Chapter Text
The lights were too bright.
Lara squinted against them, trying to shut them out, but even behind her eyelids there was a dull, insistent throbbing at her temples. It felt like the inside of her skull had not yet decided whether it belonged to her anymore.
Everything in the sickbay was too clean. Too controlled. Too still.
The smell of disinfectant sat thick in her throat, sharp enough to turn her stomach. It clung to the sterile sheets, to the metal frames of the beds, to the air itself—as if nothing that had happened could possibly exist in a place like this. As if blood and salt and fire were things that could simply be scrubbed away.
Less than two hours ago, she had boarded a cargo ship bound for Tokyo. Or was it longer? Time still refused to behave properly. Four days on Yamatai? Five? The island had broken time into something jagged and unusable.
She had watched men die there. Executed, sometimes, without hesitation.
She had killed.
She had survived things she still did not fully allow herself to name.
And she had burned a dead empress alive inside a storm that should not have existed in the first place.
Lara swallowed, her throat dry.
She was not alone.
On the bed beside hers lay Alex Weiss, Pentagon hacker, unwilling survivor, and the one person who had refused—quietly, stubbornly—to leave her side on that island. His eyes were closed now. Sleep had finally taken him, his breathing slow and uneven, as though even rest did not quite know how to reach him properly anymore.
Further along sat Conrad Roth. The man who had raised her after her father’s death. His dark grey eyes were fixed on nothing in particular, though worry sat heavy in his expression, tightening the line of his mouth. Beside him, the ship’s doctor—a man who had been promoted into roles he was not prepared for—was examining Roth’s leg with clinical concern.
A little further away, Angus Grimaldi, Joslin Reyes and Jonah Maiava spoke in low voices. At first glance they looked uninjured, but there was a heaviness to them all, a quiet exhaustion that had nothing to do with sleep. Grim coughed every so often, a dry, unpleasant sound that made Lara’s shoulders tighten instinctively.
And then there was Sam.
Samantha Nishimura.
Lara’s best friend.
She lay on a bed further back in the sickbay, turned slightly away from everyone else, as though even proximity felt unbearable. Her eyes were open, but unfocused. Not looking at anything. Not responding.
Lara had tried speaking to her earlier.
The words had simply slipped past Sam, as if Lara had been speaking through glass.
So she had stopped trying.
Instead, Lara had turned to Whitman’s notes.
Doctor James Whitman. Her professor. A man whose obsession had carried them all to Yamatai and then failed to carry him back. His notebooks lay open in her hands now, filled with frantic, fevered writing about Himiko—the Sun Queen, the myth, the corpse that refused to remain dead quietly.
Lara exhaled slowly.
She shook her head once, sharply.
She did not want to think about Whitman.
Not about the way Nikolai had shot him. Not about the small red bubbles forming at his lips as he collapsed. Not about how his eyes had gone unfocused so quickly, as though someone had simply switched him off.
Her stomach tightened.
Without thinking, she reached over her shoulder.
Her fingers brushed empty air.
The quiver was gone.
Of course it was gone.
She had handed it over when she boarded the ship. Back then it had felt like a temporary thing. A procedural thing. Something reversible.
It did not feel reversible now.
Still, no one came too close. The survivors kept their distance from one another instinctively, as if proximity might cause memories to spill over. Every one of them wore the same expression: the look of people who had seen something that language would fail to hold.
“I did what I could,” the doctor said quietly, more to Roth than anyone else. “But we’ll need Tokyo for proper treatment. The wound’s been untreated too long. No necrosis yet, but—”
He hesitated.
“Don’t expect full function back in that leg.”
Roth gave a short, humourless grunt.
“As long as they don’t take it off,” he muttered. His eyes dropped to the clean bandages as if they were an insult in themselves.
Lara’s gaze flickered to him.
The wound had been there since Yamatai. Deep. Brutal. Bone-exposing. They had done what they could in the field—fabric, pressure, improvisation—but there had never been enough antiseptic, never enough anything. The island had not allowed for clean solutions.
Her own body reminded her of that constantly.
She shifted slightly, feeling the injury beneath her ribcage pull tight. Almost impaled on a rusted metal spike. She had cauterised it herself with a candle on the first day, more instinct than knowledge, more desperation than sense. The burn still felt alive beneath her skin, as though it resented being contained.
No. She refused to think about it.
She was fine.
When the doctor left Roth and moved towards Jonah, Lara let her gaze drift.
Sam still had not moved.
Alex was still asleep.
And Lara found herself standing without quite deciding to.
She crossed the small distance between beds and stopped beside him.
