After thirty minutes of thinking, planning and bickering, the twelve of them have finally made it to the last room in the chasms. Jankovic was at the front of the group and the chest was vibrating intensely like a heart during a heart attack. He stared in awe at the glowing crown on the ground in front of him surrounded by visible white lines protruding from the ground. Jankovic noted the diamond-like shapes on the jeweled crown and held up the cube in his hand. It was not a cube, but a diamond that had been separated from the Crown of Immortality a long time ago. "It turns out the key to the Crown of Immortality was in my hands the entire time," Jankovic says, extremely proud of himself.
Lara was unable to speak and did nothing but stare at the Crown of Immortality. The divine object is all her pupils saw. Although she kept quiet, she actually believed that in some way, the Crown of Immortality was connected to the Divine Source either directly or indirectly. With a little more research and less guns aimed at her, then perhaps she could discover if the Divine Source is a lost piece of the Crown of Immortality.
Lara and Jankovic blinked in shock and surprise when the cube when flying from his hand and right into a gap between the diamonds. Jankovic took a step backwards in shock and so did the others. The diamond fused itself into the jeweled crown like a puzzle piece and the entire crown lit up a bright color. Jankovic, Lara, Ben and Nadia waited a full minute before any of the moved. Jankovic paced towards the crown quietly like he was tiptoeing around a sleeping guard. Jankovic gets down to one knee and thrusts his arms forward to grab the crown. He stared in wonder at the crown like a child and smiled smugly. "Behold this, I have finally achieved my quest in finding the crown. I am holding the actual Crown of Immortality in my hands." The jewelled crown was a little spikey and he actually pricked himself. He ignored the pain and slowly placed the crown on top of his skull, taking extra care in making sure that he does not cut himself by accident.
Lara couldn't take it anymore. She could not sit back and let her worst enemy achieve his destiny. She still had her switchblade hidden within her sleeve and she knew that this was the right time to use it. She wriggles her arm so that the switchblade rolls down her arm like a boulder down a hill. She catches the switchblade with the very tip of her middle finger and she presses a small button at the bottom of the hilt, activating a stainless silver blade and raises it above her head, and like in slow motion, she rockets it forward and the blade slices through the air and lodges itself deep into Jankovic's back. The Trinity commander's eyes widen and he freezes in time. The knife did not pierce him all the way through him, but it did stake him a fraction in the heart.
The man falls to one knee and the crown falls out of his hands and rolls away and back in the middle of the ground where it was initially placed. Blood streamed down Jankovic's mouth like he was a vampire and he collapsed to his back, pushing the knife deeper into his back and heart.
Ben and Nadia fought back quickly and turned the guns on the Trinity soldiers and they blow them to Hell. Pretty soon, all eight of the soldiers were killed and their guns were kicked to the side.
Nadia didn't kill any of the soldiers, only did Ben and Lara did. Lara snapped the last Trinity soldier's neck-Danny's-and kicked his corpse to the side. Lara huffed and walked towards Jankovic like a bloodthirsty lion. Lara stepped over the bleeding Jankovic and towards the fallen Crown of Immortality. Without thinking, she smashes her boot onto the Crown of Immortality without any hesitation and the crown shattered beneath her feet. All what was left of the crown were scraps of diamonds and metal.
"NO!" Jankovic shouts as he watches the one thing he truly desired (literally) shatter in front of him. "What have you done?!" He cried in pure anger and despair. "You whore! You stupid daughter of a Croft, you ruined everything. You bitch, I'm going to kill you and everyone you love!"
Lara turned to the downed Jankovic and raises the boot that she used to stomp on the crown and stomped on Jankovic's chest, burying the knife deeper into his back, all the way up to the hilt. His heart had hit an all-time low, but he was still alive and wheezing like a fish outta water. It was like God was giving him an extra few minutes to talk to her.
Ben and Nadia stared at Lara and Jankovic in, somewhat amusement.
Lara crushes her boot down on Jankovic's chest a little more and causes him extreme pain. Lara bends forward and spits in Jankovic's eye. "Call me a blasphemous for spitting on your bloody eye, but I just want you to know something mate. I want you to know that Trinity is going to be buried in the ground for everything you've done. You killed my father and thousands of innocent people for your own selfish purposes. I just want you to know that once I make Trinity nothing more than a myth, I am going to be living a good life with my husband. I will take your advice and have a few children and I promise that they will grow up without having to worry about being hunted by a secret group of zealots. I'll make sure you are buried down here and nobody will find your corpse. If there's anything you would like to say while I am still around and you are still alive, then I suggest you say it right now."
