Disclaimer—Recognizable characters are the property of Universal. No copyright infringement intended. Any similarity to events or persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
Author's Notes—I have long loved the Mummy movies. It could be because I identify a little too much with Evy—down to having a big brother with a penchant for the dramatic named Jonathan. It could just be that it's a wonderful story and a very fun movie. But, sending a special thank you to my very own "O'Connell," who keeps me straight, offers guidance and assistance when I know I need it and when I think I don't, and who loves me dearly, as much as I love him. Thanks to my dear friend Cindy Ryan, who took a look and insisted I post. Hoping your week gets better, my friend.
Spoilers—Mostly from The Mummy. One or two details plucked from The Mummy Returns.
Seeing You Again—When he said he'd be seeing Imhotep again, he didn't realize that he'd seen him long before. A venture into the thoughts and memories of Rick O'Connell during the events of The Mummy.
He had never been one for believing in fate or karma or whatever. In his experience, he'd never seen the extreme kindness of a stranger, merciful justice in action, or known the warmth of a mother's unconditional love. So, whether there was one God, several, or none at all, he really didn't care.
He relied on himself and, as such, he was excellent at survival.
For years, it had been that way. It didn't matter what country he was in or what was going on around him. He had enjoyed a profitable, relatively easy run until he found himself locked in a Cairo prison cell.
Of course, the bank job with Izzy hadn't gone quite as well as he'd hoped. And the belly dancer may or may not have been everything she'd claimed to be. While he hadn't made the best choices as of late, he couldn't believe that he was now looking at a death sentence because of it.
He knew the end was coming, that his days were numbered and short. Growing up in an Egyptian orphanage as an American with a chip on his shoulder, he never figured that he'd die in in the desert much the same way as he had begun there.
Penniless. Caged. Alone.
When he saw them, he felt an odd sense of deja vu. It intensified when the prison guard forced him to his knees.
The two looked out of place but eerily familiar-the curious woman and the sniveling man.
When she spoke, the feelings spiked white hot again, especially when she talked of Hamunaptra with those bright, wide eyes of hers.
He couldn't put his finger on it. If he knew her name, it wasn't on the tip of his tongue. If he had met with her before, he couldn't remember where. The British accent she spoke with threw him for an added loop and, being as out of it as he was, it didn't matter much. He blamed it on the heat, the lack of food and water, and the fact that he was within easy reach of Death's scythe. Even if he wanted to bring up the memory from some dusty, cobwebbed corner of his mind, there was no way he knew to accomplish it.
He did the next best thing.
He kissed her. And he begged for her help. Being out of options, he wasn't above extreme measures, even if that meant using strangers. Given that she seemed to have no recollection of him either, he knew it was a long shot, but he'd try anything if it meant saving his own skin.
Once he had dodged the bullet, he found himself beholden to the woman on her quest for the ancient City of the Dead. Given her primness, her propriety, he made sure that he looked presentable for the next time he saw her.
As he approached, however, he heard them talking and he knew that their subject was him. While he knew he hadn't ingratiated himself to either of them yet, he felt a mysterious pang of something that he couldn't quite explain when she talked about how horrible she found him.
While he had some sense of manners, he very rarely used them. Now that he was free, he found himself falling back onto them as a second nature whenever he was around her.
And there was still that peculiar sense about her. Like he should've known more about her. He just couldn't figure her out.
All of his earlier excuses were gone though. He'd enjoyed shade, peaceful rest, quenched thirst and satisfied hunger since his brief time dangling at the end of his rope. Surely his mind wasn't still playing tricks on him.
Instead of her, he tried to focus on the job ahead of him. The first time he'd heard his garrison talking about Hamunaptra, he'd debunked it as hooey. When they had insisted, when they were off to parts unknown to try to find it, he'd tried as best he could to remind them that they were soldiers and not treasure hunters. It hadn't gone over well at all.
The whole wandering trip to the lost city had been especially strange for him since he felt every wrong turn and seemed to be able to tell which way to go to locate it. Like he had been there before, a hundred times.
That was how he had known, even in the dark of night, in the flickering, fiery chaos from their burning barge, which side of the river they needed to be on to reach their destination.
He still couldn't attribute it to some higher power. It was just his finely honed senses, sharpened by his other adventures, from the French Foreign Legion to gun for hire. But when he saw her the next day, in more traditional Egyptian-wear, he felt that odd pang again, like he should've done something other than stare at her, like he shouldn't have joked with her brother about trading her for camels.
It couldn't be that he liked her, that he found her attractive. He buried that thought just as quickly as it had surfaced. She was a woman-a lady-of distinction and he was far too uncouth for her. As nice as it had been, when her head eased onto his shoulder as they made their long trip toward the City of the Dead, he wouldn't-he couldn't-allow it.
The more time he spent around her, the more he saw her, the more he protected her, the more he felt his defenses crumbling around him, with debris sifting through the once-impenetrable walls like sand through his fingers.
