Hey guys! I promise, this is just a oneshot until I get at least 5 people that want it to be a story!
This contains spoilers for the end of Tomb Raider (2013) and Tomb Raider Anniversary!
With that out of the way, enjoy!
Lara knows that Mathias probably won't be the last person that she'll have to kill. In fact, she already suspects that she'll have to kill more people fairly soon. But even as she looks through all of her father's notes about all of the 'myths' he had wanted to uncover...the Scion of Atlantis, the Floating Island of Babylon, and the sparse clues to discovering the secret of Stonehenge...she still has no idea that some of these people she will come to know, even if she will have no particular liking to them.
She doesn't know that in the next few years of her life as an archaeologist, she will have a business rival named Pierre Dupont. Nor does she know that he will die, trampled by undead centaurs, in front of her very eyes simply because he'd done his job.
Lara has no way of knowing that she will come to meet a southern United States mercenary named Larson Conway that will have a certain kind of fondness for her that, although she may not reciprocate it, will save her life more than once. And she doesn't have any notion that she will kill him just to achieve a goal her father had failed in.
The graduate student has no clue that she will destroy this artifact mere hours after killing Larson to get it. And she doesn't know that she will be given, and turn down, an offer most people would jump at: to become one of the three new rulers of the Sacred Triumvirate of Atlantis, to become immortal, and to have the entire world in her hand.
But how can she know? She doesn't even acknowledge that in her long career, her go-to weapons will be the same two handguns she had used to save her best friend's life hours earlier. The only thing on her mind is her father.
I'm so sorry, Father. I wish you were still here so I could tell you that face to face. I doubted you, like most of the world, and yet you were right about so many things. I know that now. And until I take my last breath, I'll prove to the world that all of these lost cities, these ancient and mystical artifacts, are real.
"Lara?" Sam says quietly, walking over to her. Lara doesn't look at her. "Sweetie, you've been staring at that for hours. Are you okay?" She pauses. "Well, none of us are okay. But...shouldn't you get some rest?"
"Shouldn't you?" Lara retorts, but nonetheless stands and follows her friend to the cots that the ship's crew lent them. Reyes and Jonah are already asleep. But the others should be with us. Alex, Grimm, Roth...even Dr. Whitman. None of them deserved what happened to them. But I'll do what Roth told me. I won't be sorry. I'll make it count.
"Goodnight, Lara..." Sam whispers, closing her eyes. Lara sighs, her bruised and scraped body unused to something even as soft as a simple cot.
"Goodnight..." She replies, holding her father's journal close to her. She had parted with many things on the Endurance, but she had managed to keep the two most important things: the photo of her and Sam's graduation...and the journal she will use for years to come.
Even if she has no idea what's really in store for her. Yamatai is only the beginning...
I hope you guys enjoyed this! :D