expert in extinguishing it.
“Yes, but there is much to do… And not many to actually do it.” His eyes are warm, despite the glacial blue, way more inviting than a bonfire. “We did quite a number in them three years ago, remember?”
Maybe she feels like laughing now.
“We!?” Lara fakes to be offended in between smiles. “Trinity is the one to blame… We were just passing by.”
“Yes, passing by… You know Levi has a bet going about how many arrows we’ll find out by the time we finish clearing the tunnels?”
“Shut up…”
He laughs instead, and his voice is warm too, deep, full of joy and love on equal parts.
Some people look on their way, some already were, since she took his hand and they started talking, but just as this morning, from the moment they were in each other’s presence, everyone else just seemed to fade or disappear.
Curiosity more than overpowers the respect many of them holds for the couple but, as their conversation proceeds, the novelty dilutes itself into normalcy and, as the night begins to set, most people return to their normal affairs, finding the picture forming in front of them way too natural to question it, almost as if it had always been a part of their ecosystem.
Of course, the couple doesn’t register this change, too deep into their conversation to pay attention to what’s happening elsewhere.
And, in that fashion, they do not notice that the sun is long gone for a while now, or that most of the people have already said farewell to the day they keep prolonging, or that every time they laugh it echoes throughout the entire village, no other sound there to stop it from spreading out.
What they notice, eventually, is the silence.
Lara has finished narrating her encounter with the young apprentices and, after a much needed break to recover from so much laughter, they are finally able to hear, or better said to not hear, the void left behind that surrounds them.
“It’s late…” He eventually says as he stands up, offering her the same hand she was just holding a second ago. “Should we retire for today?”
She nods, accepting both the hand and the offer without hesitation, and standing up a bit closer to him than she should’ve.
“...”
It takes Jacob a few seconds to react, needing the thousands of years of experience to tame his heart back into place before taking a step backwards.
“Well…” He smiles for the umpteenth time, jaw starting to feel tired at this point and, after the much needed moment to come back to reality, he offers her his arm, all gentlemanlike, patiently waiting for Lara to take it.
And so she does.
Her hand wraps around his arm and they start walking side by side, leaving behind the few people left awake.
Some of them smile at the scene, others do not seem to mind it that much and, of course, Jacob and Lara register none of it, way too lost into each other’s presence as they walk together into the night.
-------------------------------------
I swear... Next one: is "Bed Companions" ehheeheheehe
This chapter was a weird one, but it took shape on its own and really: who I am to stop the story from flowing where it wants? So here we are.
Btw, Nadia is character from the Baba Yaga dlc that I really like (and so are her grandparents) and realized later that tons of people don't even know her... But I'm writing this shit for me so here she is lol
If you're interested both Levi and Mikhail (the blacksmith) are based on real background characters you hear talking a couple of times, but they didn't have any name so I gave them one (and more personality)
As always my will to write this madness is fed by comments, so don't be shy and scream a little with me about this two or whatever, if you want to. Can pm/follow me on tumblr too: @tealenko for more nonsense.
So, there's like 2 lost souls here with me in this empty fandom that keep writing comments in my fics and, what can I say? I'm a very simple person lol The moment I see someone liking my fics it makes me want to keep writing them.
So here we are. I have a more clear idea for this chapter now and know that I want to do many stories in one, to show their day to day life and sink in straight into the fluff (get ready for it people, I love to write this shit)
Yesterday, out of nowhere, I decided to do a couple sprints and just write some of these little moments and tbf I like them a lot for how little they took me to write.
Thought the 3 persons following me because of TR may like them, so here you have them (ignore my crazy notes please, this is just me testing concepts and ideas)
The book
Lara’s hand graces the spine of many tomes before stopping at one. This one somehow feels different than the rest, special.
She’s about to pull it out of its place when someone else does it for her.
Jacob graces her skin ever so slightly on its way to take the old book, sending a shiver through her entire body.
“Nice choice.” He indicates, smiling at the ragged tome before turning to cast his happiness toward Lara.
…
“This one focuses mainly on **insert astronomy mambo jambo** Are you familiar with the concept/area?”
“Ermm…”
Think, Lara… Think!
“Are you feeling well?”
“Yes! Yes…”
“Yes you are fine or yes do you know it?”
“Both, I…” She laughs a little, all her courage doing its best to sink her embarrassment. “The **insert whatever the people of Paititi is** had, well have, better said, interesting ideas about it”.
“More astronomy argot I really need to research.”
“Her reply”
“”I see… Fascinating.” Jacob opens the book to reference a page.
//It's obvious he knows it to perfection, doesn't need the book, having in mind he even knows from memory in which page the passage is written. Does it almost as a ritual, Lara finds it endearing.
“Look, this is…” He shows her the page as he talks. “But if what you’re telling is true…”
He takes her hand, closing the other, looking at her with the twinkle only little kids have when they find they are going to have their favorite dish for dinner.
“Please tell me more about it.”
Before Lara can add anything, he guides her to the bench/sofa and both of them sit one next to the other, still holding her hand, expertly handling the book with the other.
With one flicker of his wrist the tome opens. Jacob passes the pages with his thumb searching for a specific chapter and, for a second, Lara’s mind is tempted to make a comment about the skill displayed by Jacob’s hand, but her survival instincts kick in just in time to prevent her getting into something wouldn’t be able to recover from.
So the moment vanishes quickly as she moves her eyes to a different target and sets them on what he's showing her instead.
“What about..?”
Praying
Lara knows she must be late when she doesn’t find Jacob his usual spot, at the mirador that hangs over the waterfall.
She shouldn’t have let Levi convince her of doing that one sparring round but, to be fair, she was way too focused and having too good of a time to realize what time(?) it was.
After a second cursing herself, she redirects heer steps towards the mountain observatory, reaching it in only a few minutes, knowing this was when Jacob was going to be headed.
Lara found him seated on the stairs: fingers crossed, hands in between his knees, head lowered. She knows way too well the meaning of the pose: he is praying.
Jacob’s lips move ever so slightly, mouthing the silent plea as his eyes remain closed, way too focused on thee action to notice her presence or too deep into his conversation with the higher powers to be able to break it just to acknowledge her.
She isn’t expecting it, either.
So, after a long moment dedicated exclusively to take in his peaceful expression, she sits at his side and waits.
At first she looks at the scenery, taking in the valley as she rests her weight on her elbows and her elbows on the steps.
Making the most of the pose, she dedicates heer attention to the sky for a while, tracing the different shapes of the clouds and admiring the way the sky seems to have decided to paint itself in a shade that cannot be described neither blue not gray, finding that kind of color that no one can describe without other person thinking they're wrong.
Once her eyes get tired of the sky, she closes them and, against her very own nature, raises them toward heaven.
She takes a deep breath in trying to feel something. Anything.
Trying to feel.
After a while her heartbeat becomes slower, and starts to feel more focused, rested. At peace. And after hesitating for a while she takes a final second to do another deep breath, and lets her mind be true.
I… I really don’t… I’ve never, I mean, who knows… But… But, whoever is listening…
She takes one last second there, turning to look at Jacob, glee coating heer face the moment heer eyes set on him
Here we are once again. Told you this one would be faster.
I do love to write letters (I mean, this whole fic is centered in letters because of it lol)
Anyways, hope you like this one as much as I do.
Summary: Lara finally tells Jacob what happened to her in the years they were apart. What she did. And, summoning her worst fears, her words manage to wound Jacob to an unseen level of torment, the kind that only she is able to dispel.
Words: 2265
Rating: Teens and Up
Warnings: talking about death, as always
All Chapters -> [link]
Read in AO3 -> [link]
-----------------------------------------------
Despite the length and deepness of the cave passage, the wind was strong enough to find its way towards Lara.
A shiver trailed her skin while she extended one of her hands, hovering it near the fire in an attempt to steal some of its warmth. The other remained on her lap, holding in it the main focus of all her worries.
“That would be more effective if you tried it with both hands.” A familiar voice said behind her, taking a few steps to sit by her side.
“Uchu.” Lara said his name as a greeting.
The stern man smiled at her ever so slightly before focusing his eyes on her closed fingers, still resting on top of her legs.
“I could find someone to deliver it for you, if that’s what’s worrying you.”
With a half sigh, half laugh, Lara shook her head, moving her eyes to look at the letter.
“It’s not…” She halted her speech for a moment. “It’s… Complicated.”
Uchu’s eyes narrowed, the trace of the stern expression still there, but something else tinted his features as he got closer to her.
“I can see that much.”
“Right.”
Her eyes turned back to the envelope, and stayed there for a while, letting the silence engulf them little by little.
She could’ve left it like that, swallow all her emotions so the calmness remained unbroken, but giving an end to the long pause she finally decided otherwise.
“It needs to be me…” Lara announced out of nowhere. “The one who delivers it.”
Her eyes remained on her target, tinges of sadness invading them.
“But…”
Uchu left a few seconds of courtesy before pushing her to continue.
“You’re afraid to do so?”
“I’m afraid I won’t be able…” She instantly corrected, finally displaying her true feelings. “Afraid I’ll… I’ll…”
The words vanished on her chest, unable to free themselves from her body. Luckily, they weren’t needed for Uchu to complete her sentence.
“Die.” He affirmed, not a trace of question in the tone of his voice.
“Yes.”
After a few moments of reflection, he moved his hand, placing it on her shoulder, letting the small gesture radiate whatever comfort it could, perfectly knowing his worlds would’ve been even more useless in this matter.
Lara sighed and gave him a tired and sad smile, but a smile, nonetheless, which, considering the circumstances, was more than triumph.
“Perhaps…” Her eyes traveled from the crumpled envelope to Uchu’s and, just with that small gesture, he understood what she was about to ask.
“Here…” His hand moved from her back and, with a remarkable display of delicacy and tenderness, removed the letter from her own. “I’ll keep it safe, until your return.”
“...” Gratitude built-in Lara’s eyes, the small smile deepening a little.
“And if the worst comes to be…”
“...”
“I’ll make sure this gets to its rightful owner. You have my word.”
“...” She exhaled, finding some comfort in knowing her own wouldn’t be lost even if they reached that grim future she was so afraid to be painting. “Thanks.”
And after taking a second to tame her fears, Lara started to explain to Uchu how to reach the small valley lost in Siberia where she finds herself right now, months later, seated next to the recipient of her letter, thanking whoever god is listening that, after everything, she was able to give it to him in person.
~
My dearest, my Jacob.
How does one begin to express every single feeling harbored inside one’s heart? How can these letters be arranged into something that is able to show you what I really want to tell you? How could they ever compare to anything after the ones that accompany me everywhere and that I read every night?
Poor as always are my words to explain the effect that yours had on my soul. But, as always, I must try.
I have to try, because they saved me, and continue to do so, every day, every hour, every moment. They float inside my mind no matter what I’m doing, what I’m facing, coating me, lifting me, carrying me through every challenge the universe imposes on me.
If mine had even half the effect that yours had on me, I could be at peace, knowing that I’ve been the cause of so much happiness in this world. In your world. And only the heavens know how much you deserve to be happy.
How much you deserve to smile, to laugh. To live.
Only the heavens know how much I've been fighting so that you are able to do so. How much I’m willing to fight. How far.
I’ll do everything in my hand to assure you’ll have the life you deserve, even if, deep in my heart, I’ve known for a while the heavens will never allow me to live it next to you.
It doesn't matter anymore.
Nothing seems to matter, these days, except for you.
How selfish of me was to ask you to love me, knowing I would never be able to go back to you. How cruel is this life that, with your letter, has given me everything I asked to show me the dark side of all my wishes.
My pleads of undying love have evolved into misery and regret and, above all, worry.
Your words, which have saved me more times than I’m able to recall, have become a double-edged sword that forever reminds me of the consequences of my initial pleas.
I felt so attached to you that I was blinded, and I only wanted you to feel as I did, but now that I face reality, I can truly measure how merciless all my wishes truly were, how heartless it was for me to want to keep a permanent space in your heart when the only thing I can offer in return is lost and suffering.
My wants were blinded by love and longing and, after reading the letter that confirmed them, they gradually evolved further away from the wish for us to be together.
Right now, that is just a dream. Impossible, unreachable.
So, instead, I started praying, despite not being even sure what I believed in. But I did pray, every day for a while, for you to forget me.
Please be happy and forget me, repeated my heart as its mantra, not wanting to be the reason and cause of your anguish.
How cruel are the paths that my life has followed for me to end up asking you to do the exact opposite I begged of you three years ago?
I held your letter every night, as I still do, attempting to sleep while wishing I could see you again, knowing those wishes were long gone, faded by reality and the trials it keeps imposing on me and, after all, the only thing left for me: was you.
I prayed for you. That you were safe, and sound, and warm. That you were rested. That you were free. That you were whole.
I’ve known for a while now that the path I’ve taken can only lead to death, but my only concern is what that may do to you.
So I prayed, as I told you, so that you would forget me. Leave me behind in a distant memory and live the life you’ve always deserved to live.
I prayed for you to smile, and laugh, and love. That you moved on and found someone else who isn’t selfish, nor empty or careless. Someone who won’t hurt you, or leave you, someone who will finally outlast you.
Every day I asked the heavens not to make me the reason you’re suffering. To take away from me the power I hold over your feelings and free you from all the misery I know I’ll cause you.
I prayed and prayed, knowing that every single one of my prayers was destined to reach a dead end.
Knowing you won’t forget me.
You won’t move on.
Every word in your letter casts such rich feelings, such love, that I can feel them tangling around my very being every time I read it, as clear as I could feel the light of the Divine Source enveloping my entire body all those years ago.
I know it’s fruitless, to ask you to banish me from your heart, for if someone asked the same of me, I could never cast you away from mine.
No matter how much you pleaded. No matter what the heavens had to say about it.
No matter everything in this vast and lonely world, the truth is so simple and clear that no one could ever convince me otherwise. And, the moment I read your letter I knew, it was the exact same for you.
No matter what reality comes to be: I am yours, and you are mine.
So I do not pray anymore, for I know that asking you to forget me is as pointless as to ask me to stop fighting for you.
Instead, I’m just going to keep fighting, but not just for you. For us.
I’ll do my best to become your happiness instead of your sorrow. To come back to your side, even if I still think it impossible. I’ll fight, with every fiber of my being, to once again be your savior, and not your demise.
God, I wish you could see, could know, how much I’m trying. For you.
And yes, I’d still fight nonetheless, without you in my heart, for someone is owed to, but not as much. Not like this.
Despite knowing I probably hold the future of a free world in the palm of my hands, and as much good as I want to do, I must confess, you have become my main reason to keep going.
My strength, punished and beaten by everything that surrounds me, is now unable to be replenished by any other thing that isn’t your letter, fueled by your words as if they were gasoline pouring into a fire.
Fire, indeed. Fire.
My heart burns, bright blue flames coating it with the warmest blaze. So hot it’s almost freezing. Half blue ice, half blue fire. As blue as your eyes, also burnt into my heart, my soul. My desire.
How I wish to see them, to see you. To behold them as I hold you, as we attempt to both tame and fuel said fire.
And so I fight, and I’ll keep fighting, till my last breath, so it isn’t the last. To be back, to save you, one last time, by returning to your side. To love you as you deserved to be loved.
