Archive of Our Own ^beta

Returning to Yamatai had not been Sam’s first choice and she was pretty sure it wasn’t Lara’s either, but after the whole Titan thing and Lara’s subsequent recruitment into Monarch, she’d figured it was inevitable and like hell if she’d let Lara return to this hellhole alone. Besides, she wasn’t without her own expertise and Monarch found her film-making skills invaluable.

Not that they were technically alone. There was an entire Monarch team with them. Except they were actually alone right at this moment. So that still counted. Sighing, she lifted her camera and snapped a few photos of the cavern wall. “I wanna say that I can’t believe you took the time to explore while you were fighting crazy cultists and saving my life, sweetie, but you’re you and I can totally believe it.”

Lara didn’t respond right away, her attention on the wall and the paintings that adorned it. Sam wasn’t entirely sure how she’d even found this place; the tomb was a dozen meters up and to the south and the only way into this cavern was a crack that they could barely squeeze through. Even to Sam’s untrained eye, it looked ancient, far older than the Kingdom of the Sun Queen.

“I was granted few moments to breathe, Sam. I think I might have lost my mind If I hadn’t had a chance to think of something besides surviving.”

Sam returned her attention to the drawings, “This is older than Himiko, isn’t it.”

“By several thousand years,” Lara confirmed. “It could be Ainu or Ryukyuan.”

“Okay. Makes sense, the Ryukyuan inhabited a lot of these islands before people came over from China.” Sam stepped closer to Lara, putting a hand on her shoulder, “And the big boy there?”

“He’s probably a hell of a lot older.”

Sam looked again at the drawing. At the monstrous being with the tiny figures worshiping it.

“After I found this art, I kept an eye out for any mentions of great creatures or strange gods while I was traveling across the island,” Lara said, pulling a ratty notebook out of her pocket. “There wasn’t much, but the Japanese did record oral histories about a giant predator who wasn’t Gojira. His name roughly translates as The Destroyer.”

“Do you think he’s down here somewhere? Sleeping? Like—”

“I don’t know, but that’s why we’re here.”

“You know, sweetie, I still don’t understand what the point is in trying to contain these things. I mean look what happened to San Francisco, it took a bigger monster to kill the other monsters and like, everything we threw at them only pissed them off. And now there are apparently dozens of outposts across the world and like… I guess monitoring them makes sense, but the fuck are we gonna do if they wake up? Go all Pacific Rim on them? I know we’re drift compatible.”

“Pray,” Lara said, stepping away from the wall and taking Sam’s hand, squeezing it. Sam glanced back at the wall, and at the monster there. A big ugly bastard with outstretched wings and a huge horn. It looked like a bad, bad time.

“Yeah, I’m gonna pray Godzilla can kill that thing.”

Monarch had been the only people to believe Lara’s story after she’d escaped Yamatai with her friends. The mad cult, the Sun Queen and her powers; controlling the weather, bodily possession, it was admittedly unbelievable. It wasn’t until she’d been briefed on the existence of Godzilla and other ancient monsters that she’d understood why they hadn’t dismissed her; and why what she’d seen on the island had been so important. And then a year later, the whole world became aware there were Titans among them.

Himikos’s body atop her temple had been taken away for study, and Lara stood near the throne, alone. There was something important to be found here, some proof that the Destroyer was more than a myth, an actual creature like so many of the others. Month after month, year after year Lara had studied and traveled, visiting places as far ranging as the Temple of the Moth in China and Loch Ness in Scotland. Sleeping monsters and hundreds of myths and stories surrounding them.

If she went back in time and told her father the secrets she knew, she thought he might have laughed at her.

“Lara?”

She tensed, then immediately relaxed, “Sam, never sneak up on me.”

“Sorry. It’s just…” She walked into Lara’s field of view and gestured at the throne, “It’s been six years and it still gives me nightmares. I don’t … there’s no way to describe what it felt like, having my soul being pushed out of my body.”

“You never need to describe it,” Lara assured her. Sam had been the reason she’d lived; her determination to save her had kept her going. In the years since her feelings had crystalized, even if she’d been reluctant to admit to them..

Sam leaned against her, “So what are you doing up here?”

“I find it impossible to believe that Himiko was unaware of the legends of a great and terrible beast.” Lara slipped an arm around her, “If there’s a clue as to his whereabouts, somehow she’d have it.”

“Well, I am her descendant, and she was kind of in my head for a little bit there.” Sam squinted up her eyes, tongue sticking out of the corner of her mouth, “I don’t know. There’s something familiar about the throne and I don’t think it’s just because her butt sat in it for a thousand years.”

“The throne,” Lara mused, letting go of Sam and walking towards it. Himiko had sat here for thousands of years. Dead, and yet not, until Lara had ended her reign and her storm.

Had she been a guardian of sorts? Or had she other plans for the destroyer?

