Lara couldn't sleep. Her stomach was tied in knots all night. Every time she drifted off her dreams were haunted again by the image of Steph tied up in the cave. Finally the dream changed, Lara was again crawling through the bone-ridden scavenger's cave. She came upon a large chamber, larger than it had been. All around the walls were faceless figures chanting in time with a slow, deep beat. Like a heartbeat.

In the middle of the cave was a beautiful figure, dressed in all the finery of an Empress. She smiled at Lara beatifically, she spread her arms wide in a welcoming gesture.

As the figure smiled, her face slowly warped and changed, eventually becoming the face of Lara's oldest and best friend. Sam's face, still smiling, spoke. "Thank you, Lara, for making me whole again…"

Even as the new Sam-figure spoke, it started to age. Sams pretty, youthful face was marred by wrinkles and her skin became discoloured. Her limbs became thin and spindly, her body shrank to that of a waif. Lara watched in horror as Sam's features fell away, to be replaced by those of a lady so old that she looked mummified. Finally there was a change, Sam's eyes returned and gazed at Lara with pain and sorrow. She drew a knife from her once magnificent robes and, with one last look at Lara, plunged it into her midriff. The life went from her eyes and the fell backwards.

Lara tried to run to her but was blown back by fierce winds, thrown against the cave walls she screamed Sam's name.

Lara jerked awake, blood still pounding. She lay still for some time, trying to calm herself and slow her breathing. That last dream had shaken her badly. She had no desire to try and return to sleep. It was still the middle of the night, the cold january air nipped at her skin, but she'd take that over more tortuous dreams.

She decided she was rested enough to get up.

She looked at Harry, who was still fast asleep. He was curled up much too close to the fire for Lara's liking, but Harry had said that the fire would not burn either of them. She still wasn't sure she believed him, how could the fire be hot without being able to burn? It made no sense. She could just about accept that physics didn't really apply to magic, but how could it ignore even basic logic?

Then again, the golden-ball blanket that Harry seemed to be attached to had made a reappearance, and that made no sense either. She was beginning to get the impression that 'not making sense' was par for the course with magic. Even Harry didn't know why things worked.

That irked Lara. She was planning to experiment with Harry's magic as much as possible once they were back to safety. Now, though, she accepted that there were far more important things. As her father would say, 'never look a gift-horse in the mouth'.

After rereading Sam's infuriatingly sparse journal for the second time she decided to see if she could forage some more food. If she could find any traces that might give a clue to where Sam had gone, well that would be even better.

Harry claimed that now that he had some food frozen and stored in their bag that they would be fed for as long as necessary. Lara, by now, was willing to accept that. If only just. However, Roth had always told her that you should always have a back-up plan. If, somehow, they lost the little food they had then they could be in trouble. It would be best if they had some to spare.

Besides, she was hungry and she didn't want to awaken Harry quite yet. The beets that she had found growing around the island had really been rather nice. She felt they would be a good breakfast. And she wanted to find Sam, or at least feel like she was doing something.

Mind made up, she pulled herself to her feet and picked up her bow.

The camp she had Harry had found rested atop a small hill near a widening of the gorge they had walked down last night. On the far side of the camp the hill dropped gradually away and gave way to a broader valley, complete with a small stream. More importantly, there was a lot of undergrowth and Lara was sure she would be able to find something edible without too much effort.

She walked down the slope, lost in thoughts of Sam. She was still extremely worried. She hoped desperately that Sam was right in her estimates of 'Mathias'. Sam always had been rather idealistic and naive, though. She could be like a little kid, so easily excited and seemingly never able to see the possible downsides of a situation.

It was for that reason that she was such a good friend to Lara. While Lara tended towards cynicism and would focus on one small thing to the detriment of all else, Sam would always be there with her relentlessly upbeat attitude and some cheerful and joking comments. She was probably the sole reason Lara hadn't turned into a hermit during her time at UCL. Sam was, much to Lara's chagrin at the time, dragging her away from her work and just generally making sure she didn't completely lose herself in her work.

