AN: This is a story that came into being after several different versions ran through my head before finally forming into what it finally has become.
Disclaimer: I do not own anything. Much to my dismay…
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"Mummy, where are we going?" The small girl asking the question was looking up at her mother; holding her hand.
"We are going to try to get your uncle out of prison...again." From the tone of the woman's voice it was obvious that this was a rather frequent occurrence.
"Oh," the little girl said, still looking at her mother. "What did he do?"
Her mother sighed. "I have no idea. All I know is what Izzy told me and the only useful thing he said was that your brilliant uncle was here."
The child nodded; she stared out in front of her but didn't really seem to see their surroundings.
People turned to look at the pair as they walked by, not all that surprising really because each was striking in their own way. The woman was obviously an foreigner, not surprising in Cairo really, but she had red hair, not bright red like a flame but darker more like slowly cooling embers, an unusual color for the area; her eyes were of an impossible shade of blue; and freckles, a testimony to much time spent in the sun, were spread across her face. The girl was a beautiful child with long, curly, black hair and the darker skin of Egyptian natives, but she had her mother's eyes and many of her features, which erased any doubt of their relationship that there might be; it was easy to tell, even though she was but five years old, that she would be a beauty when she grew up.
They came to the entrance of Cairo prison and informed the guard of their purpose there; he left and came back with the warden. The disgusting little man eyed her in a way that made the woman want to strike him, very hard. "What is your interest in this man?"
"He is my brother and I have come to see him and to bail him out."
The warden looked her up and down, with more curiosity this time. "You know, your brother is rather popular today."
She frowned. "What do you mean?"
"Well there are some other people interested in seeing him today."
"Who?"
Before the warden could answer a couple came up to them. "Excuse me," the man began, a tad nervously, "but we're here to see a uh...Rick O'Connell?"
The woman turned to look at him. "What do you want with my brother?" She got a good look at the both of them; the man looked a somewhat shifty character; he rather reminded her of Rick's friend and oft accomplice Izzy, not a bad person, but generally not the most trustworthy. The woman looked rather prim and proper, somewhat timid - no, that was not the right word, more like...self conscious or not very self confident - and completely out of place in Cairo Prison.
"Well - uh - we uh -" the man stammered.
His sister sighed and spoke up. "We found something that belongs to him that we wanted to ask him about."
"His strange puzzle box."
The siblings started at her statement.
"How - how -" it was the sister's turn to stammer apparently.
"It's about the only thing that he has that could be of interest to anybody." She looked them straight in the eye; Evy found herself liking this woman who was so straight forward and honest.
"I'm Evelyn Carnahan and this is my brother Jonathan."
The other woman seemed to assess her for a moment before accepting Evy's offered hand and shaking it. "Deirdre O'Connell." She looked down at the little girl beside her. "And this is my daughter, Hadiyya. Hadiyya say hello to Miss and Mr. Carnahan."
The small child smiled at them. "It is nice to meet you."
Deirdre watched the siblings' reaction to the fact that she carried her maiden name, appeared quite single; yet had a child. Mr. Carnahan smiled slightly awkwardly at the little girl, his eyes drifting between mother and daughter a few times, seeming not to know what to make of them. His sister either missed the implications or was more tactful than her brother - Deirdre put her money of the latter because while the woman seemed rather naive she also struck Deirdre as having a sharp mind - she just crouched carefully down to the child's level, smiling at her and taking her proffered hand. "It is a pleasure to meet you as well, Hadiyya."
Out of the corner of her eye Deirdre had seen the warden getting rather impatient with them; she waited a moment longer before she finally said, "Well, shall we go see what my dearly demented brother has to say for himself?"
Evelyn smiled and nodded. Jonathan wasn't sure why but for some reason seeing the two of them hitting it off so well so quickly scared the hell out of him.
The warden seemed pleased that they had finally decided to get to what they were there for. "Come, come! Step over the threshold. Welcome to Cairo Prison, my humble home."
