Chapter 1

 

Lara sat behind a rapidly disintegrating pillar, taking stock. Taking stock was a good way to pass the time while you were waiting for other people to be done talking and/or shooting. There was a lot of ‘Damn you, Croft!’ and a few ‘Get her you idiots!’ Nothing she wasn’t used to, although she made sure to keep an ear out for any ‘Grenade out!’ or ‘Reloading!’, but until one of those came, she stayed put. Shards of ancient marble flew around her ears scratching the skin of her neck and arms as antiquity dissolved around her in splinters. A real shame, too. This would’ve been quite the find. 

But people get just one whiff of Atlantis and poof! Some rich asshole with too much money and not enough sense showed up with a private army equipped with enough guns to topple a South-American government and the moral bankruptcy to install their own. She shook her head. So many cultural heritage sites destroyed just because she got her hands on one single teensie-weensie itsy-bitsy magical world-destroying artifact and suddenly it was all rocket launchers and helicopters. 

There was a lull in the gunfire and with a sideways jump and a roll, both of her 9 millimeters barking like mad dogs in her hands, the familiar recoil like getting a pat on both shoulders from the sirs Heckler and Koch, she moved to the next piece of cover, which was close enough to what appeared to be a window to safety. It was possibly also a window to a hundred-foot drop or maybe it was just decoration, in which case, well, Lara was nothing if not good at improvisation. And making meatloaf, but that was all Winston. She really did need to thank him for that recipe one of these days. Around her, a four-thousand year old fresco exploded into tiny pieces, a bunch which embedded themselves in her skin. That was gonna be a fun bath later. If she got out of this. Which she definitely was. 

“C’mon Lara,” she whispered to herself, “you’ve dealt with worse.” Technically correct. There was that time with the Cretacious Critters trying to get the jump on her, but right now she couldn’t for the life of her figure out if those were worse or better than a grown man with a soul patch and more liquid assets than God. “I just have to wait a moment longer and I c--” she said, hyping herself up to make a run for the window, when it exploded. Inwards, too, which was usually a bad sign. It definitely was, now. 

Really pushing the limits of “All” in All-Terrain-Vehicle, some overzealous driver had crashed his vehicle through the window and the wall -- Lara explicitly did not finish the lyrics in her head -- and the roof-mounted turret on top was swiveling around to meet her. Well, that just wouldn’t do, would it? 

“Sod this,” Lara said and sprinted towards it. One advantage of being shot at by pretty much every caliber and projectile under the sun was that she knew which ones had trouble aiming down, and also that vehicles driving into a building full of gunfire had a tendency to shake things up. The men who had been trying to chew through her cover with the combined powers of audacity and bullet had momentarily stopped firing -- Lara was counting on it -- and she took cover behind the vehicle. The little turret on top (it was easily two feet long, but it looked so rinky-dink compared to the rest of the blocky vehicle) awkwardly swung back and forth when whoever was operating it realized that its heavy caliber really wasn’t designed for close quarters combat. Lara smirked. The doors on this thing were in the back, too, and the back of the ATV was still outside the building. It was just something for her to hide behind now, and if her assailants opened fire on her now, they risked hitting the driver of the vehicle. 

“Nice job, fellas,” she quipped, and then realized that there was now a large metal brick on wheels between her and the only exit she could actually get to. Unless she went over the top? That would be ridiculous. She looked around for a moment and tried to think of something when it went quiet in the room for a moment. “Can we talk about this?” she asked, blowing some hair out of her eyes. 

“Give us the dagger, Croft, and I’ll make your death quick!” Lara rolled her eyes. Maxwell something-something-three-names-too-many Reading was exactly the kind of man to threaten in a situation like this. She’d gotten out of tougher scrapes before. If only she could remember when those had been. Malaysia, maybe? Tibet? 

“Tempting, Max, darling, but I’m going to have to decline.” She reloaded quickly and tried not to dwell on the fact that she was down to single digits per magazine. “How about a ceasefire?” 

“Or what? You’ve got nothing to threaten me with, Croft! No allies, no escape! I’ve got you right where you wa--” with a sigh Lara pulled the dagger out of her belt and held it out into cover and pushed the barrel of a gun against it. That shut him right up. 

