Helping Hands

Their transatlantic flight was out of Chicago, bound for Helsinki. With their journey into Salt Lake City and their flight from there, they'd already been travelling for hours. Somewhere over the oceans, Lara shifted uncomfortably in her seat, pushed her feet against her hand luggage stowed under the chair in front of her and taking up part of her foot room, and cursed economy class. She'd usually choose at least business, but when seats weren't available, no amount of money would help you. Her calves ached.

"I'm going to stretch my legs," Lara started to say to Kurtis beside her, but cut herself short when she found he'd fallen asleep. She rolled her eyes and got up. It looked like she wouldn't even be getting any conversation to pass the time.

She was towards the end of the aisle when a woman rose from her seat and stepped out, blocking Lara's path. Her lips were pouted nastily, a scar running clear across them, and her eyes held a look of disgust. Her face, along with her spiky hair and biker-style clothes, left her looking rather like she was more used to confronting people in alley ways.

"Excuse me," said Lara politely, moving to gently push past the woman.

The woman pushed back with a belligerant air and Lara halted, a little surprised, and her temper igniting.

"Excuse me...Sian," she said, reading the name on the woman's necklace condescendingly. Their eyes locked challengingly.

"Where is it?" Sian asked.

"Where is what?"

"The Chirugai. I want it."

Lara shook her head. "I don't know what you're talking about. Now get out of my way."

Sian pushed her again and fixed Lara with a look. "I want it."

Lara laughed in amusement. "Are you really going to start something here? On an aeroplane full of people and probably an armed air marshall?"

Lara was punched in the face, inhumanly hard. She fell, banging her elbow on a seat and lay there for a moment, stunned. Nobody else reacted.

Shaking her head to clear her vision and her mind, Lara got to her feet and took a fighting stance.

Sian let another hit fly. Ready that time, Lara blocked it and hit back with one of her own, landing it on the left side of her attacker's face. She barely seemed to register it, instead smoothly going for a punch to Lara's stomach, then another, before kneeing her hard.

Lara staggered back, falling against a nearby passenger, gasping in pain, winded. She looked at the person she'd collapsed over and then, in amazement and horror, around the cabin. Everyone seemed almost frozen, moving so slowly that it was barely noticeable, and the man she'd hit didn't seem affected at all. Were they slowed down? Was she moving faster? What was happening? She looked up at Sian, horribly awed. The smirk she received back was chilling.

"Humans. They're so easy to control. And so easy to subdue."

White exploded in Lara's vision as her head was rammed into the armrest, and then she was shoved fully to the floor.

Sian stepped back, and pulled a gun. Lara's eyes went wide.

Instinctively, not thinking of what might happen, Lara kicked up a leg and rammed her foot into Sian's wrist, sending the gun jerking just as it was fired.

The shot was deafening in the confined space, but almost immediately drowned out by the ear shattering high pitched sound of whistling wind, air being sucked violently out of the hole that had been formed in the rear door.

Lara drew in a horrified breath, slammed her hands over her ears and curled up in the aisle, eyes screwing shut. With a frightening shudder and an explosive bang, the door was ripped from its housing, shooting out into the atmosphere, streaking forty thousand feet down to earth.

The oxygen masks dropped, the passengers sat there, moving dreamily, oblivious to their danger.

Fighting on through the turmoil, against her impossibly strong attacker, Lara struggled to hook a foot around Sian's ankle and bring her down.

Sian simply dropped to her knee, letting the fall bring her closer to Lara, and took hold of her collar. Then she stood, dragging Lara after her, and threw her to the door.

Lara screamed shortly, thinking she was being tossed out, but she landed hard on her front instead, only her neck and head out of the doorway.

Sian was on top of her immediately, a hand on the back of her head, shoving it down over the edge, the other holding down one of Lara's arms.

Lara's cry was stolen by the sky, her breathing in the struggle and the wind almost impossible.

It was what the demon wanted, the reason she was being pushed like that, but she had no choice. Lara had to call the Chirugai.

It tore through the side of her bag from where it was hidden, rode the currents effortlessly down the aisles and around the seats, went straight into Lara's free, flailing hand. If she'd had more practice, maybe she'd have been able to have it attack Sian from behind but she was too distracted, struggling too much, couldn't see.

Sian's mouth twisted into a parody of a smile at the arrival of the weapon. She freed Lara's head, and instead took hold of her wrist, banging her hand over and over again into the fuselage wall, trying to loosen the grip.

Lara let out a strangled scream, refused to let go.

The impact came again and again, bleeding her knuckles, bruising her fingers, intensifying the pain more and more.

A strong hand curled around Sian's hair and jerked her head back painfully, drawing a surprised and pained cry. It was pulled back further, and she let go of Lara to claw at the grip on her head. Her upper body freed, Lara pushed herself up and back inside the plane, gulping in a lungful of air gratefully. She tried to twist around enough to see what was happening, but couldn't, she could only hear the struggle.

One of her saviour's hands moved to Sian's throat and squeezed, and she tugged at it uselessly, unable to free herself, mouth gaping as she tried to breathe, her eyes wide. She scratched blindly towards his face and drew a snarl as she caught his temple, making him bleed.

"Bitch," he snarled. Lara started. Wasn't that Kurtis' voice? Had he not been caught with the other passengers?

