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There’s a peaceful light in Jonah’s eyes when he says he loves his life, that he loves the things and the people in his life. There’s an ache in Lara’s chest, and if she was anyone else, she would say something.
She would lean forward, take Jonah’s dear, beloved face in her hands, and… do something. Something that she can’t even think of for fear of slipping. It’s okay, though. It’s okay.
Because Jonah is here, and he chooses to stick with her even after all the hell she put him through. He is brave, and loyal, and one of the best people Lara has ever met. And he most definitely, definitely , deserves better than the broken, twisted little thing that Lara is.
Lara is under no illusion that she has brought anything but pain and suffering on the people around her. She dives headfirst into impossible situations, convinced she’s doing the right thing, only to come out the other side, blinking the dust from her eyes to see the utter carnage she caused. The path behind her is littered with corpses and destruction and, really, she should have let Jonah go long ago.
This big, gentle man that feels more like home than Croft Manor ever did or could, deserves more than the chaos that is strewn throughout Lara’s life.
This is the last time, she thinks, watching as Jonah rolls out his bedroll, shifting their few belongings around. This is the last time. After this, she’ll let him go. She’ll push him away, tell him to go, whatever it takes… after this. Just this one more time, she’ll keep him. Just this one more time, she’ll hold him close, bask in his warmth one last time. Just this one last time.
Lara turns around to unroll her own bedroll, only to discover that, of course, she does not have one. Of course not. She’d only managed to salvage her weapons and gear, giving no thought for inevitably coming to rest for the night. No matter, she’d slept on the hard ground countless times in the past, one more night wouldn’t do any more damage to her spine than there already was.
There’s a movement to her right and she looks over to see Jonah shuffling to the side, beckoning her closer with a soft smile. And, oh, god help her, she knows she shouldn’t, knows it would only do more harm to her already fragile heart, but Lara is nothing if not self-destructive, so with a whispered thanks she slides in next to him, relishes the arm slung around her middle, the way she feels completely covered and concealed from the world, protected.
She’ll let him go after this, promise. Just this one more time, just this final race to the finish line. Just this one more time.
---
Arriving in Kuwaq Yaku is a relief. It’s nice, not having to worry about the rustle at your back or plummeting to your death because of a miscalculated jump. It’s nice to see human, though wary faces. It’s nice to meet a smiling, helpful Abigail, or Abby. It’s… fine, to see the immediate interest Jonah and Abby take in one another. It’s fine when Lara sees the interested glint in Abby’s eyes, the barely there blush on Jonah’s cheeks. It’s fine, because Lara is well aware of the deficits carved onto her skin, her soul, that could never hope to be a match to Jonah.
Jonah looks adorably confused when Lara tells him to stay, extricating herself from the situation with as much grace as her stiff British upbringing had instilled in her. (Which, after everything, wasn’t all that much.) She stays close, for a minute or two, making idle conversation with the people around them, every enthusiastic word exchanged between Jonah and Abby a nail in her heart. She stays, until she is sure she made the right choice, that at least Jonah will have something to return to when Lara inevitably gets herself killed, and then she’s off.
There’s a remarkable number of nooks and crannies to explore in the small village, monoliths and ancient tablets and artifacts galore, even an old crypt that’s rife with traps that keep Lara on her toes. It makes her blood sing and her mind sharpen and, really, this is the whole reason she’s in this mess. She knows full well the situations she throws herself into are dangerous, that normal humans wouldn’t be so cavalier with their own skin. But that feeling , that thrill of discovery and wonder, the ache of her muscles as she gazes upon long-forgotten ruins, it’s intoxicating . She craves it enough that she willingly throws herself into these situations, just to feel it again.
Another mark against her, another reason for Jonah to get as far away from her as possible.
She usually has good reason. She’s trying to save the world, this time. She’s trying to save the world from the apocalypse she had begun, from the destruction she had caused in a tiny village that didn’t deserve to get drawn into all this mess.
When she finds the temple, she radios Jonah, excited and wide-eyed. Abby’s not with him, and Lara is ashamed of the rush of smug satisfaction that runs through her. She had Jonah first, he’s hers first, and Lara will use that advantage until it is tired out, until is has no legs to stand on, for that’s one of the only things she has.
Of course,that all lasts about ten minutes before Abby’s on the radio, berating Lara about destroying the mural in the old temple, which, yes, Lara did do that, sorry, yes, she’ll try not to do it again.
Rejoining them again, afterwards, seeing the pretty picture they make together, just puts another tear in Lara’s heart, but it’s fine, because they have a world to save, and Lara’s heart was never that important anyway.
