"I'm sure they're okay," Anna said, pulling her legs up onto the couch and wrapping her arms around them. She'd pretty much been wearing Sam's Canon shirt since Elsa had gotten the call about Endurance going missing. There were nearly a dozen people on that ship, including Sam and Lara, and Elsa had met several of them when she'd gone to see Lara off. It hadn't exactly been how Lara had intended her to meet Conrad Roth, the man who'd basically raised her, but Elsa had somehow managed to get him to smile which was apparently a big deal.

Even now, Elsa still couldn't believe that Lara had put her down as her emergency contact.

Thinking about that was less stressful than thinking about the ship being missing. From what Elsa had been told, storms in the area were making it difficult for searchers to find them. Elsa had remembered that Lara had called the area the Dragon Sea, and she'd learned it had a reputation not unlike the Bermuda Triangle.

That had not been a comforting wikipedia entry.

She sat down next to Anna and pulled her head down so she could stroke her hair. "It's only been two days. Lara is probably too busy making discoveries to notice anyone is looking for them."

Anna laughed, snuggling in against Elsa. "And Sam is documenting the whole thing to put together a sciencey youtube channel for them."

Her throat bobbed and she tilted her head to look up at Elsa. "I don't know when it happened, but I think I'm in love with her. Is it too soon? I'm just so worried about her. About both of them. Lara was one of the first friends I made outside of you."

"Sam was one of the first friends I made outside of you." Elsa allowed herself to think about Lara, a knife going through her heart. "All I know is I've been missing Lara more and more every day, and her safety means the world to me."

"I think that's love," Anna murmured.

"I'm afraid to say it out loud." Elsa's phone buzzed and she pulled it out. Her face paled and the world seemed to spin out from beneath her feet even though she was sitting.

"Elsa? What's wrong?"

"They... one of the search planes went down. They're reassessing the search."

"They can't call it off! It's too soon!" Anna sat bolt upright.

"They're not calling it off, Anna. They're just… " Elsa's stomach continued to drop and she gripped the phone too tightly as she looked into her sister's eyes and saw her own fear and anxiety mirrored there. It was enough to push her to action.

"Pack a bag." She got up, bringing up Expedia. "We're flying to Japan."

There was one flight left and it would be a small miracle if they made it in time. But Elsa pulled the trigger and then packed a bag too, before she dragged Anna out of the flat. She must have disobeyed a number of traffic laws on the way to the airport, and probably broke a law of physics to get there in time.

Even with remembering to pack a tablet she hadn't really counted on how much thinking she'd have to do on a twelve hour flight. With music playing in her ears and a book she couldn't focus on enough to read on the tablet, her mind kept asking her what they were doing and why they were doing it. It wasn't like they could charter a flight or a boat and go searching for Endurance themselves… could they? Elsa could tell Anna was already plotting some kind of search, playing with a map she'd printed out and drawing the last known course of Roth's ship.

If a genuine search plane had gone down then Elsa wasn't sure what chance the two of them might have, but at least they were trying.

"Maybe they've already been rescued," Anna said hopefully, sinking back in her seat and staring at Elsa with bleary eyes.

"Then they'll be taken to Tokyo and we can be there to meet them," Elsa replied. "Now get some sleep. We're barely halfway there."

Elsa wished that time wouldn't move so slowly. The last six hours felt like an eternity, even while dozing off and on for the remainder of the flight. And when they landed it felt kind of surreal to disembark and find herself in another country. In the airport alone there were so many people it was almost crushing her.

Anna grabbed her hand, which helped her center herself. "I'm thinking we can start with the British Embassy. Endurance was registered in England and they'll probably be keyed into what's going on."

Elsa nodded, pulling out her phone so that she could look up the address of the embassy. She'd only had a few Japanese lessons with Lara and Sam so her knowledge was pretty basic but it would be enough to get them a taxi and a ride to the Embassy but after that… after that…

"We'll figure out what to do next," Anna said, squeezing her hand. "One step at a time, okay?"

"Yes, of course." Elsa allowed herself to be led out of the airport and away from the overwhelming number of people. She knew the city would be just as crowded but as long as they were in the safety of a cab it wouldn't bother her too much.

Her phone rang almost as soon as she got inside. She listened to the person on the other end and then thanked them before hanging up. In halting, broken Japanese she asked the driver to take them to the hospital. She hoped she got the name right.

Anna looked at her fearfully. "They found them?"

"A ship picked them up on a little boat," Elsa said, rubbing her thumb up and down her palm. "Lara collapsed not long before they docked and was airlifted. They didn't have too many details beyond that."

"How many of them did they find?"

Elsa squeezed her sister's hand. "Four including Lara. Sam, Jonah and Reyes."