Suddenly there was a snap and her foot exploded in pain. She reflexively tried to lift it while crying out in pain but was unable, a bear trap she realised. That action had put her off balance and she toppled to the ground with another pained gasp.

"Shit shit shit… That hurt." She pulled at the jaws of the trap, trying to extricate her foot but the device was stuck fast.

"Harry? Harry!" She stopped calling abruptly when a wolf howled, it was very close. She tried to pry the trap open again but couldn't get any of the leverage needed.

The bushes rustled, a low growl oozed threateningly from the thick undergrowth. Lara scrambled to pick up her bow and quickly nocked an arrow on the string.

The ominous rumbling growls now seemed to surround her on all sides. Lara pulled back on the bow and her head tracked back and forth trying to locate the source of the sound.

"Harry!" she screamed. At that moment a huge ball of grey fur and, more importantly, teeth flew through the air from the bushes.

Time seemed to slow. Lara felt like she was aware of everything. The pain in her ankle, the continued rustling of the brush, the drops of water on the wolf's fur, the strands of saliva stretched between the white teeth of its maw.

As if watching her own actions from afar she saw herself raise and draw the bow, even as the wolf flew through the air. She felt like a spectator as she lined up the shot, slowly, as if she had all the time in the world. She looked on as the arrow was released.

It flew true and struck the airborne wolf in the roof of its mouth. The huge beast immediately went limp, though the body kept coming. Time sped back up to normal and Lara was flattened by the heavy ball of flesh and fur.

She was acutely aware that the growling from the bushes had not stopped. She tried frantically to extricate herself from beneath the heavy canine. She could barely shift the beast. The threatening snarling was closer now. She could hear the wolf as it moved through the undergrowth. Summoning up strength she didn't know she had she managed to force the wolf off her just enough to reach another arrow for her bow.

Before she could nock it, though, the animal burst from the thicket surrounding her. Time once more seemed to slow for Lara, though this time her movements felt sluggish. She tried to pull the arrow back on the string, but it wasn't happening fast enough. This time the wolf would get her. It was even larger and more ferocious looking than the last, she thought absently. She grasped the arrow in her hand, ready to fight to the last.

"Depulso!"

A bright white light flew over Lara's head, striking the still airborne wolf in its centre. The beast thrown back violently, as if swatted by the hand of a giant. It hit a large tree behind it with enough force that Lara heard bones break.

"Lara, are you ok?" Harry dropped to his knees at her side, a flick of his wand throwing the second wolf off her completely.

"Harry! Thank God." Lara was almost crying in relief. "My foot, I stepped in a trap and then the wolves…" She was rambling, her heart still beating a million miles a minute.

"It's OK, Lara." Harry cut her off, his voice calming. "You're OK now. Let's get you out of this trap and I'll have a look at your foot."

Harry immediately started heaving on the trap with all his strength. Lara didn't think he'd be able to do all that much more than herself but somehow he managed to find the strength needed to pull the trap apart with his bare hands and Lara was able to wrench her foot free. She immediately threw herself at her saviour, grasping him hard.

"Thank you! Oh God. Thank you!" she repeated over and over again, her heart still hammering in her chest.

Harry let her hold him, all the while he whispered soothing words and rubbed her back.

Slowly Lara was able to calm down, the adrenaline gradually leaching from her system. She pulled away from Harry and tried to pull herself to his feet with his help. When she did she saw something that caused her heart to swell.

"Reyes! Jonah! Over here!" She shouted in excitement. Many of the crew members were in their group. She could see Alex, Grim and Whitman in addition to Reyes and Jonah.

"Lara! We found you! Are you alright?" said the ships engineer, Joslin Reyes, an outspoken african american a little shorter than Lara. She glanced at Harry briefly as she spoke and Lara noticed that the dark-skinned american was still grasping the pistol she was carrying.

"I'm OK, Harry here helped me. Are you all OK? Have you seen Sam?" Lara hadn't forgotten that Sam was the entire reason they had come here.

