Please forgive my dreadful french, it should mean 'The Hardest Choice.' My first, and last Mummy 3 fanfiction. In my humble opinion I don't think the third film even deserves to be a part of The Mummy franchise for many reasons which I won't bore you with. (Feel free to PM if you fancy a chinwag about it though!) And we all thought The Mummy Returns was awful...it looks positively golden now. I digress; this little ficlet came to me when I was trying ever so hard to pick out some good points about TM3 (not many) and I decided I'd have a little play with this :) It yanked at my heart chains, and I hope it does yours.
A/N Evelyn is actual Evie in this, not bloody Bellos effort.
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There was no harder choice she could make in her lifetime.
Let the water touch his wound, his skin, and it will seep into his body and make him immortal. He will then have to suffer years of knowing that one day you will pass, and he can never join you.
On the other hand, you let can let him die now, knowing that his pain and fever will end, and that one day you will rejoin him in paradise.
She couldn't let him go...she couldn't lose the man who had fought everything for her. Is this a glimpse into how he felt at Ahm Shere? She wondered.
Morally, she should let him go, stop playing around with life and death and let him be, let him rest so she could be with him in heaven...but heaven wasn't enough, she could end her own life. Yes that was it, she could end her own life and leave the mess behind.
Images of her son and brother halted that thought- no, she would not give in to a mortal sin. They had risked too much, tampered with too great a thing; the book of the dead, the bracelet of Anubis...she had seen what had happened to Imhotep when Anck-Su-Namun fled him...could she flee Rick?
Memories of their nights together, the day they met, their matrimony, the tiniest simplest things; The way his hand always caressed her cheek with every stolen kiss, the way he held her like she was the most valuable thing he had ever held onto...
She let her tear fall, and cupped his face in her hands, leaning in to give his fevered lips a kiss.
No.
The greed consumed her, blinded her.
There was a determination in her bones that had won her the place at Bembridge all those years ago. The determination had been strong enough to gain her a prominent role at the British Museum, and finance for digs...she had even found the book her father used to read her stories about.
She wouldn't live the rest of her life without the man who made it all possible, the man who completed her.
She would not succumb to another undead bastards blade, be it unto her own skin or her husbands.
The blade had cleanly struck through, severing prevalent arteries, and although they could have been stitched the internal wound was too great, the blood loss too many.
She would bring him back, no matter how selfish and she would be with him, they would find a way to stay together. They had come this far, what use was there in not taking what help was offered? Alex needed his father, he would forever blame himself otherwise. They had just gotten back as a family, the family they once were.
And she loved him, oh how she loved him. Her heart ached for him every second they weren't together. She couldn't live without him for upon meeting each other they truly knew what it felt to be alive.
Her lips lingered for a moment, savouring the feeling that stirred in her stomach.
His eyelids wavered, his breath becoming more shallower than the last.
"Save him. Bring him back to me." Her voice was hard, urgent. She had seen things no living person had witnessed, she had been through things no one could comprehend...and she had done it all with him by her side.
"Are you sure Evelyn? I do not have enough to share with you...he will leave you behind-"
"No, he won't. We'll cross that bridge when we come to it. Zi Yuan, please, please-" She turned to the witch. "He took your love away from you, he murdered him without another thought- don't let the emperor do the same to me."
Zi Yuan held her breath, "As long as you are sure." Having to accept the womans decision regardless of the consequences, Zi Yuan found herself reminded of the day she had to watch Lins father be torn, limb from limb mercilessly.
Evelyn clutched his hand as Zi Yuan poured the smallest amount of elixir onto the seeping wound, and almost immediately Ricks large hand almost crushed her own.
"Rick!" Her voice cracked with emotion, and both her own small hands enveloped his one.
His breathing was still strained, but he had regained some colour. Zi Yuan nodded, her work was done. She left them alone.
"E-Evie.."
"Sweetheart I'm here, I'm right next to you."
"I-I'm sorry Evie, I had to save-"
"Sssh." She pressed a finger to his lips. "Speak later." But what her eyes said was I understand.
It had been the hardest choice she had ever had to make, but she knew she had made the right one. All thoughts fled her mind as she bent down and kissed her love, who returned the kiss eagerly.
"Don't ever leave me again." She cried, holding onto his bare chest tightly. "I couldn't imagine-"
"I won't." was his reply.
He was still weak, but he found the strength to hold his wife.
His dying thoughts had been of Alex, and of her. His brave, strong, clever wife. The woman who had saved his life that day in the prison and who had never failed to suprise him since.
"I love you." She sobbed into his chest. "I couldn't believe my eyes when I saw-"
"Ssshh, honey it's okay, I'm here. I'm here."
He did not want to ask what had brought him back, all he knew was that upon inspection of his wound there was only a scar that remained purple and protruding. He kissed her head, her tresses, and let his forehead rest on hers. "I swore I'd do anything to protect you and Alex. I love you Evie, and I'll be damned if you don't know it."
Something inside her snapped, and she was kissing him, pressing herself into him with a force that suprised him. Her fingers toyed with the hair that crowned the top of his neck, she ran her hands over his chest and his scars...scars that she knew had healed but the location of where etched into her memory, new scars from Shanghai and the old, deep scars from 1923...
The tears never stopped pouring down her face.
"Heaven was the same." He managed to breath against her neck. "It was just like you told me."
She managed a small smile.
The next few hours were theres and theres alone.
The had alot to face, they had already faced so much but neither could bring themselves to rest. They needed each other, and nothing was going to take that away from them.
The choice, when Jonathan mentioned it to her a good while later, how? why? She replied that she would have done it all again in an instant.
"There are ways and means to and around everything Jon, you must surely know that."
Fin.