A/N: Well I wasn't supposed to start a new story, but the Lara/Jacob brainrot took hold of me and next thing I knew, I had a few thousand words staring me in the face. I'm still making apologies to my ever-patient beta reader (shoutout to Tom for putting up with my constant shenanigans). 😅 I did start a playlist and a few video edits because I have absolutely no self control, so. Enjoy those over on Spotify and Youtube, if you like.
Salmiakkikarkki, this is all your fault and I'm so grateful ❤ Thank you for all the encouragement, storyboarding, and canon expertise!
If you're here for the angst, we've got a fun ride on that train. If you're here for fluff, hang in there, it's coming later. And if you're here for the smut, I hope you like a little slowburn to go with it.
Chapter 1 Content Warnings: violence, guns and gunshot wounds, light gore, death
Chapter 1: would you kill?
Lara
"Jacob, look out!"
She's too late; Ana fires three shots, and all find their mark in Jacob's chest. He falls to a knee, his laboured breathing and slight grimace the only outward signs of his pain.
"The Source is not meant for the world!" he shouts.
Lara draws her pistol on Ana just as the other woman turns.
Jacob is immortal - he's in pain, hurt, but he'll heal. He won't die.
He can't die.
That thought is the only thing keeping her steady.
The gun in her hand weighs cool and heavy, ready for her choice. Waiting for her to end this, to end Ana's scheming and Trinity's violence.
Waiting for her to end everything her father died for. His life's work will end here, in this city buried beneath a glacier, these ruins of the Prophet's legacy, this chamber where thousands of souls are trapped within the Source - the price of immortality.
Would her father plead with Ana to stop? Would he let her use the Source? Would he bring it before the world and change the nature of humanity for the chance to study its many wonders?
Maybe what her father would do matters less than she thinks. He isn't here, but she is. Jacob is still down, three bullets in his chest, unlikely to stop Ana himself.
This is her choice.
A difference is not always for the best. Would you wish Trinity to have the secret to immortality?
I gave up everything for this! I have no intention of giving it to Trinity.
Lara's finger curls over the trigger as she glares down the barrel of Ana's pistol. If she lets Ana use the Source and take it from Kitezh, Trinity will fight to get it, and she's seen firsthand how far they'll go. Torture, murder, annihilating anyone and anything in their way.
Even if she could convince Ana to keep the Source a secret, Ana was in league with Trinity, known by Trinity. Eventually they would discover that she survived, they would guess how, and they would come for the Source and wipe out the Remnant.
"Ana, don't," Lara says, half a plea. "You know I can't let you do this."
Outside Kitezh, the Source could be studied, researched, its secrets picked apart and laid bare in sterile laboratories. It could end disease, heal wounds, save countless lives. But the price is one's soul.
Jacob is a good man, and still human in every way but one with his soul held hostage. But he seems to be the exception; the Deathless Ones wiped out Kitezh just to keep the Source to themselves. Jacob said as much, and the Trinity envoy's letters said the Deathless were no longer human.
The envoy was biased, obviously, but surely Jacob knows the army that was once his.
Maybe… is it possible the Deathless buried Kitezh beneath the glacier to keep the Source safe, hidden beneath the ice where Trinity could never reach it?
Perhaps it would be best if it were to remain lost forever.
What gave the Deathless the right to choose whose lives were less important than the Source? What gives her the right to make a similar one now?
Who decides who is worthy of the Source's gifts and who isn't?
Ana backs toward the exit, the cloth-wrapped Source cradled to her heart. "This is your chance, Lara. Everything I've done, everything you've done."
It would be the end of humanity. An end to sickness, to death, but an end to what makes humanity… human.
Lara steadies her grip, aiming for Ana's head because the Source protects her chest. Don't make me do this, Ana.
"Don't be a fool!" Ana continues, pleading, hunched over the cloaked Source like a crow. "Another Croft doesn't have to die for this."
Lara's next breath comes sharper, cold as the Siberian tundra.
Her father… her father; he was still warm when she found him.
The truth is written in Ana's steady hand, a gloved finger on the trigger, undecided.
Lara adjusts her aim as she rasps a guess.
"You… you killed my father?"
Ana's eyes widen. "Trinity ordered his execution. But I… I loved Richard."
It might almost be grief, this wide-eyed look on Ana's face.
Or it's a confession tinged with regret, too belated to matter.
They aren't alone. The Deathless materialise from the shadows, advancing with panther-patience, predators surrounding cornered prey. Ana whirls and opens fire, ignoring Lara to empty her magazine into the army. Some flinch and jerk in place as bullets bury in their chests, knees, weak spots in their armour, but none fall.
Ana's pistol clicks. Empty.
Jacob still hasn't risen.
Focus, Lara. Lara tightens her finger on the trigger. She can't let Ana take the Source.
Ana's bravado evaporates, the edge of desperation sharpening in her eyes.
"Please," says Ana. "I'm dying."
Lara wills her arms steady. She could shoot. It might be kinder than watching Ana flail about, ready to trade her soul if it means she can live forever. It would be kinder than letting the Deathless tear her to pieces.
She knows Ana's choice before she makes it. She once saw this desperation in her father, too.
Ana stares at the lump in her arms. Her hand moves.
