Day 42

"It's not you. It's me."

Lara and I raised one eyebrow each.

"Really? That's what you're going with?" I snorted.

We were dropping Reyes off at the airport. She wasn't supposed to leave for another two days, but she had quietly switched her flight to an earlier one, and refused to let me pay the extra charges. We didn't even realize she'd done it until we barged into her hotel room last night trying to drag her to dinner, and found her packing her things.

"Okay...it...it is you." Reyes grimaced at us. "That came out wrong. Look. No matter what, I...you guys are my friends. Like family, kind of."

I nudged Lara in the ribs with my elbow.

"She loves us," I whispered.

"I do not!" Reyes said contrarily. "I...have some concern...with regards to your welfare. It would matter to me if, you know, something bad happened to either of you. So...don't let anything happen. Because...your well-beings are of interest to me."

I leaned closer to Lara's ear. "That means she really loves us."

She rolled her eyes. "I have a teenage daughter and somehow you two are the biggest pains in my ass."

I put a hand to my heart and pretended to sigh dreamily. Lara pressed her lips together, forcing herself not to chuckle.

"I just...I need to think about Alisha. I want you guys to stay safe and I wish I could help you more, but I have to make sure no harm comes to her. And that means I have to keep myself out of trouble," Reyes sighed. "It's nothing personal. Other than all the, you know, this was actually a really nice vacation. Alisha would have enjoyed it, too. I'm not trying to run away from you. I'm trying to distance myself from…"

She raised her arms, thickly bandaged from the night of the fire.

"If something had happened to me - "

"We understand," Lara interrupted. "It's okay, Reyes."

"Seriously. Lara, I don't blame you for anything. I promise," Reyes insisted. "Maybe if I were young like you, with no kid, I don't know. But now, I can't risk it. I can't stay here, and I can't hang around you."

"It's okay," I echoed Lara.

"If there's anything I can do to help you from New York, you let me know, all right?"

Lara put a hand on her shoulder. "Definitely. Send Alisha and your sister our regards."

"Thank you again for Roth's inheritance."

"Thank you for taking it. Or, well, half of it."

Reyes grinned awkwardly for a moment before finally pulling up the handle on her luggage.

"Okay, I'm gonna - "

"Wait, wait." I spread my arms wide open. "Bring it in, ladies. Bring it in."

Both Reyes and Lara groaned as I forced them into a group hug. I felt them both struggling a little to get away, which just spurred me to squeeze them tighter. Eventually I let them go and they both shoved at me, though they both looked pleased doing it.

"Best of luck, you two. With whatever you guys end up doing." She pointed a finger back and forth between us. "And whatever y'all got going on here."

Lara blushed. "We - I - "

"Uh-huh," Reyes smirked. "I promise I'll keep in touch, this time."

We watched her until she disappeared in the throng at airport security check, and then made our way back to the car.

"I'm going to miss her grumpy arse," Lara said as she slid into my passenger seat and clicked on her seatbelt. I started the car and navigated the confusing airport lot, trying to find the exit.

"Yeah…"

The two of us stayed awkwardly silent as I drove around, Reyes's parting words ringing in our heads.

After we had left the hospital, we checked into a nice hotel and spent the rest of the weekend salvaging things from the house and putting stuff into storage. The work on the house would take nearly three weeks, according to the contractor, and we wouldn't be able to go back once we were finished removing our belongings. Then the police kept calling us, the insurance vultures kept trying to find loopholes, and the press began to swarm. That kept us pretty busy, and extremely exhausted. Because of everything going on, we both kept conking out early and sleeping long hours.

So we never actually got a minute to talk about the fact that we had made out in the back of my car.

I finally found the exit to the motorway and was just about to say something, when suddenly my phone began to ring from the cupholder. Lara practically jumped to get it, saved by the bell, so to speak.

"Unknown caller," Lara read from the screen. She held it up so I could see. It was definitely a London number that looked vaguely familiar, but I couldn't place it.