For God I love you, how much I love you. I love you as much as I’ll hate myself if I fail and I extinguish our fire.
Please forgive me, if my trials take me down. Please forgive me if I cannot make it. Please. I truly gave it my all. I swear, I did my best.
For you.
So I beg you, to do your best too.
If the worst comes to happen please cry for me, forgive me and, eventually, forget me. Even if it is just for me. Please try, even thinking it impossible, try to move on with the same strength as I’m trying to come back to you.
For I’m really trying, believe me. I’m trying.
And I’ll keep trying.
For you. For us.
No matter what, I’ll keep trying, forever, with all I have. All I am.
For, at the end of everything, all I am is yours.
Despite the distance, despite the trials, every single inch of my being belongs to you.
So even if I’ll never see you again, even if I fail, I hope you can at least find some comfort in the fact that, in our hearts, we belong to one another. Everlastingly together.
A part of your soul will always accompany mine as I know a part of mine will always live in yours.
So, despite what happens, this isn’t a true goodbye.
For, no matter how far away we are from each other, we will never be apart. One single soul split into two different bodies, that no span nor distance could ever separate.
One heart, beating at the same rhythm. One being, breathing at the same time.
So no, I won’t say goodbye. For you’re always with me, as I am with you.
Instead, I’ll say see you later.
Perhaps in person, perhaps in your memories. I’ll visit you in your dreams, and we’ll be whole once again.
Together.
Until then,
Forever yours,
Your Lara.
~
“My Lara…” Jacob's words echo her feelings shaped in a soft whisper.
Her eyes abandon the mesmerizing scenery to discover his own are already waiting for hers, shining and glittering thanks to the emotions forming in them.
They stare at each other as his hand reaches for her, finding its favorite place at the back of her neck, bringing her closer to rest his head on hers, his fingers traveling upwards to tangle in her hair.
“God…” Jacob closes his eyes, the many words on her letter coating every part of his being, shaping his mouth into a welcoming smile. “And you said you weren’t good at writing…”
She laughs. Of course she laughs.
As she only does for him.
“Well…” Lara waits for him to look at her once again, a grin painted on her face as she anticipates the effect of her next words. “You weren't supposed to be good at talking, so… You could say we’re even.”
-----------------------------------------------
So this weekend I was supposed to work on the repairs at my home but, lucky me /s, I have a urinary tract infection, so yeah... I'm with antibiotics and drinking as much water as I can. The bad part: I felt like dying and now that the pain is almost over I'm struggling with the side effects of the meds. The good part: gave me time for writing, so here we are lol.
I'm not joking, but I'm still unsure about the end of last chapter... So I'll probably fix it in the future.
And this one I like quite a lot but idk, it was too easy to write, which make me feel is not that good idk why. Cause I really like this chapter.
Anyways, It's done now. Hope you liked it.
Next one we're going back to full fluff (or at least that's the plan). Have them doing day to day stuff and living their best life.
I mean, the name of the chapter in my notes is literally: A Taste of a Normal Life
God knows they deserve it.
That's all I think. Feel free to comment and tell me what you think.
Hope you have a better day than mine (not too difficult lol)
Love you all!!
~~tea
Soooo here we are.
I'm getting better, only a few months between chapters looool
To be fair... This is my peak of angst (it's really not that angsty, but my heart is as soft as it gets). If this was fluff I would've posted it a week after ch.10.
But hey, I got there in the end.
Btw, I keep finding mistakes in this one, idk why, but I don't have the heart to keep editing and there's no beta... So we die like Jacob didn't ehehehe
Anyways, hope you like it!
As always: inner thoughts are in italic.
Summary: Lara finally tells Jacob what happened to her in the years they were apart. What she did. And, summoning her worst fears, her words manage to wound Jacob to an unseen level of torment, the kind that only she is able to dispel.
Words: 6380
Rating: Teens and Up
Warnings: discussion about being a willing volunteer to a human sacrifice
All Chapters -> [link]
Read in AO3 -> [link]
-----------------------------------------
"A human sacrifice?" Rage and pain fused into a stream of words, spilling uncontrollably from his mouth with the roaring waterfall as its background. "You offered yourself as a HUMAN SACRIFICE!?"
~ 5 minutes earlier ~
Sofia chokes a melodic hum as she returns from finishing her morning tasks, happiness on the brink of overtaking her body, before she tames it, as she walks back to the western village.
The place is deserted when she arrives, with most of the people focused on restoring the castle ruins in the southern settlement, where Levi is now headed, and where Sofia should be going too, but she decided to stop here first in order to see how her father was doing.
After an overall scan of the empty town, she assumes his task is now over and has probably moved on to the next duty on his to-do list. Nevertheless, upon further inspection of the place she left him behind, she realizes the repairs aren’t finished yet.
To say she is surprised is an understatement.
Her father has never left something in the middle of it, has never disregarded his duties, except for once. A mistake of which she is a direct consequence. But she knows that, for something like this to happen, there has to be something really wrong with him.
Under any other circumstance she will panic. Sofia’s mind would surely think the worst of the situation, imagining something terrible must have happened to her father to cause him to abandon a task still unfinished.
It would have to be the end of his world for him to neglect his duties, afterall.
And she isn’t wrong.
Nevertheless, she doesn’t have the time to think about all this.
With a loud bang, coming from the farthest cabin in the village, Sofia’s attention is instantly captured, and any preoccupation about to be formed is instantly dispelled. The sound of the door slamming against the wood beams resounds with might throughout the empty town, its intensity amplified by the calm that had reigned before.
Her eyes have no problem recognizing the distant figure storming out of said cabin.
Jacob doesn’t even spare a moment to look back, too absorbed in his own thoughts to acknowledge her presence, striding with decision in the opposite direction from where his daughter stands. Neither does Lara, with the same focus as he, who exits with the same urgency after a few seconds, too preoccupied to follow Jacob to let her gaze stray from his path.
Just like that, Sofia is left behind in the village, completely alone. Yet, instead of the panic she would normally feel, her emotions are now a confusing amalgam of shock, worry and bewilderment, way too tangled to unravel. But, more than willing to try, she sighs, picks up the forgotten tool, and starts replaying the bizarre scene in her mind as she resumes the
task she had started earlier that morning, trusting Lara to handle whatever is already unfolding.
She’ll know what to do.
~
Jacob’s steps are larger, faster than hers, and so, she loses sight of him soon after he leaves the village. Luckily for her, she doesn’t actually need to see where he’s going to know where he’s headed.
She gets to the path to the observatory and, as she suspects, neither of them follow it all the way up there, taking instead the side route that leads to his favorite hideout at the top of the waterfall.
Despite her intuition, there’s a part of Lara that fears he won’t be there when she gets to the hidden cliff. Perhaps she is right, but too late, and Jacob has already left the place by the time she manages to reach it.
She’s thankful, for a moment, when reality overrides her fears, finding him standing next to the wild current of water, completely focused on the way it flows and falls with strength toward the abyss, crashing against the distant ground so many feet below where they are.
For a moment, she is so glad she’s found him, that she forgets the reason he stormed away from her.
She forgets, just for an insignificant moment, what her heart knows is true.
For a moment.
And then, the moment is over.
Lara only needs to take a step closer to see his face.
It’s more than over.
He had been so supportive of her, so open and accepting, so patient. When she started talking about the worst parts of her journey, how she took the dagger despite all the warnings, how she endangered Jonah yet again. The deaths, the loss, the pain. He did not make a single comment, listening in silence without casting any judgment.
She couldn’t even look at him, eyes fixed on the ground while her trembling voice narrated the last year of her life, and he just let her, waiting patiently until her story had an ending.
Lara knows she couldn't have gone through it otherwise, mustering only the courage to look at him once her tale was over.
Then, and only then, is when she realized her words had completely obliterated him.
She’s seen Jacob angry before, but never like this. Their little argument four years ago, when she disobeyed his wishes and went looking for the Atlas, was merely a taste of what his rage could really be.
Without warning he turned around and ran away from her. And now that the fleeting happiness of having reached him is leaving her body, she’s starting to realize this may well be the very last moment they spend together.
Jacob is an empty shell of himself, looking at the thundering water in complete silence, expressionless.
Right… A tear flows through her face as she closes her eyes, Lara’s mind coming to terms with the reality of her situation, and the consequence of her actions. It was too good to be true, after all.
With any other person in front of her, that would be it. She would flee from him and would never look back, as she’s done with everyone she’s ever disappointed, being all too used to running away from anyone who manages to see what she’s truly made of.
But Jacob isn’t any other person and, before she has the time to panic, operating now on basic instincts, as she did when she followed him here, Lara starts walking in his direction.
Too good to be true.
Half of her body screams at her to run, to hide, to protect her feelings. To survive.
But the other half has more gravitas, its influence now deeply rooted in the control of her body, rising with more strength than her many preservation instincts for the first time ever, pulling her in the opposite direction instead.
Towards him.
He’s too good to be true.
Lara’s mind replays the torment she found on his expression before he fled away from her, twisting it like a dagger into her heart.
And I… Am not.
She’ll never feel deserving. She’ll never feel enough. And that, no matter the circumstance, is always present in every single one of her thoughts, of her choices, including the catalyst that has led them to this moment.
Lara felt both relieved and anguished after sharing her adventures, her decisions. Her mistakes. She needed him to know, to see her. The real her. Let him see the truth and decide, with no further distance or embellishment, if he is really in love with her and not just an illusion. A mirage. An idealized version of a hero that never existed.
And now, she has her answer.
He’s not.
Another tear falls when she stops walking.
How could he?
Even her thoughts tremble as her mind speaks the excruciating truth.
How could anyone?
Lara is now close enough to reach for him, but the moment her hand starts to rise she stops it, too afraid to face what she knows is going to happen next.
Anger, disbelief… Disappointment.
And she doesn’t know which one will be the winner of the battle Jacob is now fighting, but for some strange reason, she fears the latter to an unexpected degree, making her want to run away even more, and leave all this pain behind.
Survive.
Nevertheless, she stays.
She must stay.
Despite always wanting to help, to do what’s right, in her quest to stop Trinity Lara made more than a few excruciating mistakes, too many choices linked to terrible and haunting consequences to be able to count them, and now, she must finally face some of them.
She must pay the price.
So she stays, in complete silence. Standing there with patience, just as he did for her, on the edge of the abyss. Embracing the reality forming right in front of her eyes, letting her tears fall as the reason she’s done all those terrible things vanishes into nothing, getting ready to witness him break the illusion that’s kept her heart running for years now.
How could he not?
After what seems an endless wait, he finally turns.
There’s no disbelief nor disappointment in him.
There’s anger, indeed, but, despite simmering with unseen strength, is not nearly enough to be close to what she had predicted. Inconsequential, as well as every other sentiment and emotion brewing in him, casted away as one remaining feeling conquers his entire being without finding a trace of resistance: fear.
"A human sacrifice?" Rage and pain fused into a stream of words, spilling uncontrollably from his mouth with the roaring waterfall as its background. "You offered yourself as a HUMAN SACRIFICE!?"
Her tears halt right away, replaced now by confusion while she does her best to process what’s really happening.
“A. Human. Sacrifice.” Sounds closer to spite this time around. The terror inside him turning swiftly into a mixture of sorrow and disbelief brewing out of control to gain possession of every inch of his body.
In one second, Jacob closes the distance between them. In the next one, he has his hands on her arms, holding her in place with a trembling pulse as his heart demands an explanation.
“What were you thinking!?”
“I…” She doesn’t have the time to answer.
Before Lara is able to find the right words to say, Jacob's head sinks downward, completely defeated by the possible reality that never came to be.
“How could you do that…” He barely whispers, no longer a question to her, but to the universe, tormented now in the present by knowing how close he was to losing her. His hold strengthens, no longer his decision, with his body acting on its own to be sure she won’t slip right through his fingers. “How could you… How could you…?”
His voice goes beyond breathy, no force left in him to finish his question and hold back the tears that are desperately trying to overrun him.
Someone had to. She wants to say, but isn’t able to either, all basic abilities to function more than lost as the sight presented in front of her turns somehow into something even worse than the hell she was expecting to unravel. I had to.
“Heavens, Lara. You… You…” His words choke as they form, but he forces them out nonetheless, pulling back his emotions long enough to finish them before they stream down. “You could’ve died.”
A tear starts falling, unhurried.
“You should’ve died…”
Two more join the first one.
“By all means, you should be dead.”
And he breaks.
A third waterfall joins the scenery and starts pouring from his eyes, his grip tightens even further, head down still, being now Lara the only thing that keeps him from slipping away from reality.
“And I…”
There’s a part of Jacob that screams at him to surrender and stop talking, to take a moment to breathe and to think, to look at her. But his pain blinds him to all sound and, instead, his eyes remain fixed on the ground as his fears, already fed to the brim by the years of anguish and separation, take now complete dominion over his being, stripping away all traces of self-control, fueled by the weight of this newfound information.
“I…” His eyes close for a moment, fighting the idea as it leaves his body. “I would’ve never found out.”
Stating it out loud, makes the concept even more painful than when it was chained and trapped deep into his body. Somehow, putting it into words, makes it more harmful. More real.
“You would’ve saved the world and I’d be here, alone, left to spend the rest of my long, pointless and miserable life imploring God that you were lying when you said you love me, praying so that your absence meant you had forgotten me. Every second, every day, pleading and begging that the reason you don’t come back is because you didn’t want to.”
Jacob shakes his head for a few seconds, tears still having free reign over his face, too well aware of the way the alternate reality he’s painting would’ve ended.
“A wasted life of prayers.” He adds, the anger melting further away under the influence of the sorrow. “Perfectly knowing, through every single squandered breath of my empty, drab and meaningless existence, that the reason you won’t come back to me is because you’re dead.”
Lara remains silent, focused on him, all old fears disappearing while far worse take new form inside her body, shaping all of his words into anguish as she witnesses the pain she’s causing him.
Nevertheless, she remains silent.
She owes him that much, at least.
The grip on Jacob’s hands starts to soften along with the stream of water flowing down his face and, with his head still focused on the ground, still unable to look directly at her, he eventually releases her from his hold, tears fading away little by little at the same speed his grasp finally crumbles, no strength left in him to keep alive neither of them.
His hands fall, almost surrender, back to their place, feelings invading him as his own lack of sleep, the emotional shock, and the strength he just employed without knowing it, mix carefully into a transcendental form of tiredness to leave him standing there without the will to do anything else for a while.
When that while comes to an end, he takes a few steps backwards, literally at the edge of the abyss, putting some distance between them as he stands right next to the falling water, needing the added space to finally be able to look at Lara. After a mandatory moment to breathe, eyes shut and hands closed by his side, he puts everything aside, and forces his sight to move.
What he finds once it sets on her, is enough to cast away any remnant of his anger that the tiredness still hadn’t taken care of, leaving the fear and the pain on their own as they find themselves a new reason to upsurge.
“...”
Lara remains stoic, looking directly at him. Strong stance, composed breathing and focused expression, all mixed into the woman that stands now before Jacob. No emotion palpable in a single inch of her body, no feeling painted or leaving its trace behind.
And yet, it's the most harrowing vision he’s had the chance to witness in many hundreds of years he’s been alive.
In fact, he doesn’t feel alive, for a moment, or at least, he wishes he wasn’t.