Anna squeezed her eyes shut and nodded. It was a relief that Lara and Sam were okay, but there'd been so many people on that ship when it sailed out, and only four had been found.

Knowing it would be impossible to relax until she saw Lara and Sam again, Elsa instead wrapped her arms around Anna and pulled her in close. Comforting brought her comfort and there'd been many times when Anna had done the same for her. She stroked Anna's hair as she stared out the window, watching the unfamiliar city pass by.

The hospital loomed up sooner than she'd expected. Overpaying the driver, she pulled Anna and their backpacks out and together they rushed inside. Elsa despised hospitals; too many bad memories from her lost years. But for Lara she'd force herself to deal with it.

The first thing Elsa saw was Sam sitting in a chair. There were bruises and cuts on her face and her hair was a complete mess, but she was wearing clean clothing. Anna started to launch herself at Sam, only to come up short, as if afraid of hurting her.

That didn't stop Sam, who wrapped her arms around Anna and squeezed her tightly. "Anna baby, what are you doing here!?"

"We kind of planned to start searching ourselves," Anna joked, voice muffled by Sam's chest.

Sam laughed, then winced. "Okay, laughing still hurts."

"I'm glad to see you're okay." Elsa approached her, swallowing her nerves. Sam simply reached over and pulled her into a hug.

"Reyes took the first flight she could to get to her daughter," Sam explained after several moments of hugging. "Jonah went to get us something to eat. We can't see Lara just yet."

"What happened?" Elsa tried to quiet the voice in her head.

"Septic shock, mostly, but she has a lot of injuries, some really bad ones." Sam let go of them and ran her fingers through her hair. "God, where do I even start?"

Anna pulled them both over to some seats. "Try with the beginning."

Sam looked between them as she sat down. "I'll let Lara fill in a lot of the details but… okay, like, literally nothing I'm going to say makes any sense at all and I won't blame you if you think we've lost our minds."

Elsa tightened her grip on Anna's arm, not sure what Sam was getting and wondering if she really wanted to know. "So what happened?"

"We got caught in a storm off the coast of Yamatai and the ship kind of snapped in half," Sam said. Somehow, she sounded calmer than Elsa might have been under the circumstances. The idea of that big ship just getting split in half was almost mind boggling.

"We weren't the first ones to get wrecked there though." Sam's lips thinned out, her skin pale. "Others had been trapped there for years. They'd formed this… this cult that worshipped Himiko. They believed that if they just appeased her then she'd let up on the eternal storm surrounding the island and they'd be free."

"Cult?" Anna asked.

Elsa shook her head. "Eternal storm?"

"Yeah." Sam smiled grimly. "The cult was… well it was bad. They thought I was some kind of … vessel for the Sun Queen's soul and to prove it they tried to burn me at the stake. Lara was a bit… too slow."

Sam's throat bobbed and she kept her tone light. "Anyway there was this gust of wind, I lived, Lara escaped, and I was taken to this temple. Lara showed up, murdered a bunch of the cultists and saved me. And then there was some other stuff after the cult kidnapped me again so Himiko could possess me and Lara… She ran herself ragged, Lara Croft the unstoppable Terminator. One woman army. I... I'm sorry, give me a minute."

She pulled one of her legs up and hugged it. Despite her light tone there was a haunted look in her eyes. Elsa squeezed her shoulder, even if she was burning with questions. "It's okay. You can tell us more later."

"Thanks." Sam nodded, and sagged against Anna, lifting her hands to cup her face. "I was so scared I'd never see you again."

It was almost too much to take in at once and Elsa was positive that wasn't even the half of it. Eternal storms, possession… And she couldn't imagine Lara killing anyone; at least, not until she thought about how much Sam meant to Lara. They were closer even than Elsa and Anna were, and if Anna had been captured by some crazed cultists and her life threatened Elsa could see herself tearing down the sky to save her.

Quietly, she got to her feet to give Anna and Sam some space. Elsa had just decided to walk outside for a few minutes of fresh, non-hospital air when a nurse approached her. "Ms. Croft is awake, but she can only see one person at a time right now."

Elsa glanced back at Sam and Anna. Sam motioned for her to go ahead, so Elsa nodded and turned back to the nurse. "I'll go first then, thank you."

She was led to a room on the third floor, and stepped inside.

Lara lay in a bed hooked up to IVs and several monitors. If Sam looked like she'd been in a schoolyard scuffle, Lara looked like she'd gone three rounds at the UFC. Her lovely eyes fluttered open, bloodshot and hazy, but they locked onto Elsa almost immediately.

