You told her not to go. You laid it out plainly, logically, listing the unstable geology of the region, the hostile remnants of Trinity operatives still rumored to be lurking, the sheer, vertical isolation of the temple itself. “It’s a deathtrap, Lara,” you’d said, your voice tight with a fear you tried to mask as frustration. “Not a puzzle. A deathtrap.”

She’d listened, her head tilted, those sharp, intelligent eyes seeing right through you. She heard the worry beneath the anger, and it only seemed to harden her resolve. “It’s a lead,” she’d replied, her voice quiet but iron-clad. “The last real lead on my father’s research. I have to see.”

And she went anyway.

Now, she’s back. Not triumphant, not unscathed, but back. She’s sitting on the edge of the heavy oak desk in your study at Croft Manor, the one littered with her maps and translations. The first light of dawn bleeds through the tall windows, painting the dust motes gold and illuminating the damage. Her left arm is cradled awkwardly against her ribs, the sleeve of her tank top torn and stained a rusty brown. A deep, angry gash runs from her temple back into her hairline, cleaned now but still seeping. Her knuckles are raw, her clothes are filthy, and she smells of sweat, blood, and ancient stone.

But in her good hand, resting on her thigh, is a small, intricately carved obsidian box. The artifact. She got it.

You work in furious, efficient silence, your jaw clenched so tight it aches. The antiseptic wipes sting as you dab at the cut on her temple, and she doesn’t even flinch. She just watches you, her breathing a little shallow. You wrap a bandage around her ribs, your fingers brushing against the hot, bruised skin of her side, and you feel the tremor that runs through her—not from pain, you realize, but from the adrenaline crash, from the sheer exhaustion of having survived.

The silence between you is a physical thing, thick and charged. You are so, so angry. Angry at her recklessness, angry at her stubbornness, angry that she makes you feel this—this clawing, desperate terror that sits in your chest like a cold stone. Every time she leaves, it’s there. Every time she returns like this, battered and bleeding but alive, it melts into a relief so profound it frightens you.

You finish taping the bandage in place, your movements finally slowing. Your hands, which have been all business, now simply rest on her shoulders. You can feel the tension coiled in her muscles, the incredible, weary strength of her. You look down, avoiding her eyes, focusing on the top of her head, on the dark strands of hair stuck to her damp neck.

She shifts slightly, and the obsidian box clinks against the desk. “It was a deathtrap,” she says, her voice hoarse. A simple, quiet admission.

That’s when you finally look at her. The anger is still there, a hot ember in your gut, but it’s being smothered by something else, something vast and tender and terrifying. You see the shadow of pain in her eyes, the fatigue, but also that unquenchable fire, the one that drives her into the dark and brings her back, always back, to you.

You don’t speak. You can’t. Instead, you let your forehead come to rest gently against hers, closing your eyes. In the quiet of the study, with the dawn spreading across the floor, you just breathe her in—alive, here, hers. The artifact is on the desk. The wounds are bandaged. She is home. For now, that is everything.