A/N: Guest: Thanks!^^
K is for Keeping:
Keeping - (noun), the action or fact of owning, maintaining, or protecting something.
It's the first chilly night at Paititi and Lara has to dig through her backpack for more clothing - or for the only warmer item she grabbed from the gear back at Kuwaq Yaku: the light-brown canvas jacket from Jacob.
It's still lightweight yet sturdy and has survived the rockfalls, sewage waters, and fires she has escaped from in the last few years. She has had to add a few patches here and there, and she can almost picture Jacob's amusement at how she has made it her cause to keep the jacket with her as long as possible.
But Jacob isn't here to see her wrap herself in the jacket and seek the warmth from the rebel camp's fire while sitting on the cold stone. Her thigh and back ache horribly, and for the first time, she wishes that Jacob was here to heal her injuries. She needs that energy to keep going, to push forward to another fight against Trinity.
The jacket is too big for her, and she has to wrap the airplane's seatbelt numerous times around her waist and some tape around her arms to keep the jacket in any sort of shape over the blue dress that Unuratu had given her.
Jacob had given the jacket to her after she had nearly drowned after their escape from the Gulag and she had only had her blue Henley, "Take it, it will keep you warm." The jacket was not Jacob's own but it connects her to the Geothermal Valley and she can almost smell the pine trees under the smoke and death when she rests her head on her arms.
It seems so far away when she managed to build trust with the Remnants. Now, she is in another valley and the task of earning their trust while Jonah is kept as a prisoner, a piece of extortion, feels like an uphill battle that she isn't sure that she has the energy to tackle.
Their fight – even if already set – still gnaws at her and she understands his point, had expected the anger, even, because of the destruction she has caused. She pulls the sleeves to cover her fingers better and thinks that the chilly air is just another calamity brought by her. It will probably weather the crops and plunge these people into a second famine. She presses her hands on her face hard enough to see stars and tries not to groan out loud.
The end of the world is coming if she can't stop it. And she can't help but wonder if Jacob somehow knows. Maybe he is that well in tune with the world that he smells the change in the air, and she chuckles tiredly at the idea of how he must guess how the mess is on her. Correspondingly, she hears the sigh that must leave his lips when her relic hunting gets out of hand, again, "Lara…" She wishes Jacob would offer her a listening ear, look at her reassuringly with his experience, and make a plan on how they'd sort this out.
His jacket does none of that and she'd burn it down in a heartbeat if it would give her a chance to speak with him without endangering the Remnants.
Furthermore, she wants to return the loan, see his face when she hands him the patched and torn cloth, and quarrel about how the jacket must have looked like that when he had given it to her.
Above all, she wonders if she will ever see him again.
And she fears that if the world will truly end then the answer is 'no', because if there is a heaven, she has no chance to make it there with him.
A/N: This ABCs series will be paused until the "Ripples and Waves: Shared Respite" will be finished (starts on Saturday). After that one we'll get back to the normal schedule when waiting for the 3rd installment. Also apart from these there are... I don't know how many - seventeen? - one-shots if you include the "Auction (dark)" ones. Some may be thrown to trash and most likely (hopefully) new stuff comes up as well.