Lara’s skills to conceal her inner turmoil normally excel the average and, right now, they even go far beyond what are usually her own, reaching levels of realness so high that she’s almost able to fool herself.
The many emotions fighting and arguing inside of her have caused such disarray that she isn’t able to act as a consequence, with no trace of them in her expression, making her look like she’s staring at the void.
She’s staring at the void, indeed.
But not for long.
The battle royale disputed inside her body quickly elects a champion among the countless emotions fighting in it and, at the speed of a lightning striking against the ground, the winner takes control and makes her drop to her knees, emotionless still.
Jacob stares, not knowing what else to do, unable to pinpoint what she’s experiencing just from her expression. Too many shades of too many feelings to strike them out as a single color.
But that doesn’t last either.
After a few moments of staring at nothing, her eyes move to his, sinking in them, as she’s somehow striving to read his soul, searching for something in them she’s both eager and afraid to find.
“I…” He attempts to say, but that’s when she finds it.
A cry of tears bursts from Lara without notice and, unlike before, this one could not be more different.
Her dignified stroll towards him a few minutes ago, with feelings streaming slowly down her face as her heart twisted inside of her, is nowhere near what she’s experiencing right now.
The tears cannot be called that anymore, for they are no longer drops of water. A flood, conquering her eyes, muddy and unstoppable, running from her eyes and her nose and mixing with her cries into a complete mess.
Perhaps it would be more proper to call in an explosion, than a cry, a mix of howls and grunts exiting her body without a trace of warning nor preparation, fighting and crashing against one another on their way out.
The soft breaths of pain she displayed before are now long forgotten, her entire being conquered by a concoction of choked weeping and sobs and faltering breathings followed by loud gasps as all of her desperately attempts to get some sort of air supply to remain alive.
Her body seems to be trying to coil around itself, still on the ground, head down on her legs and arms wrapped around her knees in what seems like an attempt to guard herself from the entire world, and all the pain within it.
The wails and whimpers carry on for a while, frozen in what could almost be described as a prayer-like position, while hugging herself for every second that it takes her to exorcise the many battling feelings and cast them away with this shaky, unrestrained and raw stream of tears.
Jacob is too strained, too tired, to react as he would usually do: crumbling into a million pieces after witnessing her doing so. Instead, he just stares for a few seconds, and starts moving.
The gap left between them is quickly closed with a few long steps and, after taking a moment to breathe, he crouches in front of her, remaining in complete silence as one of his hands moves to rest on her shoulder.
As if it were a black wire, the contact instantly grounds her, the defeated emotions redirecting away from her and flowing back into the earth, the cries fading little by little while the tears remain, all feelings escaping without resistance, while the one that prevails, still undefeated, quickly takes over her body.
To say Jacob is surprised, would be an understatement.
What seemed like pain only a few seconds ago shifts gradually into something different, brighter, and for a moment, he could swear her cries sound like giggles. After another, he hears the unthinkable.
Is she laughing?
His head scurries to the side trying to get a better angle of her face.
She is laughing, indeed. The tears are still there, but she’s laughing.
More than a thousand years of life, but nothing in them prepares him for this moment. Not a single clue of how to act, what to do. How to feel.
Nevertheless, the explanation needed doesn’t make itself wait and, as she recovers a more normal disposition, unwrapping herself to look at him, what’s left of her internal battle finally vanishes, leaving the entirety of the spotlight to the main victor.
“I thought this was it…”
Relief.
Lara wipes the tears aways, taking a few moments to catch up with her breathing.
“Thought it was over… You and I.” An incredulous giggle exits her body. “I…”
Jacob hugs her.
He is exhausted, and hurt, and now he realizes he’s hurt her too, which puts him in extreme danger of continuing to fall into their well-known vicious cycle of pain and suffering, destroying themselves in a helpless loop of infinite guilt.
She did something to hurt him, which hurts her in return. He sees her hurt, so it hurts him too. And, in that fashion, they could torture each other until the end of time, if he was willing to let it continue.
He is not.
Instead, Jacob just hugs her. One hand on her lower back as the other buries in her hair, bringing her as close as he’s able, apology and forgiveness all melted into a deep and solid embrace.
She leans into it, with amends of her own, embracing her mistakes and their consequences tight within her arms, feeling as undeserving as ever while she takes in all the pain she’s caused him.
“Should it be over?”
Lara’s voice is thin, shaky, almost a whisper, but her words aim at her target with strength and precision.
Jacob breaks the embrace, hands back at her arms, his eyes looking in hers for any kind of explanation that contradicts what he knows she really meant.
There’s none to be found, and still, he cannot fathom the idea.
“What…?” He shakes his head in disbelief, reluctant to even contemplate what she’s suggesting.
“After all I’ve done…” She looks down, summoning courage as her fears shape into words. “It’d be only natural. If you don’t, if you didn’t…” Lara has known the concept by heart for a while now, but still unable to say it out loud, she lets context fill in the gaps, and just adds a simple: “Anymore.”
“No…”
She doesn’t seem to hear his reply at first.
“You’d probably be better off without…”
She does the second time around.
“No.” Concise, powerful. Soft, yet strong enough to halt her line of thoughts.
After a moment of emptiness, with only their breathing and the roar of the waterfall filling the surrounding air, Jacob moves his hand with care and redirects her chin to make her look at him.
He expects to see tears in her eyes. Instead, they're mostly filled with acceptance, which is somehow more successful at harming him.
“No.” He takes his time with this last one, letting room in his voice to let her know how much he really means it. “Never.”
Lara breathes deeply, shielding herself from the truth.
“I am broken.” She offers it as an explanation.
He isn’t willing to accept it.
“So am I.” Her eyes flicker with hesitation for an instant. “So is everyone.”
She fights back.
“You cannot love me…” Lara states, as if it were true, not sure who she’s really lying to. “No one can.”
Jacob sighs and lets his head fall onto hers for a few seconds, needing the pause so all of his thoughts can rearrange and shift to form the adequate words to express himself.
It’s easier to let her see his true feelings when he’s able to write them, to process them, to put them all in the right order before reexamining them to infinity before turning them into ink.
Such rich emotions cannot be improvised into words, cannot be materialized without choking inside his throat or formed into something that makes complete sense. But for her, he’s willing to try.
After another sigh, he turns back to his previous position and decides to ignore all the turmoil, letting his instincts do the talking.
“I see you, Lara.”
Deep breath in, deep breath out.
“I truly see you.”
He looks away, his mind searching for the right words for an instant, but he forces his eyes back to hers: say it as it is.
“I’ve always seen you.” He smiles a little. “You.”
Her heart sinks a little by the way he says you. Lower, deeper, too many feelings tangled in such few letters.
“How could I not?”
Another pause.
“How?”
Jacob shakes his head a couple of times and, for the first time in a while, offers her a subtle smile.
“And I think, you see me too.” He adds, after giving the idea a thought. “Know me well enough to trust my words, my feelings…”
One last moment of silence.
“After all I’ve been through…” He corrects himself. “After all we’ve been through… Do you really think my sight is mistaken? Do you really think I cannot see you, You, and all of you, instead of this false idealized image you assume I must have created to be capable of loving you?”
Lara gulps and blinks a couple of times and he considers it a win, having in mind it is the first reaction she’s had since he started his impromptu speech.
Say it as it is. Jacob repeats again as a mantra inside his head, displaying his feelings as they are, bare just for her to do with them whatever she wishes.
“I, love, you, Lara. You.”
The inflection in his voice, the way he says you, yet again, like that little word weighed tons more than any other in the dictionary, filled with so much affection and devotion that the three letters cannot do anything other than fall and plummet right straight into her heart.
“My feelings aren’t shallow, aren’t vain, nor hollow, either. I am not painting expectations or illusions into your skin and taking them as true, I am not shifting reality to cast upon you the shade I desire most. I’m not conjuring some sort of goddess and seeing her in you, Lara. In fact, it is the other way around.
I haven’t fallen, and then started to see my feelings on you… I saw you, I see you, and that’s why I’ve fallen. And you may not believe my words, Lara, but at least you can trust what I see.”
Her eyes are fixed on him, taking in all he’s saying completely frozen. Afraid, perhaps, of doing something that would halt his speech.
Lara’s heart bubbles inside her chest, her soul slithers through her body, all he says coating her pain and dissolving it into non-existence.
But she remains silent, and that gets her exactly what she wants: he keeps talking.
“I know there’s not a heroine in front of me, nor a saint or a martyr. I do not see or seek perfection in you.
I know your story, I know your flaws. Your mistakes. I’m well aware that the horrors you suffered in order to survive equal the pain you have inflicted onto others to achieve that exact same goal.
So I can assure you that I am not lying to myself, putting you into a shiny armor, savior of the entire world and everyone in it, and ignoring anything else in front of my eyes.”
Usually, she would’ve been crying by now. And if she weren’t, that sentence would surely be the one to tip the scales and release the river.
Usually.
But she doesn’t.
Her full concentration in what he’s saying, added to the fact that there may not be any tear left in her entire being, is powerful enough to prevent it.
She feels too much to cry and, if she did, she wouldn't be able to keep hearing anything he’s saying.
And she’s not gonna let that happen.
“How could I ignore what’s really in front of my eyes? How could anyone?”
Jacob combs her hair lovingly, pinning behind her ear the rogue strands that always manage to escape her ponytail.
“I see how stubborn you are, your focus. I see you try, and fail, and yet, I see how you keep trying. Your courage and determination, your fire and rage. How your mind works, how your body follows it.
The way you’ll stop at nothing to get your target.
The way you’ll abandon your target to save a life.
I see your pain. I see your fears. I see your regrets.
No one, Lara, is undeserving of love. No one.
But least of all, you.”
His other hand falls, slowly tracing her arm to link with hers, fingers lacing slowly, tugging a little with endearment.
“I know why you may think so. I’ve been there too… But know that when I say that I love you, it’s really You who I’m talking about.”
The hand resting on her head moves slowly, adding it to his speech.
“Perhaps for them,” he points towards the village, or towards the entire world, she’ll never know, “you may be little more than a tale, a legend. The unknown hero that materializes when it’s most needed and saves the day without asking for anything in return. But for me,” his hand turns to rest on his chest, “you’re not. You are not…” He smiles a little. “I know where you come from, why you came here. What your target was, and your motivation. I know why you abandoned it… Why you destroyed it.”
Memories fill the air as Lara understands what he’s truly saying. He’s seen her at her worst, but also at her best. He knew she wanted the source more than anyone, knew why she had to find it. For her, for her father. But he also knew why she helped them.
To save his people.
Why she destroyed it.
To save him.
Almost as if he could hear what she’s thinking, Jacob’s hand moves the exact same moment that those words form inside her head, leaving his chest in order to cup her face.
“You… Are You. Imperfect, headstrong… Unique.” His smile deepens. “Lethal, yet loyal. Solid, yet delicate.”
Glee isn't able to describe Jacob’s feelings. Unadulterated joy radiating from him as his words travel the road of describing her to perfection.
“You’re the most beautiful soul to have ever graced this Earth with its existence… That, is what I see.”
He gets closer.
“How could you, for one moment, believe there’s a reality where I wouldn’t love you? Where I wouldn't care, or feel anything? Where I wouldn’t miss you, or fear for you? Where I wouldn't be terrified for your life? Where I wouldn’t be angry at your self-sacrifice?”
He laughs softly, fear and anger long gone, conquered by the love inspired by the same qualities that caused the anguish in the first place.
“Of course you volunteered as a human sacrifice, wouldn’t be you otherwise.”
Jacob sighs, but the smile is still there, as the conflicting notion that his fears and love are caused by the same thing manages to settle a newfound calm into his soul.
With most of his demons cast away, he falls into silence, leaving an empty floor she’s now more than willing to take in order to reply to the unanswered question she didn’t manage to form into words before.
“I had to.” She says it as if she was telling him the sky is blue. An objective statement and decision, not a whim, nor a death wish.
“For the greater good?”
Despite his words, there’s no judgment in his sentence, not anymore. More comfortable with the idea, now that he’s realized she wouldn’t be the woman he loves if she had done anything different, Jacob just wants to know and understand everything to completion.
Her voice trembles as she delivers her answer.
“For you…”
“Lara…”
Whatever remark he’s about to make never takes form, her words cutting his off before he’s able to develop them any further.
“You keep asking me to survive, to live. Why would you think I’d feel any differently?”
“I’ve lived enough…” He insists.
So does she.
“Not for me… Not with me.” She moves to point a finger on top of his chest. “Of course I did it for you.”
As he puts his feelings into order, Jacob’s hand wraps around hers, keeping it glued to his heart so she can feel against it the truth of his words, accompanied by the loud beats that crash through him.
“In vain… You, wanting to die to save me, would’ve only managed to kill me.”
Lara brings their hands to her lips and plants a kiss on his, keeping them there for a moment before mirroring the original pose, moving them now to rest on top of her own heart.
“You got it all wrong.” She says, with the flicker of a smile painting her face. “I wasn’t trying to only save you; I was just fighting. For you. To protect your world. And yes, I put myself in danger, but it’s also what kept me going. In the end, it’s the reason I’m alive.”
Jacob looks confused for a moment, until she starts to explain herself.
“Told you I got the chance to change everything, change it all. My mistakes, my losses… They tempted me, offered me a different life, with my parents in it, without the suffering, without the pain… And I didn’t even hesitate, not for a second, because of you.
You.
I couldn’t risk You, Us.
I couldn't change the world and erase the only thing worth fighting for. But, above all, I just couldn’t, after everything you’ve been through, after what happened here, I would never choose to have that power. No one… Should ever have that kind of power. You taught me that.”
Lara wears a full-on smile, unable to hold it back as her eyes focus on his reaction to her words: beaming love and pride in equal parts.
“So I fought for the future, instead, our future, for the chance to come back here, to see you again, to hold you.”
And so she does, her free hand cupping his face as her mind retrieves for him a fragment of his letter.
“All in this world would be meaningless if you are no longer a part of it.”
Unable to contradict his own words Jacob laughs a little, resting his head on top of hers, taking the time to process it all.
After a while he stands up, and she watches him go toward the edge of the cliff, looking at the water just as he usually does, admiring how it falls and flows with its constant movement.
It takes Jacob a long minute to finally speak.
“You’d have broken me, you know that, right?”
She decides not to reply.
After all, he’s right. She knows that.
Instead, Lara just stands up, walks slowly to where he is, and hugs his back employing the lightest touch she’s able to summon, letting her arms wrap around him to provide the comfort he needs as he finishes saying what they both already know.
“Not knowing what happened to you, why it happened… It would've been my end too.”
She breaks the hug and, for a moment, he thinks he’s reopened a wound, when he was just trying to be honest, but when he turns to try and save her, he finds her calmly looking for something on one of the inside pockets of her jacket, on the opposite side where he knows she carries his letter.
“I…” She says, as she empties it, pulling out a somehow wrinkled envelope, but one that’s in way too good of shape to be the one he gave her years ago.
Lara offers it to him.
“I know.” She admits, arm extended, waiting for him to take it. “I’ve read your words too many times to be aware of the pain I almost inflicted on you… ” She smiles at him. “So I thought maybe mine would be able to soothe it a little.”
He takes it with care, staring at the envelope as if he had just been gifted with a relic from God himself.
To Jacob.
