It's been a few months since Lara rescued Jacob from Trinity's auction. Things have been going well, but today she might need help to feel a bit better.
She watches soberly as Jacob walks to pick up something from the fridge and get a cup of tea. She usually doesn't even note his steps anymore when she is focused on her research – a miracle of what nearly three months of living together in a cramped space can do.
The change is not just in her, and she respects with amazement how Jacob has learned to use his liberty and live like a roommate with equal standing. Although, she is not always 100 % sure of that because he is so subdued and clean, barely making a noise or leaving a mark. But whenever she checks if he has adapted and feels welcomed, he always gives her a nod that appears sincere.
And she is not going to pressure him.
However, today she is more on the edge, the text on her laptop jumping in her eyes, and the smallest of noises manages to distract her.
She knows that it's all due to her nightmare. After the auction, Jacob had been the one to sleep poorly: waking her up with his trashing and moans. She had never considered herself the therapist-type, but with Jacob, she has been forced to learn. Luckily, on his better days, Jacob shows her enough of an example on how to listen and understand that she can build and reciprocate on that. Neither one of them has been a people person for years in the absence of the said people, but they are working on it.
It's not like they have a choice if she wants to find a way to fix her mistakes and Jacob is willing to find a way to die.
Trinity is still on their tail, tightening their grip on the world, and based on the whispers that she has hunted, creating new armies with the Deathless.
So far, it had still been Jacob who had needed someone on his side when he had been hyperventilating and vomiting like that alone could expel the memories from his mind.
This morning, they had switched roles.
She had forgotten to take her under-the-counter medication and ended up dreaming of Yamatai. As a result, she had been making enough of a show and noise to wake up Jacob from next to her. She had been apprehensive from the start when Jacob had objected how unnecessary it would be to move some of the boxes from the bedroom just to provide him with a private space. However, nightly terrors of finding her friends' bodies and witnessing Trinity's cruelty was her problem and one that shouldn't weigh his shoulders.
She had nearly punched him a black eye when he had shaken her awake, but as she had learned when trying to control his nightly traumas, he was distinctively strong and agile, easily blocking her attacks.
Moreover, he hadn't said anything except the compulsory reassurances that it was just a dream: no pity, no recoiling. But when he had moved to make her a cup of tea – Jacob was so ridiculously British in his tea habits – she got a feeling that the incident had changed his outlook on her.
The last months had been nothing but learning to share the same space and build a team to unite their forces to stop Trinity. Still, it seemed that the momentary loss of her hardened persona had granted him the agency that she had tried, but probably failed, to give him with her perfectionism and over-protectiveness. And he was a Prophet after all, used to guiding and leading people for over a millennium.
No matter how difficult everything was with their bursts of anger that arose simply from their fears and traumas, the nightmares, and their jumpiness to categorize everything as a threat, they both had strengths. She could compartmentalize her feelings, trust purely on her logic and instincts, and push forward with stubbornness. Jacob, on the other hand, even with his fresher wounds, was calm; there was peace and acceptance in him that she silently graved for. Because under the drive that she allowed to consume her senses, she was always second-guessing, worried if anything was going to come out of this.
She glances at Jacob who was now halfway down his tea and twirling the rosary in his fingers again. He looked so calm while sitting with his back leaning against the wall, eyes closed. It is one habit that they have begun to favor: share the same space without necessarily talking or working on anything together – just having the other's presence was comforting. They didn't know each other fully and always kept one sense alert for anything that would prove their fears founded, but for now… it was more than she could have hoped for.
She tries to focus on her work once more but not even five minutes in, she gives up again, her will and determination have taken a day-off to somewhere exotic to escape the bleak weather. Roth's birthday would also have been in a couple days if everything hadn't gone to shit.
She glances at the brecciated Jasper beads turning in Jacob's hand again – a combination that was thought to provide mental clarity and focus to the wearer.
Another thing that she has learned about Jacob is how good he is at reading situations and people, guiding them in the direction that he deems suitable. He isn't narcissistically manipulative, but with the guardedness that she has learned to harbor, she has to look back on many of their conversations afterward. Yet, she cannot deny that he is wise with sharp instincts, and she is starting to trust his heart. She hopes that he feels the same way despite having turned a bit more wary when she had gotten heated at Trinity's actions for the first time in his presence or whenever she breaks her habits in some other way.
Those situations are becoming less and less though.
"Does it help?" she asks, keeping her voice gentle not to startle him. Another thing that she has had to learn since previously her words usually consisted of curses aimed at Trinity or tough love directed at herself.
Jacob opens his eyes but refrains from answering immediately, and she can almost read the rest of the prayer in the movements of his fingers.
"Sometimes," he gives her simply.
She is surprised by his response because she had expected an answer closer to 'of course' with how the lines on his face always smoothen whenever he prays.
"It depends on one's mood, receptiveness; sometimes finding the state of mind is more arduous."
She simply nods, having lost the energy to be perplexed about how he could read her thoughts already on the third week.
"I'm almost jealous," she admits with a speck of a smile. She could use some inner peace today.
His eyes stay focused on something unknown, the small sadness underlining them as always when he isn't actively trying to hide it. She knows that look; it's on her face every time she lapses even for a second to think back to the people she has lost.