It was Jonah that spoke, "Is she not here, with you? This was where she said to meet," he said, concern lacing his voice. Over the course of their voyage Jonah Maiava had become very protective of both Sam and Lara. The burly maori man was the ship's cook and general muscle man and had treated them both as little sisters and had always been a good friend during any drama that had unfolded in the close atmosphere of the ship.

"She was, but by the time we got here she'd already gone," said Lara with worry. "She left her journal, it said she met a man called 'Mathias'."

The young team technician, the bespectacled Alex Weiss pushed forward to answer. "She said she'd met him, yeah," he said enthusiastically, "said he was a schoolteacher I think. He fixed up her foot."

Harry stepped forward. "Well I'd say she'd been gone for at least an hour, by the time we got here."

Angus 'Grim' Grimaldi, an old friend of Lara's father and the helmsman of the Endurance spoke up this time, the cantankerous scotsman's burr dripped suspicion as he asked, "and who are you?"

The wizard was unmoved by the aggressive showing, though he noticed that the other crewmembers had also moved around Lara protectively. "I'm Harry Potter." He smiled his best smile and gestured grandly. "Adventurer and trouble-magnet extraordinaire!"

Reyes raised a single eyebrow. "Isn't it 'trouble-maker'?" she asked cautiously.

Harry thought about it for a moment, and even went so far as to tap his finger on his chin as if in deep thought. "Nope," he said eventually, "definitely trouble-magnet." He jabbed a finger towards Lara. "She found me. All the trouble is her fault."

Lara couldn't help herself, momentarily she was able to forget their situation and the missing Sam. She laughed happily at the cheerful attitude of her new friend. Everything seemed just a little less gloomy with his constant light-hearted attitude.

Her laugh also broke through the heavy atmosphere between the crew and Harry.

"Little bird does have a nose for trouble," said Jonah, his deep voice rumbling with repressed laughter. "Remember that ninja she managed to annoy in Osaka? I didn't think they still existed!"

Grim, true to his name, didn't even crack a smile. "You girls shudnae go wanderin off. Now we need tae find Sam."

First the first time in the conversation, Whitman finally made his presence known. "Uhhh. Wait wait wait. What about Roth?"

Reyes, who seemed to have taken command of the remaining crew thought for a moment. "We should split up." Lara heard a quiet snort from Harry. "Someone should go with Lara and Harry to find Roth. The rest of us will fan out and look for Sam."

Lara rolled her eyes. It was obvious Reyes still didn't trust Harry, hence why someone else was going with them. "It's ok I-"

She was cut off by Whitman who jumped in quickly, cutting across Alex in the process. "I'll go with Lara."

"You know how to use this?" Reyes asked as she handed Whitman a pistol.

"I, uh, yeah. It's been a while, but it's all coming back." he said haltingly.

Seemingly ignoring the man's useless bluster Reyes just nodded. "Right, you guys, lets go find Sam." She immediately headed off into the undergrowth, Jonah and Grim right behind her.

Alex paused for a moment, he grasped her shoulder and didn't quite look into her eyes for some reason. "Don't worry, we'll find her." Before he quickly broke the contact and went off after Reyes.

The whole exchange had taken less than five minutes. Lara felt distinctly unwanted. She felt Harry's hand on her shoulder.

"You want me to take a look at that foot now?" he asked softly.

She tried putting her weight on it and hissed in pain. She'd probably twisted it when she'd fallen. Harry helped her back to the ground and looked around for Whitman.

"You, uhhh, what's your name?" he asked, realising he hadn't actually been introduced to the crew. Lara had told him the names of a few, but hadn't realised he wouldn't know them by sight.

Whitman jumped at being addressed. "Whitman. uh. Dr. James Whitman. Chief archaeologist for my expedition."

Harry nodded amiably, despite having to put up with a couple of hours of Lara complaining about the entitled arse. "Alright, Doctor. Can you scout ahead a bit while I take a look at Lara's ankle. It won't take long."