“I was going to send it… Just in case, you know.” She grabs his chin and redirects him to look at her. “But then I wouldn’t be able to do this.”
Her hand traces his jaw on its way to his hair, tangling in it to bring him closer to her.
By the time their lips meet, his hands are on her too, holding her close, near, moving with care to explore her body. Nothing too haste, or hungry. Just a thousand feelings, slowly finding their way to be expressed into something real.
Despite the softness of the exchange, Jacob needs a moment to focus once it's over, feeling overwhelmed, ever so slightly, as his mind tries its best to catch up with his heart.
Once he’s back to reality he smiles at her, letting her know he’s ready to keep listening.
“Gave it to someone I trusted, instead. I needed to think… To hope, that I’d be able to hand you this in person. That I’d come back to you.”
He looks at Lara one more time and then stares at the letter. Without asking, she nods as a reply, giving him permission to open it.
He’s more than ready.
Jacob seats at the edge of the cliff and breaks the seal.
With her mind suddenly replaying all she wrote and felt, Lara stares at him, and for a moment, she thinks of leaving him alone. Nevertheless, the thought is casted away almost immediately and, after gathering some resolve, she decides to sit by his side.
She takes in the scenery while he begins to read, not wanting to bother him but, just as it did with the Divine Source, her hand moves on its own, and her fingers intertwine with Jacob’s before she’s able to do anything to override that order.
Lara stares at the view of the valley, following Jacob’s ritual of getting lost into the many glimmers of the falling water, as this one focuses everything he is and gets sucked into the letter.
Despite not wanting to distract him, she simply cannot help herself, and contradicting her own wants, the contact remains unbroken.
Maybe I’m distr…
The thought never takes form.
By the way he strengthens the grip, radiating love and affection, it’s obvious that he doesn’t care.
And, after feeling every bit of it in the tender gesture, neither does she.
-----------------------------------------
Boom! Done with the angst.
Next chapter -> The Third Letter
Yaaaaaay~~ Now you know why the fic is named that way (most of you surely were expecting this moment for a while now)
Being the next one a letter, I can already tell you I'll take me less time than this one.
I mentioned the angst problem but, the other thing that made this longer than expected is that, after having the whole Jacob speech already written, I watched for the first time ever every season of Buffy the vampire slayer (in like, a week lol) and coming back to write this I realized most of his speech was almost identical to Spike's speech at the end of the series (the "I love what you are" one) and despite being a coincidence (like, I was amazed, because you cannot imagine the level of similarity) I felt like I needed to change my own (but I didn't want to completely change my vision), so it took me a while to find a new line similar to my original draft but not too similar to the one in btvs.
So yeah.
Also, I've spent a month reading spuffy fics, that may also have influenced how much this has taken me to write ehehehehehe Oh well... I have no regrets.
As always, feeling a bit unsure about the ending. Think it can be better, but I'm posting this today, so it'll have to do lol
Finally, and sorry for the long af note, wanted to thank you for taking the time to read my madness, means a lot. Still cannot believe this is over 4000 hits as of now.
Feel free to leave a comment about whatever, they always cheer me up, motivate me to write more.
In any case, thank you for reading this.
Love you, and see you soon (fingers crossed)
~~tea
Woooow. So, this one became experimental... like, A LOT. But here we are: longer chapter than usual (that's why it took me a bit to write) but I finally did it yeeeeeyyyyyy!!! *self five*
So, 8 nightmares and 8 moments in the present that somewhat echoes them (hence the change in the title)
Hope you're here for some ptsd coated fluff (I sure am lol)
As always: Italics for inner thoughs and bold for cannon dialogue.
Summary: Lara learns to live in the present despite of her past.
Words: 8295
Rating: Teens and Up
Warnings: talking about death, wounds, trauma... You know, as always
All Chapters -> [link]
Read in AO3 -> [link]
-------------------------------------
~ 1 ~
“Chak Chel.”
“Ix Chel?”
Blinding light, blinding possibilities. She discards them nonetheless.
Her next steps are clear.
A chill travels throughout her spine the moment her back meets the stone. Her body is so warm that she almost expects to see steam when it comes into contact with the chilled surface, but even if that happened Lara would not be able to see it.
The golden mask narrows her eyesight to a mere speck of light, but it is enough to discern her fate.
The strange creature raises both arms, dagger in hand, as time seems to slow down.
Nearly stops.
Red ink wraps and climbs around their skin, and Lara suddenly thinks she’ll soon match them, once the blade meets her, and crimson rivers start flowing throughout her own body.
She should be more afraid, but she isn’t.
The frozen moment seems ethereal to her, unreal, all sound and chaos muffled, all sight and damage of the battle blocked by the ornate mask.
She knows what's next, but she doesn’t close her eyes. Not yet. Umber crystals shimmering in the face of an unavoidable destiny.
The dagger resumes its movement.
She remains still. A few last breaths.
Lara expected to cry, but she doesn’t.
She thinks of her parents. She just saw them in her vision.
She will meet the real ones soon.
That moves her for a moment, still no tears, but then she remembers.
And her eyes close.
Her last thought: is for him.
~
A gasp fills the empty cabin as she wakes up, her upper body rising before she adjusts to the real world.
Drops of sweat scurry through the back of her neck for a few moments as she scours the room, one hand moves on instinct towards her chest, applying pressure to tame her heart back into a normal rhythm.
Deep breath in, deep breath out.
The remnants of the nightmare fade as her mind manages to calm down, lowering her feet to the ground, and leaving it behind on her bed along with all her fears.
It doesn’t take too long for Lara to exit the cabin. Her clothes don’t vary much from one another, so she just throws on the first thing she grabs and is already on her way out while she’s still putting on her one and only favorite jacket.
The sun greets her high up in the sky, and so do many villagers as she crosses the small settlement, finally grabbing a piece of fruit after the third time the blacksmith insists she should have something before starting her day.
She eats it as she walks away, pausing her bites in order to follow the stairs down to the lowlands, jumping two steps at a time with a steady rhythm in her movement, humming along as the well too known scenery coats her mood with many unfamiliar shades of comfort and happiness.
He said he’d be…
The idea doesn’t fully form before her eyes lock onto him.
Jacob is seated on a tree platform, legs dangling and moving ever so slightly, all of him far too focused on what he’s reading to notice her presence until she speaks.
“It’s really not that good.” Lara yells at him, conjuring his lips into a smile, examining the tree trunk for just a few moments before she climbs it, finding herself successfully seated next to him in no time.
“Agree to disagree.” His glee deepens, and so does his grip on the letter. He pauses for a second to look at her before slipping it back in its envelope and hiding it in the inner pocket of his dusty blue coat, right next to the one she wrote him three years ago.
Jacob leans forward ever so slightly, ice blue eyes locked onto hers in that way that always manages to strike down her ability to breathe.
“Good morning…” She barely whispers, her voice struggling to come out of her body, an anomaly that’s completely ignored by her hand as this one moves with natural grace to land on top of his leg.
For a moment there, she could swear he bites his own lip.
“Good morning.” Low and composed voice, as always, with that tinge of sweetness only Lara ever gets to hear.
His hand decides to travel too, finding its usual resting place on her neck before leaning in for a kiss.
So soft and tender. So sweet and kind.
More a blend of slow yet short kisses than a unique one.
His tongue teases hers just for a moment and, maybe he didn’t bite his own earlier, but there’s no doubt that he’s targeting her lips now, leaving behind a careful nibble before the greeting meets its inevitable end.
“Yeah…” Lara looks away for a few seconds, needing space to recover her voice. “Good indeed.”
The comment makes him laugh in a way that doesn’t help her either, but she still finds the strength to meet his eyes one more time.
“Did you sleep well?” Jacob asks.
Her smile falters for just a moment but, no matter how little hesitation she casts before taming it back to normal, doesn’t succeed to escape his eyes.
No use in lying about this, after all. She reminds herself, aware he’s caught on with the truth, needing to reassure herself before she replies.
“A bit rough, as all nights are…” Lara admits with more ease than expected. “Morning is presenting itself much better, though.”
The tiredness melts back into joy as she leans forward with all the care in the world, leaving more than enough time for Jacob to retreat into a safer position if he wishes to before giving his earlier kiss the reply it truly deserves.
“Good to know.”
Another smile, another touch, and the kiss happens. After all, Jacob’s never been one to retreat from a battle.
~ 2 ~
“Jacob! Look out!”
A gavel hitting three times to deliver its sentence, the bullets hit him before she can react.
They both beg her: two different motives, two different outcomes. But neither of them matter.
Ana gets her wish and pays for it.
The source is in Lara's hands in no time after that, her mind yelling at her what she must do as her eyes meet Jacob’s.
He nods.
“It’s okay.”
Her heart breaks.
“I’m sorry.”
And she breaks it.
She knew what would happen, she knew this was the price.
So did he.
“You knew I’d destroy it.”
His smile is what finally makes her cry.
“In all my years… I’ve met few as extraordinary as you.”
She wants to scream, to yell, to tear her hair out and sink into the abyss.
“It’s finally happening. My ending.”
Almost feels like she’s the one who’s dying.
“I’m sorry. All I wanted was to make a difference.”
He starts to fade.
The pain does not.
“You already have.”
It twists in her heart like a poisoned dagger.
“... You already have.”
~
The nightmare still echoes in her mind despite the many hours that have elapsed since she woke up from the haunting ‘what if’ that darkened her previous night.
Lara finds herself in the eastern village library, searching for something, anything, that might distract her from the alternate reality that her decision could’ve caused and its consequences.
After a while, her method starts to prove effective, losing herself in her quest of finding something interesting and letting the past that never came to be slowly fade away.
Her hand brushes the spine of many volumes before stopping at one. This one somehow feels different than the rest. Special.
She’s about to pull it out of its place when someone else does it for her.
Jacob graces her skin ever so slightly on its way to take the old book, sending a shiver through her entire body.
“Nice choice.” He indicates, smiling at the ragged tome before turning to cast his happiness toward Lara.
“…"
The contact lasts only a moment, but she feels like she’s on fire, surprise and desire mixing into an amalgam of feelings that quickly short-circuit her entire being.
“This one focuses mainly on the impact of celestial makers in the development of a culture. Are you familiar with the concept?”
“Ermm…”
Think, Lara… Think!
“Are you feeling well?”
“Yes! Yes…”
“Yes, you are fine, or yes, you know it?”
“Both, I…” She laughs a little, all her courage doing its best to drown her embarrassment. “The Incan were, well are, better said, the prime example for that thesis”.
She laughs awkwardly before she starts to explain herself.
"They didn’t just track the sun and stars for rituals. They structured their entire empire around them. The ceque system, 328 sightlines radiating from Cusco, wasn’t just a spiritual guide. It was a functional geospatial network based on celestial alignments. It connected sacred sites, water sources, and even roads, all mapped to the stars.”
Lara forces herself to stop, fearing her knowledge is having its usual effect on people. Nevertheless, Jacob’s expression couldn’t be farther from what she’s used to.
"I see…" His voice is softer now, almost reverent. "Fascinating."
Jacob opens the book to reference a page, although she isn’t sure why.
It's quite obvious to anyone paying attention that he knows it to perfection and doesn't need to read it again. He’s even memorized where the passage is written on, but he does it anyway, almost as a ritual that Lara can’t help but find endearing.
“Look, this is similar to…” He shows her the page as he talks. “But if what you’re telling is true…”
He takes her hand, closing the book with the other, and looks at her with the same twinkle in his eyes that little kids get when they find out they’re about to have their favorite dish for dinner.
“Look at these...”
Before Lara can add anything, he guides her to the nearest bench. They sit side by side, still holding her hand while he expertly handles the book with his other.
With a flick of his wrist, the tome opens. Jacob flips through the pages with his thumb, searching for a specific chapter and, for a second, Lara’s mind is tempted to make a comment on the skill displayed by Jacob’s hand, but her survival instincts kick in just in time to save her from diving into something she wouldn’t be able to recover from.
So the moment vanishes quickly as she moves her eyes to a different target and sets them on what he's showing her instead.
“I’ve seen many records of patterns of sorts in ancient Egypt, the most known being the alignment of the pyramids of Giza with Orion’s Belt, and there are many other examples such as the nilotic calendar of their architectural temple construction. But to map your civilization based on such a system, both a geographical and a spiritual map… I’d really love to learn more about the subject.
Jacob’s eyes finally leave the book, twinkling with excitement and wonder, to find Lara looking at him with the deepest smile he’s ever witnessed.
“Or perhaps… We could talk about something else.” He almost looks flustered, for a moment. “Sorry. I get excited and sometimes forget t…”
“What do you wanna know?”
His heart seems to skip a beat, only to sink further than ever into his chest.
His lips mirror hers.
“I… ” Jacob laughs a little, not sure what he's done to deserve so much happiness. “Are you sure?”
“Sure?” She snorts and, with a quick gesture, snatches the book from his hand to inspect it. “Could talk about this stuff for hours.”
He laughs one last time.
“Your doom, then.”
~ 3 ~
A tremble.
Light.
And then: pain.
Her body moves on its own, robbing her of the opportunity of getting used to the light that seeps through the cracks of the wooden walls of the cabin.
Lara’s chest falls and rises with unprecedented speed, with her heart hammering the alarmed beat as the room takes form.
A few more breaths do the trick.
The scene gets lighter by the second, her mind catching up with reality as she remains seated on her cot, moving without moving, with her body trembling as a consequence of what her mind just witnessed.
What she witnessed, so many years ago.
Her hand moves instinctively to her side, holding onto the old wound like the day she got it, attempting to block the memory as she stopped the bleeding back then.
The blood is no longer there but the pain remains, and every now and then comes back to ensure it once existed.
Lara doesn’t remember what she's dreamt of but she doesn’t need to do so in order to know, as her body quickly recalls the dream her mind was able to dispel.
The pain is there to remind her. Burning, stinging, sinking into her skin like a claw that’s trying to rip her apart.
Always present.
Always alive.
And, as always, she takes her needed moment to adjust and just greets it, like an old friend, swallowing the embers of her own screams and using her breathing to control the pace of her heart, forcing it back to its usual beat before finally leaving her resting place to begin her day.
The pain is still there, as so will be tomorrow, but there’s more pressing matters to care about.
~
Her hand covers it yet again.
“Is it the scar?”
It takes Jacob a couple of days to notice there’s something off.
A few hours to pinpoint the origin.
And a lifetime of courage to finally inquire about it.
“Hi?” Lara smiles, surprised to see Jacob bursting into her cabin, moving her hand ever so slightly to rest her on the cot where she’s seated. “You were saying?”
He closes the space in a few long steps.
“You’re in pain.” It isn’t a question. There is not even a hint of hesitation in his voice. “Is it because of the scar?”
“The scar? Jacob please, I have so many that you’ll have to…”
He doesn’t let her finish.
“The one you cauterized in a crashed helicopter with an incandescent arrow.” Jacob kneels in front of her, envelops her hand with his own. “The one you were covering when I entered the room?”
“I… Well…” Lara hesitates. “I’m fine. I…”
One. Two.
Three seconds of silence.
He lets it fill the air. He lets her decide.
Lara sighs, and then: smiles a little.
“Truly, I’m fine.” She reasures him. “But yes… Sometimes it hurts.”