Deirdre heard Miss Carnahan castigating her brother behind her, something to do with the fact that he lied about where he had gotten the box.
'Yep,' she thought dryly, 'definitely a shady sort.' When she heard the brother say that he had picked Rick's pocket while he was drunk all she could think was, 'Ohhhh, if Rick recognizes him...'
Deirdre kept a firm hand on her daughter, not having to look at her to know she was looking around with great curiosity. "What exactly did my brother do?"
"You don't know?"
Deirdre looked at Jonathan, who was nudged in the ribs with his sister's elbow. "No," she said flatly, thinking of Izzy and his lack of information on that point.
The warden spoke up again to bring attention back to himself. "I did not know this, but when I heard that you were coming I asked him that myself."
"And what did he say?" Evy asked.
They had reached a caged in area; the warden leaned against the bars. "He said he was 'just looking for a good time.'"
Deirdre groaned.
Two guards dragged, none too gently, a man with long scraggly hair and a face which hadn't been shaved in a good while, who was doing his best to fight back even with his hands chained together, into the caged area; they punched him in the back as they forced him to his knees behind the bars.
"This is the man that you stole it from?" Evy asked, none too quietly.
"Yes, exactly," her brother said nervously, trying to shield his face somewhat from the imprisoned man's sight. "So why don't we just go sniff out a spot of tiffin -"
Rick meanwhile smiled wryly at his sister. "Hey, Dre."
Deirdre made a disgusted sound rolling her eyes skyward before once again glaring at her wayward brother.
Rick looked at his niece. "Heya, Hadie. Bein' good for your mom?"
"One of us has to be, Unca Rick."
Rick felt a touch of amusement at this but also a wrench of guilt, he knew how much trouble and pain he cause his sister and he hated himself for it. The muscle in his jaw worked a few times before his attention was caught by the Carnahan siblings; he looked at the brother. "Who are you?" The pair turned to him; he turned to the sister. "And who's the broad?"
"'Broad'?" Evy asked.
"Rick!" Deirdre snapped at the same time.
Hadiyya stifled a giggle at her mother's scolding.
Jonathan stumbled through an excuse about being a "local sort of missionary chap," to which Deirdre had to choke back a laugh. "But this is my sister, Evy." He pulled his sister forward."
"How do you do?" she asked formally.
"Oh, well. Guess she's not a total loss."
"Rick!" Deirdre said exasperatedly and squeezed her eyes shut.
"I beg your pardon." Evy looked scandalized.
Someone from elsewhere in the prison yard called to the warden who shouted back before saying to them, "I'll be back in a moment."
"Ask him about the box," Jonathan whispered to his sister.
"Um, we have found -" she began before noticing that Rick's attention had followed the warden. "Uh, hello. Excuse me." Rick turned back to them, looking at them with a rather bored expression. "We both found your puzzle box and we've come to ask you about it."
Rick looked at them for a moment before shaking his head and saying, "No."
The pair looked confused. "No..."
He shook his head again. "No. You came to ask me about Hamunaptra."
They were both obviously shocked and Jonathan looked around to see if anyone else had heard, shushing Rick.
"H-How do you know the box pertains to Hamunaptra?"
"Because that's where I was when I found it. I was there," he said in what Deirdre called his "No, duh, stupid" voice.
Jonathan approached the cage rather close, seeming, for the first time since they had arrived, not nervous. "But how do we know that's not a load of pig's wallow?"
Deirdre saw a look enter Rick's eyes, one that meant that something was familiar but he couldn't put his finger on it; she just began a mental countdown for "it" to come.
"You, know." Rick pointed at the other man. "Do I know you?"
Jonathan instantly became once again became nervous. "No, no, no. I've just got one of those face."
'Here it comes,' Deirdre thought as she saw the recognition flood her brother's face. And indeed a second later her brother had punched the other man in the face. Of course immediately thereafter one of the guards punched him in the back.