As he spoke Harry caught Lara's eye and shook his head minutely while waggling his fingers. His funny little 'it's magic' gesture. She understood, he didn't want the other crew to know right now. She was aware that he'd broken laws to tell her about magic and it seemed he wasn't about to break them again unless forced like he had been with Lara.

"Uh, yeah. Uh. You're right. I'll just, um, do that." Whitman quickly moved off, holding the gun in front of him like he expected it to go off at any second.

When he was out of hearing range Harry turned back to Lara. "Doesn't seem that pompous," he said with a smile, "believe me, I've seen pompous. That was just a bit pathetic really."

Lara snorted at the apt description. She had no idea why Whitman would opt to be her 'protector'. He really wasn't much use for anything more than smiling at a camera and chatting up reporters and undergrads.

Harry pulled out his wand and waved it over her foot while Lara looked on in fascination. Seeing actual magic being done simply never got old. Even if it was anticlimactic. Harry whispered a single word and the pain in her ankle ceased. Even the beginnings of a dark bruise where the snare had clamped her disappeared.

"All better, Miss Croft." Harry spoke in clipped tones and looked at her over the top of his glasses. "I'd recommend a week of bed-rest and then a month of relaxation at home. Is that clear?"

Lara giggled at what was obviously an impression of an overprotective nurse. She'd been in enough falls in her youth to know the type.

"Thank you nurse Potter," she said with a cheeky grin, "but I think we should catch up to Whitman before he does something stupid."

Harry nodded and stood, holding out his hand to Lara. She grabbed it and stood up, testing her injured ankle. There was no pain at all. She hadn't really expected there to be, she had grown an extremely healthy respect for Harry's abilities over the last two days and was starting to wonder exactly what he couldn't do.

They both started moving quickly through the undergrowth after Whitman. Lara had to give it to the man, they hadn't given him much of a head-start but he'd got a fair distance away from them. After twenty minutes of walking they still hadn't seen him. At a couple of instances Harry stopped them both and cast some kind of spell. He said that there were more wolves about and he was just making sure they didn't try to attack like the other ones had.

He explained that his magic was able to make creatures, even humans, ignore them completely. He had apparently set something like that up around their camp earlier that night. He wasn't concerned that the wolves would be a legitimate threat, but he also didn't want to have to kill them unnecessarily.

He reminded Lara of some of the bushmen she'd met when out with her father and Roth. Big, burly men who used all their considerable skills at hunting to avoid killing the animals. When Lara had asked, one of them had said it wasn't a fair fight. There was nothing to be proud of in killing some dumb beast when you could instead have ensured its continued survival.

Harry, on the other hand, just shrugged and said he didn't see the point of killing them when they couldn't even attempt to hurt him. Lara considered that to be much the same kind of thinking.

Finally they found Whitman. Much to Lara's shock the man had actually managed to set a fire and make a simple camp. She wasn't quite sure how he'd got past the wolves. Perhaps it was his miraculously still-present hair-gel driving them away.

The camp had been set up next to a huge gate. Lara thought it looked to be either late Heian or early Kamakura period. It was covered in the same graffiti Harry and her had seen in the abandoned 'house' in the bunker. While the structure of the gate was obviously an old Japanese gateway, the actual gate was sheet steel, and attached to a modern looking hand winching system.

Whitman was talking to himself excitedly as they both walked up. She found it somewhat amusing that he hadn't connected the female figure with Himiko yet, but she supposed this really wasn't even close to his area of expertise.

"The people who made this, they must have been survivors like us," he babbled excitedly. "Remarkable!"

"And crazy," said Lara, unimpressed. "And murderers."

Whitman completely ignored her, however, in favour of waving her over to one of the winching mechanisms attached to the heavy, anachronistic steel gate. She shot a glance at Harry, who was seemingly trying to climb into a large metal shipping chest. She was obviously getting no sympathy from him, so she moved to the winch.

"Ready!" called Whitman.

"Wait! The handle's missing from this one, I've got no way to push it." She looked around as she spoke, surely the handle couldn't be far off.

