A/N: Timeline-wise: After "J is for Jail". Trigger warnings for violence, a bit of gore, implied/referenced suicide, and temporary character death.
Thank you so much to RhiaLynn for comments and grammar help!
T is for Tomb
They toss Lara unceremoniously into the tomb that had been carved for her even before she had been born. The Trinity leader spits on her body before signaling the others to close the tomb with the large slab of stone.
One of the soldiers kicks Jacob with the reinforced combat boot in passing.
"Leave him a gun to pass the time. I don't think his wife will be much of a company."
The soldiers chuckle after him and one of them throws a machine gun with a full magazine into the chamber. Shackled and injured, Jacob isn't fast enough to dive for the gun and take a few of them with him to hell before they activate the ancient hydraulic mechanism and disappear behind the large stone doors. It's dark with a small, engraved border lighting the edge of the platform that holds Lara's tomb. The room is larger than most tombs he had visited with her during the years but void of anything useful, especially when situated far underground.
Jacob slumps to the ground and starts to pick the lock the way Lara had taught him on one autumn night at the Manor when neither one of them had managed to fall asleep in the post-sex adrenaline. The broken bones and ruptured organs hurt with every breath that he takes, but he doesn't bother healing them. Physical pain is heaven compared to everything else. He is beyond tired of living while everyone else dies.
The lock snaps open after a moment of tinkering, giving him a chance to put his head in his hand while supporting himself against the ground with the other. He can't get the images out of his mind of how the combat knife pierced through Lara's lower stomach or about the hole in her skull that they hit into her next. There was nothing to the violence but to make sure that she was beyond his healing capabilities. Trinity had already found the three mystic stones, and they were never going to get the Seer's medallion out of Lara - figuratively or literally.
The people here had envisioned her as their protector over a thousand years ago, but despite all the preparations that they had poured into this war, she lies dead after the third contact.
A whimper escapes Jacob's lips and he hates prophecies and visions from the bottom of his heart. Moreover, he hates himself for ever having faith in anything. It's a moment of infidelity he will carry with him because the faith refuses to abandon him.
Sofia and a few of the Remnants that have stayed dedicated to their oath are hiding with the Divine Source on the other side of the world. Trinity will probably find them with the seers' gifts that they came to look for here. And Jacob's soul wrenches at the thought that it is his only hope. Until the destruction of the Source, he is doomed to live a weakening existence with Lara's remains. The bullets can only work as a distraction for so long, no matter how sparingly he would use them to silence his heart.
However, he has never been allowed to give up, and he knows that it's fruitless to start now, so he gets up to inspect the room for any potential lever with eyes as sharp as Lara's.
Utilizing his faith seems hypocritical, so he doesn't bother to heal himself. There is a pang of hunger and thirst in his stomach, but he lets them wander on the outskirts of his mind. He only feels relief when the unconsciousness finally offers him a short respite through his injuries. The aches will be his only companions for a long while.
The tattoo of a cross on his wrist mocks him when he raises his hand the next day to check his vision after returning to his senses.
His drifting mind tries to escape the growing discomfort and pain into his memories. Only to stumble all too often in their capture and Lara's death. He knows that Lara was okay with the risk of dying and, were she here, would cradle him softly to say that he shouldn't mourn for her. But he does anyway. She deserves as much, and his heart hasn't turned to stone over his long life. He just hoped that this last hurrah could have gone on for a bit longer.
"Why the stars?" She asks him when he is lying on the ground staring at the night sky in Mongolia. The inquiry had been visible on her face the moment she had found him after walking back to the camp.
"Something so much bigger than us. People used to think they determine your fate – part of it at least."
Lara hums at his answer and sits down next to him. "Man's place in the universe," she recites.
"Hmh?"
"I read it in one of the tombs back at your Valley," she explains and her brows furrow, "They built the Orrery for you."
"It's a long relationship," he remarks with a mournful tint but taps the ground next to him making Lara snort softly but lie down anyway. However, she doesn't raise her gaze to the stars and instead flops to lay her head on his chest to look at him. Her eyes are always so full of life when he looks at her. "The stars are in the other direction," he smiles.
Lara glances upwards somewhere above his head but remains indifferent towards the skies. "I don't mind."
"Destiny?"
Lara hums at his words and he can feel the action against his chest, "You know, I'm the Goddess of New Moon. I can make them visible to you, but I'll eventually drown them out."
He snorts at her boldness and doesn't doubt her one bit. She is a force of nature in her own right, powerful beyond measure without help from a Divine Source or any other artifact, just by being willing to be the best she can be. And she is still human, laying in his arms contentedly, looking at him like he was just a human, too.
He loves her with all his soul at that moment.
Time loses its meaning. The stubble on his face is noticeable and his fingernails scrape against the stone. He has used two bullets, but the scars that they leave behind them feel disappointing under his fingers. They offer him nothing but memories. He has had three bouts of anger where he screamed and shouted like he hadn't done since his self-imposed exile after the Mongols. It's all wrong and unasked.
After what might have been a week or three, his vision starts to adapt to the dim light. However, it seems to be at the expense of accuracy or then it's the hunger making everything fuzzy and unclear.
It takes him a few more turns of fitful sleep to realize that it's not about his vision but the condensing darkness that seeps into the crypt from every crevice. It expands and grows, making him feel cold and isolated. Despite the destruction that Trinity can cause, he has rarely come across pure darkness, and now it's circling him like white caps in a storm.
It also circles Lara's tomb.