She lowers her head, taking some time to breathe.
“And sometimes the pain brings memories along with it, nightmares, decisions…” Her words tremble a little. “... consequences.”
Patiently, he lets his other knee hit the ground too, sits over his own legs, and waits for her voice to catch up with her courage.
“Consequences, you, should be aware of… ” Her voice is even softer this time around.
Her pain is different: no anguish, no burden. He can see that, whatever she’s feeling, she’s learnt how to live with it, through it.
Lara cups his face with her free hand and they stay like that for a while, gazing at each other’s souls, until Jacob decides to let his head rest on top of her legs, resting it on her lap with an exhale of relief.
“Whenever you’re ready: today, tomorrow or next year… ” He shifts a little, making himself comfortable in the new position. “I’ll be there to listen.”
“...”
Lara’s hands are suspended mid air, frozen, as she lets the development of the situation sink in as it shapes into her new reality.
After much consideration, and absurd amounts of hesitation, considering all they’ve been through, one of them lowers inch by inch until it's resting on his head. The left one returns to her side, to cover the old wound, as the right starts to play with Jacob’s hair.
The motion gets rewarded with a lower hum and, suddenly, both pain and wound are completely forgotten. Leaving just the consequences floating around in her mind, but not for too long.
“I’ll tell you one day, I promise.” Her strokes are now more deliberate, more loving. “Just… Not yet.”
“Whenever… Forever…” He smiles, eyes closed, sinking deeper into her touch. “I’ll be there.”
~ 4 ~
White.
Pure, calm and solid white.
The void gets filled with laughter in an instant. Three different tones mixing to create a beautiful melody.
“To claim her treasure, the adventurer, Lara Croft, must outwit the King--” She looks at her father with a defiant stare.
His response doesn’t make itself wait.
“Outwit the King?” He fakes to be wounded by her words. “I think the King might have something to say about that!”
The melody comes back: giggles filling the air that surrounds them until her mother interrupts their tempo.
“My loves, will you hold still for a second?”
“Yes, my White Queen.”
Lara and her father lock eyes before replying at the same time.
“One!” “One!”
What a beautiful melody, indeed.
~
“You’re quite good at it.” Lara tells her friend with a smile on her face, hand moving instinctively to her left side for a few seconds. “Though I`m not the best judge when it comes to that, more than half the planes I’ve been in ended up crashing, or exploding… Or both. So my expectations are not that high to begin with.”
Sofia laughs and hits her playfully.
“Don’t exaggerate.”
Lara shrugs her shoulders, not confirming nor denying if her statement is indeed true.
“You seem to be doing fine, though. Having learned all by yourself.”
“Well, after insisting we should get more familiar with technology these past few years, I needed to set an example among our people. We found a couple of manuals and started from there, little by little.”
“And now you get to fly a helicopter.”
“Yeah…” She smiles. “I must admit, I find the experience quite freeing.” Her head shifts to look at the sky for a moment. “We use them mainly to move cargo and resources, but there’s been a few occasions where I just used it to survey the area or patrol. Probably shouldn’t have.”
“I wouldn’t be able to contain myself if I were you… I probably should learn more about it.”
“You? Not knowing something?”
They both laugh before Lara pushes her a little, faking to be mad for just a moment until her smile betrays her.
“Just the basics, you know, to survive.” She finally admits “But I’ve never dedicated the proper time to learn.”
Sofia’s expression changes instantly as an exciting idea forms in her head.
“I could teach you.”
“Really?”
“Yeah… I’d love to. Been dying to share what I’ve learned with someone.” She looks at the chopper. “It’ll also give us some time together… You’ve been hard to get a hold on, since you came back.”
Lara’s head moves on its own, avoiding eye contact to stare at the helicopter too.
“You think?” She rubs the back of her neck.
“Yeah. You’re always so busy no one really knows where you are most of the time. I’ll have to have a stern talk with my father.”
That definitely makes her look back at her.
Having everything in consideration, she’s quite proud of the nonchalant tone her voice acquires as she replies: “Your father?”
“He overworks you, Lara. I haven’t said anything until now, cause he’s been in a good mood lately and did not want to ruin it… But he’s always giving you tasks, books to read, hunting rounds, patrols… You should rest too.”
Lara is getting better at confronting her own feelings but she’s done her fair bit of training in the art of avoidance and, right now, she’s more than ready to put it to good use.
“And learn how to fly a helicopter while I’m on it?”
“Well… It’s more an excuse than anything. Spending time together is what I really care about.”
A cheeky smile forms on her face, but she manages to keep it at bay for a few more seconds, not willing to waste this opportunity.
“Awww… I’ll start thinking you no longer hate me, if you say things like that!”
Sofia pushes her back, just as she did a few seconds ago.
“Sometimes you’re impossible, Lara”
“And still, you want to spend time with me.”
The melody fills the air once again.
“That I do.”
~ 5 ~
The incandescent light of the fire bursts angrily illuminating the entire cave.
Sam screams for her help, but she’s immobilized, and so, when the strange force propulses the flames towards her, Lara closes her eyes, and sinks into the fire.
Deep waters crowned by flames. Screams and voices trapping her there.
“I have to go! I’m the only one…”
“You’re the only one that can what!?”
Jonah’s anger frees her. Swimming up towards the fire.
Water, mud, flames.
A hand that wraps around a sharp knife. Merciless and silent.
The blade descends with strength, committed to meet its target, flesh and agony mixing into one before it gets quiet.
Lara falls to the side, fist still closed around the dripping dagger. Her head moves slowly to look at it, but it’s no longer there, replaced now by tools, soaked in crimson pain, pulling from her like a wire.
“Go!”
The ground turns into metal. The air on her back bursts, surrounding everything, bullets flying through it as she focuses now on Alex.
She shakes her head in denial.
“Now!”
A tear falls slowly, and she starts to run.
She almost falls when she exits the room, the sunlight blinding her eyes as if it was fire. She takes a few steps backward as her arms move on her own, tensing the bow, an arrow already pointing at her target.
She’s too slow. She’s also a target.
“Drop your weapons!”
Grim doesn’t waste his time.
“Don’t fuckin’ do it!”
He makes the choice before she can do neither.
“Grim!”
She falls to the ground and so does the night, another blaze hitting her, unmobilized, surrounded yet again by fire.
“Lara!”
Everything is dim and shaky, so she remains frozen amidst the flames, hot rain pouring on her as someone grabs her.
“Come on!”
Roth screams in pain, limping, and just like that: the bullets start flying.
Lightning passing right next to them and then: silence.
He turns and that’s when she sees the axe.
“Noooo!”
She falls to the ground, everything darkens.
~
The familiar sound of the windchimes welcomes them as they get closer to the cave.
“Almost there…”
Her boots get soaked as she jumps gracefully on the meander, splashing droplets everywhere.
After one more minute they make it there.
“Impressive.”
Jacob’s eyes shimmer, lit by flames and anticipation on equal parts.
“You’ve seriously never been here?”
“No… Sofia has, and a few others, but you discovered so many things last time you were here that we’re still trying to catch up with most of it.”
She moves her torch towards his in order to ignite it, their eyes meet for a few seconds as she waits for it to get on fire.
“You won’t get bored.” Lara smiles and walks past him.
Fire, indeed. Fire.
Jacob takes a moment to recover.
“There’s always something to do, yes.” His feet resume their movement and he starts trailing her steps.
Despite her mind prompting her the perfect answer, Lara hesitates a little but, after considering it and its effects, she decides to enounce it nonetheless.
“I’d offer more help….” Lara halts her steps and turns to look directly at him. “...but I was sternly reprimanded yesterday by your daughter.”
“Heavens…”
She can’t help but laugh.
“Sofia thinks you overwork me too much, monopolize most of my time.” Lara clarifies and Jacob stops right in front of her, with the fire of the torch flickering through his many emotions.
For a moment there, he’s afraid that his daughter may be right.
“Is she into something?” Jacob links their free hands, lowering his head a little to get closer to her.
“No… Of course not.” Lara smiles, giving him a few playful tugs before raising her eyes to meet his. “I love spending time with you, especially like this.”
Strong and powerful, her heart crashes against her chest.
Then: he smiles.
Lost and found, her breath leaves her body in search of his and, with a sweet and tender pace, Lara seals his lips with her own, confirming her words with her actions.
“Good.” He says, although his voice struggles to produce the word, resuming his steps right after.
She laughs and follows and, after a couple of steps, a new idea enters her head.
“She’s gonna find out more sooner than later, isn’t she?”
“It appears so…” He agrees, knowing his daughter to perfection, considering the fact in silence before he offers her his thoughts. “I’d like to tell her before that happens… When the time is right, that is. If that’s okay with you.”
They’ve never discussed this until now, and Lara hadn’t given the idea too much of a thought but, whatever she had in mind, she never expected it to be so easy.
So natural.
“I… You know… If you don’t mind I don’t see why… Why it should…”
“What?”
He is the one to stop and turn now, intrigued by what she’s trying to say.
“I mean, it’s your people, and their opinion of you, what’s at stake.” Lara takes a moment to read her own emotions, make sure they are as real as she feels them. “So, as long as you’re okay with it, so am I.”
Before she can react, Jacob is already hugging her.
The quick movement surprises her, so she stays frozen for a while but, once she recovers, her arms wrap around him too, sinking as deep as she’s able into the embrace.
“I’m more than okay with it. And so will they.” He pulls back a little and stares at her. “How could they not?”
“Jacob…”
His right hand moves towards her hair, playing with the rogue strands that always manage to get loose from her ponytail.
“I wouldn’t care, either.”
“You don’t mean that.”
He laughs.
“True, you’re right. As always.” He tucks the hair lovingly behind her ear. “I would care. I appreciate their opinion way too much to not care about them. I only meant to convey that I care about yours way more.”
That is indeed true and, almost as if he was trying to prove it, his hand anchors around her jawline before he goes in for a kiss.
Sealing the meaning of his words and their lips together with a single tender gesture.
The torches fall to the ground at the same time, their fire extinguishing as another one fuels and devourers.
Neither of them mind, nothing else seems to matter.
Darkness embracing them, as they embrace each other.
~ 6 ~
The entire cave trembles even before she grabs it, but she grabs it anyway.
A chill, roaming her body, to mirror the one she has after she turns, transporting her to the chaos her action caused, where not the night, nor the rain, are strong enough to avert her from witnessing the hundreds of lives she's just destroyed.
The flooded city flickers in the darkness, with the sound of water streams and screams muffling everything Jonah is saying.
Her hand trembles with the ghost of the dagger that’s no longer in her possession.
All these deaths, and it was for nothing.
Jonah keeps screaming. The rain comes now from a different direction.
“Are you out of your fucking mind Lara?!”
Metal shaking and banging. The water hits her face with sharp tiny droplets through the broken windshield.
“I’m not jumping out of this plane!”
Another tremble and the decision is taken from him. The cabin rips apart in two, propelling him away from her.
“Jonah!”
She turns to look forward and is suddenly standing on the ground. Jonah falls right in front of her after failing to recover the box.
“What the hell were you thinking?”
He smiles at her, panting.
“If I was you it would have worked.”
The ground starts to move, shaking furiously under their feet.
They share one last look.
“Go!”
~
“And then I woke up.” Lara finishes her explanation, letting her body fall backwards to rest her weight on her elbows. “No mystery what this one was about.”
She sighs.
“You regret taking the dagger…”
“How could I not?”
“You’re trying to…”
“A lot of people died, Jacob. Because of me.” She lets her head meet the ground, lying completely flat against the grass. “Innocent people.”
“There’s no excuse, then?”
“No… There’s not.”
Terminal. Decided. Not a hint of hesitation in her answer.
“What about me?”
Until now.
“What?”
Her question doesn’t need to be answered, for Lara already knows his reply. She asks nonetheless, hoping to be wrong about the matter.
She isn’t.
“How many people died because of me? My own people…”
“That’s different.” She tries to deflect, knowing it won't work either. “You were trying to help, you believed in something. You were doing your best to run away from Trinity. To protect your people.”
Jacob rests his chin on his hand and smiles at her, giving her a few seconds to realize what she just said.
“Oh, don’t think I don’t know what you’re doing, mister.” She says, sitting up, to be at his eye level. “Two completely different situations.”
“And still…” He gets closer. “So similar.”
Lara huffs and looks away, on the verge of smiling, but still carrying enough weight on her heart to prevent her from doing so.
“Hey…” His hand gently moves to her chin, guiding her face back toward him. “You did your best. That’s all we can do: our best. Mistakes are bound to happen sooner or later but, as long as we try with all we have…”
“Other people's mistakes don’t get people killed.”
“Other people's successes don’t save lives.” Jacob counters immediately. “Don’t save my people.” He adds, grabbing her hand. “Don’t save the world.”
And there he has it.
A smile.
Faint, small, subtle. But a smile, nonetheless.
He smiles too.
“I'll let you have this one.”
Now he laughs.
“Heavens, did I just best the mighty Lara Croft in something?”
“Shut up…” She pushes him playfully. “Or I’ll take it back.”
Jacob brings a hand to his chest and bows in agreement.
“My deepest apologies, Lara. It won’t happen again.”
She’s now the one laughing. Her giggles are joined by the distant sound of a bell.
Lara turns and sighs, brushing her hair out of her face.
“We should head back to the village, it's almost time to…” She halts her sentence and turns her face towards him once again. “Shit, I’m a mess right now, aren’t I?”
Although Jacob would never share that opinion she’s somewhat right, her ponytail is barely holding up thanks to the long morning spent in the valley and her recent contact with the ground from just a second ago.
“Gimme a sec.” She says, pulling her hands backwards. “I'll do a quick braid before… Ugh.”
One hand moves quickly towards her left side, causing Jacob to instantly lose all of the glee that reigned his face.
“The scar?”
She sighs.
“Yeah, there’re some random movements that sometimes…”
He’s extending his hand before she’s able to finish her explanation.
“Here, let me.”
Lara is confused, for a moment, until she realizes he’s asking for the elastic.
“Erm…”
“Don’t be stubborn…” The smile makes a triumphant comeback. “I can help.”
“Ermmm…” Confusion shifts to hesitation on its way to morph into anticipation. “... okay.” She finally agrees, placing the black elastic in his palm.
Before she can fully process what’s happening Jacob is already sitting behind her.
His fingers start detangling her hair with care, beginning at the tips, and making their way up to the roots little by little, taking all the time needed to work it strand by strand.
A shiver conquering her body, slow and deliberate, exploring with care every inch of her skin as her breathing falters.
Once the overall mess is gone, he uses them to comb her hair for a while, making sure it’s as smooth as possible.
There’s an audible gulp and, for just a moment, she worries he’s heard it, but he continues working,completely focused.
His hands travel to her scalp, gathering all her hair backwards, making sure no rogue strands are left behind. Then they glide to the upper side of her head, and start braiding.
His technique is masterful, despite doing the entire process without a comb, and his movements feel more familiar than she expected.
It doesn’t take her long to realize why and, recovering some of her focus, she’s finally able to break their silence.
“Sofia did my hair just like this on my first day here, before the bonfires.”
“Did she?” He smiles, finishing his braid with black elastic. “That was kind of her.”
Lara turns to look at him, her braid follows the movement gracefully, perfectly executed and tied.
“Did you teach her?”