"Ahh ha!" shouted Harry. "Here we go." He ambled up to Lara holding a length of metal pipe. "This should work."

He shoved the pipe into the vacant hole left by the old winching handle. "Ready, Doctor?"

"Hmm? Oh. Right," said Whitman who had returned to staring at the white graffiti. He moved back to his winching station and began pushing on Harry's signal.

Both of them were able to raise the gate quite easily, though it wouldn't stay up. Harry called to Lara and asked her to fetch some of the metal struts from the shipping container he'd been rummaging through earlier. Lara understood immediately what he wanted to do and could see the sense. There was no way back through once the gate shut. They'd be stuck.

She found some heavy pieces and propped them up on either side of the gate while Harry and Whitman held the gate open. Well, mainly Harry held the gate open. Whitman mostly complained.

When she was happy that the gate would stay open she waved to them both and they quickly followed her through. They both turned back to watch as the gate was stopped by Lara's carefully placed wedges. Harry smiled and nodded at Lara in acknowledgement.

By the time they turned around Whitman had already started up the stairs, still talking to himself all the way. Lara couldn't resist shaking her head.

"You do realise you do the same thing, right?" asked Harry while he smiled broadly. "That thing where you talk to yourself when you think you've found something interesting?"

"I do not!" protested Lara immediately. She thought about it a moment before shrugging sheepishly. "Not all the time, anyway."

Harry just smiled at her again and started up the stairs behind Whitman. Lara followed behind. The stairs led up a narrow and shallow gully. The sheer rock sides were, in places, inscribed with the figure that Lara believed to be Himiko again. It was strange that the Sun Queen was so universally represented in the art of the island. Earlier she and Harry had come across a ruined statue of her and here where huge murals in her honour. The murals themselves must date to at least a few hundred years after her reign, normally a Queen would not be so long remembered. It was almost as if they'd had no other rulers. Not even a reference to another king or queen was to be found anywhere on the carvings.

Just as she was about to voice her thoughts to Harry, while thinking smugly that she hadn't been speaking out loud, they both heard shouting from ahead. They shared a look and broke into a run.

They both burst into a small clearing a few moments later and Lara tried to assess the situation. Whitman was up ahead, standing in front of a large rough-looking man. The man was telling Whitman to lay down his gun. She noticed that the unknown man was well armed, with both a pistol and a bow. He was also accompanied by two more men, both of whom were similarly well armed.

"No, Whitman!" she called out. "Don't trust them!"

Harry put a calming hand on her shoulder. "Calm down, Lara." His voice level and controlled. He lowered his voice further. "There's more of them around up on the cliff. We can't fight them safely, just go with it for now."

Lara turned to him in shock. "You can't-" She saw the look in his eyes, it was hard, but at the same time she could see something else as he looked at her, protectiveness perhaps? It was just enough to calm her down, whatever it was. She nodded.

"OK, we'll come quietly," spoke Harry.

Almost immediately they were both grabbed from behind and shoved roughly forward. Lara felt rough hands trail over her shoulders before removing the bow she was carrying. The man flicked her hair and said something in a language she didn't recognise. Russian, she thought.

"Hey, watch your hands," Harry growled, Lara felt gratitude well up as the man turned his attention to Harry.

"What do you think you can do about it, little man?" His voice was rough and cruel, his russian accent adding to the harshness of his words. He stalked up to Harry and punched him in the stomach with enough force to make Harry double over gasping for breath.

"Harry, no!" whimpered Lara. Somehow Harry managed to straighten up and flashed her a grin before he winked. Lara wondered just how much the man had seen if he was able to take something like this in his stride. A tiny part of her wondered if he knew these people, the pushed that away quickly.

They were both pushed forward again. Up ahead, Lara could smell smoke.

The scavengers had rounded up three more of the Endurance's crew, though Lara only knew their first names. Behind them there was a steep terraced hill covered in old traditional Japanese houses. Most of them were burning. Harry and Whitman were pushed over to the other three men and forced to their knees with vicious kicks. The man from before, she thought his name was Vladimir, kept hold of Lara, instead pushing her up against a tree. His hand roughly trailed down her cheek to her chin.

