A/N: Chapter 2, finally! This was one of those frustrating ones I had to rewrite from scratch a few times, but it's done now. Gotta say it's weird to have such short chapters... not that I'm complaining. By the way, Prices will probably end up being 5 chapters instead of 3, due to entirely unforseeable circumstances that had nothing whatsoever to do with chapter crawl and Salty continually filling my brain with ideas.
Chapter 2 Content Warnings: mentions of violence, death, and natural disasters
Chapter 2: all you have is your fire
Lara
"Those aren't going away, are they?"
Lara hesitates as Jonah meets her eyes, an arm of messily folded shirts hovering over her carry-on bag. Her backup clothes, in case the airline loses her luggage - or Trinity tries to steal it. Just last month, she chased down a Trinity operative trying to abscond with her suitcase.
Jonah knows something happened in Siberia, that the Source is real, she saw it, and she's not entirely herself. But Jonah hasn't heard the whole truth yet.
If not for her body's unnatural healing, if not for the glacier-blue eyes staring back in the mirror, if not for the contacts she always wears outside, she could almost forget. Almost pretend it isn't real.
Telling Jonah will make it more real.
"No," Lara says. "They're not."
Jonah tucks a sat phone into his bag. His empty hands flex - a nervous tick he's picked up since Siberia.
"You alright?"
"Yeah." Because she is, but… "But there's something I should tell you."
If Jonah's determined to help her bring down Trinity, he needs to know everything - Siberia, the Source, the truth that Trinity can never be allowed to discover.
More than that, he's the only steady friend she has. He deserves to know.
So, she tells him.
When she tells him she killed Ana, Jonah sinks onto her couch, brow furrowed but his stare stopping just shy of judgement. Jonah was there at Yamatai; he knows she kills when she has to.
When Lara tells him she looked into the Source and it took something from her, or maybe it didn't but it changed something inside her and now she's functionally immortal just like Jacob, Jonah puts his forehead in his hands and shakes his head.
"Shit, Lara."
"I know," she says - not much else to say, but she repeats it anyway. "I know."
"What's it like? I mean, you still seem so… you."
Lara sets aside her bundle of clothes - breathable undershirts, socks, slim cargo pants. She can finish packing later. For now, she joins Jonah on the sofa.
"I am. Everything's the same, I just can't die. Well, not permanently."
"You sure?" Jonah picks at a scab on his index knuckle, a scrape from rock climbing. "You said the Prophet's Deathless Army are immortal too, and without their souls…"
"I'm not like them," she says quickly.
She's not. The Deathless let their need to protect the Source - or to keep it to themselves, she's still not sure which - drive them to sacrifice their own city. They committed an atrocity to ensure none possessed the Source but them. Thousands of lives to keep the Source hidden in the ice, safe, untouched. Such a choice cost their humanity, didn't it?
They sacrificed their own people to protect it. Surely she couldn't be that callous, even for a worthy cause. Understanding the Athanatoi isn't the same as agreeing with them.
She only sacrificed one life: Ana's. Only the one, because Trinity would use the Source to make their own Deathless Army. Even if she'd managed to keep it out of Trinity's hands, what would be the cost of immortality? She could save millions from disease, serious injury, anything, but would they still be human?
Jonah looks at her like he can hear her thoughts.
"Jacob is still himself," Lara says. "He's as human as anyone."
But she can't say for sure why. Why, if the Source gives immortality by taking one's soul, can she and Jacob function as normal humans, but the Deathless became mindless shells who care for nothing but the Source? Is that a choice they made collectively? Individually? Are they still following Jacob's order to protect the Source above all else, centuries later? Or did the Source decide that for them, somehow?
"He wasn't always, right?" Jonah gestures to her journals and artifacts from Siberia, which include records of the Prophet's city - its citizens, tombs, and autocratic theocracy.
As the Prophet, Iacobus ruled his city with a zealous fist. He must have thought his escape from Trinity, the Source itself, was proof of righteousness, that his God blessed him, his followers, and his city.
Kitezh, where criminals were forced to labour in the Pit of Judgement as penance. Where people possessed by demons - who were likely just unwell in body or mind - died in brutal exorcisms.
Kitezh, where Jacob's people died at the hands of an army they thought would protect them.
Kitezh, where Iacobus the Deathless Prophet died, and Jacob the compassionate leader was reborn.
"Not always," Lara admits. "Kitezh was as brutally medieval as most any society. But he is now, and that's what matters."
Jonah rests his elbows on his knees, his dark eyes soft with understanding - or something akin to it.
"Alright. Just… if you're worried, if you think the Source is changing you -"
She's shaking her head before Jonah finishes, hands fisted in her lap.
"It won't. I won't let it."
Jonah nods, but his eyes… he has the look he had in her father's study when she told him about the Prophet's Tomb in Syria.
Tolerant, struggling to grasp what she's saying, but… cautious.
Wary.
Jonah's caution precedes frustration, which precedes anger, and then he walks out, or tries to, and one day -
One day, he won't come back. Because Jonah is a better friend than she deserves, and she cannot stay still for anything. Not even for him, the most constant friend she has, because if the Source makes her into a monster like the Deathless, she'll lose Jonah anyway.
