A/N: This is the shortest of all the one-shots.

Howling2themoon: Glad to hear!^^

A. L205: Thanks! Abby and Jacob are an interesting duo. :D Do you read in English or by a translator? I have read French and Russian language Tomb Raider fics by Chrome's translator which works okay.^^'

C is for Competition

The competition starts somewhere between saving each other's lives for the first time.

They both have larger-than-life egos: they can take criticism and second-guess their actions for ages but those characteristics only pave way for the endless game of becoming better and better. They hate to lose because they know how the price stays with you. And they know that the war will always come.

They wrestle it out between the two of them. He is faster, stronger, and has unhuman stamina, which she calls cheating once or twice – but only as a joke, because life is unfair most of the time, and the better adversary she has, the more likely she is to learn how to survive.

She, on the other hand, fosters stronger desperation to pursue those skills. Jacob smiles at her with a victorious smile to infuriate her, but he is silently taken aback at how potent she is for someone so young. Once she cracks her skull in a misstep before he can catch her, yet, she still keeps going and drags him down with her to battle it out until he is forced to call it a game at her rapidly waning consciousness and heal her with his heart in his throat.

Things that aren't originally challenges turn into ones between them. There are mornings when he heads out to the village only to spot her scaling a mountain; he doesn't even feel guilty when he dismisses his chores for the day and makes it to the protruding ledge first along the age-old patrol routes. She has the drive, but he has learned over the centuries that knowledge is just as valuable, and sometimes even more so. And he is at the same time hopeful that she realizes that sooner than he did – and daunted by what she is becoming. He trusts his faith that he isn't doing a disservice to the world.

Then there are the late afternoons when they go for a swim in the arctic waters just to see which of them chickens out first. Those times always end up in unmentioned, silent understanding when he climbs back to the shore first, as he has no doubt that she would otherwise stay under the ice close to hypothermia. She is sometimes annoyed by his lack of will to help her push herself towards the breaking point, but she also understands how much he wants to spare her from the pain as those situations will appear even without calling.

And in life and war, they are always on the same side.

A/N: I'm looking for a Beta reader, so PM if you're interested!