"Ahhh, such a pretty thing," he mused as he caressed her shoulder. Lara tried to push him off but he slammed her back up against the tree forcefully. "Your little boyfriend is going to die," he whispered callously in her ear, "but don't worry. I'll show show you what a real man can do." He leaned in towards Lara as she struggled desperately.

"Flipendo!"

Once again Lara was saved by a flash of light and Harry's much welcome voice. The surprised Russian was thrown to the side with a cry of surprise. Lara looked up and could see Harry was standing, his hand holding his wand extended.

The other men gaped at him for a moment, a moment which gave Harry the opportunity to take two more down with flashes of red light. Quickly, though, the tough-looking and heavily armed men started firing at the attacking wizard. In moments Harry had taken down at least four of the rough-and-ready militia men. Lara hadn't been able to get a count, but she was sure there were at least a dozen. Most were now focussed on Harry.

Harry's magic was easily the equal of the men trying to fight him. Around him was a shimmering bubble that turned away everything the men fired at it. Through the shield Harry continued throwing bright blue and red lights.

In the chaos the other prisoners made a run for it, most running up the hill into the burning town. Lara turned back to Harry, determined to find something to help him. She looked around frantically for a weapon, but just caught sight of Vladimir as he tackled her to the ground. He hit her forcefully about the head with the butt of his pistol.

Dazed, Lara scratched ineffectually at him and tried to force him off her, her struggles were in vain. The man gripped her hair painfully and pulled her to her feet. It felt like he was going to rip her scalp off. He held Lara in front of him as a human shield, his gun resting on her temple.

"Little man!" Vladimir's voice shouted from right next to Lara's ear.

Harry turned immediately at being addressed. All around Lara could see the prone bodies of the men Harry had hit with his magic. Of the more than a dozen men at the start all but three had been laid low. His eyes widened when he saw Lara. Before he could react properly, the Russian spoke again.

"Ahh! If I see that little stick of yours move one diuym, I'll have to spread the girl's pretty little face all over the ground." Lara tried to shy away as she felt his warm breath in her ear as he spoke.

She could see the indecision in Harry's eyes as he dropped the tip of his wand just slightly and his shield flickered and fell. Lara knew he would be trying to come up with a new plan. Unfortunately, the remaining Russians didn't give him more than the barest few seconds. Lara saw one of them move up behind the wizard, swinging a huge mace-like polearm made of rusted flotsam.

"Harry!" she screamed, but too late. The ugly metal lump struck Harry on the side of the head, throwing him meters to the side and to the ground, the force of the blow more than enough to cave-in a skull. "Harry! NO!"

Lara shook herself free of the loosened grip of Vladimir and sprinted across the narrow patch of ground between her and the fallen wizard. She collapsed to the ground as she reached his body. Behind her she could hear Vladimir shouting at the remaining men, she couldn't recognise the words. She paid him no heed. All her attention was focussed on Harry.

He was crumpled bonelessly in a heap, arms and legs in disarray. The side of his head was already covered in blood that dripped down across his face. Lara tried to straighten his body out, unaware that most of the remaining Russians had moved off into the burning village in search of the other runaway crew members.

"Harry, don't do this. You can't die. You'll be OK." She whispered to him as she cradled his head in her lap. As she did so she noticed something that made her breath hitch. His skull wasn't crumpled as it should have been. She looked closer.

He was breathing. She let out a joyful laugh and hugged his head to her for a moment, thanking any deity that would listen. She realised that she didn't want the Russian gang to know he'd survived and looked around in momentary panic. There was only one near her, and he was looking the wrong way.

Moving quickly she dragged Harry behind the cover of a low and almost completely destroyed wall, grateful for the noise of the large fires for drowning out the sound of her movements.