---
Hearing Rourke’s voice over her radio chills Lara to the bone. He’s been with them, all the way, every step. He’s been with them and--
There’s no time for that. The world is about to end, and although Lara is intimately aware of how selfish and self-absorbed it sounds, she’s the only one that can save it. Unuratu is dead, Etzli has entrusted her with finding the box, with saving them all, and she has to do it. She has to. She cannot let another person die for her mistakes, for her recklessness. She thinks that, after everything, really would be the last straw.
Hearing Jonah’s voice over the radio is a shock wave of relief, before being immediately replaced by a dizzying sense of fear, as she desperately tries to convey that this channel is not safe, that they know where he is now . Thankfully, because this is Jonah, and because he’s the best man alive ever, he understands, and is gone, and Lara has to trust, despite the tight ring of fear around her throat, that he’s going to be okay.
He’s a big boy, he can take care of himself.
So she pushes, and pushes, and pushes and--
And then Rourke’s oily voice sounds over the radio and--
And the words he says makes sense, sounds bell clear in Lara’s head but--
But what he’s saying is just, it’s clearly impossible, it cannot be, there has to be a mistake--
And then she hears the gleeful tone to his voice, feels his pleasure at her shock, and--
And something in Lara snaps.
Now, Lara has come a far way from the scared, innocent girl that landed on the shores of Yamatai, the girl who wept after the first time she killed a man, even if she then had to kill five other men after that. She can fight with a cold, clinical type of detachment now, is able to isolate her feelings and let her body take care of the job that needs doing. She’s not altogether proud of that capability, and she doesn’t take any pleasure in the act of killing, but she is efficient and capable, and there’s a quiet, twisted type of pride to be found in that.
She doesn’t kill unnecessarily. She tries not to, anyway.
But Rourke said--
He said that--
He said --
He said that he had killed Jonah.
(But she knows, deep down, that that had been her.)
He had killed Jonah, and now nothing and no one will stop Lara from killing every. Single. Fucking. Person. In her way. She is a force to be reckoned with, and Rourke will feel her wrath.
Lara can, quite honestly, not exactly recall what happened after that. She knows that she killed people. A lot of people. She knows that she got shot at, that a few hit, but she didn’t feel the pain. She knows that, when she blinked herself out of the stupor of killing, becoming aware of the fire and corpses around her, the gaping hole in her chest she had been frantically stuffing with anger let itself be known, and she could. Not. Breathe.
It’s hard enough to keep standing after a normal fight, but this had not been a normal fight, and Lara swears she can feel her heart actually bleeding , and so there’s nothing she can do but sink to her knees, dragging in breath after laboured breath, trying to convince herself that there is a point to getting up, to getting up and going on, even if Jonah is--- Even if he’s---
“Lara?”
It feels like seeing a ghost, Jonah appearing from the smoke and flames, that achingly familiar frown of worry etched into his beloved brow. It’s his voice. It’s him, and Lara is still trying to reconcile the living, breathing Jonah (hesalivehesalive hesalive ) in front of her to Rourke’s voice gleefully informing her of his death, when Jonah is dragging her upwards.
“Lara, what are you doing? We have to get out of here!”
Lara coughs, and gasps, and gets out, hopelessly breathy and filled with so much emotion she would feel embarrassed if she could think clearly, “Jonah.”
His frown deepens. “Lara? Come on, we need to get to the box--”
“ Jonah .” This time, his name is more like a sob, and she is in his arms, clutching at him, every part of him that she can reach, his head, his arms, his shoulders. He is here, and alive, and warm and alive and alive and alive .
It takes a moment for Lara to remember where she is, who they are, why she cannot have her hands encircling Jonah’s face and be so close to him. It takes a moment, and only a moment, and only because Jonah’s arm comes up around her waist, gently, oh, oh so gently, and he asks, softly, “Lara?”
Lara does not know what he is asking. She doesn’t know, and she jumps away, and forces herself to think of the problem at hand, and not about the soft question in Jonah’s eyes, because if she did her heart would try and hope, and she already knows how hope feels when it dies.
There’s no time to linger on it anyway, not after Jonah talks some sense into her, pulls her out of her self-deprecating spiral and reminds her that she has a job to do, a responsibility, that she had made a promise . She has a job to do, and this is no time for crises of the self.
---
It’s strange, to have a warrior queen, a figurehead of a goddess, staring at her, handing her a mask, asking that she fulfills the role that Unuratu was meant to fill. It’s strange, fighting alongside something that resembles a human woman in form, but in mannerisms and speech seems like something utterly removed from the world Lara lives in.