Lara pressed her hand against the throne, and pushed.

It budged, and then started to move along the stone platform which it had rested, the sound of grinding stones filling the still air. When it stopped, it revealed stairs that disappeared down into the mountain.

Without thinking about it, Lara started down the stairs, Sam calling after her.

“Lara! Don’t just run down stairs like that! What if there are traps? There are probably traps. Lara? I’m coming with you!”

Lara barely heard her. She could feel air, the deeper she went, and she kept an eye out for loose stones and other potential traps as she walked.

The stairs eventually spiraled down into a chamber, dozens of paintings depicting scenes from long, long ago.

The paintings on the wall were in much better condition than those in other chambers around the island, and Lara walked between them, studying each with a keen eye, “Do you remember the Queen’s ritual, Sam?”

“Duh? Pour her soul into my body and take it over.”

“And her chosen maid killed herself to stop the process, freezing Himiko in a state between life and death until the Solari caught you. But this tells a different story.”

Lara pointed to an image of the Sun Queen, arms outstretched, the great beast bowing to her, “Either she knew how to control the destroyer…or she planned to try.”

“Lara?” Sam tugged on her arm, “That one looks a lot like the vessel image you showed me. For the soul transference ritual.”

“There’s no way…” Lara looked closer. It did share the same imagery of water pouring out of a vessel and into the titan instead of a maiden. But there was more than just the queen. There was a whole island of souls, all pouring into it.

“She was going to sacrifice her people,” Lara whispered. “And become the destroyer of the world in a mighty vessel.”

A high pitched trilling sound echoed through the temple, and another like the rushing of wind. Lara started for the stairs, rushing up them two, three steps at a time. She and Sam got to the surface in time to see a giant creature sour over head. A moth, and a beautiful one at that, trailing behind it glittering, glimmering dust. Lara stared, awestruck, “Mothra…?”

Their radio’s crackled, and Sam pulled hers out as she gazed at the massive creature, “Yeah? Wait, can you repeat that??”

Lara was startled out of her reverie when Sam grabbed her arm, “Lara, someone attacked Outpost 61.”

Storms were buffeting Yamatai for the first time in years, and yet by all accounts, Sam knew they weren’t getting the worst of it. The reports remained horrifying; titans emerging from long slumbers, laying waste to whole cities, and Washington DC being leveled by an otherworldly storm.

They’d taken shelter beneath Himiko’s throne, though Sam didn’t think any place was safe if the destroyer woke. The whole island would probably shatter and they’d be dead before they realized what was happening.

One of the other team members kept trying to raise other Monarch outposts, or any of the other facilities. All she got was silence, or bad news. Mostly silence, which was somehow worse.

Lara had her hands on her hips as she looked at one of the drawings for what seemed like the hundredth time, and Sam approached her, “Any ideas? He hasn’t woken up like the other ones.”

“Either he can’t hear Monster Zero’s call, or he doesn’t care,” Lara replied, pointing. “He’s fought some of the others before. Godzilla chiefly, but also some of the others.”

“So he’s on the big guy’s level,” Sam mused. “... Maybe he could take down Monster Zero. Ghidorah. Whatever.”

“When or if he does, what then? The last news we had was Godzilla going down and Ghidorah surviving that bomb. We could trade something bad for something worse.”

“Might not have the storms,” Sam pointed out. “It’s like he’s terraforming the planet.” She sighed, feeling like they were half in the dark and praying other parts of Monarch had more info, and a plan.

“One thing at at time.” Lara gave her a tired smile, staring at her for a long, long moment. “Can I tell you something?”

“If this is one of those ‘we’re going to die’ speeches-”

Lara put her finger over Sam’s mouth, “I love you. And we’re not going to die, but our world has changed irrevocably and I’d like to step into whatever is left with that off my chest.”

This was not ever how Sam wanted to hear those three words coming from Lara, and her elation was tempered by the disaster that was going on on the other side of the world. She stared at her, opening her mouth to speak but then the woman on the radio jumped to her feet, “Ghidorah is dead! Godzilla killed him in Boston!”

Sam felt both terror and relief at the same time. Telief? Rerror? Either way it made her want to flop over somewhere for a good long while, “What about all the other Titans?”

“They’re … bowing to him.”

Lara looked a little pale, so Sam took her hand to squeeze it, “Long live the king, right?”

Squeezing back, Lara stared at the painting of the destroyer, “Yes, but … why do I think this one won’t bow so easily?”

Sam leaned her head on her shoulder, “Not much we can do but hope, sweetie. And for the record, I love you too.”

Lara laughed, a slightly hysterical sound as she held Sam even tighter, but she didn’t tear her eyes from the painting. Sam’s eyes followed Lara’s gaze, to one of the paintings of the destroyer. Aptly named, as it turned mountains to rubble and reduced whole cities to ash.

She hoped he slept for a good, long time.