"Answer it for me?"

"Really? You don't know who it is."

"I kinda recognize the number, but I'm not sure where from."

Lara shrugged and swiped the green phone icon. When I reached for it, she slapped my hand away and put on the speaker. She never let me talk on the phone while driving, unless it was on speaker. For a human disaster magnet, she was awfully keen on my driving safety.

"'El-lo!" I answered into the phone, using a deep-throated, confusing accent mix of Scottish and Australian. Lara practically stuffed a fist in her mouth to stop herself from laughing. She recognized my fake phone voice, most commonly used when I drunkenly gave my number to a guy at a bar I didn't really want to talk with. "Cehn ah 'elp ya, mate?"

"Oh, I'm sorry, I must have the wrong number."

He hung up, but I had recognized his voice.

Mr. Walter Pullman, of the BBC. In all the commotion, I had completely forgotten that I was expected to give him an answer about the promotion today.

I blanched and Lara looked at me curiously.

"Who was that?"

"I, um, I may have been extended a job promotion at the BBC that I was supposed to follow up with today."

She beamed at me. "That's great!"

"Is it?" I frowned.

"Of course it is! I always knew you were the best, Sam. You're so good at what you do. It was only a matter of time before someone noticed. I'm so proud of you!"

I bit my lip. She didn't understand the whole story, and frankly, it felt kind of embarrassing to just come out and tell her the promotion was only because of my family name. Especially if being proud of me meant looking at me like that.

"It's...well, it's a desk job. An assistant gig, full-time. Full benefits. First step on the track to the executive big time."

Lara faltered before looking away from me and out her window.

"Oh."

"Yeah."

"That's...I mean, that's how your father and uncle started out, isn't it? And look at them now. They practically rule the media world."

"Right…" I didn't know why I couldn't bring myself to say any more. Maybe it was because I was so shocked that Lara seemed to actually want this for me. Jonah and Zip had been so sure it wasn't for me, and I had all but made up my mind that it was something I would never want to do with my life.

"You'd be good at it," she said, almost monotonously. "It's practically in your blood. And I'm sure you'll still have some artistic involvement in things. I mean, if you're the boss one day, you can do anything you want, right?"

The one whose opinion mattered the most was pushing me towards this. And being totally weird about it.

"I guess? It would probably be a couple years of me fetching coffee and answering phones. Then maybe I'll be doing some paperwork. A couple more years of that and maybe I'll break into the upper offices where the real party is," I said dryly. "I better stock up on pantsuits!"

The phone began to ring again. Mr. Pullman, evidently trying to give me another shot. Lara snatched it away and rejected the call.

"Hey!"

"Okay, wait," she winced. "Maybe think about this a minute."

There she was. My girl.

"Yousaid - "

"I'm an idiot!"

"Lara - ?"

The phone rang again and Lara was about ready to throw it out the window.

"Please don't take that job, Sam," she said sincerely. "It's not you, it's never been you, and I can't even imagine if it one day became you. Come on, pantsuits?"

I raised a teasing eyebrow. "I would have thought you'd be all for it. Safe behind a desk, stable job with benefits that keeps me in one place. That's always been what you wanted, right? Keeping me safe?"

"Of course I want you safe, but that job would change you. It would be like what those awful people at SeaWorld do to their Shamus. They confine them in these tiny, cramped spaces, no room to grow or think freely. The Shamu just starts to deteriorate physically, mentally, emotionally - "

I scowled at her. "Oh, my God. Did you watch Blackfish?"

She grinned sheepishly. "Research got a lot harder for me while we weren't speaking to each other. When I needed a break and couldn't go to you… I just…sort of…"

"I told you not to watch that!"

"Well, I did."

"I told you it would just upset you!"