It’s strange, but also not. Lara has seen some strange things in her short life, and while the Crimson Fire and the Yaaxi are quite strange, they are not the strangest, and they are strong allies, which makes up for a lot. And, running and jumping and fighting her way towards Dominguez, Lara is grateful for the presence of the Yaaxi in the roaring flame and heat, the patter of gunfire and buzz of helicopters.
Lara doesn’t usually enjoy killing, she really doesn’t. But Rourke is a special case. He seems half-mad when Lara finds him, yelling and screaming and laughing in the midst of fire and death, bullets raining from his machine gun until the Yaaxi overrun him. She gives herself a second of pleasure, of dark, guilty satisfaction when she sees him disappear underneath the grasping hands and sharpened weapons. Not many people deserve their deaths, but this one, this one he deserved. Lara is sure of it.
It’s a hard fight to the end. Lara feels almost sorry for Dominguez, at the end. He did have good intentions, at the beginning. She can see it, see it in the way she herself had good intentions when she took the dagger, trying to keep it out of Trinity’s hands and thereby setting in motion the apocalypse. He asks her to help his people, as he dies, the bright light of Kukulkan shifting to Lara, and of course she promises. That’s the whole point of all of this, isn’t it? That’s the whole point.
Crimson Fire is there, of course she is, but it’s only when she gestures at the altar in front of her that Lara understands.
Ah. Of course.
Unuratu was prepared to make the ultimate sacrifice for her people, a sacrifice that had only been necessary because of what Lara set in motion. It’s only right that Lara sacrifice herself to make up for what she had done in her short life.
It’s not like she set out to die, not this time. She wanted to save people and, by doing this, by completing the ritual, she is . Finally, an action of hers will save thousands, instead of condemning them.
So she lays down, the stone under her surprisingly cool given all the fire and heat surrounding them. She can still hear the helicopters, can still see the flickering orange flames dancing around their little island of calm, but it’s as if she processes all of it through a thin pane of glass, perfectly clear, but apart from her. Separated from her reality. The only clear, real thing Lara can see is the Crimson Fire, dagger in hand, staring at her with those inscrutable eyes.
For a second, Lara wishes she’d told him. It’s a selfish thought, since the knowledge could only bring him pain once she dies, but she wishes she had told him that she loved him. Not for herself, not really. Not exactly. It’s just that she wants him to know how much he is loved, what a wonderful, amazing human being he is, and how much he deserves. She wants him to know that she appreciates every single thing he does and did for her, and most of all that he stayed. That he stayed and kept staying and is still staying.
There a frantic yelling in her ear, and Lara thinks she recognises Jonah’s voice, and this hurts her, so she reaches up to turn off the little transmitter. She looks up to where she thinks the helicopter with Jonah in is, and although there’s no way he can see her, she smiles. This is good. This is a good way to die, in the place of hundreds of lives. This is a good way to die and, and maybe, she thinks, her parents would be proud of her. For putting other people first.
She looks at the Crimson Fire, and nods. She is ready.
She closes her eyes as the Crimson Fire lifts the dagger in the air, pointing down at her chest, and feels calm for the first time in a long, long time.
---
The first thing Lara is aware of, at first, is a bone-deep ache that radiates through her, pulsing, hot and bright and excruciating . She thinks it would be enough to make her black out but, somehow, she is still aware of her surroundings, of a low hum all around her, the heavy smell of medicinal herbs hanging in the air, and of her hands trapped together tightly in a grip, pushed against a forehead.
The pain is still there, still echoing through her body, still making Lara want to curl up in a little ball and scream, but with the added awareness of her surroundings comes the understanding that she shouldn’t. That the person whispering softly against her hands is more important than any expression of pain she could make. It takes a small eternity to open her eyes, her eyelids feeling heavier than entire brick pillars she had lifted before, but after about 30 seconds (she was counting), she manages to blink her way into sight, blurry at first, then solidifying into a dark hut. There’s a fire with a pot over it just outside the entrance to hut, and Lara understands that’s where the scent is coming from. The design of the hut seems familiar, and she recognises that she must be back in Paititi.
All of this is secondary, instinctual observations, born from a lifetime of cataloguing and identifying pieces of history. Lara’s primary focus is on the man holding her hands, seated cross-legged at her bedside and rocking back and forth, eyes wet.
It’s Jonah. It’s Jonah, and he’s here and… and Lara’s alive? But, but she was supposed to die, wasn’t she? She was going to make the sacrifice and save the people and--
“Jonah, Jonah!”
Jonah looks up at the sound of her voice, his eyes ringed red and puffy.
“Lara? Lara, you’re awake. Thank god.” His voice is more emotive than Lara thought it would be, and he still does not let go of her hands.
“What happened? I was supposed to be the sacrifice, I was supposed to…” She trails off as Jonah’s eyes narrow.