There was a sickening crack as Sian's neck was snapped.

Immediately, Lara was back standing in the aisle, time moving normally, the door intact, the oxygen masks gone, Kurtis and Sian nowhere to be seen.

"Are you ok?" a woman's voice asked, clearly thinking Lara wasn't right in the head.

Lara pulled herself together, looking quickly to the lady standing next to her and looking back at her questioningly.

"I'm sorry," she managed. "I'm tired, I must have been away with the fairies for a moment."

"Then I could please get past?" the woman asked, unconcerned.

"Of course." Lara smiled sheepishly and stepped aside, letting the woman go before hurrying back to her seat. The man she'd fallen against was looking puzzled, nursing a rising bruise on his side. Kurtis was still sleeping, his head tipped to one side, but Lara was too concerned to think about that for the moment. She settled quickly down and snatched up her bag, rifling through it and letting out a sigh of relief when she saw the Chirugai packed safely under her other belongings. She closed her eyes for a long moment, calming herself, and then pushed her bag back under the seat and laid back into her chair, letting out another long breath.

Beside her, Kurtis stirred. His eyes fluttered open and he took in the sight of Lara, every inch the harassed traveller.

"I expected you to take long journeys in your stride, Croft."

Lara gave him a sideways look and then closed her eyes again. "Usually I do."

"Not used to being packed in with the cattle, huh?"

"I've been packed in with the cattle quite literally before now, thank you very much. I don't need first class and fully reclining seats, I'm not spoilt." She just very much preferred them when she was on a nine hour commercial flight, but she didn't say that.

Kurtis smirked affectionately, but then his smile faded.

"Are you ok? I get the feeling there's something you're not telling me."

Lara rolled her head to look at him. "I'm fine," she said after a moment, turning back to the front.

"No you're not."

Lara's composure faltered. She leaned into him to keep their conversation private. "I just got attacked again."

"Really?" Kurtis' eyes were flickering around, looking for evidence. "Are you ok?"

"You don't remember?"

"Er...no?"

She let out short, stressed breath. "You saved me. I thought."

"Did I?"

"It was strange. It was as if everyone else had been slowed down. And then this, this woman, she attacked me, she shot at me, the bullet blew the door out, she was ready to throw me out of the plane when she got what she wanted."

"The Chirugai."

"Yes. But then someone – I thought it was you, but I couldn't see, just hear - killed her, and immediately everything went back to the way it was. The door intact, everyone normal, you asleep... Except I definitely hurt." She placed a hand on her sore stomach.

Kurtis thought for a moment. "Temporal demon?"

"What?"

"Sounds a little like a temporal demon. They can mess around with time, slow things, separate things... sometimes deja vu isn't always deja vu, y'know?"

"Well, whatever it was," Lara said sourly and leaning back to rest, "I didn't like it."

"The Chirugai?" Kurtis asked, leaning back over towards her.

"It's safe."

"Good. What about you?"

"I'll be fine," Lara insisted, swatting him away. "I just wish I knew... could it have been you? And then you somehow forgot when everything got rewound?"

Kurtis shrugged. "Hey. I don't know everything. Maybe. The important thing is that you and the Chirugai are ok."

Lara swallowed. "The sooner we get to the lake, the better."

Kurtis nodded, and then sat back in his own seat and let his head fall back. Unseen by Lara, a little of his long hair dropped away from his face, revealing a bloodied scratch.

Finland was cold. It wasn't the first time Lara had visited the country in the wintertime, but it was still surprisingly cold. It was turning out to be a harsh winter, they said, and she and Kurtis were forced to stop in Helsinki to buy arctic coats. They took the train North, and hired a car to drive themselves the rest of the way to Lake Lappajarvi, where they rented a waterfront cabin and bought provisions from the nearby lakeside town.

It was quiet by night. Few people were visiting their holiday homes and fewer were venturing out. Lara sat, wrapped up in her coat and boots with a flask of hot tea, on the cabin veranda, the lake in front of her and the road behind her. Kurtis had seemed to have developed a new found enthusiasm for earthly pleasures since being brought back from the dead – or perhaps, she reflected, he had always been hedonistic – and was sleeping lazily in their large fluffy bed, stuffed with a gigantic supper of meat stew and vodka, satiated by sex.

The lake was iced and silent, a great dark expanse in front of her draped with the twinkling lights of its settlements. The slightest breeze played with her hair and somewhere to her right, a specimen of invisible wildlife snuffled about in the grasses at the base of the tourist information board that told how the lake was a flooded meteorite crater, seventy-five million years old, ancient and wise.

She took a mouthful of tea. It was nice, she mused, to have someone waiting for her inside. It had been a long time since she'd had that. For too long she'd been by herself, a lone soldier, no-one watching her back, no-one to catch her when she fell. It was often the only reason she'd been able to carry on fighting, knowing she had no choice, but paradoxically it was also what sapped her. She wondered which effect was the stronger.

A motor came into earshot, the only human sound around. She looked, and saw an army jeep purring slowly up the gentle rise. It was too dark to see who was in it, but Jack Tipper pulled his cap down further anyway as he drove, and continued onwards.

Lara watched it go, deciding a base must be nearby, and then got up and went inside to bed.