"Well, it did!" Lara shivered at the memory. "But that's not the point. If you take the job with the BBC you are going to end up like that Shamu with the folded-down fins! And before you whine about how I'm calling you a whale, because I know you're going to, it is actually quite a good metaphor for this situation!"

The blush was faintly spreading to her cheeks now, and she was amazingly adorable. I had to mess with her a little bit more.

"So you're comparing me to a whale."

"Sam!"

"You know they're called orcas, right? Shamu is a name, not an animal."

The phone went off a fourth time and Lara shut it down completely and jammed it in the glove compartment.

"Whoa, careful!" I protested. "I don't have a hell-proof iphone cover like you do!"

"Why even bother using those super-thin cases?"

"They look nice. Your phone always looks like it's about to be launched into space."

She pinched my arm to get me back on track.

"Listen, you're the most vibrant person I've ever met in my life and that job - business meetings and reports and sucking up to some CEO to make your way up a corporate ladder - that will take more out of you than Himiko ever could have."

This time I fully intended to stop playing around, to calm her down and tell her I had already decided to pass on the job, but she just barreled on.

"You belong where the story is. I can dig up the past, but you're the one that makes it interesting. You make it relevant, you turn it into something that people actually want to know. History is just this great big dust heap, and I may be the one to brush it off, but you're the one who polishes it."

"Lara, I - "

"You don't belong in an office. You belong out there, with a camera, a vantage point, and three thousand years worth of humanity's greatest works, ideas, and achievements to record and share."

She was coming just short of saying it. I could see the struggle in her, and the embarrassment.

"You belong with me."

"Lara!" I interrupted sharply enough to slow her roll. "I wasn't going to take it."

Her mouth opened and no words came out for a good ten seconds.

"You...you weren't?"

"No!"

She narrowed her eyes at me. "So you just let me ramble on, like I'm some sort of mental - "

"You were being really cute," I admitted. "And super inspirational. You've gotten really good at giving those speeches."

"Jesus, Sam." Lara threw her head back in exasperation. "You had me thinking you were just going to lock yourself up in a building for the rest of your life!"

"Of course not," I said gently. When she didn't say anything, I bumped her with my elbow to try and get her to relax. She had gotten really worked up about it and I was starting to feel guilty. "Because of what you said. The Shamu thing."

There was hope in her smile. "But...not just because of the Shamu thing?"

"Not just because of the Shamu thing," I confirmed.

She absorbed what I said and just sat back in her seat, the cogs turning in her head. We drove in a comfortable silence for a few more minutes until we arrived at our hotel. Lara tentatively returned my phone to me, thankfully not cracked or broken, and I turned it on.

"I have to at least tell him I don't want the promotion," I told her.

The concierge wished us a good day as we got into the elevator and I pushed the button for the tenth floor.

"Are you gonna make us downgrade to a regular room now that Reyes is gone?" I asked, mostly just kidding. I hoped she didn't. When we had first arrived, I booked the Royal Suite and Lara was aghast. She claimed it was a waste of money, especially if we splurged for three weeks. She barely even wanted the Deluxe suite, but the allure of a hot tub got her. Plus, we figured Reyes deserved a little pampering after she'd gotten injured at our house. We let her have the master with the queen bed all to herself. Lara and I had shared the connecting room with two of our own double beds.

"Maybe we can switch tomorrow? One more night with the spa would be nice," she said, raising her arms over her head to work the kinks out of her shoulders. I watched as her muscles stretched and her shirt came up a little, revealing her little belly button on top of some increasingly defined abs.

I felt my face heat up.

"Is it just me, or is this the slowest elevator ever?"

She gave me the oddest look, but it finally stopped on our floor. I nearly leapt out and jammed the key card into the door.

"Are you all right?"

I held the door open for her first and let her sit down on her bed before speaking.

"No. I…" I took a deep breath, my mind racing for something to say. There was nothing left to say, though. Nothing except, "Lara, what are we doing?"