And he isn't really surprised in the end, after watching the darkness grow for days when the tomb is pushed open from the inside. Because no other object here could draw all this power except for the medallion that Lara must have swallowed during the battle to keep it from Trinity.
It's a horrifying outcome, but one that he'll have no say in. At least, it might provide a change or kill him.
After all, it's not Lara that rises out of the tomb. The blood on her head and body has turned ink black like her eyes and the veins that shine through her skin. But the mist welcomes her, wraps around her, and grows until there is more darkness than air in the room.
Her attention shifts to him as she steps down from the platform. Not only her interest, because the darkness follows her every movement and acts on every whim, surrounding him. He can hear the mist and void, how it resonates with his nightmares and horrors: the exodus, Kitezh, Soviets, Trinity, Sofia, and Alya's death are all there, staying an inch from his skin. He is briefly reminded of how Lara had asked him to kill her if a situation got out of hand, how she didn't want anyone to die because of her. He pushes the thought out of his head, and instead, embraces the hope that maybe, just maybe, the medallion has kept Lara from dying as well.
And he tries to listen to his instincts when the woman puts her hand around his neck. She is Death. His hunger and thirst mock him at how he cannot die, but he feels certain that death is the most lenient option this darkness can grant to him. And he would welcome his ending on his knees with raised arms. But there still seems to be a trace of Lara or her brain, and he has never been afraid of her. He knows her too well; has listened to her tears, and seen her joy too many times, to lose faith in that, so he waits without fear. She had probably followed her instincts to swallow the damn thing, and he trusts those.
She observes him for a full minute. Waiting for any crack, any sign of deception to appear, but ultimately lowers her hand and with one longer look towards him, moves to pick up the machine gun from the floor and hoists it on her back.
The mist parts the stone doors with supernatural ease, and Lara looks at him as if to test if he'll follow.
He will. He would follow her anywhere.
Trinity is still here. Some of them must have left to find the coordinates from the seers' gifts but many have stayed to look for the missing medallion. It'll find them like destruction always finds those who seek to wield it.
The first soldier that they come across a few floors up panics so badly at the sight of the undead Lara that he doesn't even have time to shout a warning before the darkness overpowers him, pushes into his body from every orifice in his head and he crumples onto the ground as dust. The sequence is immediately followed by a gust of wind that mixes the dust into the prevailing darkness.
The next soldiers have a chance to shout, "Croft!" into the ageless structure, but they are given no more mercy.
Jacob wonders if the split second is intentional to draw the soldiers to her.
No one is spared in their advancement.
However, he is protected. The darkness always condenses in front of him whenever a bullet is flying his way. It's a living organism, and he can feel the agitation that the mystic stones are gone. Moreover, the mist is following his movements, assessing his feelings as he follows the annihilation of their enemies. He sets to heal himself as inconspicuously as possible because he has a feeling that this darkness will not stop on its own. Hunger and thirst are things that he can do very little to, but he can diminish the harm they have done to his body.
When the ground-floor chamber has been cleared, Lara waits for him to open the door to outside, and he cannot escape the notion that this is just another test. He decides to let her into the open air anyway.
The Trinity base is on red alert and immediately as Lara sets her foot outside, she is met with heavy gunfire and even a missile – but she doesn't halt.
The sky is darkening above them as death swells. Jacob takes note that the current Trinity leader isn't here, but right now, they have bigger problems to worry about.
The darkness expands to search every building and hiding place inside the gates, but Jacob can already see to his anxiousness that Lara's black eyes are turning towards something behind them. The nearest village is only a few miles from the excavation site and full of souls to reap.
He cannot let her that far. But she had made sure that he was unarmed. And with the darkness swallowing the ground, he has no true chance of getting his hands on the fallen soldiers' weapons either.
Moreover, the darkness can sense the shift in him despite his efforts to keep himself appeasing to the death's whims.
Neither one of them is ever going to find peace if they turn on the innocent on this scale. And he cannot fully die – he hopes.
Maybe this will be their last hurrah.
He breaks into a jog that aches in every bone in his worn-out body. The darkness attacks his defenseless form immediately, drowning him back with the dead, back with his failures and horrors. Everyone he loves is dying while he is forced to crouch on the ground with the pressure that the darkness exerts on his body.
The only speck of luck he receives is that Lara walks back to him to watch his demise with empty eyes.
The whisper of Lara pleading him to kill her if things get out of hand rings in his ears again and just because he is still alive, tortured but kept from being crushed, he dares to hope that what's left of Lara can help him do one final attack.
He lunges towards her abdomen and gets a second of leeway until the darkness attacks him full force. Nevertheless, he uses his overgrown fingernails and the inhuman strength that the Divine Source has gifted him with to rip his wife's stomach open barehanded while the screams of the deceased and the sights of Kitezh fight to overpower his senses.
His fingers manage to grasp onto the small metal pendant in Lara's stomach and he throws it as far as he can reach. He doesn't pause as the darkness screams and Lara begins to fall limp under him while he pulls the powder bag from inside the lining of his jacket. He dumps half of the powder that they have left into her mangled stomach and the other into the hole in her head.
It shouldn't work, but by some miracle that he isn't going to question now – and probably will never want to – Lara stays alive enough that he can start blowing air into her lungs and patch her less lethal wounds with any materials that he can find.
Trinity will send new troops as soon as the information reaches them. But for now, he needs to find a shelter for himself and Lara to keep her alive before even thinking of a more advanced plan than food and water.