Chapter Text
An arrow shot past Lara’s cheek, slicing the surface of her skin. Hissing curses, she dove behind a pillar, narrowly avoiding a second to the arm. By some miracle, that one didn’t catch flesh.
But Unuratu –
She huffed a breath, hauling the shotgun on her back into her hands’ steady hold. Careful, quick fingers reloaded it; she was focused entirely on this process, for it moved her mind to instinct over sporadic thought. Instinct, she believed, was always better a mode of survival to snap into. If you thought too much in a situation such as this, you died.
She could only hope, pray Unuratu wasn’t –
A cult member came hurtling around the corner, a makeshift axe raised and, then, swinging down to smash through her skull. A shell blasted through his stomach, repelling him backwards with a forceful blow, and she herself was springing back to avoid the freed axe.
Landing hard on one arm, scraping her elbow on centuries-old stone, Lara lifted her shotgun and fired again at an approaching archer. The shell went through his throat. As he gasped, gurgled and clutched at the helpless situation beneath his chin, she hit a third cultist in the forearm – he screamed.
Lucky shot, she thought, grimacing, I barely saw him coming.
Out of her peripheral vision, she caught a fourth. In the same instant, she’d aimed and fired. As he joined his fellowman in cries of anguish, she slung the shotgun’s strap over her head and rolled onto her toes and hands, pushing up into a stand.
“(Come here),” yelled one of the last two (she’d made quick on counting the bastards, and there were six) active hostiles, “(demon)!”
“(Demon)?” She turned to him and pulled her pistol – he, despite the glaring red warning sign, continued to charge. “(Is that the best you can come up with?)”
His response a feral yell, she went for a headshot. That was before she saw his friend hoping to get a kill from afar. Shifting her strategy in seconds, with perfect timing, Lara ducked, arrow whistling overhead, and shot the charging cultist in both kneecaps. When he collapsed, she twisted at a slight angle to shoot at the would-be sniper. Purely warning shots, of course. There was no way she’d hit him at this distance.
He didn’t seem to consider that, though, doing the one thing she’d always seen in movies but never in reality: run. Declaring her a cursed so-and-so, he turned and fled. She wondered what Rourke would say about that.
Rourke.
Unuratu.
Sheathing her pistol, Lara sprinted across stone and leapt over water, very narrowly making the landing on the island Unuratu had been shot upon. Skidding to her knees, Lara cringed at the sight of Paititi’s leader, eyes closed and mouth agape.
She should have stayed with her.
But she would have died, too –
No, Unuratu wasn’t dead. She refused to believe it, beginning to perform CPR. Please, she prayed, and she didn’t pray often, please, God, be alive.
But there was nothing, nothing, she wasn’t responding to Lara’s action at all. The anxiety she’d been repressing was crawling, faster, to the surface. She tried again – compress the chest, breathe into the mouth – and again – compress, breathe – and once more. Compress, breathe, compress.
“Breathe, dammit!” she begged, her voice a pained whisper, “Please, Unuratu – come back to me.”
The last thing she wanted to hear in that moment was Etzli’s voice, but it was his she heard shouting for his mother – Jonah’s and Q’orianka’s, too. Taking a deep breath, Lara willed her fear away for one last try. The leader before her lay statuesque.
She compressed her chest, once, twice, three times. She paused for just a moment, and then, inhaling deep again, put her mouth on Unuratu’s.
With strain, Unuratu inhaled – and exhaled coughing, choking up her blood. Lara jolted, moving aside as Etzli and Paititi soldiers approached. Briskly, the soldiers rose Unuratu’s body between them and followed Q’orianka west towards a temple. Jonah strayed, mouth opening and closing, gaze locked in his friend’s. Etzli spoke first.
“What happened to my mother?” the young prince demanded, tears and rage in his eyes. Lara knew that look all too well. God knows how many times she’d seen it in her reflection.
“I’m sorry, Etzli,” and she meant it more than he knew, lashing out at herself on the inside, “I should’ve protected her - we were attacked by Amaru’s men and your mother was shot.”
“With an arrow?”
“No, a bullet. He was one of the –”
Etzli was turning on his heels and racing to the temple before she finished. She decided not to waste her breath on information Jonah was already partial to.
“Was it that guy - Rourke?” His question, swift to break the silence, affirmed her decision.
Nodding, Lara looked to the stone at her feet. “I could’ve done something to stop it, Jonah. I should’ve seen Rourke coming -”
“That’s all ‘if’s’, Lara.” She looked up at him. He smiled a little, as best he could. “We’ve gotta work with ‘now’s’, right, little bird?”
She hadn’t heard that nickname in a long time. She was glad to hear it now. Jonah always knew how to bring her around; he was her anchor after Sam –
No. She couldn’t afford to think about Sam given what was currently happening. Lifting her head to properly meet his eyes, she spoke firm. “I need to find Rourke. Kill him before he hurts anyone else.”
She didn’t expect Jonah to disagree, which was what he proceeded to do. “I don’t know. Don’t you think we’re better regrouping, rethinking our strategy now Unuratu’s…?”
“Matters’ll get worse the longer he’s allowed to stomp around here.” Lara argued, “You know that.”
“Yeah,” Jonah responded, “but I also know we’ve got an army on our side. And I don’t mean just you.”