He laughs and stands up.
“Well, of course.” Jacob offers her a hand to help her do the same.
She takes it.
Perhaps it is because he pulls as she rises, or maybe it’s their magnetic energy, bringing them together once again but, whatever the reason, the entire action ends with both of them completely glued, standing in the middle of the valley as their hearts beat into one another.
She gulps again, and then looks up.
“Will you teach me?”
Jacob cups her face with his hands and suppresses a smile.
“Your wish is my command.” He promises before lowering his head in a vow.
His lips meet hers for the umpteenth time, a count that, if not for the distant bell filling the air once again to remind them where they should be, would surely double right now.
But, alas, their kiss comes to an end and, after a needed moment to come back down from the skies, they link their hands together and start walking towards the calling sound.
~ 7 ~
“How are you doing all this?”
Her steps are slow, measured, taking her time before sitting in front of her.
“I told you when we met: They killed my father.”
Unuratu smiles, analyzing Lara's expression with care.
“And so you’re willing to die too. I can see that.” The bonfire that separates them cracks and flickers filling the silence. “But you are not dead.”
“Yet…”
“Still. I’ve seen many skilled warriors in my life, some of them better than you, fail miserably in their fight against the cult.” Her eyes move for a moment to inspect Lara’s clothes. “What keeps you fighting?”
“It’s what I do, I guess. I survive.”
The room is quite warm, thanks to the fire, casting their shadows on the nearest wall, which Unuratu turns to admire.
Lara’s eyes follow hers, none of them looking at each other, as the rebel asks what she’s been meaning to since the conversation started.
“What’s his name?”
Lara turns in her direction, confused.
“Whose name?”
“The one you’re doing all of this for.”
“I’ve already told you…”
“Not Jonah, not your father.” She interrupts, redirecting her gaze to Lara. “The one whose letter you keep reading.” She points at her clothes. “The one who gave you that jacket.”
Her first instinct is to look around, for some reason she can’t quite comprehend, needing to be sure that they’re alone, and especially, away from Jonah.
“He doesn’t know?”
Unuratu reads her like an open book.
“It’s complicated…” She concedes, as she pulls the letter from the jacket. “Someone I met years ago, similar to how I met your people… A myth, a legend.”
Lara’s eyes remain glued to the envelope.
“It would be too difficult to explain it to him.” She hesitates for a second, but then extends her arm. “Here.”
For the first time in the conversation, Unuratu is taken by surprise. Her hand trembles subtly as she takes it, eyes filled with understanding and reverence.
“You’re letting me read this?”
“You asked about it, and, what can I say?” Lara replies, feeling somewhat lighter after finally finding someone to share all this weight with. “I don't feel like lying.”
“I… Thank you.” She stares at the ragged letter, wondering how many things it must have been through to be in this state. “I don’t take this lightly, Lara.”
She nods, but Unuratu remains still, hesitating, needing further approval to move forward.
“It’s Jacob, by the way.” Lara smiles at her before redirecting her eyes to the fire. “You asked his name… It’s Jacob.”
Her newfound friend smiles at her, opens the letter, and starts reading:
Dear Lara…
~
The string meets her skin to grace her lips, hand anchored on her chin to find its balance.
A thunder strikes his heart, halting its beating for what feels like an eternity.
The left arm, imperceptible to any other eyes, redirects the bow, her gaze fixed with determination on its target.
Jacob’s jaw drops slightly, in complete awe, unaware of the subtle gesture, mesmerized by the sight of Lara training while she perfects her stance even further.
Her hand is close to releasing the arrow when the wind shifts its course and, instinctively, so does she, correcting the posture so the trajectory is the desired one.
The air toys with her hair, setting free some strands to play with them, her ponytail dancing gracefully in the wind, revealing most of her neck as it flows.
He curses it and gives thanks at the same time, trailing the line of her exposed skin with his eyes.
The day couldn't be more peaceful, warmer, sunlight radiating and coating everything in its path. And yet, another lightning, feelings exploding to conquer all his being.
Heavens.
Her hand relaxes, fingers softening to release an arrow that flies violently away from her, sending more of her hair streaming backward.
Bull’s eye.
Lara lets her opposite arm fall to its natural resting place, the bow moves along with it, cheers surrounding her as Levi puts a hand on her shoulder.
The arrow is still wobbling, its head buried deep into the precise center of the target.
“Nicely done, Lara.”
She smiles, and Jacob realizes he was wrong, because the day gets even brighter.
“I’ve had my fair share of practice.” His training partner laughs, and so does their audience, many villagers cheering and clapping as she grabs another arrow.
She starts explaining the technique to Levi, and a few of the close watchers. Her words can be heard by everyone, even from where he’s standing, resting his weight in the newly repaired fance, but her voice gets lost in the wind, his eyes filled to the brim with admiration and desire.
As her friend starts shooting at a nearby target, now with her hands completely free, she undoes whatever the elements didn’t take care of and, after combing everything backwards with her fingers, starts braiding from the top of her head.
Her gestures mimic the ones Jacob taught her the day before, and he cannot help but to relive the sensation of when he did it for her a week ago, caressing every strand with care, as if he was threading gold instead of hair, stealing brief moments in the nape of her neck as his fingers yelled at him to go rogue.
The storm gets completely loose inside his body, admiring how even a skill she just learned has been conquered in so little time and, almost as she did it to prove him right, what he’s feeling is nothing compared to what she causes next, raising her bow once again and splitting her previous shot in two with a new arrow.
Heavens indeed.
Jacob shifts a little, taming his smile, pride and desire mixing together as the dart meets the target.
Heavens…
For a moment he starts doubting if she’s even real.
Has to be.
He tells himself, knowing no mind is powerful enough to imagine what he’s feeling. To imagine someone like her.
Breathtaking…
Breathtaking indeed, for Jacob needs a moment as his mind catches up with his breathing.
So skilled, so brave.
Lara grabs another arrow.
Not in a million years would anyone be able to conjure someone like her. With every single detail carved to perfection as a weapon to rule my heart. Skills, gestures, chosen paths… A soul forged by the fires of hell on earth to produce the proof of the divine.
Perfect yet imperfect.
The cord tenses against her skin.
Resolved and kind.
“…”
Graceful.
Strong.
And, as always…
Splinters fly everywhere: bull’s eye.
“Astonishing…”
“She truly is, isn’t she?” Sofia mimics his pose, resting her weight on the fence, eyes focused on Lara. “After all, every great warrior is forged by war.”
Jacob spends one more second in his own inner process to verify how much he’s said out loud. Luckily, his daughter’s expression tells him he can stay calm, leaving room to consider her statement instead.
A spec of sadness develops in him as he thinks about Sofia’s sentence, contemplating how deeply rooted into the truth is the statement she just deducted.
“Yes… They are, indeed.” He turns, placing softly a hand on her arm. “But please, don’t say that to Lara.”
“Why?” There’s more preoccupation than inquiry in her question, sensing already what her father is about to confirm about her friend.
“She’s still at war… Or her mind is, at least.” Jacob smiles briefly, but with too many shades of sadness to go unnoticed. “Let’s give her the chance to find some peace and not remind her of what she’s gone through before she extinguishes that fire.”
“…”
Sofia’s mind takes more than a second to let everything sink in and, before she has even started to process it he realizes that Lara, now taking a break, has closed the distance that kept them away, only a few steps away from the duo.
“Enjoying the show?”
His spirit rises to high heaven, a smile automatically painted on his face before he even notices that it’s there.
“Indeed.”
He laughs and she replies in the same fashion.
“I could use some help.”
“You already have some.”
Lara smiles, getting a bit closer, resting her hands on the fence from the opposite side.
“Now I am the help.” She explains, saying ‘I’ with more emphasis than necessary. “I’d like to learn too.”
His eyes travel instantly to her hair, braided to perfection and dancing with elegance.
“I think there’s nothing left for me to teach.”
“Bullshit…” She giggles, tracing his upper body before meeting his eyes once again. “You’ll always have plenty to teach, and there’ll always be something for me to learn.” The smile deepens. “For instance, without even thinking too hard, I remember how you handled yourself with a knife. Precision and expertise all mixed into graceful skills. Neat trick indeed.”
“You’re talking about what happened on the old train rails.”
“And there I was, thinking you needed to be rescued.”
Jacob’s laugh is deep yet short, tinted with both pride and shyness for a few seconds.
“I can’t believe you remember that.”
She turns to look at Sofia, whose attention is still too focused on the previous conversation to be truly present for the one that’s unfolding before her eyes. Lara takes the rare opportunity and gets even closer, to the point where she can notice Jacob’s breath coming to a halt, completely unprepared for what happens next.
“How could I forget?”
The storm turns now into a tempest, forcing Jacob to step backward in order to have a fighting chance, coughing in the process to recover the ability to breathe and the shyness develops into something he cannot get even close to name.
The sound of it, added to the fact that Sofia finally places together the last piece of the puzzle she was trying to solve, is what manages to finally capture her attention, bringing her back to their current conversation.
Noticing it, both of them try their best to extinguish the fire that Lara so skillfully ignited.
“Well, thanks. But sadly, I’m afraid I find myself too busy.”
“Sadly…” Lara smiles again. “Tomorrow, then?”
Jacob sighs, trying his best to avoid looking at his daughter as he says. “I should let others have the pleasure of your company too, Lara.”
She understands.
“In that case…” Lara nods to fare goodbye and returns back to the practice range, joining Levi and resuming their training.
Jacob’s eyes follow her all the way there.
Sofia’s are fixed on him.
“She told you, didn’t she?”
He turns slowly, focusing his attention.
“She’s told you what happened.” She affirms, completely sure of her deduction.“How she defeated Trinity.”
His eyes cannot hide the truth from her.
Neither does he.
“Yes.”
“I see…”
For a moment she is tempted to push on the subject, but just by looking at her father, she already knows he won’t tell her anything.
The thought of it startles her a little.
The fact that his loyalty lies with Lara to the point of concealing information from her is a novelty for Sofia but, for some strange reason, the feeling doesn't last, to the point of even feeling natural the more she thinks about her father.
Instead, she asks quietly: “Is she okay?”
Jacob considers the question for a while before providing his answer.
“She’ll be, with time.”
The tone of his voice tells her everything she needs to know. Her feelings, sadness and relief all tangled together, battle as she realises the simple truth.
“Is that why she’s here? To heal…”
Sofia is still unaware of the accuracy of her shot, but he is and so, without wanting to give up too much, Jacob just adds: “Yeah, to heal.”
~ 8 ~
The water splashes everywhere, but the sun is finally visible in the sky, no sign of tempests in their victory as they leave the island behind.
I’ve been so blind… So naive.
Orange burns in the horizon, almost guiding their path.
For years I resented my father, doubted him like the rest.
Clearing the clouds with its light.
But he was right about so much.
Shimmering. Blinding.
I just wish I could tell him that now.
Trembling.
The air turns into freedom. Weightless, sharp. Passing through her and the boat to leave it behind.
There are so many mysteries that I once dismissed as mere stories. But the line between our myths and truth is fragile and blurry.
Combing her hair.
I need to find answers…
Drying her tears.
I must understand.
~
Lara knows she must be late when she doesn’t find Jacob in his usual spot, at the lookout that hangs over the waterfall.
Her morning training with Levi has extended longer than usual, and she silently curses herself.
She shouldn’t have let him convince her of doing that last sparring round but, to be fair, she was way too focused, and having too good of a time, to realize how much time had really passed.
After a second mandatory curse, she redirects her steps towards the mountain observatory, reaching it in only a few minutes, suspecting it may be the place where Jacob was going to be headed.
Lara finds him seated on the stairs: fingers crossed, hands in between his knees, head lowered. She knows way too well the meaning of the pose: he is praying.
Never to be one to waste his day, she assumes that he’s making the best of it while waiting for her.
Jacob’s lips move ever so slightly, mouthing the silent plea as his eyes remain closed, way too focused on the action to notice her presence. or too deep into his conversation with the higher powers to be able to break it just to acknowledge her.
She isn’t expecting it, either.
So, after a long moment dedicated exclusively to take in his peaceful expression, she sits at his side and waits.
At first she looks at the scenery, taking in the valley as she rests her weight on her elbows and her elbows on the steps.
Making the most of the pose, she dedicates her attention to the sky for a while, tracing the different shapes of the clouds, and admiring the way it seems to be painted in that impossible shade, neither blue nor gray, finding that kind of color which no one can describe without other person thinking they're completely wrong.
Once her eyes get tired of the sky, she closes them and, against her very own nature, raises them toward heaven.
She takes a deep breath in trying to feel something. Anything.
Trying to feel.
What should one say?
After a while her heartbeat becomes slower, more focused, rested. At peace. And, not without hesitating for a while, she takes a final second to take another deep breath, and lets her mind just speak and be true.
I… I really don’t… I’ve never…
She’s unsure of what she’s saying, but she says it anyway.
I mean, who… Who knows if…
She cannot even tell who she’s telling it to.
But… But, whoever is listening…
Or if she’s even telling someone.
If anyone is listening…
The only thing that seems to matter: is what she has to say.
After spending one last second in the darkness, she opens her eyes, resolved, turning to look at Jacob as if it were the only thing left to do.
Glee coats her face from the moment her eyes set on him.
I… Really…
Only one thing left to say.
A breath.
A pause.
…thank you.
-------------------------------------
Bum, done! Remind me to never write a 8000 words chapter ever again please T-T this was a nightmare to check (I'm sure there're still things that I missed- I'll change them with time)
Really love this one, hope is not to confusing (although that was kinda the idea with some of the nightmares)
Anyways, next one is the one I've been waiting for with all my heart: Sofia Starts to Notice. (HELL TO THE YEAH! I cannot wait to write that... But I may have to, I'll explain more why when I'm not falling asleep on top of my keyboard cause it's 5:02 am in Spain loooool That tells you how much I really want to post this)
ho
ly
shittttttttt
sosososososososososorry this took me so long, but here we are
I told you, I don't abandon a fic. It takes me a year to update it, but I do it lol.
Long story short, I have a million hobbies... oh yeah, and I got promoted, engaged, operated and lost half of my house in a flood (true story)
Anyways, I'm okay and here you have ch.10.
Hope you like it.
I fucking love it... But I'm biased and sleep deprived, so that's that 🤣
Summary: The morning after the bonfires, Jacob wakes to realize much of his work has already been done, with Lara quietly helping the village while avoiding the rest she desperately needs. In a much-needed conversation, they confront this and other issues, taking a step closer to understanding the complexities of their love, their past, and the future they could have together.
Words: 6695
Rating: Teens and Up (Mature~ish)
Warnings: hints of trauma and all that good stuff mixed in with some fluff
All Chapters -> [link]
Read in AO3 -> [link]
-----------------------------------------
Jacob wakes up three hours later than usual, but that doesn’t mean he has slept that much during the night, or better said, the morning, having in mind that the sun was about to rise when he finally made it into his bed.
Nevertheless, he feels completely rested, with the weight of a thousand stars finally lifted off his shoulders, and as he lies in his bed, now fully awake, he replays in his mind all the events of the previous hours and everything that happened in them.
After a few minutes, basking in the sweet memories for as long as he’s able, Jacob convinces himself to get ready for the day that waits ahead and exits his cabin after getting dressed in record time, more than prepared to catch up with all his unattended work but, once he reaches the center of the village, he soon finds that his job hasn’t been neglected at all.