She bit her lip as I bravely sat next to her and, instead of looking at each other, we stared at our reflections in the vanity mirror. Our eyes met there.

"Honestly? I'm as lost as you are."

That wasn't particularly reassuring. I had spent my entire adult life looking to her for guidance. She was both the practical one that had Gatorade and Advil ready when you woke up hungover before final exams, and the impractical one that somehow just knew what to do when you found yourself hanging off Mount Kilimanjaro by a bungee cord. But today, in this mirror, we were both utterly unprepared and facing the same uncharted territory.

"Whatever happens, best friends forever, right?" I asked hopefully. She took my hand, unabashedly.

"Always. You are my best friend. But God, even that sounds stupid. You are so much more than just that," she said ardently. "Sam, you were always the most important thing to me in the world, and that was even before I started to have…"

My breath hitched. "Yeah?"

"You know…" She motioned at her chest, as if she were a confused child with minimal vocabulary.

"Feelings?" I dared suggest. "Feelings for me."

"Right."

I didn't actually know, per se, until this exact moment. Her confirmation made it feel like I had been holding my breath all that time and was just now allowed to gasp for air.

I squeezed her hand in attempt to be reassuring, but it was mostly for myself. To convince myself that even though everything was now out in the open, she was still there with me.

"Now what?" I wondered. "We've come a long way."

"And have a long way, still," Lara agreed. "We've been through a lot, but nothing that compares to this. It's terrifying, Sam. Everything we've ever done, I never doubted that you'd be with me in the end. Even in Yamatai, I knew I'd get you back. I knew that no force in the universe would keep me from you. That's what kept me going, you know."

"I know."

"But this, I mean, if this didn't work out and we broke up - "

"Why would we break up?" I blurted. Maybe I sounded too over-eager, but my God, I had been yearning for this for days. Longer probably. Definitely longer. Since I felt the last traces of Himiko drain from my body, I knew deep down Lara was going to be my everything.

"Well, have either of us ever been in a relationship where we didn't break up?"

Okay, that was fair.

"Counter-point: I have never been in a relationship with you," I said. "Except this one right here. Whatever it is, I know that the two of us can endure anything."

Lara bit her lip. It was still so strange to see her unsure of something. She was always so logic-oriented, so reliant on evidence and research. So concerned with losing people she loved.

"If you want me to appeal to your nerdy science-y side..." I said cheekily. "Statistical evidence has shown that we can survive all things natural and supernatural. Literally."

That brought up a smile. "I could never lose you, Sam."

"You never will."

"If we do this…"

I took her hand and turned her so she was finally looking at me, and not my reflection. She blinked, her eyes watery and frightened. No one else would have guessed that this was a person who had killed to survive. Killed so I could survive.

"I've already been doing this," I told her. "For a while now, I think."

Her eyes changed when I said that. I saw her compassion and confidence. I saw Lara Croft.

"Me too."

My lips pressed right on top of her grin. It was probably an enormously bad idea that we were on a bed, but there were just some things that couldn't be stopped. Like Lara slowly laying back on the rough quilt and my crawling over her. Or our mouths melding and our bodies pressing together. Or my tongue finding its way to a spot behind her ear that made her gasp. Or her hands running under my shirt and up my stomach until her fingers grazed the bottom edge of my bra.

Her abrupt snort, though. That did kinda slam the brakes on us.

"What is it?" I asked, my words being spoken mostly into the hollow of her collarbone, where I had been kissing my way down. "What's so funny?"

"Oh, God."

I lifted myself up on my hands so I could look down at her.

"What?"

She looked so happy I almost lost myself.

"Sam, I am so bloody gay."

"Uh...?"

"I suspected I might be," she continued. "I always found Amanda more attractive than Alister, for example."

My eyebrow quirked. "That's not gay, that's common sense."

"I meant her breasts."

I groaned. "Jesus, Lara, you are killing the mood right now."

"Oh! Oh, sorry. Let me fix it."