“You were supposed to what, huh? Die? The great Lara Croft sacrificing herself because she couldn’t let other people die?”
“Well, yes! That was the whole point, wasn’t it? I was supposed to--” She breaks off as a hot, blinding flash of pain radiates through her, painful enough to lock her muscles up for several seconds as it works its way through her body. Jonah, instead of seeming panicked, holds her down by the shoulders with a resigned look on his face.
When it’s finally done, he helps her upright and presses a cup of water to her lips, which she gratefully accepts once she realises how parched she is.
“Well you almost succeeded.” Jonah sighs at Lara’s quizzical brow, and continues. “I mean, when we could finally get to you, your pulse was weak enough that, for a… bit, I thought you were dead.” He pauses for a second, breathing in sharply before letting it out slowly, focusing his eyes on Lara intently. “I thought you were dead , Lara. You almost were . But, hey, at least you stopped Paititi from getting destroyed.”
Lara swallows her mouthful of water and lowers the cup, nodding in appreciation as Jonah takes the cup from her shaking hand, preventing her from spilling water all over herself. “Well, then, that’s good right? We did it. We saved them. We fixed it.”
Jonah, however, does not seem as relieved, frowning at Lara.
“You almost died , Lara. Like, properly. You’ve had a fever for three days, and I had to spend every second at your bedside to ensure you didn’t fucking, fucking dehydrate .” Lara flinches back against the fire in his tone, the anger in his eyes. Jonah’s face softens. “I just… Lara, you almost left me.” There’s a choking, almost hysterical feeling working its way up Lara’s throat and she really, really hopes Jonah is done talking now, because she doesn’t know and doesn’t really want to find out what she’s going to say. “How, how dare you even think about leaving me, Lara?”
There’s tears glistening in Jonah’s eyes and his voice is choked up, and Lara is in pain and tired and confused and feeling very, very lost. “I was letting you go!” It’s a yell, or as much one as Lara can produce at this point. “I was letting you go. I know that I keep dragging you into dangerous and impossible situations and that I give you no end of worry and sleepless nights and that you have to baby me just to make sure I eat some days and--” Lara’s voice breaks off in a sob, and she sees Jonah raise his hand toward her, but she drops her face, unable to look directly at him, because this already hurts so fucking much. “And I wanted to let you go. Except, your sense of responsibility would keep you tied to me. It wasn’t my plan to die, I promise you, it wasn’t . But, but when it seemed likely, I thought it would be fine. You would be free, and I would have spent the last moments of my life saving others. Poetic, if you think about it.”
There’s a moment of silence as tears blur Lara’s vision, before big, warm arms, arms she would recognise anywhere, folds around her, carefully, pulling her close, hot breath puffing against her forehead as a pair of chapped lips drops a kiss there.
“You know,” Jonah chuckles, a hint of a sob still in his voice, “for someone so smart, you sure are stupid sometimes.”
Confused, but appreciating the warmth and comfort, Lara grips Jonah’s T-shirt and holds him close. “Why?”
The arms tighten around her, and then gently push her away until she can look Jonah straight in the face. “I honestly didn’t think I would ever need to tell you this, I thought you had me figured out long ago but, Lara, my Little Bird, I love you.”
Lara’s throat dries up, and she swallows reflexively, hands clenching in the fabric of Jonah’s shirt. “I… what?”
“Little Bird, why do you think I stayed with you through all of this?”
“I… I thought we were friends.”
Jonah smiles sadly and nods. “We are. Of course we are. And, at the beginning, that’s all it was. But I found it utterly impossible to be in such close quarters with someone as, as breathtaking as you, and not fall in love. How could I not? You were so unapologetically yourself.”
“I…” Lara shakes her head, feeling slow with the pain still pulsing through her, with the way Jonah literally just took her breath away. “Abby?”
Jonah shakes his head. “We’re just friends, Lara. She was… interested, but even she could see how utterly lovestruck I was with you. And then you try to leave me…”
A look of such deep pain and loss cross his face, Lara takes a vow then and there that she would never be the cause of such a look again and she brings up her own hands, clutching at his face. “I thought, I thought you would be better off. I thought I was keeping you back. I’m, I’m not a good person, Jonah. I’ve killed… so many people. Caused so much pain.”
Jonah presses a kiss to her nose. “You also saved thousands, and brought so much joy to the people around you, whether because of your wit and charm, or simply because you helped them out of the selflessness of your heart. You, Lara Croft, my Little Bird, are a good person, and I Jonah Maiava, love you and am never, ever leaving you.”
And, of course, the only thing Lara could do in response to that is kiss this wonderful, beautiful man in front of her.