"Rick." This time his name was said with reproach, but there was so much humor that she was trying to conceal bleeding into her tone that it wasn't all that convincing.
Evy stepped over her brother, knowing he well deserved what he got. "You were actually at Hamunaptra?"
Rick looked up at her and a grin spread across his face. "Yeah, I was there."
"You swear?" she asked suspiciously.
"Every damn day."
"Rick!" he heard his sister basically screech as she tried to cover her daughter's ears.
"Don't worry, Mummy, I've heard Unca Rick say worse."
Rick was rather glad for the fact that Evy didn't give his sister a chance to do more than send him a death glare. He made a mental note to himself, if given the chance, to explain to his niece about keeping secrets.
"No, I didn't mean that -"
"I know what you meant," he interrupted her, becoming serious. "I was there. Seti's place. City of the Dead." He waved his hands in a hokey gesture.
Evy's hopes rocketed through the roof; she was so excited that she was stammering as she asked him if he could tell her how to get there.
Rick gave her a look like she was crazy.
They heard a commotion behind her in the courtyard; she took off her hat and used it to shield one side of her face. "I mean the exact location."
"You want to know?"
"W-Well, yes." She moved closer.
"Do you really want to know?"
She moved still closer. "Yes." When he beckoned her even closer with his finger she moved even closer.
Deirdre supposed she should would have been shocked and scandalized, had she been a proper lady, but that was something she had definitely never been accused of being, when her brother reached out and grabbed the other woman's chin and pulled her in for a kiss, all Deirdre was groan and cover her eyes with a hand.
"Then get me the hell out of here!" he said once he had pulled away. The guards began beating him, with him fighting back as they dragged him off. "Do it, lady!"
Something in her brother's voice had Deirdre's head snapping up. Something was wrong. The tone of his voice paired with the fact that he had told this woman to help him get out rather than his sister told her that something was very wrong. She rushed up to the bars as they dragged him away, shouting out for them to "wait", but her pleas were unheard. Deirdre barely recognized that the warden had returned as she stared at the door through which her brother had disappeared, a feeling of dread growing in her stomach.
"Where are they taking him?" Evy still was somewhat shocked but needed to know what was going on.
"To be hanged." Deirdre nearly gave herself whiplash as she spun toward the warden, all color draining from her face and her lunch about to make a reappearance. "Apparently he had a very good time." Were it not for the fact that her brother, her only family save Hadiyya, was about to be executed, she might have found some humor in the warden's words.
Now she knew why her brother hadn't bothered to address her when it came to getting him out, because he knew that all she had to her name was 50 pounds, no where near enough to get him out of trouble of this magnitude. Her legs gave out; Mr. Carnahan, surprisingly, caught her before she fell to the ground.
"Mummy?"
Deirdre had to take several breaths before she could look her worried and frightened daughter in the face. Seeing her child so scared gave her strength; she got her feet under her and steadied herself before turning to Mr. Carnahan. "Thank you. Could you please watch my daughter for a bit and make sure she doesn't...see anything." She supposed that she was rather crazy to let this man, whom she knew was on the shady side, look after her daughter, but something told her that he could be trusted with this.
There was compassion in the man's eyes and he nodded before he moved over to the little girl's side and began talking to her and showing her something with a deck of cards he pulled from his inside coat pocket.
Deirdre quickly caught up to Miss Carnahan and the warden. She knew that her brother's only hope was this woman and she prayed that she would succeed in freeing her brother.
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Yes this portion really follows the movie quite a bit, but I hope I added in enough of my own stuff to make it interesting. A good portion of this will have movie dialogue and such in it, but there will also be a lot of my own making. I already have basically all of this story planned out along with a bunch of ideas other stories to go along with it, prequels and sequels, how many I actually get out will be seen.
Let me know what you think, praise and constructive criticism are treasured as both make me a better writer. Thank you for reading!