She looked at me so wickedly that I almost moaned again. My demure, posh and proper English aristocrat Lady Croft flipped me onto my back and straddled my hips.

"Wait, wait," I realized, breaking out in a cold sweat. I had completely forgotten.

"Now who's killing the mood?"

"Remember, Dr. Kimura told us no...uh, strenuous activity for six weeks."

Lara smirked. "Well, someone's being rather ambitious."

"I'm serious!"

"Sam, we jumped out of an exploding house and fell from a tree."

"Yeah, we're lucky, but…"

Lara sighed and sat back on my thighs. She pulled her shirt up, so I could see the jagged scar healing on her abs. That certainly did not help my situation, especially when she grabbed my hand and placed it there. My thumb traveled over the raised tissue, dark pink against her pale skin. Her muscles tensed under my touch, and I saw her swallow hard.

"Does this feel like something you need to worry about?" she managed to say.

"Uh, I mean, I'm a little worried that I'll never be able to take my hands off you?"

Lara laughed and let my hand stay as she climbed back over me. "It has to have been six weeks by now. I've finished my antibiotics forever ago and I haven't had any pain."

I grabbed my phone and scrolled up in my calendar app until I found the old appointment with Dr. Kimura, way back when we were still in Japan.

"Wow, it's been forty-two days exactly." I whistled. "This has been some six weeks."

"I know, I was right there with you."

I grinned at her. "You always are."

Our lips crashed together and the fingers I had on her scar tickled their way down to circle her navel. I brushed against the top of her jeans with every revolution and she hissed, the sound sending a jolt straight down my body. I felt her slowly raise my top until it was pulled over my bra.

Then she stopped. Lara's tongue slowed and I pulled from the kiss to look on in amusement.

"Hit a speed bump, did you?"

Lara blushed adorably, eyes resting firmly on my clothed boobs.

"Two of them."

I had to chuckle.

"It's okay, I'll teach you." I assured her. "It doesn't even have to be today. We have plenty of time, there's no need to rush. And we don't have to jump straight to the advanced class yet. Let's get the prerequisites out of the way."

The poor girl was basically a virgin at this. And the way I felt as I watched her, it was almost like I was one too. I'd had the privilege of being with women before, but not this woman. Not the best one.

"Good thing I'm an excellent pupil." She smiled gratefully.

My hands found her hips and just kind of held them in place, instead of creeping around to grab what they really wanted. I didn't want her to move away quite yet, but I also didn't want to overstep any boundaries too early.

Still, though.

"You bet this glorious ass, you are."

Later, as I came back to the room from a quick snack run, I found Lara on her stomach on the bed. She was writing in her leatherbound notebook, barely even aware that I had like five boxes of Jaffa Cakes with me. I didn't say anything, because it struck me hard that she looked really, really beautiful with her face scrunched up in concentration like that. Her hair, now outrageously long because she still never got it trimmed, spilled over her shoulders like a waterfall. The sun was setting, so the orange light from our westward facing window illuminated her, made her look like she was glowing.

I dropped the Jaffa Cakes and dug through my things, looking for my camera. This would be one of the greatest shots of Lara I would ever take. The bright archaeological genius, innocently scribbling away like a schoolgirl in her room as darkness fell behind her. I almost wanted to climb into bed with her and start braiding her hair as she told me stories.

But I just let the camera roll.

"You're wasting an awful lot of memory just to film me write," she said finally, not looking up, but grinning.

"I was hoping it was something dirty."

She made a deprecating noise. "Hardly."

"Well, I'm a thousand percent less interested now. Come on, I have Jaffa Cakes. Let's watch something On Demand. The concierge said we get a complimentary movie for every third night we book this room."

The mention of Jaffa Cakes almost made her look up.

"One minute. I just need to jot down some ideas before I lose them."

"Ideas about what?" I sat in my bed next to hers, so I could keep a good distance for the shot.

"Pomegranates."