Elsa barely recognized the person she saw there. She remembered, once, a series of photographs Sam had shown her of people from before and after they'd been through a war. There was a hardness to Lara's eyes, a sharp wariness not unlike a cornered and wounded animal.

But that didn't stop Elsa. She walked into the room, sitting in a chair next to the bed and picking Lara's hand up, lacing their fingers together. "Hey. So I hear you're a hero."

A few tears rolled down Lara's cheek and she rasped, "Just a survivor."

"Okay, a survivor." Elsa lifted her hand and kissed one of Lara's knuckles. "You survived. You made sure Sam and your friends survived too."

"Not everyone."

There was nothing Elsa could say to that, so she just nodded. "I'll be here as long as I can. They'll only let one of us in at a time for now."

"Sam?"

"She's with Anna right now."

"Good." Lara managed something close to a smile. "She kept talking about all the things she was going to tell Anna when she saw her again."

"A little extra incentive?" Elsa teased.

"That would be you." Lara closed her eyes for a few seconds before she opened them again. "I kept telling myself… Save Sam. Get home to Elsa…"

Elsa didn't need to ask to know which of those took priority. She would have had the same if all their places had been swapped. That didn't make it any easier to hear, but it did make it easier to understand.

"You did both, sweetheart. You made it."

❄️

Lara couldn't remember when she'd actually hit the wall and her body had started to give out. It hadn't actually been on Yamatai; she'd barely slept those three days, fueled by a desperate drive to save Sam and get them home to their girls, and well as what meals she could hunt up. There had been times, even, where Lara had survived out of spite and a desire for revenge. At this point she no longer cared what had kept her going, only that she'd brought as many of them home as she could.

Four hundred and twenty three.

It was a miracle she'd lasted as long as she had with an infected stomach wound and god knows what else. Lara's scars would be numerous, marking her body with the experience of Yamatai, and her mind would be equally affected.

But it was just… one moment she was standing on the deck of their rescue ship, and the next she was inside a helicopter being airlifted to Tokyo. In and out, in and out, blackness and nightmare and then the world interjecting. Until finally Elsa stood in the doorway looking like she'd barely slept the past three days herself, and it was honestly the most beautiful thing Lara had ever seen.

She didn't deserve her.

Four hundred and twenty three dead men between Lara and saving Sam and their friends. More than that if she counted the lost members of the Endurance crew and the rescue plane Himiko had downed with a lightning strike.

She didn't deserve any of them at all.

And to think she'd asked Elsa to come with her. To go on this expedition. Imagining her on the island at the mercy of Father Mathias and his cult made Lara's stomach turn.

Elsa moved her hand through Lara's hair, stroking it lightly, and it brought her back to the here and now. "I don't know what you went through. Sam only gave us the cliff's notes version and some of it doesn't make any sense. I'm not even going to pretend that I understand, but I'm also not going to be going anywhere."

Where even to start? How could she tell anyone she'd nearly lost Sam to having her soul sucked out and replaced by that of a dessicated, insane corpse.

She set that aside for now. There'd been words Lara had wanted to say. She'd promised herself she'd say them if she'd made it. Words to Sam about just how much she meant to her. And words to Elsa about how deeply she'd wound her way into her heart.

The only thing that came out was barely audible to herself and yet echoed through her head like booming thunder, "I love you."

Maybe not the fix to everything that happened, no, but something good to grab hold of so she could drag herself through the next day and weeks and months.

Elsa smiled down at her, leaning over to kiss her cheek. "I love you too. But you should rest."

Lara worked her jaw, her throat bobbing. She didn't want to know what Elsa might think when she found out just how low Lara had gone in order to survive. Elsa could just walk away and Lara wouldn't blame her.

"You did what you had to do," Elsa said, almost as if she was reading her mind.

"I don't even know if I'm ashamed of what I did," Lara whispered.

"I'm not going to judge. All right?"

Lara hesitated, wanting to believe her. "What did I do to deserve you?"

"Wore the punniest musical shirt I've ever seen," Elsa told her.

"Did I ever show you my Beethoven shirt?"

"Not yet."

Lara squeezed Elsa's hand. "First thing first when we get home."

"It's really cute," Sam said from the doorway. Lara's eyes slid from her girlfriend to her best friend and she was suddenly hit with a wave of relief that was exhausting.

"Thought it was… one at a time."

"Shh." Sam said, pulling Anna in with her and closing the door. "We just went through hell I'm not gonna listen to stupid rules like that."

Lara had spent too much time isolated and paranoid; she welcomed their company as long as it was just the three of them.

Not knowing what would await her on the other side, she drifted off, surrounded by the people she'd fought so hard for, these people who were the only family she had left. Lara feared her dreams would be dark and deadly, but instead she dreamed of the farmer's market and a smile on ruby lips.