It got so bad that he desperately wanted her to leave Egypt when Imhotep began his ascent to power. She needed to be kept safe, at all costs. No one else seemed to understand his insistence, least of all himself, but he had always trusted his gut, so he blindly followed his intuition. Everything about what was going on, what they were facing, screamed danger and mortal peril to him.
Her life was paramount.
Even she had wondered quietly to him, when they finally had a moment alone, if he was okay.
The cockiness emerged first, unbidden. It was a standard reaction for him and the answer slipped from his lips before he could stop it. He was exceedingly good at poor manners, as she continued to remind him.
She withdrew after that, accepting of his-albeit unintended-verbal shove aside.
As soon as he'd said it, he had wanted-and had tried-to take it back, tripping over his own tongue in the process. Her opinion of him mattered, more than any one else's had, and it bothered him that she was distant again, and that he himself with his stupidity had been the one to cause it.
After the trip to the museum, as they fled from the moaning, groaning, puss-covered masses, when all hope seemed lost, she made the deal for their lives.
Every fiber in his being screamed at him to pull her back, to push her behind him. It was animal, feral, the feelings he had about her, especially when she was in Imhotep's grasp.
"I'll be seeing you again," he said, gritting out the words. His tone was laced with grim determination, with a fierceness. As soon as he'd said it, he felt that same sense of deja vu. The smug look on the creature's face triggered the emotions, the senses even harder. It was like Imhotep hadn't expected any less from him, like the creature understood his English.
Only once they were in the aquifers beneath the city, in the near blackness, did the images come to him.
Evelyn behind him, Imhotep in front of him, a sword at the ready but hardly necessary, given the men surrounding the traitor.
"For crimes you have committed, for trusts you have violated, you will suffer at the hands of fate," she said, her voice clear but with a thick layer of pain beneath it.
He stood taller, moving her slightly as Imhotep attempted to lunge at her.
"Simple death will not suffice for you," she said. "Your sentence to be carried out will be the worst of all, in keeping with the severity of what you have done. You will face the Hom-Dai."
While he would never dare contradict her in public, he did stiffen at the punishment his new queen laid before them.
Imhotep smirked at the curse, looking from her to the captain of her guard. With clarity and certainty, he spoke. "Death is only the beginning."
He smiled in return, then nodded at those under his command to take the most vile criminal away. As they thundered out, dragging the once-trusted adviser with them, he turned to look at her. "The Hom-Dai? Are you certain?"
"He deserves what the gods see fit to provide."
"And what of the power? What of the threat of his resurrection?"
She reached out, touching his face, her fingers light and graceful across his cheek. "I have faith in the Medjai. I have faith," she said, "in you."
The ghostly remembrance was dashed when Jonathan slapped him hard across the same cheek he could've sworn she had just caressed.
"O'Connell!" he said insistently. "What do we do now?"
He glanced between the only ones left-her brother and their mysterious local friend, who quirked an eyebrow back at him.
Rick O'Connell had never been one to give into flights of fancy. Wishes, hopes and dreams meant little to him. Whatever he had just seen, he couldn't be sure that it was real. How could he have known a 3000 year old man, after all? How could he have known Evelyn when they were both far too young to have lived in the age of Seti the First?
It had to be the stress of the situation, from facing Biblical plagues to dealing with a creature unlike any other he had ever even heard of before. And then there was the woman. As hard as he tried to hide those feelings, he could still hear her voice echo through the corners of his brain.
I have faith in you.
"Now we go get your sister back," he said, a determination in his voice that even he hadn't expected.
"I knew I knew your kind!" Jonathan said, trailing along as Rick led the way. "True to your word."
"Save it, all right?" he said, quieter.
How could he live up to his word, to her expectations, when he didn't understand what was happening to them? When, clearly, he was having hallucinations? He was losing his faculties, his grip on reality.
The woman in his vision couldn't have been real, because the Evelyn he knew and had come to protect had been taken. She wasn't the one calling the shots on Imhotep. It was the complete opposite.
He still wasn't ready to call it fate yet, or destiny. What he needed was luck. Seeing as how when he allowed his purpose to get cloudy-like when he gambled with his money and not his life-one bad event tumbled after another. She'd told him that they needed to save the world. Lofty was one way to describe that goal. Loony was another. He wasn't big on the abstract notion that he could do that, that he could prevent an apocalypse all on his shoulders alone.
But as he ran, the singular purpose that drove him became crystal clear.
From the very start, he had owed her his life. Even on the barge, she managed to save his neck again. She was looking out for him as much as she could, in her own way, much the same way he had tried to protect her.
And he'd be damned if he failed.
Her life depended on him, and he knew it. And she, for all her faults and curiosities, was changing his notions about his life. Maybe there was more to a person's existence, but the only way he would know for sure was to keep his word. He had to see her again.
End.