I made a face. "If you had a hankering for anti-oxidants, you could have told me while I was out and I would have gotten you one."

She laughed. "Pomegranates in the context of myth and legend."

"Ah, mythical pomegranates. Now it adds up." I nodded. "You only eat garbage, I was kind of surprised you even knew what a pomegranate was."

"Of course I do! Pomegranates were pretty widespread across civilizations and symbolize many things to many cultures. They're used fairly prominently in representations of fertility, for example."

"That's cool…" I vaguely remembered the themes that Lara had been researching before the fire. Mostly stuff about the end of the world, doom and gloom and such. "Although fertility was definitely not what you had been reading about before."

"Not quite, but pomegranates are just as widely known assymbols of death. The ancient Greeks literally thought of them as the fruit of the dead. It's a curious dichotomy."

"Curious," I ribbed playfully. But now it made even more sense for Lara to be interested in them. There was death involved.

"You know the story of Persephone, don't you?"

"Duh. Hades the god of the dead is a dick and steals Demeter's daughter, Persephone, away to the underworld to marry. Demeter is the goddess of the harvest, so if you fuck with her, you starve. Lord Zeus realizes his family is crazy and run amok, so he forces Hades to give Persephone back. He does, but not before he tricks her into eating some pomegranate seeds which, for whatever weird god-reason, means she's tethered to the Underworld part of the year. So Persephone winds up part-time goddess of the spring, when Demeter is happy to have her back and lets things grow, and part-time queen of the underworld, when she has to go back and Demeter gets depressed and forces everyone to deal with winter and Ugg boots."

I couldn't even describe how hot the look was that Lara gave me.

"So that's what does it for you, huh?" I winked. "Ancient mythology drama?"

She blushed. "I'm just impressed."

"I'll keep that in mind."

She had to shyly turn away from me and the camera for a moment before getting back to business.

"The abundance of seeds in each fruit is what links them with fertility, but those same seeds have the ability to quite literally bleed red through the skin, which is where the more sinister associations come from."

"If only they knew about polyphenols, huh?"

"What I'm interested in is their involvement in myths of cyclical deities. Not just Persephone's cycling of seasons, but also the comparative myth of Rimmon in Syria, whose name literally meant pomegranate, Osiris in Egypt, the ancient Sumerian Tammuz, the Babylonian Ishtar. The descent and return from the underworld of deities is almost universal. The cycle of death and rebirth is practically a staple in religious texts, and can be considered loosely analogous to the pomegranate and it's symbolism of death and new life. You know?"

"Well, I do now."

Lara had sat up in her bed and was talking excitedly, thrilled that she was getting this chance to go completely Nerd-O-Matic on me.

"Especially when you consider that pomegranates were called apples by other cultures, which opens up a whole new - "

"Wait...apples?"

"Yes, apples. There were language barriers everywhere in the ancient world, and the pomegranate was a very specific fruit. Traders or invaders or other foreigners that came upon the fruit usually just used their own generic word for it. The word 'apple' applied to almost any rounded fruit with seeds inside it. People still do this today."

Something about this bothered me, but I couldn't put my figure out what it was.

"So when you hear about golden apples in legends or poisoned apples in fairy tales, that forbidden fruit tradition has descended down from literally thousands of years of pomegranate symbolism. Even in the story of Adam and Eve, the first original sin was committed over a pomegranate from the Garden of Eden."

"That's…uh..."

She frowned at me. "What's the matter?"

I shook my head. "I don't know. I feel like I'm forgetting something, I just don't know what."

Lara picked up the notebook she'd been writing in. "That's why I'm keeping one of these. So I don't forget anything."

"You know, you have a new laptop," I teased. "And an iPad. Who actually writes anymore?"

"This is a journal," she informed me. "Not a blog."

"You have a journal now?"

"My father had one. Roth had one. I thought it was about time I started keeping a proper one of my own."

