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Siberia, Russia.
He feels lost.
Again.
It’s like his mother is in front of him again and Sam is trying to calm him down without success.
It’s like he is in that orphanage, looking at how Sam is always leaving and he is staying behind.
It's like he is on the streets of Colombia again, before he met Sully, trying to find something, any signal, of what he is supposed to become, of who he is.
He is lost again. And in pain. Because being lost always comes with pain.
But the pain is different this time. It's not in his chest, it doesn’t feel like it's in his veins.
It feels like it's in his flesh, in his skull, like it was caused by something else.
It's still pain, but not the one he usually hides from everyone.
He can hear a howling, a howling that reminds him of that time he went to the Himalayas to look out for a treasure that he had to destroy at the end (very typical of him to be honest). But he can also hear the crackling of a fire and someone talking.
He takes his time opening his eyes, because they are heavy and, besides the pain, he feels exhausted, as if he ran for his life (again). When his eyes are finally open and he can see without blinking to clear his vision, he finds that he is not alone.
He can see the back of someone with a ponytail and a red winter jacket a few feet from him. They are holding something in their hands and by something in their tone, he guesses they are frustrated.
A few seconds later the person groans in frustration and turns around, revealing a familiar face and a familiar pair of eyes that land on him almost instantly.
“Nate”, she says and, if he is honest, he hasn’t heard anyone call him with such desperation in a long time. The last time he heard that tone was probably coming from Elena’s mouth because he was doing something stupid again.
She leaves what she had in her hand on the top of a bag on her way to him. She then kneels on his side and puts a hand on his arm.
She is warm even if they are supposed to be freezing their asses in this cave.
“How do you feel?”, she asks, with worry and urgency.
“Like I fell from the Belukha and broke something”, she doesn’t stop the little chuckle that escapes her, and he smirks a little in exchange. “Seriously, though, I feel like shit”.
“And with good reason. I had to drag your ass all the way here”, she starts explaining, just when she starts touching his face and head (he can feel bandages somewhere on his forehead). “You were bleeding a lot, but I got to close the wound the best I could. Do you feel any pain?”
“A lot”.
“Luckily, I have painkillers here. But you should eat something before you drink them. I don’t want you vomiting in such a close-spaced cave”.
She leaves something warm in him when she leaves his body to return to the bag.
He blinks heavily and tries to sit down.
His head spins a little and he feels sick, but he sits down slowly and uses the cave’s wall as support.
“Take it easy”, she says from over her shoulder, while she is still looking in the bag.
When she arrives at his side again, she seats down putting a bottle of water on the floor and holding a soft bar in her hand.
“How long I have been out?”
“A while. Not much”, she answers, opening the bar. “I’m trying to contact Sully with the radio but the storm outside is not helping. I guess we will need to wait”.
She offers the bar to him, and he slowly extends his heavy arm to take it. Moving his jaw to chew feels strange for a moment.
While he eats the bar in silence, she starts covering him again with a blanket that keeps him warm. He, for once, thanks God that Lara is a control freak whenever she starts double-checking the equipment whenever they travel. Since Yamatai she always makes sure she has everything for sticky situations like this one. (Even if he later starts teasing her about it to annoy her).
When she is finishing covering him, she takes a moment to check his wound. Its on his left leg and he knows because it hurts like shit.
“Your leg looks fine”, she says, before covering it again. “How much do you remember?”
“Just getting chased by mercenaries and then a lot of pain”, she nods. “What exactly happened?”
“We were being chased by mercenaries. They shoot you and then you fell, hitting your head in the process. That didn’t stop you from having a fistfight against a few mercenaries though”, she smirks, amused and he smiles while chewing. “Then we run for our lives and when we lost them in the storm, you passed out and I had to do the rest. When I arrived at your side, you were bleeding pretty badly but the bullet didn’t enter your flesh, just brush it. I hope you don’t have a concussion. How does your head feel?”
“It hurts like hell, but I’m fine. I been through worse”.
“I know you have been through worse, but that doesn’t mean it didn’t scare the shit out of me”, she looks directly at his eyes with something that wasn’t there before. And he knows at that moment that she is telling more than her words do.
Lara has lost a lot of people on the way. She is always feeling responsible for that and the people in her life and he knows for sure that him passing out was a good scare, even if she has managed much worse than that.
He knows that she will feel terrible if his name is added to that list of people she couldn’t save.
“Hey, Lara”, he suddenly says, stretching the hand that is not holding the bar.
His fingers curl around her fingers until he finds her whole hand. She looks down at it.
“It's alright. I’m fine, everything hurts but I know those painkillers will wear it off. You saved my life and that’s the important thing. I’m grateful for that and for having you here, do you know how lost and fucked I’ll be without you?”
“You wouldn’t even know where your head will be”, she answers, looking at him with an amused smirk and something naughty in her eyes.
“Exactly, princess. There is no me without you”, he smiles, squeezing her hand. They exchange a look until Lara looks away.
“Alright, you win. But finish that bar so you can drink the pain killers”.
“Yes, your highness", he chuckles softly when she rolls her eyes.
He finishes the bar a few seconds later and Lara helps him with the water bottle then. When the painkillers are down his throat and he is laying down on the hard floor of the cave again, he turns his head to the fire and to Lara, who is putting things back into the bag and trying to see if she can reach Sully and the plane again.
“As you said, the best thing we can do is wait for this storm to pass”, he comments and Lara sighs before nodding, putting the radio back in the bag and sitting close to the fire and him.
“You should rest. I’ll let you know when we’ll be leaving”, she fixes the blanket again, and he almost chuckles.
“You should rest too”.
“I’ll wait a while in case Sully contacts us”.
“That old man is probably sleeping after saying to himself that he will check on us after the storm is over”.
Lara almost rolls her eyes, and he knows she isn’t going to contradict him because she knows Sully as well as he does.
She ends up laying next to him a while later. She hugs herself because she is a little cold and he ends up passing her part of his blanket.
When she rolls over to complain, he gives her a glare and she doesn’t even try.
His eyes grow heavy a few minutes later and so he falls asleep, feeling her warmth a few inches from him and a smile in his lips.
When he sleeps, he doesn’t feel lost.
He knows Lara is there, and he is never lost when she is around.