“You let me walk out of here and I don’t destroy it,” she said. “I think that’s as good a place to start as any, don’t you?” She smirked, trying desperately to keep her voice steady. Her finger on the trigger felt awful sweaty and her hand had definitely been steadier before. She willed it to stop shaking. 

“You’re bluffing, Croft,” Reading said, but there was uncertainty in his voice. That’s all she needed, for him to wait long enough. If she kept him talking, maybe she could think a hole through the wall, or find another way out. 

“I’m dead either way, Reading. Might as well all go together, yeah?” Come onnn, take the bait, you pompous bastard. 

“You wouldn’t…” he said, but she knew he wasn’t sure. A rich bastard like him didn’t want to actually risk the possibility of him being the one who might actually die. 

“Worth giving it a go, Max, old boy? Or are you going to let me walk out of here?” She gritted her teeth. All or nothing now. With just a little bit of… NOPE. Three loud cracks, like marbles colliding but so much louder, and bullets ricocheted off the ATV. He hadn’t taken the bait. 

“I think I can kill you before you decide to do something that stupid, Lara, old boy.” Oh, come on. Sure, they were trying to kill each other, but misgendering was out of line. If she wasn’t about to die and several guns didn’t all open fire at once, she would have said something. Not that words from a human turdlet like him hurt her, it was just… disappointing. Like being called a slur by a Limp Bizkit album cover, it lacked the necessary class to be really insulting. 

“I think I’m actually going to kill the little weasel,” she mumbled to herself, but had no idea how she was going to do that. She looked over her shoulder. The little turret on top of the ATV had stopped its awkward wiggling, so either the vehicle’s occupants had skedaddled or they’d been perforated by their compatriots. Typical. But that meant there was maybe a safe way out on top of the vehicle, under the sharp shards of the broken window. It would be a tight fit but maybe…

The soldiers would have to stop shooting for a moment, though, and their ammunition supplies seemed to be somewhere between ridiculous and improbably. But at some point there reloads were likely to run out, right? Someone was going to make a mistake at some point, and Lara desperately hoped it hadn’t been her, two weeks ago. 

On the other hand, if not her, then who, right? Somebody had to stop the assholes from ending the world. With a deep breath she did her best to isolate the barking noises, counting ammo, trying to visualise them as slowly emptying magazines. It was a hard trick to master, and she wasn’t even halfway there, but, well, no time like the present to get better, right? There was a click. She narrowed her eyes and took a breath. If she was right… click. And then, if she had it right -- and she was smugly aware that she was, there would be a third. A third click, right on cue. She’d already started tensing her legs, bending her knees slightly, her many scrapes and bruises trying to protest and finding it really hard through the cocktail of adrenaline and definitely-don’t-want-to-die-juice pumping through her veins. When silence fell, she grabbed the ledge above her and flipped backwards onto the ATV and spun around to open fire again as she crouched quickly to the small gap between the roof of the vehicle and the razor-sharp glass still sticking out of the frame. 

She was going to have to crawl, and the more of the gun-toting dickwaffles that were out of cover while she did, the higher the odds of her making it through without extra airholes. She scooted as quickly as she could, spacing out her shots like they weren’t the last ones she had. She’d wear bandoliers if they didn’t weigh her down so much, but right now she could’ve really done with an extra magazine. Her last bullet fired, she throw herself down and started to crawl to the opening, when suddenly, the whole world moved. 

Well, the ATV moved. More specifically, it moved up. All-Terrain was really being put through its paces today, huh? She tried to hold on to something -- anything, really -- but this thing hadn’t been made with rooftop-passengers in mind, and she found herself sliding off, until she hit the ground with an oof, her back breaking her fall. Immediately she raised her pistols up over her head, aiming upside down at her foes with empty guns, until she realized what had actually happened. Under the ATV was a woman. And not in the traffic-accident kind of way. She sat upright as she saw this… well, it was obviously a person, but not like any she’d ever seen. Six foot seven, maybe eight, all muscle, in what appeared to be a metal corset and a skirt, knee-high boots, holding up the ATV like it was nothing. Well, not nothing, it was clearly taking her a lot of effort, but she was doing it. 

