The Tomb Raider (lara) wrote in valarlogs, @ 2020-09-28 05:03:00 |
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Entry tags: | !complete, !trigger warning, lara croft, natasha romanoff (black widow) |
Who: Lara, her wife, and Natasha (sort of)
What: When you marry a succubus sometimes things don't end well
Where: A warehouse district
When: recent
Status: complete
Rating: R for violence, gunshot wounds, demon death and bodies disappearing mysteriously
Her wife had once worried that she was the cursed one, bringing pain and hardship into Lara’s life.
But Lara had never believed that to be the case. There were times in her life where Lara was certain she was the cursed one. Too many times in her dreams, too many events in her waking life.
She heard the footsteps in the darkness; left or right, she couldn’t tell where, so she remained perfectly still. Waiting. Listening.
And nearly losing her head as a sword swung out at her from a dark tunnel she’d missed. Lara rolled out of the way and then jumped to her feet. She sprinted down the street and darted into another alleyway, only to have a dumpster flung at her. Lara dove underneath it, coming back up with an uppercut to her assailant’s jaw.
It was a bit like punching that dumpster. Stepping back and shaking her hand out, Lara stared at her attacker. But she didn’t draw her gun, or her climbing axe. She straight up refused to.
Her wife stepped into the light, energy swirling around her. It wasn’t the normal energy that Lara associated with her succubus powers; her eyes were green and not blue, for one thing. But she was still as strong as she ever was, and could very easily drain the life out of Lara before she could stop her.
And then she’d be a danger to others.
“I’m not going to hurt you,” Lara said. “I’m going to fix this, break this curse or spell that’s taken hold of you.”
Once before she had hurt her. An arrow to the chest in order to save others. And the part of Lara that was hardest, the part she was ashamed of, knew she could do it again.
She just really didn’t want to. Where the hell was Logan? Lara just needed her wife held down long enough to--
“Look what you’ve done.” The echo in her wife’s voice reverberated through her bones, it sounded nothing like her and yet it sounded exactly like her. “Dug too deep. Unearthed history better left buried. And who pays the price? Not Lara Croft, no.”
The … demon? Lifted her hands and ran them through her hair, “This one suffers. You should feel her pain.” Then she surged forward, striking Lara in the chest and sending her flying back out of the alley. She hit a brick wall hard enough to knock what air remained from her lungs and she slid down it.
Frankly, Lara had never really cared if she lived or died; but she cared if her wife lost her soul to this thing and she cared if this thing hurt innocent people. This was her fault, it was her job to fix it.
Hoping that a cognitive realignment might help, she crawled to her feet and then leapt onto her, slamming a brick she’d grabbed into her wife’s head. This barely seemed to phase her, and she was lifted up by her throat.
“I was going to let you live, but torturing her with your death is … filling to me.”
Lara slid a knife out of her belt, gripping the handle tightly as her airflow was cut off.
Through the ribcage, into the heart. Quick.
I’m sorry. But she could look into this woman’s eyes and see that her wife was gone. And she didn’t know how long it had been since she’d truly been herself.
A gunshot rang out, and Lara was suddenly dropped as the succubus stumbled back, blood forming from a hole in her chest.
Someone screamed, and Lara recognized her own voice. She rushed forward, catching her as she fell. On a distant roof top she saw a figure retreating. Lara turned her eyes back to the woman she loved.
The green was gone, but so was the blue, leaving lifeless brown behind. Lara felt nothing, and everything, all at once.
Even guilt. Guilt that it hadn’t been her, guilt that she’d almost done it anyway. Guilt that she’d even been willing to put a knife in her heart.
And behind that, blind rage. And behind that, a soul shattering grief.
And if she really had dug too deep? Now she was only going to dig deeper.
Climbing to her feet, Lara took a step as if she was going to chase down the shooter; but where had they gone? What was she going to do?
Turning back to her wife, Lara stared.
The body was gone. Which meant the monster that had taken her wife was still out there.
Both of the monsters.