Lara squeezes, instinctual.
A bang, a spray of blood.
Ana falls.
The chamber floods in brilliant blue, and Ana is dead, a crimson pool spreading around her head - a gruesome halo.
Ana is dead.
She killed her.
Ana is dead.
"Lara!"
Lara realises too late she hasn't looked away. That the Source is naked, that Ana was too late.
That her father's life's work is staring back at her, and it is little more than a rock glowing neon blue. She expected something holy and glorious, spectacular enough to bring the men of the world to their knees. Something that made the trade worth it.
Something so ostentatiously precious that it could justify the life she took.
The Source doesn't look divine. It looks like a rough-hewn crystal smothered in cheap phosphorescent paint.
Her eyes begin to burn.
Lara has walked through many dangers, kissed death many times only to elude it.
The Source is different.
The Source pierces her eyes with blinding blue rays, sears into her skin, skull, the fleshy brain encased within. She's never been so aware of her own brain before.
The Source dives deeper, deeper, carves a path through the most secret parts of her, cleaves life from bone and heart from soul and leaves a trail of fire in its wake - cleansing and all-consuming, leaving behind the smell of smoke and an echo that tastes of grief.
Jacob was right; the Source is not divine.
The Source takes.
Jacob
If the Deathless are good at one thing, it is surviving.
If they are good another, it is killing. And Lara is the only outsider remaining.
"No!"
He moves without thinking, barely conscious of it until his voice breaks on desperation as he dives between Lara and a ring of spears.
Jacob waits for the inevitable, another death in a line of thousands.
It never comes. He's sprawled over Lara, bleeding onto her armour as she stirs, groaning, and the Deathless' spears have halted inches away.
Slowly, painfully, Jacob sits up. He groans as crumpled bullets ping onto the stone floor and gilded cross inset. His breathing steadies as his body heals, lungs and muscle and skin knitting back together.
"You are not to harm her," he says, unsure if this will work but he must try. "Never."
The Deathless raise their spears skyward and stand at attention.
After all this time, they obey him?
"Go," Jacob orders.
In a rattle of ancient armour, the Deathless retreat. They trickle from the Chamber of Souls until the room is empty, leaving Jacob with centuries of regret and grief given new life, another facet of culpability.
He could have stopped the atrocity here with a single order. All those lives…
Would the man he was those ages ago have stopped them?
Lara groans and sits up, rubbing her eyes.
"Jacob," she whispers.
When Lara opens her eyes, their light brown colour is gone, and Jacob's breath lodges in his throat.
Two pools of bright blue stare back at him, twin glaciers shining in the gloom.
Lara
Later, much later, when she is a hollow husk of a woman staring down at Kitezh from the hole Trinity blew in the ice, Jacob comes to her. The Source is encased in its gold cloth and safely locked in the Chamber of Souls, but his disappointment encases her like snow, pierces like the bitter Siberian wind.
His sorrow is worse. His sorrow chokes like blood and dirt and broken promises she never made.
"I'm sorry."
Jacob says nothing.
"The Source is safe," Lara continues. "If Trinity or anyone else comes for it, I'll stand with you."
Jacob nods, sombre. "The Deathless will continue guarding Kitezh - and the Source. But if Trinity attacks again…"
"I'll help your people sweep the valley," Lara says. "I can use a Trinity phone or radio to send a message that the Source was destroyed and no one survived."
"That could buy us time," Jacob says. "But I fear Trinity won't give up so easily."
"I know." Lara hugs her knees and doesn't let her head hang. "I'll keep them busy."
Jacob stares out at the frozen landscape lit by the distant winter sun, splashes of orange and pale gold tinting the snowy horizon.
"Where will you go?"
Lara thinks of her map in London, the red threads and pinned news articles and boxes upon boxes of her father's files.
"Anywhere I have to. Someone needs to stop them."
She understands, now, that stopping Trinity is her responsibility - and more importantly, that there will always be enemies like them and she's started a fight she'll never truly finish.
Especially now.
Jacob nods. "There will always be a place for you here."
A half-formed laugh bubbles in her throat, roils on her tongue. It never escapes, but Lara's bitterness twists into a scabrous smile.
"Even after everything?"
Jacob doesn't hesitate. "Yes," he murmurs. "Especially after everything."
Lara gnashes her teeth into her cheek, until she tastes blood.
"I should've destroyed it," she blurts. "I still could."
I still should.
Jacob shifts, rests an arm on his knee, but doesn't look at her. "Why didn't you?"
Lara digs her fingertips into the snow.
"I can't imagine my father would've been very proud if I had."
It's a hollow half-truth, and she thinks they both know it. But Jacob doesn't call it out, doesn't try to heal the ache in the words she hasn't said.
And that is the most damning thing of all.
A/N: Fair warning, I have no update schedule lined up for this because my main WIP is massive (as in, probably half a million words when it's done, massive) and my job decided this summer was the time to grind us all into dirt. I also haven't prewritten as much as I usually would for this. So, Chapter 2 is coming when I have brainpower for translating my outline into actual words, or the next time I pull an all-nighter because Lara and Jacob made me feral again.
As always, I welcome any thoughts or feedback! Especially since I haven't written for this fandom before 😅