She scoffed a laugh, bowing her head. Now was not the time for humour, yet Jonah made her smile like it was an ordinary day. She supposed, however, at this point on their journey, scenes of blood, screaming and bullet wounds did comprise a daily routine. “Jonah – come on. You know the last thing I want is a war.”
“They want it.” He definitely wasn’t backing down any time soon. “And hey, Dominguez’s worshippers aren’t the only hostiles around here. We’ve got zombies to fight, too. We could use the extra arms.”
Lara sighed. “Okay. Let’s go join the others. At the very least, we should have some form of strategy in case Rourke tries to take Paititi.”
“From Dominguez -?”
“He’s the sort of arrogant bastard who’d try it.” She started towards the temple, he, quickly falling into step beside her. Her heart pulsed, synchronised with her footsteps and slightly laboured breath; in her head, she was calm, controlled; her body knew different, slowly starting to rage against her.
Jonah, noticing the uneven pace of and in his friend, grabbed her hand short of heading through the temple’s opening, intricately-carved stone all around them. “Hey. What’s up?”
Her gaze narrowed, but loosened a couple seconds later as she heard the breathiness of her voice, “What d’you mean?”
Initially, he looked unsure how to proceed – awkward, even. “It’s just – never mind.” He attempted an assuring smile to clear the tension. “We shouldn’t be worrying about us.”
But Lara did not resume walking. “Jonah, if you’re worried about me, you should tell me why.” Feeling tension clog the air between them, she sighed a half-choked sound, emotions from battle and the situation at-hand clashing in her throat. With the slightest inclination of a smile, she shrugged, jerking her arms a little rather than opening them as intended. She started, too, quieter than she’d wanted, “Let’s –”
He hadn’t heard her start. “I know that look in your eyes.” Firmness and curiosity reflected in his. “I remember it in Yamatai –” and he hesitated, so she, despite her mind speaking a hard ‘no, no, no’, nodded, acting inquisitive when she’d honestly a good idea of what he was about to say – “when you carried Sam down the beach, and…”
“You’re seeing things.” She hated what she was saying but, at the same time, she didn’t want to have this conversation with him. She didn’t want to have this conversation – with anyone – period.
“Oh, no. You don’t get to have this your way, remember?” He took her arm as she turned away and locked her gaze. “We’re in this together, Lara. If I tell you what’s on my mind, you should do the same.”
She struggled with her words until they burst out. “I don’t know, Jonah -!” A tremble settling in her fingers, she broke their gaze. “I don’t know.”
In her peripheral vision, she saw his posture soften as his voice did. Her heart ached; it wasn’t that she didn’t trust him with his feelings (she definitely did - God, how many times had she fallen on his shoulder when shit spiralled?), it was that his words had opened old wounds. The slightest jab to them was fatal, regardless of whether harm was intended or not.
It had barely been a year –
“Alright,” his voice vanquished a thought otherwise unstoppable, and she blinked back the tears in her eyes, “it’s just – what I wanted to say was, it’s not all on you – to protect other people. Like I said, we’ve got the people on our side,” she nodded, slowly raising her eyes to his again, which made his smile a little more relaxed, “and me, you know – your best backup.”
“My only backup.” she said, quiet but, audible enough for him to hear clearly. Swallowing the _ growing in her throat, she raised her line of sight to his again, trying a smile. His mirrored expression made it stay. “Ever, by the way.”
“I hear you,” he rested a hand on her shoulder, “loud and clear.”
Placing a hand over his, she let the calm wash over her.
They began walking. Lara couldn’t see far inside the temple, hell, without its torches hanging off either wall, she wouldn’t have been able to see anything. As she squinted, trying – hoping – to see more than the scurrying, little creature or plant prying through stone, she felt nerves creep on her once more. And they would continue to rise every time something went south, no matter how much therapy she had, no matter how much Jonah made her laugh. Maybe relaxing was the mistake. But she was alert, almost always to the point of paranoia, the rest of – ninety-percent of – the time.
Maybe this was just the way her life was now. A constant fuck up, karma for sins past and present.
But Unuratu was fine. She’d survived.
This time –
“So – you got a crush on the queen of Paititi?”
It took her a moment to process what he’d said. When she had, she didn’t think her eyes could roll back much further. “Oh, so we’re gonna joke about it now?”
“Mm – yep.” Lara need not look. She could feel the shit-eating grin on his face.
The slight semblance of a grin tickled her cheek. “Thanks.”
“Hey, I’m just glad it’s true and I don’t look like an idiot.”
“That’s how I felt when I asked about you and Abby.”
“You know about me -?” It was then he realised she hadn’t. “I walked right through the door, didn’t I?”
“Right through it. When it was shut. And locked.”
“Of course –”
“Bolted several times, actually.”
At the look on his face, half-resembling a goldfish, other half, a mildly irritated man, she snorted. Seconds dissolved the delightful expression into a grin from ear to ear.
“I’ll take that as a compliment.”
“Good.”
Looking ahead, it appeared this path was endless. She wouldn’t mind walking long-distance, though, given Jonah was beside her.
Etzli burst from the shadows. “Lara, Jonah,” he was breathless; both named broke into a sprint, “come – our enemy has brought the promised army to Paititi.”