For a moment she hesitated. Something absurd crossed her mind—showers? Food? Sleep again?—but fatigue made the decision for her. She climbed onto the narrow bed beside him without removing her boots and turned onto her side.
The moment her head touched the pillow, exhaustion dragged her under.
When she woke, it was the silence that came first.
Not the sickbay noise. Not the distant voices. Something else.
Something controlled.
Instinct took over before thought.
Her hand moved automatically towards the pistol she knew should be beside her.
It wasn’t there.
Her eyes opened fully.
Alex was already awake, lying on his side facing her. He had seen the movement.
“The weapons were confiscated,” he said softly. “We’re safe.”
Lara said nothing.
She simply watched him.
He looked different. Cleaner. Not in the way the room was clean—but in the way people looked when they had been scrubbed of something heavier. His hair was still damp, pushed back messily from a recent shower. He wore borrowed clothes that fit him poorly but comfortably enough, free of blood and salt and grime.
“The showers are next door,” he added, as if reading her thoughts. “One of the crew gave me spare clothes. They’re going to swallow you, but honestly, everything you’re wearing is… not great.”
A faint, reluctant curve touched Lara’s mouth.
It wasn’t quite a smile.
But it was the closest thing she had managed in days.
She nodded once and stood.
“Hot water first,” Alex said, handing her a folded bundle of clothing. “Wait a minute. Then cool it down slightly.”
There was something absurdly normal about the instruction. Something grounding.
Lara almost felt her throat tighten.
She nodded again.
On her way out she passed Reyes, towel-drying her hair. The woman gave her a brief nod—assessing, not unfriendly. Lara avoided her gaze before it could linger.
The shower room was small, utilitarian.
Undressing took longer than it should have. Her clothes clung to her skin, stiff with dried salt, mud, and things she did not want to identify too precisely. She had not realised how badly they were torn until she tried to remove them. Fabric split, seams giving way in her hands.
She dropped them into a corner without looking back.
Let someone burn them.
Let them disappear.
When the water finally reached the right temperature, she stepped under it.
Heat struck her shoulders and scalp, heavy and immediate. For a moment she simply stood there, watching as dirt and blood began to run off her skin in slow, reluctant streams.
It did not stop quickly.
It took minutes before the water began to run clear.
Only then did she reach for soap.
She scrubbed until her skin stung.
Her hair was washed, rinsed, washed again. Fingernails scraped clean with almost obsessive attention. Every trace of Yamatai clung more stubbornly than it had any right to.
By the time she stepped out, the water was turning cold.
She dried herself carefully, avoiding the pull of her injuries, aware now of every ache she had ignored until this moment. Her muscles felt stiff, overused, as though they had been carrying something far heavier than her own body for far too long.
The clothes Alex had given her were oversized. Soft. Clean.
They did not belong to her.
She pulled the trousers tight at the waist and slipped the shirt over her head. Damp hair fell loose around her shoulders.
For a while she stood there, brushing it out slowly, carefully, working through knots that seemed to resist her patience.
A toothbrush appeared from somewhere. She used it without thinking too hard about where it had come from.
The mint taste was almost overwhelming.
Almost nauseating.
When she finally returned to the sickbay, she found Sam again.
She sat beside her on the bed.
“Sam,” Lara said quietly, taking her hand.
No response.
“Sam… I think a shower would help.”
This time, Sam blinked.
Her eyes focused, briefly.
“Yes,” she said. “Good idea. Good idea.”
Lara nodded once. “I’ll get you clothes. Alex managed to find extras.”
“Good,” Sam repeated.
She stood slowly, unsteadily, as though her body was still negotiating whether it agreed with being upright. She hesitated at the edge of movement.
“Where are the showers?” she asked.
Lara guided her there.
She turned the water on before Sam stepped in.
“I’ll be back,” Lara said, already moving away.
Alex handed her another bundle without asking questions.
When Lara returned, Sam was already under the water.
At first Lara did not look.
Then she did.
And immediately wished she hadn’t.
Bruises covered her back and arms in uneven, dark patterns. Rope burns circled her wrists, raw and angry against pale skin. The violence of it was clinical in its efficiency—no unnecessary brutality, just enough to restrain, to break, to control.
Lara swallowed.
“I— I’ll leave you,” she said quickly, eyes dropping. “I’ll wait in the sickbay.”
Sam did not answer.
She stood beneath the water, head bowed, letting it fall over her like something that might wash meaningfully away what had been done to her.
Lara turned and walked out.
And for a moment, as she closed the door behind her, she had a thought she did not allow herself to finish:
Some things did not wash off.