After a few moments of baffled silence, the men opened fire on the woman and Lara dove behind her previous cover, everything exploding around her, taking notice of the fact that the woman didn’t really seem to mind the bullets any more than someone would mosquitoes. It was hard to keep her eyes off the woman. For… several reasons. The muscles, sure. Bulletproof, check. Breathtakingly beautiful.  Hot as shit. Lara felt light-head and tried to reboot her brain, to try and think of something useful to do when the woman casually tossed the ATV at Lara’s assailants. When the crashing had finally stopped, Lara could hear the sound of running feet. Yeah, you better run. Sure, they might’ve had guns, but Lara had a… uh… What was this woman, exactly? 

“Hello,” she said, blowing some hair out of her face as the woman approached and Lara stood up. She holstered both her guns and offered her hand. “Lara,” she said, “Croft.” 

“Diana,” the woman said with an accent Lara had trouble placing -- and she had an ear for accents. It was hard to think, and she tried to blink the fog out of her head. “Are you alright? Does that not hurt?”

“Does wh--” Lara started and looked down. There appeared to be a hole in her midriff, roughly the size of a ten-millimeter wide piece of metal moving at high speeds. Bugger. That explained the light-headedness. Not the tall hot muscle-lady. “Oh,” she said, and her legs gave out. The last thought going through her head was the acute awareness of the amazon rushing over to catch her in big, strong arms, and she couldn’t help but smile as everything went black. Lara, she thought to herself, you useless lesbian.

Chapter 2

 

“Lady Croft?” A voice like a velvet sword gently cut through her dreams and exposed her to horrid daylight and the feeling of having been punched in the stomach with a rhinoceros. 

“Just five more minutes,” Lara mumbled. She was being carried -- bridal carried -- into the sunlight, and the annoying part of her brain was trying to remind her that it was probably a bad idea for her to be moved right after having been shot. The other part of her brain was acutely aware of big, strong arms and the faint smell of pomegranate. It was the fun part, and it was currently very annoyed at the whole rational thing. She was being set down on something hard and uncomfortable. The arms had definitely been better.

“You have been wounded, Lady Croft. I’ve done my best to dress the wound, which does not appear to have hit anything vital,” the tall woman said, and Lara could see her even more clearly now. The woman was a vision. 

“Only my heart,” Lara said, fluttering her eyelashes and putting a hand on her chest in a dramatic gesture. Diana frowned and immediately moved her hand, then dropped her hand back. 

“You should be resting, Lady Croft,” Diana chided, “not making jests.”

“Well, you should…” Lara said, and then frowned when she couldn’t think of anything. “Who are you? I think I saw you throw the ATV. And get shot a lot more. Why aren’t you all…” she gestured vaguely, “ventilated?”

“I am a demigod and an amazon,” Diana said as she carefully started to clean Lara around the wound. In order to make things easier on her, Lara tried to be in as little pain as possible. It was the least she could do. The amazon didn’t seem to mind her wincing. “I am made of sterner stuff.”

“Oh,” Lara said. “That… certainly raises some questions.” She took a deep breath and immediately regretted that decision. “Although I think I might pass out a little bit first, if it’s all the same to you.”

“Be my guest, Lady Lara Croft,” Diana said through the rapidly thickening wet cotton that was filling up Lara’s head. “I’ll keep you safe.” Sweet angels, have mercy. 

 

---

 

“Are you feeling any better, Lady Croft?”

“Just Lara is fine,” Lara said, and immediately regretted it. Sure, she didn’t like being called ‘Lady Croft’ all the time, but something about the way the giantess said it made her brain purr like a kitten and her stomach growl like a senile terrier. The latter might have been food-related, though. “Although it’s up to you,” she decided to add. 

“Very well.” Diana stood up and stretched, her arms and calves perfectly outlined against everything else and Lara did everything in her power to keep from sighing. This kind of thing should be illegal. She was glad for the covering of Diana’s upper body. Lara worried she would be in danger of losing control and just fainting again. “I must go, Lady Croft. Will you be safe from here?”

Lara looked around. She’d been carried out of the old unearthed temple in what had been a sort of encampment. Lara had snuck around but had been caught on her way out with the artefact. “Uh, no, I don’t think so, no.”