Sofia, wanting to ease his load, as always, has taken care of dealing with most of the aftermath of yesterday’s party and, as she’s been doing for the past few years, she’s also gotten a start on his day to day responsibilities too.
“You should’ve woken me up.” He says while entering the pen where they keep the chickens, walking next to her side.
“Didn’t want to bother you…” Sofia answers without looking at him, too focused on fixing the fence to move her attention from its current target. “Though you may need the rest.”
Her right hand starts to roam on the bag she has by her side, resting on the grass, looking for something that she doesn’t seem to be able to find.
“Well, thanks.” Jacob looks at his daughter for a few seconds, grinning, before focusing on the tool she needs, laying on the ground outside of the bag, and after taming the inner corners of his mouth a little, he kneels, grabs it, and hands it to her. “Here you go.”
“Ah, thank you.” She turns to look at him, now they’re eye to eye, smiling back at his father to convey her gratitude and finally pay some attention to him. “Long night?”
“A bit.”
He casts a small laugh, but Sofia doesn’t want to ask about it, or not directly, at least.
“Too many things to process?”
“No… Well, yes.” He takes a second there, reflecting about everything that happened the day before. “Way too many, actually. But, oddly enough, none of them kept me from sleeping.”
“Good to know.” She stops moving for a moment, finally dedicating all of her senses to him, hesitating, for a second, before stating the next: “I was worried yesterday’s events would keep you restless.”
“Nothing of sorts.” Jacob pats her daughter on the side of her arm before she continues her task. His answer is quick enough to soothe most of her worries and allows her to resume her work immediately. “Just took a walk, meditated… Got lost a bit in the study of the skies.”
Sofia is mid-motion with her hammer when he says this and, despite the fact that her concentration flickers, briefly, it isn’t shaken enough to prevent her from continuing.
“Want some help?” He offers her after seeing the small hint of struggle.
Without giving her nearly enough time to answer, Jacob moves quickly to the other side of the fence and holds the piece of wood she was trying to nail down just a second ago. Sofia sighs a little, tempted to complain and ask him to rest, but decides otherwise, knowing it’d be a lost fight without having to even fight it. Instead, she just replies with a soft “thank you”, and lets the rest of her worries fade away.
They start working in complete silence, no words needed to understand nor coordinate with each other, leaving him the opportunity to continue reflecting on his own thoughts.
Jacob is focused, at the beginning, all his attention dedicated to helping his daughter. But, as the minutes go by, and with the task getting easier with the constant repetition, his mind starts to roam away from where they are, finding a new focus on one of the cabins situated near the center of the village.
Her cabin.
His memory, without any type of warning, decides to replay their last moment together, seeing and hearing his goodbye to Lara before they parted ways earlier that morning. Unwrapping only for his eyes as if he was witnessing it right now, from afar. As it didn’t happen hours ago. As if it was indeed the present.
And what a present to behold. A gift, interwoven with such craftsmanship to his whole being that its stitch is able to keep together the many pieces of his soul that he always deemed desperately lost, vanished or far too broken to be a part of him ever again.
The vision of her eyes, that remarkable tint of honey across an umber sea, causes him to forget how to breath for an instant, before a rogue grin conquers his face with the echo of their kiss caressing his lips, feeling the warmth of her skin invading the hand he used to cup her face, bathing in the smile she gifted him once their moment was over.
Jacob can even hear her giggle, with that soft laugh that he’s only heard from her on little and counted occasions, making it a rare treasure that burns in his heart any time he thinks of it, so precise and deep that he could almost swear he’s hearing it right now. How can her voice feel so real?
After a second of reflection, he hears her again. Louder, this time around, less soft, less breathy. Closer.
This isn’t a memory.
His concentration breaks as he changes his focus, travelling back to reality in record time and, once he’s had a few moments to adapt to it, his eyes quickly pinpoint the true origin of the sound.
Lara laughs a third time, he sees now from afar, to something that Levi, situated at her side, must be telling her.
As one can only imagine, Jacob dedicates all his might to hear what they’re saying but, if the distance wasn’t enough to prevent it, Sofia’s interruptions make it impossible for him to get a grasp of their exchange.
“A force to be reckoned with…” She comments casually, her eyes quickly changing their target to look directly at him, taking a moment to analyze his face before speaking. “Everything okay, father?”
“Ah?” His attention flickers briefly. “Yes… Yes. Just…” Jacob armours himself with a smile, redirecting his sight to his daughter. “Surprised, that’s all.” He says, quite convincingly, managing to tame his emotions. “Wasn’t expecting Lara to be up this early.”
“Yeah, right.” Sofia nods, wondering where she gets the strength from. “You’ve found yourself a match there…”
A moment of silence comes after that statement and, if it had lasted any longer, it would’ve given Jacob many reasons to start panicking with the possibility of what his daughter’s words might entail.
Nevertheless, it isn’t the case, and Sofia finishes her sentence before it's able to alarm him, clarifying the meaning of her words.
“Never thought there would be someone so keen and insisting on helping others as you are… And yet, there she is.”
Jacob laughs, instead of defending himself, as he would usually do employing an elaborated speech filled with many counter arguments and excuses. This time around, however, he feels incapable to contradict any of her words, mainly because they couldn’t be more true, so, instead, he just resigns himself to smile at Sofia’s comment and lets his attention travel back where it belongs.
“You know if she’s been up too long?” He asks, nonchalant, with the calmest tone of voice he’s able to summon.
“Yeah, we woke up at the same time, she’s been helping Levi all morning.” Her eyes turn to look at both of them, dedicating a moment too to stare at the two friends before adding anything else. “Since I was doing your job, Lara offered to take mine…”
There’s a hint of something close to sadness in her words, but luckily for her, his father doesn’t seem to notice it, each of them too busy focusing on one member of the distant conversation to realize the other’s focus is opposed to their own.
Nevertheless, Jacob, despite not being aware of her feelings, and only in search of his own, quickly makes the offer that frees her to follow them.
“I should finish here.” He declares, more than suggests, dedicating his daughter a loving smile before taking the hammer from her hands. “You shouldn’t be burdened with my work as well as yours.”
Sofia smiles, nods, and kisses him on the cheek as a goodbye, happy to return to her usual place and be able to aid Levi.
Jacob observes her go away, ecstatic to see his actions already having the desired effect.
With the addition of Sofia to the group, Lara quickly excuses herself and, as the couple walks away to resume the daily tasks, she’s left behind, stretching a little before taking a moment to yawn.
Jacob congratulates himself and goes back to work, happy to, at least, be able to free her so she can get some rest.
Unfortunately, his prospects do not last for long.
After a few minutes completely focused on repairing the fence, his concentration is instantly shattered by the sudden presence of her words filling the air.
“Need a hand?” Lara’s voice strikes against him with unseen strength, making him stop right away. Jacob sighs before raising his head slowly to look at her.
He takes another moment there, unsure if he should be proud or angry at how stubborn she is.
“Lara…” She smiles at him with tired eyes, getting a bit closer to him on the other side of the fence he’s fixing. “Shouldn’t you be sleeping?”
She shrugs her shoulders while deepening her grin.
“And shouldn’t you?” Her reply is quick, bouncing back his argument against him. His is even faster.
“Unlike someone.” He counters immediately. “I haven’t been up all morning.”
She laughs a little before playfully cursing “Sofia…” under her breath, knowing her friend had to be the one to tell Jacob how much time she’s been awake.
Despite his feelings, Jacob can’t help but smile at her reaction and, after she mirrors his glee back at him, he finds himself unable to add anything else about the subject.
“Let me help you.” She insists, grabbing the hammer of his hands in the same fashion he did only a few minutes ago.
He’s about to protest, but she gets to speak first.
“I want to spend some time with you.”
And that does it.
Erasing the hundreds of years of experience and determination, Jacob can only nod and surrender to her request, reduced to a quivering soul whose only possible course of action is to say “okay” and allow her work by his side without any further complaint.
The task at hand, suddenly loses all familiarity, with the rhythm of his movements completely disrupted, tampering with his speed.
Unlike before, he’s now very aware of everything he does and how he moves, with his mind completely captured by her presence there. More delicate, more careful, all he decides is questioned countless times before he does it, acquiring a new level of concentration that only flickers with the accidental touches of their hands or the short instants where their eyes meet.
They don’t speak much either, with him focused on taming his heart and she doing her best to bury her fatigue and suppress all her yawns.
“Were you able to rest, then?” Lara asks after a while, once she’s had the chance to process all his words.
“Yes.” He replies right away. “It’s been a while since I’ve…”
Jacob stops talking and censors himself but, for her, it isn’t hard to complete the rest of his sentence on her own.
“You’ve been having trouble sleeping?” Lara asks, not really expecting a reply.
She’s going to receive one, nonetheless.
With his hands now frozen, all work put aside since she formulated her question, Jacob sighs before letting his head fall backwards, looking at the sky for a moment.
When his eyes travel back to her, the hesitation is completely gone, leaving room to the simple truth.
“Only these past few years.” He admits, finding his courage quickly rewarded by her cheeks as they are invaded by rose gold shyness all across them.
“Oh…” Lara mutters before resuming the work at hand, quickly kneeling to keep on with the repair, looking for any kind of excuse to escape his gaze before it melts her heart. “I see.”
Despite being tempted by her reaction, Jacob just dedicates himself to enjoying the moment, and allows her to calm down, by pretending he doesn't know what she’s doing, joining her efforts to mend the fence.
The pen is nearly repaired in no time, thanks to Lara’s new focus of attention, and his disposition to switch his own too. Nevertheless, perhaps aggravated by the lack of conversation in the last few minutes, the tiredness finally gets to her, causing her hand to make a mistake because of it.
Lara’s eyes close only for a second, her eyelids going rogue in a desperate demand for some sleep, but that brief moment is more than enough to wake her up.
The hammer misses part of the nail and, instead of sinking into the wood, it gets propelled far away with unseen speed, getting lost in the distance in no time but not without leaving a mark of the mishap.
“Shit.” She says, abandoning the hammer on the ground to use the hand that was holding it to aid the other.
The time it takes her to inspect the wound, and determine that it isn’t serious, it’s the same that it takes Jacob to jump to her side of the fence and kneel so that he can examine it too.
“It’s nothing.” Lara reassures him, the pain quickly forgotten as she witnesses his reaction, deeply touched by the way he worries about her well-being.
“It’s not nothing.” Jacob helps her to get up with his eyes still fixed on the cut on her hand. “We should take care of this.”
If she intended to carry on and keep working, she never gets the chance to even try. Instead, they are walking toward his cabin before Lara is able to say anything else about the matter and, in just a few seconds, they are already seated on the inside, with him cleaning and disinfecting her wound.
She almost feels guilty, after seeing his reaction, as she used to be when she did something wild back when she was a child and Winston reprimanded her before curing her scratches after one of her many adventures through the gardens of the manor.
Jacob shares indeed a similar stern disposition as he takes care of her wound, a mix of concentration and worry that she witnessed so many times on her poor butler and some more on Roth, later on in her life.
So similar and yet so different.
“Stay still for a second, I’m almost done.” For the first time since they got there, Jacob’s eyes move to find hers, dedicating her a warm smile before grabbing some bandages and resuming his job.
Very different.
Lara nods and waits patiently, grateful that the eye contact didn’t last long enough for her to get all flushed like before, distracting herself by the way he is struggling a bit to tie everything in place.
“I’m usually better at this.” He adds with a soft laugh, doing his best to finish taking care of her wound, but having some difficulty controlling his hands with the same expertise he usually possesses.
“Something making you nervous?”
His first reply is his laughter, low and deep, quick and short, confirming her assumption to some degree.
“Perhaps.” He adds then, corroborating it even further.
“Too bad you can no longer whip out the magic powder and do a quick prayer to heal this.”
Shit.
It takes Jacob a few seconds to react to her comment, which makes her think that maybe she’s overstepped some kind of line with it, but then he smiles a little, finishing tying the bandages before leaning back.
“Too soon?” Lara inquires after trying her best to decipher his expression, afraid she may have said something harmful when it wasn’t her intention.
“No, no…” He places one hand on her knee before deepening his smile, letting her know he’s okay. “Sorry, I was concentrated on that final knot, that's all.”
She examines his face, not knowing if he’s telling the truth, now that she’s had the time to consider how much he lost after she destroyed the Divine Source.
“There isn’t any part of me that misses it, really.” He replies right away to her inner turmoil, almost as he could hear it. No hesitation, no doubt. There isn’t a trace of sadness or regret in any of his words. “Never asked for it, never wanted it…”
“Perhaps that’s why you got it…” She reflects out loud, with a more relaxed tone of voice, after hearing he’s not in pain because of this.
“Perhaps.” He agrees, after giving it a second thought. “Maybe the same happened to you.”
She’s about to say something before a yawn meddles with her concentration, covering her mouth and turning for a moment before she’s able to return to their conversation.
“Maybe…” She recovers her focus in record time, not wanting to leave him room of opportunity to worry about her sleep. “You’ll know better than me.”
There’s a tone of curiosity on that reply that Jacob isn’t fully able to pinpoint.
“Meaning?” He asks, not too sure of what her words are implying, but sensing there's more to it than meets the eye.
“Well… I don’t really know how you got it.”
“Ah…” It takes him a second to process this little fact, despite being as simple as it gets. “True.”
Jacob smiles at her as the duality of the situation starts to set in.
They care so much about each other, longed so much for each other, that sometimes it’s easy to forget how little they truly know about each other’s life. An oxymoron, where they feel splitted parts of the same soul but have traveled through different paths to be oblivious of what’s really happened to the other.
Despite all this, just as he’s told her the few times she’s asked him about what’s next in their relationship, this situation has a simple solution too, and the only thing left for them is to share things as they come and endure them together.
And so he does.
He tells her about how he found the source, how he got chosen. How he believed it was a message from heaven, a gift shared with him by God himself.
And how, of course, it wasn’t.
He sacrificed his life. Went to war. Lead the exodus to Siberia.
And what was it all for?
“It wasn’t until the fall of Kitesh that I realized there was nothing divine about the source.” Jacob stands up and takes a few steps to look through the window, unable to hold Lara’s gaze as he replays the worst mistakes of his life for her. “Already too late to undo my steps.”
There’s pain in him, there always is, but now she has a better understanding of its depths, and the mere knowledge of it astonishes her.
She stares at him for a moment, wondering how he managed to compose himself after all that, just to keep fighting in the name of higher purpose.
“And after everything you had to endure, you still believe in God?” There’s no judgment behind her words, but once they leave her mouth and she’s able to hear them, Lara feels the need to clarify them. “Which is fine, by the way, it’s just… In your position… I think my faith and beliefs might’ve been more than shaken.”
“They were… For a moment.” He concedes, turning to look at her. “But then, they became stronger.”
In the time it takes him to find the words to elaborate the thought even further, Lara stands up and walks to his side.
“Our first reaction when we fall is to blame Him but, truly, what I really lost was the faith in myself. For a while, at least.” He sighs, reliving some of the pain as he speaks. “But then, I reflected on my mistakes, on what I became in the name of a higher power. Everything I was supposed to fight against.”