"Do you wish to try?"
She looks back at her laptop and the work that only irritates her at the moment. "It wouldn't do me any good."
"I can teach you, if you want," he offers with small guardedness, apprehensive that he is stepping on her area, and yet, reading correctly that it's not the rosary that she hesitates but her fit with it.
She isn't going to get any work done anyway, and a sense of normalcy, a bit more agency to Jacob might not be a bad thing, so she swallows the nervous sigh, and walks to kneel by him on the floor.
"So...?" she prods hesitantly.
"Are you familiar with the core principles?" he asks, leaning a little away from the wall and closer to her.
"Every stone – or knot – resembles a prayer and you move along the cord."
A hint of amusement flashes on Jacob's face, making her simultaneously exasperated and glad.
"In essence," he nods. His nods are still shallow as his mind hasn't yet accustomed to the collar missing from his neck. The realization always takes her back to the abandoned warehouse and her paying an obscene amount of money to have the collar cut off by people she trusted only when she was aiming at them with a pistol, Jacob lying on the ground with a rudimentary spark shield over him.
"It's not the movements," he guides, bringing her back to the present, "but the way you approach it."
"I'm... not religious," she confesses despite that it's probably become obvious at this point.
"That is not a prerequisite factor," he smiles wryly. "Are you familiar with any prayers?"
"Lord's prayer..." she replies while trying to think of any other she might remember well enough. "I... Would you mind if I asked what you prefer to use?"
He blinks at her question, taken by it.
"Sorry, that was an intimate question–"
"–but one that makes no harm," he amends before she has the time to finish. "I have my own, building upon the Byzantine tradition," he replies while tasting the words, his fingers twirling the rosary, albeit so fast that it's more of a habit than anything. "It's longer than the Lord's prayer."
"I don't think that is going to make or break this," she states dryly, pushing a hand through her tied-up hair, unable to control her apprehension.
He nods at her with a hint of sad amusement before turning back to his hardened persona.
"Everyone prays in their own way. But you need to find that peace and faith inside of you. Rosary does not give them, it's simply a tool to keep you focused," he says and presents the rosary for her to take.
She hesitates. His words are a final nail to her confidence in this. Still, she doesn't want to hurt his feelings by declining. She knows that he needs these small victories as much as she did when she was recovering from Yamatai.
"Rome wasn't built in a day," he sighs at her, his hand still calmly extended.
"That saying is older than you," she retorts back, managing to keep herself from rolling her eyes – just.
"I'm glad that something is," he gives with a perfect poker face that is only betrayed by his eyes.
She accepts the rosary even if it feels alien in her hand. And it must feel unfamiliar for him too as he had asked for the prayer rope. She decides to find him one or at least the materials for one the next time she dares to leave this building.
"Praying is a form of creating a contact with God?" she surmises, earning a slow, pondering nod. "I just don't..." she sighs, turning the rosary in her hand, "I'm quite far from holy. Killing hundreds – thousands – is probably not that favorable in the eyes of divine beings."
Jacob weighs her silently, making her uneasy as the seconds progress.
"Maybe you should first work on forgiving yourself before worrying about the divine powers," he gives her thoughtfully with a hint of reprimand. "We are all imperfect, every one of us on this Earth."
She smiles bitterly at that, the uneasiness that is only growing in her gut, rising to constrict her throat. "How could I?" she finally asks, more at a loss than she'd want to be.
"That's where the praying comes in. One stone at a time." But Jacob sighs too, battling against his demons. She feels horrible at that, how she is turning this into something difficult for him.
"I'm sorry," she blurts, her hand flying to her push her hair out of her face, "I... I'm just not fit for this." She wants to get up and flee from the situation but she cannot do that to him on top of everything else.
"No one is, Lara," he replies softly. "The task is to learn to accept that, to feet that emotion and let it free."
"I don't like feeling," she avows back like a scared child, her gaze averted. Feeling is something that she has learned to cut away from herself. Despite not meeting his gaze, the pain in her demeanor must be evident and remind them both about her outburst last night.
"What you are scared of, Lara, is letting go, surrendering. But with this, that's the only way you can gain any control, learn to work with those feelings instead of against them, against yourself," he says and gently closes her fingers around the rosary that she is offering back to him.
"I don't want to disappoint you," she confesses quietly. It's an unaccustomed thought all in all, to care what someone thinks of her, maybe it's her speck of hope that there is still something human left in her after all the lives that she has taken.
"You are not doing such a thing," he assures. "You are willing to learn. Everything else will build from that."
She contemplates his words before pushing the rosary back to him. "Take it, for the time being, you have more use to it before we find another or a prayer rope."
He nods and watches her for a minute before recognizing that the moment is over and gets up.
"Could you... write it down?" she turns her head to ask from his back from where she is still seated on her knees in the middle of the open space.
"The prayer? – Of course."
And when she reads his neat handwriting on the spare mattress on the living room floor that night when Jacob has already fallen asleep beside her, she is no closer to believing in her chances to learn how to pray. However, peace is something she finds momentarily as she studies the words, follows the shapes of the letters and the rhythmic use of space in Jacob's handwriting – calligraphy more like – and the rest of the world fades from her awareness.