Jankovic was taken aback by her monologue and was riddled with fury. He could not believe anything that was happening to himself. He not only lost all his friends, had his right-hand man turns on him while being humiliated live for the Boss to see and see the very object he desired destroyed right in front of him. Icing on the cake, he had been spit on, backstabbed literally by Lara Croft had been given a hate speech by her directed towards him and every single other Trinity soldier and Trinity mercenary out there.
He had failed his mission, he accepted that, he can even accept the fact that his friends turned on him and that he failed. He can accept that but if there is one thing that he cannot accept is that Trinity will not be beaten by Lara. His health was declining incredibly fast and he had to say something. He was going to speak from the heart to Lara while it was still beating. He puts a hand on his chest, putting pressure on his wound and sighs deeply. He had truly accepted death and he was waiting for it.
"Shit," Jankovic curses. "I understand that my life is numbered, the seconds I have left alive are numbered, but I want you to know Lara that your days are numbered. We-Trinity-may only have five hundred and fifty-eight initiated members, but we are everywhere. There is a total of two thousand and ninety-six of us and there is only two of you. You're outnumbered one thousand and forty-eight to one. You and Nadia are not going to survive."
Lara narrowed her eyes upon the realization that Jankovic said her and Nadia and left Ben out completely. "Wait a goddamn minute, why did you say me and Nadia and leave Ben out?"
Jankovic laughed as if it was some sort of big joke. "Ben is going to die. Your future husband and potential father of your children is going to die in your hands. You are going to get the moment to say goodbye to him and you will be broken. Trinity will get a victory out of this battle and you will not be walking home with a trophy. You think you have Trinity outnumbered. We have the resources, we have the numbers, we have the archaeologists and we have the world power to ruin your life. All it takes to end your life with you alive is a simple flip of the switch. Like flipping the switch to a fan in your living room. Ben. Is. Going. To. Die. I take comfort in the fact that Trinity is going to outnumber you by thousands of years. We've done it before. If we wanted to, you should be dead from the inside within twenty-four hours." He leans forward and pulls something out of his pocket. An envelope with blood on the outside. "Your father wanted me to give this to you. Cry and don't hold back any tears or else it will only cause you to break down in a place that will make you feel uncomfortable."
His health was no less than one percent. "I...hope..you...take comfort...in knowing...that…" He begins to drown in his own blood. "I...be...torturing...your father...in...the...afterlife." He said his last words as his head laid all the way on the ground, his body going limp, his chest stopped moving and nothing came out his mouth other than blood. He died holding the letter in his hand and the last thing he was looking at before he died was Lara Croft.
"I take comfort in knowing that you'll burn in Hell," Lara says as she pries the letter from Jankovic's cold and bloody fingers. She took two fingers and used them to shut Jankovic's eyes with them. "Tell Vladimir, Mathias, Ana and Konstantine that I said hello." She rolled Jankovic over to remove the knife from his back and wiped it clean against his pants.
She looked at the envelope in her hands and she folded it neatly and placed it in the back of her pants. Her knife was put away and she turned back to Ben and Nadia and went to go hug the two.
"What are we going to do now Lara?" Nadia asked.
"We are going to find our way out of here somehow and we are going to seal this entrance up for good and make sure that this place is never discovered again," Ben answered.
"It should be difficult to find this place without the cube, because I destroyed it," Lara said. "You know Ben, we are in Rome and we can use this moment to plan our weddings. We can even get married here, if you want to."
Ben liked that idea. "Hell yes let's get married in Rome."
I gotta say, it was very hard for me to write the death of Jankovic Jurisa (February 5, 1971-April 7, 2016). He was my favorite villain to write in this fanfiction and what I like about him is that he uses charisma to get what he wants and he believes that Trinity really is doing a good thing and he really wants to make the world a better place by ridding it of sin. He does not use sadism to intimate Lara, but he uses what knowledge and goals he does have in mind to try and win her over. He is quite different from the other Tomb Raider villains because he is a villain whose intentions seem pretty clear and he is willing to eliminate any threat in his way as long as his goal is completed, but at the same time, he does not wish any initial harm against Lara, despite being a major thorn in not only his side, but in Trinity's side. Most of the Tomb Raider villains in the reboot series are pretty determined to kill Lara but Ana does not harbor any true hatred towards Lara, just like how Jankovic never harbors any true hatred towards Lara in any way possible. Coincidentally, both Ana and Jankovic knew Lara since she was a child. Had Jankovic been completely unfamiliar with Lara, then he wouldn't have hesitated to bring any harm towards her. But even villains like Jankovic have a breaking point, his breaking point is similar to Ana's though. Both still offered Lara a chance, but Lara made them both furious to the point where any love they had within them was wiped out completely. Honestly, I don't know if I will write another villain like Jankovic. I will.