Reboot Lara/Sam. Hopefully it's decent. :)
Lara's eyelashes brush Sam's tears the first time they kiss.
This isn't how it things are supposed to go.
When you fall in love, it's supposed to be beautiful. You're supposed to accidentally trip over your words and smile too much and feel your heart pound in your chest. You're supposed to spend your nights dreaming about them, not dreaming of fire and guns and the sound of bullets when they hit an aluminum sheet. You're supposed to be happy when you fall in love.
It's not how things are supposed to go, but they make do.
When they return from Yamatai, after all the doctors and lawyers and TV people are done fussing, after the media hype has died down, they get a hotel room. They rent it out a month at a time and lock the door and relish in the humanity of it, the normality of the little chocolates on the pillows and the tiny bottles of shampoo and the TV that doesn't always know how to get from one station to the next. It is so normal, and they have almost forgotten what that feels like.
They get a hotel room and they sleep, each in their own bed, waking when the other shows the hint of a nightmare. They watch TV, they order room service, and they talk, not about important things, but anything. It is three days before Sam starts crying. The words that come out of her mouth are not about Yamatai, not as she expects, but just, simply, "Please, Lara, please kiss me."
Lara's chest aches when she did, but she doesn't regret it. She never will.
"Do you think we'll be okay?" asks Sam, fingers clutching Lara's as she pulled away.
"I don't know," says Lara. "I'm sorry. I don't know."
Sam shuts her eyes, taking a deep breath. Lara wishes she could lie to Sam, tell her that it'll all be okay, but she has found that lies don't work if you can't make yourself believe them.
Sam reaches her hand to Lara's face, brushing a scar with her soft fingertips. "We'll be okay," she says, trying to make herself believe it. Lara relaxes into the touch, wondering if it could be true.
The fifth day it is Lara who cries. This is the first time she's done so since before all of this. It's the first time since…she realizes she cannot remember the last time she cried, really cried, not tears from laughter, not tears from pain, but from the raw gaping wound inside her chest that hurts more than anything on Yamatai ever did.
Sam holds her and soothes her, hands cupping her face, pressing their foreheads together and feeding her hopes she herself may not believe. She is soft and warm against Lara, who feels so cold all the time now. She wonders if Sam has ever felt cold a day in her life. She wonders if she can make Lara warm again. She wonders so much. Perhaps the wondering is why she can feel this urge to go back out there, to learn, even though she knows what cost adventure brings now.
She doesn't know how she can ever tell Sam she wants to explore again. She doesn't even know why she wants to. Really, she doesn't want to leave Sam's arms, but how realistic is that?
They hold hands in public now. People assume they are close friends, best friends since childhood, and that is true, but that is not where Sam and Lara end. They're gal pals, says Sam one day with a smile that was a bit too wide, her laughter a bit too loud. Lara laughs with her. Sam is trying.
They sleep in the same bed now. The maids wonder around them, wonder why these two women are spending months and months in a hotel room. London is stifling. All of England is too much to deal with, so they hide away in their rented room and they hold each other like Mathias is still after them.
"I love you," says Sam, and Lara wishes things were different. She wipes away Sam's tears with her thumb.
She wishes she had never heard of the Endurance. She wishes she had shelved Yamatai away as a lost island, now and forever, in some dark recess of her mind. This isn't fair. She is supposed to be happy when she hears those words.
"I love you too," she says, and they look away from each other. On Yamatai, all Lara wanted was to save Sam. She has no idea what she's supposed to do with her now that she's here to stay.
"We'll be okay," says Sam, looking up and meeting her eyes. There's something there this time. Steel. "I promise you, Lara. We'll be okay."
Things get better.
The nightmares don't go away, but they stop happening quite as often. Sometimes they make it through the night now, nestled in each other's arms, soft skin pressing scars and the rise and fall of their chests soothing them through it.
Lara smiles more. Sam notices it first and takes a photo, laughing all the while. Lara can't help but join her. It is hours before they realize it's the first image Sam has captured since Yamatai. They try not to make a big deal of it, but they still end up going out for dinner.
They kiss across the table, holding hands. The waiter sees and they don't care. There might as well be no one else in the world, the way Lara sees it.
They are better, but they aren't fixed. Lara is okay with that. She has to be; but more than that, she is okay with being changed. There's nothing she can do about it, after all, and she has a life to live. People to meet, places to see. Relics to find.
When Sam says, "I love you" with no tears in her eyes, Lara knows she will be there with her.