Diana raised an eyebrow. “Why is that?” Then, mother have mercy, she crossed her arms. Lara wanted to see her arms up close. What would they be like to have wrapped around her? She was furious at herself for being unconscious for most of the being-carried around part, but then again, being shot was a pretty excuse for most things. 

“Well, I need to get this away from them,” Lara said, and reached for her belt. There was nothing there. “Bugger me.” She looked up at Diana who held up the dagger between two fingers. “Well... what are you planning to do with that, miss Diana?”

“I am going to put it somewhere men like them can never find it,” Diana said, righteousness coming off her in waves. Why was that attractive? Usually it was exhausting, but Diana made it work for her. It must’ve been the divine thing, her gorgeous black hair held back by a diadem gleaming in the sun. 

“Brilliant,” Lara said with a pained smile and reached up to pull herself up. “I’m coming with. I don’t want to lose sight of you just yet, you make me feel funny about myself.” She paused. “I said the quiet thing out loud, didn’t I?”

“I suggest you unhand my lasso, Lady Croft,” Diana said, her hands on her hips in a power-stance that almost knocked Lara off her feet alone, but there was also a slight blush on her cheeks. Lara did as she was asked and tried to feel her wound. It seemed to be in a lot better shape than it probably should’ve been.

“What just happened?” Lara shook her head. As it turned out, shaking your head after a firefight was a bad idea. 

“It is the Lasso of Truth,” Diana said, as if that explained everything. Perhaps it did, in the amazon’s mind. Lara really wanted to dig into that woman’s… history, a little deeper. “If our goals align, Lady Croft, I would gladly accompany you.”

“Fantastic. Do you have any idea where to go?”

There was a moment of silence. “I had been hoping you did.”

Lara grinned widely. “We’ll figure something out.”

 

---

 

Twenty-five hours, one plane flight, car chase and gunfight later, and Lara was feeling a little miffed. “You know,” she said as she crawled under a door that looked like it weighed a ton, held up only by Diana’s capable hands and impossible thighs, “usually, getting shot is how I know I’m, hnnng, getting close to my destination.” She rolled over  and looked up at Diana, who lifted the giant stone gate above her head, her feet on both sides of Lara. “Could be worse, though.”

“Much as this view is probably enjoyable for the both of us,” Diana said with a voice that made Lara want to curl up into a ball and hum happily to herself, “I would like you to keep moving, Lady Croft. It looks heavier than it is.”

“I have every faith in you, Diana. You’re a goddess, after all.” Lara winked, but resumed her crawling when she saw Diana blush. Those deltoids were to die for, but if she didn’t move, she literally might. 

“And you,” Diana said, her voice strained as she pushed the door up a bit more before jumping inside and it thundered to the ground behind her, “are either a curse from Zeus himself, or a gift from Aphrodite.” She held out a hand and helped Lara stand up. Lara looked around the room. It was damp and dark, illuminated primarily by Diana’s whip, until Lara cracked a glow-stick and confronted the amazon with her brightest, cheekiest grin yet. 

“Maybe I’m just a normal human,” Lara said, hands on her hips in an imitation of Diana’s signature pose. Diana walked up to her, took Lara’s chin between her thumb and index finger and looked her in the eyes. 

“You and I both know, Lady Croft,” Diana said with a whisper like razor-sharp velvet, their faces only an inch away from each other, “that you are no ‘ordinary’ woman.” With a wink, Diana turned around and walked away and Lara stood there stammering for a moment. That hadn’t been fair. She hadn’t been ready for that in the slightest! What had she even meant by that?

“H-hey!” Lara stammered and hurried after Diana in the soppy hall, water leaking in from… somewhere. She kept an eye on where she put her feet, but in her experience, the deadlier traps were inside. Of course, ancient civilizations could never build their temples on just one continent, and Cameroon was particularly damp this time of year. “What did you mean by that?” 

“Only that you are nothing like any woman I have ever met, Lady Croft. Mortal or otherwise,” Diana said as she walked down the winding passages, holding up her lasso to light the way. Lara felt silly holding up her glowstick but she wanted to do something. 