She had to get Harry away from here, but there was no way she'd be able to pull him all the way through the village without being noticed. She looked back towards the way they had come, suddenly remembering that they had wedged the gate open. If she could get him back there and to Whitman's camp on the other side they might just be OK.

She waited for the man nearby to look the other way and started, painfully slowly, to drag Harry back towards the steps they had climbed just twenty minutes ago.

There was no way she could just drag Harry down the steps, she'd have to carry him. She thought she might be able to manage, he probably weighed only slightly more than she did. She knew that she'd have to be careful though, once stumble and she might drop Harry, that could quite possibly kill him.

Just as she bent to pick him up she was grabbed suddenly from behind, spun around and thrown against the harsh rock walls of the gorge. Vladimir had come back, he'd found her.

He was shouting at her in rapid and angry Russian, she had no idea what he was saying, but he was pacing slowly towards her. She could see the crazed light in his eyes and knew he wanted her dead. She wouldn't let that happen. He moved closer, pressing himself against her. His face was just inches from her own, his warm putrid breath rolling over her nose.

In desperation Lara burst forward, headbutting him with all her strength. It was enough, he fell backwards to the ground clutching his face. Lara's vision went blurry from the force of the blow, but she knew the man still had his gun and she lunged at him, trying to wrestle the weapon from his grasp.

The powerful Russian was much stronger than she was and he gradually managed to force the gun towards her. She raised her knee to his groin with all the force she could muster causing him to howl in pain and throw her off. The gun was thrown aside too. Lara scrambled madly across the ground the pick it up.

She reached it, and spun around to aim it at Vladimir. Too slow, the was already on top of her. Once again they fought over the gun, this time, though Lara somehow found the strength to push the gun towards her assailant. Suddenly, in their struggle the gun went off.

The bullet hit Vladimir just above his brow and blew part of his forehead off completely, coating Lara in blood and gore. Somehow the man stayed alive for another couple of moments until his final rattling breath signalled his demise.

Lara, who'd been laying still with the gun still trained on the now deceased Russian started taking in deep hitching breaths. She'd killed him. He was dead and she'd killed him. She climbed unsteadily to her feet

She tried to clamp down on the panic that she was feeling. She couldn't do this alone. She needed Roth, Harry, her father. Anyone, she wasn't strong enough to do this. She knew she couldn't.

She looked back at Harry's prone body and knew that she had to try. She strengthened her resolve with everything she had and went to Vladimir's corpse. She relieved him of her bow and was able to find another magazine for the pistol he'd been carrying. As it only had two more bullets left, that was a godsend.

Next she went to Harry, and through a supreme effort managed to get him over her shoulder in a fireman's carry. Slowly, deliberately, step by step, the began her descent.

It took another 10 minutes to make it to the gate and as she did she heard just the sound she had been dreading. Running footsteps. She hoped for a moment that they might be survivors from the Endurance, the crew or Whitman. The shouted Russian snuffed that hope out before it could even be fully born.

She set Harry down as gently as she could behind one of the low stone dykes that ran on either side of the staircase before she too took cover.

There were two men, both armed with bows. She couldn't understand what they were saying, but she could guess. They must have found Vladimir's body at the top of the stairs and started in pursuit. She peaked out from behind her wall and was seen almost immediately. One of the men pointed at her and shouted, he loosed the arrow he'd had held in his bow straight at her. Lara managed to shift just enough that the arrow only cut the skin of her cheek and brought her stolen pistol to bear on the two men.

It was again as if she was moving in slow motion as she lined up her first shot, the bullet hit the man through his right eye causing him to drop like a doll with its strings cut. Even before the first man could nock another arrow she was moving her gun to target him, moments later the gun fired again and the second Russian fell to the ground, dead.

Throughout it all, Lara had barely given the actions a single thought. Still in a daze Lara moved quickly to pull Harry the last few meters through the gate to safety, kicking away her supports once they were both through.

She dragged Harry to the still healthy fire and collapsed next to him in exhaustion.

She joined him in blissful oblivion moments later.


A/N: So, Yeah. Woops.