Lara forces her hands to relax, her shoulders to drop, and the incessant itch to keep going, don't linger, on to the next mission to momentarily quiet. For now, she's still herself, and she intends to keep it that way.
"If I feel any different, I'll warn you," Lara says. "I promise."
Jonah softens; for once, she's managed to reassure him.
"I'll keep an eye out too. Just be careful, alright?"
Lara bumps his shoulder. "Always am."
Jacob
At summer thaw, Jacob tries the satellite phone Lara left behind - old Trinity gear, tuned to a different frequency - and hears nothing but static.
He's not surprised. Like him, Lara cannot truly die, but she's taken on a task too large for any one person.
He ought not to, perhaps, but he worries. For all her perseverance, for all her extraordinary courage and adaptability and tenacity, Lara is only one woman, and Trinity has operated for centuries. No one person can defeat an organisation so vast.
Yet if anyone has a chance at stopping them, it's Lara. In the valley, she accomplished nearly impossible tasks: retrieving the Atlas, defeating dozens of the Deathless, stopping Ana and Trinity from taking the Source.
After second, third, and fourth attempts at reaching Lara meet the same silence, Jacob sets the phone aside and does as he always has.
He waits, he prays, and he hopes.
Lara
They hunt Trinity for three years, her and Jonah. It's slow, steady progress, wiping out Trinity cells across the globe, killing because she has to.
It's getting easier - mindless, like breathing. This immortal body of hers learns even quicker than her usual self, though Lara initially hypothesised the opposite. Why would her body learn new tricks faster if it has all the time in the world?
Turns out her body doesn't know that. It still wants to survive, to avoid pain, to run instead of fight (an old instinct she can stifle quickly). Lara wishes she'd questioned Jacob more about what immortality is like. Judging by his scars, he's either died or survived deadly wounds many times over the centuries. Does his body still fight death, or does he accept its brief embrace knowing he'll soon wake? Does his body ever get used to dying?
She has the sat phone; she could ask.
Well, later, when she's not caving in Mexico chasing Trinity's latest archaeological findings.
"Shit," Lara swears as the earth rumbles, cave dust clouding around her. Trinity's rushed excavations have a habit of destabilising the ground, but she can't turn back; she's right on their tail. Something brought them to Cozumel, and she has to find it first.
One cave-in, an almost-crushed leg, and an explosive booby trap later, Lara sprints for daylight and dives onto the hillside, Jonah close behind. The mountain collapses behind them, just one more narrow escape. A normal Tuesday.
"You know, generally when dynamite starts going off, you're supposed to get the hell out of there." Jonah coughs and helps her stand, his grin stopping short of amusement.
"Worth it," Lara says, rubbing her eyes. Damn dust got in her contacts again. "We have another clue."
"Right. Pink fish, silver-crowned mountains… not much to go on."
Lara shrugs. A vague clue is better than nothing.
"I'll try and decipher the riddle - maybe the date has something to do with it."
"I'll look into the pink fish and silver mountains." Jonah nods across the shallow valley, where the city of Cozumel sprawls over the next hill. "Want to freshen up, regroup at the café? Dr Dominguez is supposed to be there tonight."
"Yeah, sounds good," Lara says, fighting a wince as she tests her injured leg. Painful, still bleeding through her makeshift bandage, but it'll heal in a few hours.
"Want me to take a look?"
Lara waves off Jonah's concern. No sense wasting medical supplies when she'll be fine by the time they reach Cozumel.
"I'm fine."
"If you say so." Jonah turns the conversation to the café's food - excellent, apparently - as she falls into step beside him. He's used to her brushing off injuries since Siberia, but still…
She wonders how much patience he has left. She hasn't died once on this hunt for Trinity, but Jonah's been watching her more, eyes lingering on scars and wounds she accumulates almost as fast as they heal.
Lara shakes off her worry and jokes with Jonah about food. Dr Dominguez is the head of Trinity's local cell and their excavations here; whatever he's after, she can get it first.
But until then, she can spare an hour of lighter conversation with Jonah.
Dr Dominguez isn't just the leader of Trinity's cell in Mexico - he's the leader of Trinity's High Council.
She should have killed him.
Lara kneels on the roof of one of Cozumel's last standing buildings and stares out at the tsunami's destruction. Her fault, her doing, her mistake costing thousands of lives. Her biggest fuck-up yet, all because she took the dagger from the temple before Trinity could.
The dagger is the Key of Chak Chel, and by taking it, she's started the end of the world.
Assuming Dominguez was telling the truth. God, how she wishes she could argue he wasn't.
But the proof is in the screams of the dying, the saltwater drowning the streets and Cozumel's people, the stench of fire and death. She felt something shift the moment she took the dagger.
She's getting people killed again, making reckless choices, acting too rashly. Too focused on the mission, on stopping Trinity, on getting the artifact to stop and think like Jonah said. She should have left the dagger, found the Silver Box of Ix Chel, and stolen the dagger back from Trinity after that.
But she didn't. And now Cozumel is underwater.
She has to fix this.
She has to find the box.
A/N: Update schedule is still who-tf-knows, but if my brain cooperates during NaNo, hopefully it won't take me months to get Chapter 3 out 😅