“Oh,” she said. “Very well then.”

“Is something the matter, Lady Croft?” 

“It’s Lara,” Lara said, wrapping an arm around herself. “And no, I’m fine.” Diana shot her a sideways glance, but Lara used the dark to pretend she didn’t see it. 

“If I’ve caused any offense…”

“You’re fine, Diana,” Lara said with a sigh. “Perfectly fine.” Too perfect, honestly. Lara suddenly, and for the first time since meeting, felt a distinct and powerful feeling of inadequacy next to this tower of a woman. Ironic, considering she’d once felt insecure about her own above-average height and broad shoulders. But Diana was so aggressively perfect, it was like she was having her face rubbed in it, and since she wasn’t actually rubbing her face in it, all Lara really could do was compare. And how could she compare. “It’s nothing,” she lied. 

“I will hand you the lasso if I must, Lady Croft,” Diana said, her voice a lot softer than it had been just a moment ago. “We’ll not survive here if there is unspoken distrust between us.”

“Oh for the everloving…” Lara said and stopped. “What? What is it you want to know, Diana?” She turned to the woman, actually having to crane her neck to look up at her. 

“Only you, Lady Lara Croft. Please, sit. It has been a long day.” She did so herself, finding a mostly dry spot to sit. Lara crouched down next to her and leaned against the wall. If she hadn’t already been soaked with sweat, the clamminess of the wall would’ve made her shiver. She slumped down. Diana broke the silence after a minute. “Who are you, Lady Croft?”

“I’m the heir to the Croft line,” Lara said, like she was repeating a line she’d rehearsed many times. Well, she had, sort of. She’d had to explain herself to many a customs officer over the years. “I travel the world, trying to keep ancient artifacts from getting in the hands of greedy bastards, and occasionally, from ending the world.”

“You’ve no-one else, then?” Diana asked. Her voice was barely a whisper but it bounced off the damp walls of the ancient temple. 

“No,” Lara said. “Well, there’s Winston. My butler. I suppose if one of these days I run out of luck, he’d be the only family left to mourn me.” She tried not to think about that. Clearly, Diana was doing exactly that. 

“He almost did when I met you.”

“I didn’t, though.” She cracked another glow-stick and looked at the iridescent liquid splashing around in its little tube. 

“Lady Croft… why do you do this to yourself?” Diana asked. Lara didn’t have an answer. Not one that answered the question she was actually asking. So she settled for a platitude. Platitudes were good. 

“It’s the right thing to do,” she mumbled. “And I’m good at it. I’m Lara fucking Croft.”

“And who is that? Why do my questions bother you so? Why did my earlier remark?” Lara glanced at the still-glowing lasso in Diana’s hand. Maybe today was a day of learning things about herself, too. Might as well, here in the dark, close but still quite far from this tall, perfect woman. 

Lara reached out and took the Lasso of Truth in her hand. “There will be nobody to mourn me, Diana Prince, but I’ll have done some good, at least. And maybe… just maybe… it might be enough…”

“Enough for what?” Diana asked quietly as she turned to face her. Lara felt the words coming and couldn’t really stop them anymore now, held back only by the frog in her throat and the tears in her eyes. 

“My name is Lara Croft,” she said between gritted teeth, “but that wasn’t always… My name when I was born… I…”

“Hush,” Diana said, and Lara clamped her mouth shut. Tears stung in her eyes. She hadn’t really expected the Lasso to bring that up, and now that it had been, she was very, very afraid. She tried to look anywhere, but Diana had moved up in front of her, kneeling, and everywhere Lara looked there was tall amazonian perfection. She turned her eyes down, until she felt a hand on her cheek gently lift her face. 

She suddenly couldn’t look anywhere but directly into Diana’s piercing gaze. “Lady Croft. Lara,” Diana said with her perfect accent, “we are the names we have chosen for ourselves.” Lara blinked a few times, her breath caught in her throat. 

“Y-- you too? You are…”

Diana carefully lifted her other hand, showing her holding on to the other side of the lasso, and smiled at Lara. 

“Yes,” she said. They dropped the lasso. They didn’t say anything more. Their hands and mouths were too busy with other things.