For a moment there’s a flicker of fire in his words, and she thinks it will turn into anger at any moment, but it never does for, despite being so disappointed in his past self, Jacob made peace with himself way too long ago for this to develop into something harsher.
“It was my mistake, not His. I was the one who failed, not Him. And once I realized that, I was able to carry on with his work. I concentrated on mending my errors and being the leader my people deserved instead of assuming I was His voice.”
“I see.” Lara feels relieved that his struggles were able to dock at a safe port, but there’s a hint of sadness in her voice that doesn’t escape Jacob’s notice.
“What’s wrong?”
“I… Am truly glad, really.” She stumbles into the words. “Envious, almost, knowing how much peace your beliefs must give you in dire times…”
“But?”
“But… I do not share them.”
“I see…” He waits patiently, expectant of what she’s about to say.
She takes a few steps away from him in an attempt to calm down, getting closer to the window, fearful for what she must ask next.
“Is that a problem?”
“Why would it be?”
Lara lets out an exasperated laugh as he witnesses Jacob’s graceful reply to her question.
“Because it usually is.” She admits, ready to attack this unsolved question before it becomes a true problem. “I don’t know what I believe in, Jacob. I’ve seen so much that I cannot explain, and that no religion can explain either.”
There’s a moment of silence, with her mind trying to choose the right words to express herself, in which Lara clears her eyes with her fingers, in a futile attempt to erase the fatigue from them before she resumes her speech.
“You’re a milenia older than me, it would be normal if you had a problem with that.”
He’s about to interrupt but she doesn't let him.
“I’ve been reading about it, in my spare time… To inform myself.” She lies as a habit, but quickly corrects herself. “So I can get to know you better… But I know I’ll never be where you are. We’ll always be different in that regard… With different expectations too.”
Jacob senses a new worry there, something in the tone of her voice, in the way she enunciates those last few words, clinging to them almost with fear of what they may entail.
He is right.
“Physical contact, boundaries, marriage… Kids. They may be more important to you than they’re to me.” Lara sighs, slightly tormented by most of these concepts. “Are you willing to sacrifice yourself because of me?”
She directs her vision to look at the valley, lost for a moment in her own preoccupations. But not for long.
Jacob closes the distance between them before doing the same with the window, instantly capturing her attention thanks to the gesture with the sudden disappearance of their main source of light.
“I do not intend to sacrifice anything, or for you to do so in my place.”
The room is now darker, but not to completion, still illuminated by the light that seeps through the cracks and seams of the wood cabin. Nevertheless, this change causes Lara to feel safer, at ease, making the moment more intimate along with his speech.
“And you are right, we’re different, and we’ll have to find common ground for many things as problems arise.”
Jacob moves his hand, wrapping his finger around her wrist before softly pulling from her to bring her closer, his voice turning slowly into a whisper, as if his words are afraid to disturb the peace floating on the air with the new found dimness.
“As for your worries as of now, I can tell you this: I do not care if you don’t believe in God, and I do not care about marriage.”
He takes a step forward, leaving no room left between them. His free hand moves to her neck, his thumb caresses her chin for a few seconds before finding a new distraction in her hair.
Her heartbeat spikes as he lowers his head a little, resting his forehead on top of hers, eyes closed for a few seconds, allowing himself to enjoy this intimate moment before he seals his whole argument.
“All I care about: is you.”
His words fill the room as well as her heart, vanishing all fears she may have harboured in it by pushing them away.
“I…”
The strength of his grip tightens, one hand still on her wrist, the other on the side of her neck once again, exercising much more pressure than he should, unable to control the depth of his hold.
It doesn’t harm her, however, and what would crumble most people quickly becomes a comfort for her, a force that keeps her safe and grounded, that keeps her there.
And there’s no other place she would rather be than there.
Jacob backs a little, but his hold still remains, taking his time to meet her eyes before continuing.
“Whatever difference may come between us I will tell you, I swear.” An undeniable truth is casted by his words as he says this, no hint of empty promise nor white lies found in them. “And no matter what, we’ll find a solution together, okay?”
That’s all she needed to hear.
“Okay.”
Her voice is near to ethereal, as enchanted and trapped as she is by both his words and his body, unable to talk any higher with endless feeling striking her heart with such strength that said pressure completely ridicules the one of his grip. The short distance left between them narrows even further, with him getting closer at an excruciatingly slow pace, and for a moment there, she thinks she won’t be able to withstand it.
Her heart pounds like a gong inside her chest, sending a vibrating wave that expands through her body with every of its beats, each one stronger than the previous one. By the time their lips are about to meet, she feels her soul has been compressed into an atom by the accumulated pressure of her feelings.
His hand travels slowly throughout her neck, caressing it on its way to cup her face.
A smile, a sigh, a moment on the edge of the abyss. And the pressure dies.
If there was a kiss, to end all kisses, it would probably be this one.
Soft and delicate, tender, unhurried.
Her soul goes limp, her mind completely quiet, all around her disappears to leave her in an endless void in space and time, only able to stand there thanks to his hold.
Eternity spent in one short delicate kiss.
The pressure returns the moment their lips break apart, affecting both of them this time around. His grip, in consequence, gets even stronger, sinking into her skin with all its might.
Lara cannot seem to care. Doesn’t feel any pain, doesn’t even realize it will leave a mark of its presence in her. The only thing she can feel is the fear of his hold immediately fading away.
But it doesn’t.
Their mouths meet again. And yet again, another tender kiss, not as much as the first one, but still enchanting, ethereal, almost a prayer shared between their souls.
So it is the one that follows it. And the next one.
Each of them a bit faster, but all of them containing way too many feelings to allow them to focus on anything else.
With every kiss, the pressure lowers, melting into their exchange little by little, filling their hearts instead of striking against them. So does his hold, getting softer and relaxing, as the fear of having her sleep through his fingers gets battled slowly but surely by the presence of her lips against his own.
On the last one Lara allows herself to part them with her tongue, in search of his, tangling into one for a while before the now gone pressure starts to arise somewhere else and she decides to retrete while she’s still able to do so.
This time around, there are no words needed to know what the other is feeling.
She huffs, trying to calm herself, he smiles, happy and content, and a bit amused by her reaction.
He’s right. Lara thinks to herself, as her breathing goes back to its normal rhythm pattern, seeing that, what yesterday was a problem, has turned today into something beautiful, and knowing now his preferred pace when it comes to engage in a physical relationship, allows her to enjoy their moment together without worrying she’ll take it too far too soon, taking the time to let their touches flourish naturally on it own. If we could find common ground in that, we’ll do the same about this too.
Lara smiles back at him, able to do so now that her breathing is almost back to normal.
We can do the same with everything. Find common ground.
The moment seems too sweet to end it, so they allow it to feel the room for a few more seconds.
It’ll be alright.
One last time.
We’ll be alright.
And then it ends.
Jacob scratches the back of his head and laughs a little, letting the tense atmosphere dissolve gradually with his words.
“Look at me, you are bleeding and here I am, letting you prompt me into a theological discourse.”
A few of her giggles fill the air, gifting him a warm smile before formulating a reply to his words.
“You call that bleeding?” Before he has the time to roll his eyes she takes a step backwards, untucking part of her t-shirt mid motion with her good hand. “This is nothing, look…”
Lara raises the fabric to make her point, exposing most of her midriff before lowering her trousers a bit to show him a proper example of what real wound is.
If there is even an instant where Jacob’s body is tempted to get flustered by the sight of her abs, it gets completely eradicated the moment he sees what she’s trying to show him.
The scar runs from her stomach to her hip, on her left side, twisting in itself more than it should, a sign that it reopened many times before it had the chance to fully heal.
There was a metal rod on the ground.
The memory of how she told that to the village the previous night plays now in his head, remembering how she explained with detail how the wound was originally created.
I had never felt such pain in my entire life.
His hand moves on its own to trace the scar but he stops it before it gets there, his eyes fixed on it too, unable to go somewhere else.
“It’s okay.” She reassures Jacob, allowing him to inspect it even further.
His fingers trail the wound with care, mapping every little indent with a light touch, before taking its time to caress the parts that were burned.
“The plane…” He whispers to himself, and she nods, despite the fact he’s not able to see it, confirming he’s now touching the aftermath of the impromptu cauterization she had to realize in it with a lighter and one of her arrows.
He sighs, but forces himself to talk, not wanting to bother her with his worries.
“Still hurts?”
There’s a moment of hesitation on her part.
“Sometimes.” Simple, unadulterated truth. Lara wants to say more, but deems it’s enough for now, more interested to see what he will say than to deepen into her own past.
And she has not misplaced her expectations.
After another sigh, more subtle, more painful, Jacob does the unthinkable, and kneels before her.
Lara won’t deny she has pictured similar scenes during the past few years, when the night was at its darkest and the temperature at its lowest, but she could’ve never imagined that action to star in such a sweet and chaste moment.
With his hands now resting on her hips, Jacob leans closer to the scar and presses his lips to it, nuzzling the surrounding area with care before leaving a trail of soft kisses, following the length of the old wound as he traces it throughout her body.
Hypnotized feels short to explain Lara’s reaction to this moment, feeling his love radiating through her skin every time he meets it with his lips and giggling softly as he reaches the end of her scar.
“Tickles…” She explains once his eyes set on her.
“I see.” Jacob smiles too and, as his mind stores that information for future use, he gets up on his feet, glad to have followed his instinct without second guessing it for once. “Sorry.”
His eyes land lovingly on her as she tucks her t-shirt back into place, and are there to welcome her own once the action it's over. She cannot permit herself to get lost in them right now, and so, the necessity to bring the enchanting moment to an end starts to brew inside of her.
“We should probably goahhhhh…”
Their moment meets its end, indeed.
Lara’s yawn interrupts her mid sentence once again, and once again he reacts with frustration. This time around, however, he’s faster than her and, unable to keep his feelings about the subject buried inside of him anymore, Jacob takes this opportunity to share them.
“You should’ve rested more.” He states, desperate for her to take better care of herself.
“I wanted to help.” She lies.
“Lara…” He groans and turns, frustrated, both proud and mad at her actions, understanding of them, but wounded at the same time.
After a moment looking up, he decides to take a few steps, open the window, perhaps, so he can do something to distract himself.
He never gets to it.
Jacob takes the first step, and just like that, Lara’s hand moves on its own, grabbing his arm to stop him from leaving her side.
The expression on her face, eyes set on the ground as she musters the courage for what she’s about to do, is enough to make him forget all of his feelings, all frustration casted aside as he leaves her all the time she need to act, fully aware there’s nothing more he can do but wait for her to speak.
And so she does.
“That was a lie, sorry.” The delivery is quite dry, with a few hints of regret mixed with it, but no one who didn’t know her would think too much of her apology. Jacob, on the other side, is fully aware he’s witnessing a rare miracle, staring at her with care as her feelings paint her expression little by little.
Sorrow, desperation, regret, fear, relief. An endless stream of emotions start to invade her and, fully aware of it, he turns back to her and steps closer, resting his hands on her shoulders, waiting there with patience, no further reaction, until their eyes are able to connect.
“What’s wrong?” His voice wants to tremble, but he forces it into submission: she’s his main priority right now.
She is aware of it too.
Lara stares at him, smiles, and then breaks.
A single tear falls. Unhurried. Contrasting against the tired grin painted on her face.
His soul sinks inside his body, twisting and shattering him from the inside and tearing him apart, but Jacob doesn’t move, remaining still with her at the center of own her abyss until she’s ready to open up to him.
The torture doesn’t last for long.
“Couldn’t fall asleep.” She finally explains.
Her smile deepens, and so does the sorrow, a harrowing view that strikes Jacob with enough strength to rob him of all of his senses, way too hurt by her pain to be able to comfort her right away.
“Sorry, don’t mind me…” She sniffs the tear away and takes a second, her old defense mechanisms falling back into place. “I’m just tired.”
He won’t allow it.
“Nightmares?”
After a moment of hesitation, she decides she won’t either.
“Yes.”
“Since when?”
She shrugs her shoulders, finally surrendering to the truth, unable to pinpoint which of the thousand of struggles, deaths and trials was the one to unleash this torture that she’s been suffering for years. Nevertheless, she understands what he’s asking.
She knows what answering him will lead to.
Knows it is the time.
And so, she tells him.
“It’s been worse lately…”
“Lara…” It’s all he says before he hugs her.
Jacob’s body moves on its own and surrounds her, desperate to protect her from everything that torments her and not knowing what else to do.
The sudden embrace surprises her for a second, but she immediately leans into it, feeling some of her horrors fading away as Jacob starts to take them as his own, tears falling now through his face too once he lets the tension gathered in his body flow freely.
“It’s okay…” He pats her head gently with one hand, the other bringing her even closer, almost as if his body is trying to fit her inside his chest so that he can shelter her from her pain. “You’re safe… You’re here.”
“You’re here.” She echoes, her voice as faint as it gets, with the remnant tears starting to fade away with the thought of it.
“I’m here…” Jacob reassures her, softly breaking the embrace to look directly at her so he can reiterate his statement. “I’m here.”
She smiles, for a moment, and then, he breaks.
“Perhaps, I should’ve been there too.”
“No.”
She won’t allow it. She cannot allow it.
Too many people have suffered because of her, Jacob won’t be one of them.
Not anymore.
With all her sorrow put now on hold, Lara cuts his line of thought before it's able to develop into something harmful.
“You were needed here.”
“You needed me too…” He attempts to say, but it’s pointless to argue.
“I’ll always need you…” She states, reassuring him. “But even with you there, I would’ve been restless nonetheless. Believe me.”
Lara takes Jacob’s hand to pull from him a little, closing any gap left between them.
“It was better this way.” She insists before planting a soft kiss on his cheek. “I could’ve never forgiven myself if anything happened to you.”
Their eyes meet, and Jacob can only find truth in hers. Taking some peace in that, he’s almost ready to concede.
Lara speaks again, and that does it.
“No, it’s not your fault… It’s the paths I had to take, the ones that keep me up at night.” She manages to form a faint smile, but it doesn’t hold too long. “You said it yesterday, the price of our scars… Is sometimes too high.”
“It always is.” He mirrors her own words too, not even thinking about it, flowing through his mouth as they did though hers. “But, with time, they’ll fade enough to let you live with them.”
Despite her residual sorrow, Lara’s smile is true this time, finding comfort in not being alone in all this.
“That’s the plan…”
She takes a deep breath, ready for what she must do next.
It is time.
Jacob plants a peck on her forehead, waits a second, and then asks.
“Tell me about them.”
And so she does.
-----------------------------------------
This one got intense lol
Have to admit, that scene with Jacob kneeling to kiss the scar she gets at the begining of TR1 is uffff *chef's kiss*, cannot believe that came form me lol
Anyways... Just wanted to tell you this fandom is awesome and I love you guys. Never thought my stupid jalara fic would become the most popular thing here, I'm so glad to see so many people enjoying this story and all my madness.
Hope you liked this chapter too.
Just a little preview ~*look away if you don't want to see a spoiler*~ but I'm quite tempted to start chapter 11 with: A HUMAN SACRIFICE!!!! YOU OFFERED TO BE A HUMAN SACRIFICE!!!
aksjhdfñkahsdñkfjañskdjh *I'm dying*
That's all, I guess ehehehehe
love you, really
~~tea
