Disclaimer: Neither Lara Croft nor Terry Sheridan belong to me. I don't know to whom exactly the belong but it's definitely not me. "White Flag" belongs to Dido. I'm just a poor broke college student so don't even think about suing me.
Category: Drama/Romance
Rating: PG-13 due to mature themes and one swear word.
Summary: Terry Sheridan's thoughts about his betrayal.
A/N: Yesterday I watched Tomb Raider 2 – The Cradle of Life and although the movie was not that great something didn't leave my head which was the relationship between Terry and Lara. And when I incidentally listened to Dido's song "White Flag" on the radio something in my head practically screamed at me to make this Terry's song. I don't know if the fanfic hits what I was aiming for but I hope you get my drift.
Feedback: YES!!! Loads and loads and loads… okay, you know what I mean ^_~
White Flag
I
know you think that I shouldn't still love you,
I'll tell you that.
But if I didn't say it, well I'd still have felt it
where's the sense in that?
I promise I'm not trying to make your life harder
Or return to where we were
Well I will go down with this ship
And I won't put my hands up and surrender
There will be no white flag above my door
I'm in love and always will be
I know I left too much mess and
destruction to come back again
And I caused nothing but trouble
I understand if you can't talk to me again
And if you live by the rules of "it's over"
then I'm sure that that makes sense
Well I will go down with this ship
And I won't put my hands up and surrender
There will be no white flag above my door
I'm in love and always will be
And when we meet
Which I'm sure we will
All that was then
Will be there still
I'll let it pass
And hold my tongue
And you will think
That I've moved on....
Well I will go down with this ship
And I won't put my hands up and surrender
There will be no white flag above my door
I'm in love and always will be
***
I will not surrender. Not to them. Not to the others. And most of all not to her. There will be no white flag for the Marines or for my men. And not for Lara, either. I did what I had to do. If I had stayed I would have gone mad. I wish they would understand that. I wish, she would understand that.
And yet… deep inside me… there's something that broke when I looked into her eyes in that small moment before they shot me in the thigh to stop me. She'd known all along that it was me who had betrayed the group. Nobody before her – and nobody after her – had ever been so good in reading me and anticipating my moves. She knew me inside out. Like I knew her. Which made it easier to betray her, too. Now, sitting here on this ice cube with nothing but Russian guards and Russian traitors I have a lot of time on my hands to think. And I came to one conclusion which – to be honest – surprised me.
I betrayed my country, the country I had sworn an oath to serve, and I don't take oaths lightly. The bind me, but those special bonds became like chains around my feet and my hands. I felt like I was suffocating under the pressure they put on me. Don't get me wrong, I can handle pressure and stress in battle and everything. But they were putting a different pressure on me. The pressure to do as they liked. And only as they liked. There was no room for myself, only for the man they saw in me and they needed. It didn't hurt much to break those chains.
And then there was my mission group. I betrayed them, too. I left them in the middle of nowhere, where I was the only one who knew the way out. I heard the nearly all of them got killed. I knew the families of some of them. Some of them were even my friends. Which made it very hard to leave them to retrieve the artifact on my own and sell it to the highest bidder but in the end it did not matter. But who was I for them? Their superior? Hardly, since we were a group of equal ranked soldiers. Their comrade? They wouldn't have let me half drown while the river bank was completely secured if they'd seen me like that. Their friend? For two or three of them, yes. For the rest, no. Not a chance. All of us were career officers, men and women who wanted to climb the chain of command as fast as possible to get away from all those faceless hands who sent them away on suicide missions to become one of these hands ourselves. I couldn't stand it any longer. There had to be more. Turned out, it wasn't. But that's a different story.
And last but least, there was her. Lady Lara Croft. I've forgotten all her middle names but they don't count anyway. We were working together on a mission for Her Majesty the Queen, under the responsibility of the MI6. She was looking for some artifact the MI6 needed to solve some mystery and we were ordered to guard her. Really, it wasn't important what or where we were looking for, only that we were looking for it with her. We had a rough beginning, the two of us. It seems we ran together on nearly every occasion we had to cooperate. She wanted to go that way, I wanted another. She wanted to do it her way, I wanted to it my way. Looking back it seems that only we existed. The others became background actors, not really important. It was only her will or mine.
In the end we got the artifact the way she wanted to get it. Me and my group were decorated, she got her money. And after that we should have parted ways forever. But someone in MI6 decided to pair us up again, this time only us. Those were the best four months I ever had. She was headstrong, sure, even almost annoyingly headstrong but she was a clever little vixen, a tough fighter and a damn good hotshot. She amazed me and soon amazement turned into something more. I never knew what it was for her but for me she was the only one that ever came close to seeing the real me. She never got to see everything – no one can get that close –but she got to see some of my deepest fears and some of my greatest dreams. At the end of those four months we were practically working like one mind in two bodies. It was almost frightening and maybe that was what finally drove me to leave her, too.
It was the hardest thing I ever did but if I hadn't I don't know to what my panic that someone could come this close to me would have driven me.
I just wish that at least she would understand why I left but when I saw her eyes the last time I knew she didn't. She only felt hurt and betrayed and was lashing out like a wounded animal driven into a trap. And I understand her. But I will not surrender. I will not give her up. I know she will come back, and then she will not see me waving the white flag.