A/N: Disclaimer; I'm only here to play in the sandbox.
Amanda crawled out of her grave in Peru at sunrise. With the wraith stone clutched tightly in her hand against her chest, she discovered that the excavation cite had been abandoned. There were no signs of life; there were only the remains of the dig - equipment, boards, that damned support that caused the rope to break. She squinted in the light, shielding her eyes with her free hand. How long had it been since they pulled out of Peru? She couldn't say.
She was numb, and then she wasn't. There was nothing, and then there was white-hot fury that she could only get out of her by screaming and crushing a mountain to dust. Even then, she didn't feel any better. It didn't change the fact that she was alone, that she had been left behind.
And she thought about that, for the longest time, as she pulled herself out of Peru and dove into the belly of the States without so much as a word to anyone. What did it matter to them when they'd been so eager to not even bother collecting her remains? To try outside their most basic ideas?
She met Rutland after her 'death', but she didn't love him. There was only one person she could think of, one name that stuck to the roof of her mouth; it soured her days, when she made a breakthrough; it disrupted her nights, when she was in James' arms.
Lara.
"You're obsessed with her," James said to her only once. They were only weeks away to being in Bolivia. They had the means, the know-how - everything they needed in order to proceed with the plan. She thought darkly, soon, even as her bitter-tasting resentment reared its ugly head to snarl at James.
"Are you going to help me or not?" she asked, her voice razor sharp in the dimly lit hotel room. Then, softly, "you know what this means to me." She reached up and placed her hand on his check, her thumb resting beneath his eye.
"Okay," he said, and meant it, and she kissed him, but all she could taste was ash.