Her earnest expression, in this sunset lighting, made me want her so very badly.

I paused the camera and went over to kiss her at the corner of her smile, and again on her chin and cheek, until she dropped the journal and captured my lips. Before I knew it, I was in bed with her again, feeling her body move over mine, and I was so overwhelmed by her warmth that I didn't even care when the back of my head hit the headboard with a loud thunk. She did, though, and she laughed into my mouth. When she released me, I was breathless.

I felt her hand travel to the back of my head and tangle in my hair. Whatever had been bothering me before was completely gone from my mind.

"All right?"

"I don't know. Trying kissing me again."

She snickered and helped me back up.

"Want to hear the introduction?" she asked, her eyes glinting with mischief. She knew exactly what she'd done to me, and what I wanted. Lara was teasing me.

"Not, like, right this second," I said weakly. What I really wanted was more making out, maybe a little bit more touching.

She grinned evilly at me and granted me one more peck on the lips before opening up to the first page of her journal and handing it to me.

I read the first entry and rolled my eyes.

"You have like, zero artistic flair," I snorted, grabbing her pen. "Thank God you're hot, Lara."

"What's wrong with it?"

"It sounds like a stuffy archaeologist wrote it."

"A stuffy archaeologist did write it - hang on! What do you think you're doing!?"

I twisted my body away so she couldn't reach as I wrote something above her uninspired passage. Then I signed my name and doodled a little heart and smiley face. She snatched it back from me.

"What did you write?"

"A better opening, so it at least sounds better leading in."

Lara smirked and sat back, the expression softening as she looked over my addition. Then, she read it aloud.

"Throughout history, the boldest have dared to go further. They risked death and in doing so live on forever. What drives these few to the ends of the earth? The desire to discover something more, the search for something greater. The world is full of unanswered questions. Beyond all limits, all reason, the answers await..."

The moment of silence between us was heavy and meaningful, until I realized something.

"Crap."

"What?"

I grabbed my camera and turned it back on.

"Could you read that again, just like how you did?"

~*THE END*~

Author's Note: I didn't mean to get political or anything about SeaWorld or 'Blackfish'. A couple of chapters ago I googled "Top Documentaries of 2013", intending for Sam to talk about them at some point with someone, I don't remember. The scene never happened, but I did remember two movies from the list - 'Blackfish' and 'One Direction: This Is Us'. I figured 'Blackfish' had the better metaphor lol.

Also:

OH MY GODDDDDDDDDDDD I FINISHED A FIC AHHHHHHHH!

This is the first time I ever completed a multi-chaptered fic before in my LIFE. You don't even understand how proud of myself I am right now. I mean, love it, hate it, whatever. I FINISHED it. I feel so good :-D Tell me what y'all think, I'm prolly gonna go back and fix little mistakes here and there at some point (English language was never my greatest strength) but wow, this is it. I hope you guys enjoy this as much as I enjoyed writing it! Because believe you me, writing this shit was a PLEASURE!

P.S. I may or may not have made this glaringly obvious, but I do intend to write a sequel for this at some point. Or rather, this is the prequel for another fic I have more than a few ideas about. I wanted this to primarily be about Sam realizing she has the hots for Lara, obviously, but I also wanted to set a whole new stage. The cloudy beginnings of a mysterious new adventure, a blossoming new relationship, Lara learning the truth about her parents, Sam realizing that she is no more cut out for normal life than her best friend is, and a new cast of old friends that I tried characterizing a little bit here before they appear again in the next fic.

Basically, this whole thing really was just a big huge 10 chapter prologue lol. Oh well. As for the follow-up, I'll have to decide where to go with it after I finish Rise of the Tomb Raider and update this with an epilogue, probably. But whatever happens in that game, I'm Sam/Lara for LIFE. No matter what, we'll always have fandom, right?

AGHHHHH I STILL CAN'T GET OVER THAT I FINISHED A FIC THO LOL