"So what exactly are we doin' here?" Rick asked his sister as she and he both scrounged together some dinner, "With the kid?"
Lillian's eyebrows furrow as she seems to only just now consider why there is a street urchin living in their house for the past month, eating their food (and stealing some for them), and hanging about them.
"I…don't know," she slowly said, "I guess we're…watching out for him?"
Rick sighed and stopped slicing bread to give his sister a look, "Watching out don't involve a whole lot of…parenting."
Lillian shrugged, "I wouldn't know. You've always watched out for me so that's all I've got to compare to."
"You've taken a shine to him, haven't you?" her brother asked, arms crossing across his chest.
"And you haven't?" Lillian immediately called him on his bull.
"Ok, you might have a point there. I mean the kid is winsome enough, but can we take care of someone besides us?" he gestures at the two of them with one finger.
"Of course we can," the girl stated briskly, "We can do anything."
The group with the exception of Rick is gathered round the fire, trying to ward off the night's chill. Haytham is practically dozing on Lillian's lap, while the Carnahan siblings sit across from them.
"Seems," Rick joined them, crouching down beside Evelyn, putting his rifle to the side, "Our American friends had a little misfortune today. Three of their diggers were- uh…melted."
"What?" Evelyn asked at the same time her brother queried, "How?"
"Salt acid," Rick answered, grimacing, "Pressurized salt acid. Some kind of…ancient booby trap."
Lillian hissed in a breath before sighing.
"Maybe this place really is cursed," Jonathan murmured. As if in response, the wind swept through the city, causing the fire to flicker.
Evelyn looked around the campfire at everyone's wary faces, "Oh for goodness sakes," she said, annoyed, "You three!"
"You don't believe in curses, huh?" Rick asked, prodding the fire.
"No I don't," Evelyn immediately answered back, "I believe if I can see it and I can touch it, then it's real. That's what I believe."
Rick and Lillian exchanged a glance, Rick reaching for his rifle while Lillian flexed her legs, feeling her various knives pressed up against her, and gripped her pistol.
"I believe in being prepared," Rick cocked the rifle for emphasis.
"And what about you, Miss O'Connell?" Jonathan asked, "What do you believe in?"
She gave a shrug, "I guess, in the whole world? Probably Rick. Him and a well-balanced knife."
They heard the distant sound of horses neighing, and Rick and Lillian exchanged another look. Waking Haytham gently, Lillian stood with her brother.
"Take this," Rick handed his rifle to Evelyn, "Stay here," he ordered.
"Haytham, watch here," Lillian instructed, following Rick into the American's camp.
"No!" Evelyn cried, getting up and carrying the rifle, "Wait, wait! Wait for me! Wait!" she followed after the O'Connells.
"Evie," her brother called after her, getting up as well, "Excuse me but didn't the man just say "Stay here?" Evie!"
Seeing the others following, Haytham jumped up and ran after the group as well.
"Hey! Guys! You should listen to Mr. Rick!"
When Lillian and Rick reached the American camp they found chaos- the men were running out of the tents as black riders- the same ones, Lillian was sure, as had been watching them from above ridges whenever she and Rick had been near Hamunaptra- stormed into their camp, with a battle cry and torches held high in the air.
As Lillian followed behind her brother, Beni knocked into her, causing her to fall against a wall.
"You," she growled, in no mood to deal with the coward, "What're you doing here?"
"Ah-" Beni stammered, "Wait a moment-." He looked closer into her face. "O'Donnell?"
Lillian just raised an eyebrow, "Took you this long?" She rolled her eyes and grabbed Beni by his shirt, "C'mon," she lead him back to the American's camp.
"Why do you like to fight so much?" Beni asked her.
"Cuz I always have to chase after my dumb ass brother, that's why."
Rifles were being shot, and torches thrown into tents. Lillian immediately joined her brother who was shooting the fray from a higher vantage point on a piece of ruin.
They kept shooting, making sure to hit their marks- a challenge in the darkened chaos, with sand being kicked up by men and horses alike.
"O'Connell!" they heard Jonathan shouting, and they turned to see the man himself, pistol in hand, running from a horseman, sabre raised to strike, "O'Connell!"
"Why are we the heroes?" Lillian asked her brother as Jonathan and his pursuer ran towards them. As the horseman was about to pass by, Rick took a leap and talked the man off his horse, onto the ground. "Oh," his sister said, taking careful aim at the next rider approaching, "That's why."
She noticed the swordsman knock the gun out of her brother's hand with his blade, and she rolled her eyes before leaping in herself, standing between the man and her brother, gun cocked and aimed.
"I'd stop right there if I were you," she threatened. The swordsman, perhaps astonished to find a woman (a woman in pants, no less) in the thick of things, paused.
"Lily!" she heard a voice cry out, and was distracted enough to automatically turn her head to look for Haytham, eyes widened with worry. The boy ran to her, the warriors evidently not sure what to do with a child in their midst. When Haytham reached her, she wrapped one arm around him, keeping him pressed against her side while her pistol remained on the man across from her.
The distraction was long enough for Rick to go with his favorite contingency plan.
Lighting a stick of dynamite.
Rick and Lillian stood back to back in a circle of men in black robes, Lillian holding out her gun, Rick holding out the dynamite and its lit fuse, Haytham pressed against Lillian's side. They circled, backs pressed together, each sibling taking in each man that surrounded them.
"Enough!" the swordsman who had pursued Rick called out. He was evidently the leader, "Yallah!" The entire camp fell silent except for the swordsman's voice and the crackling of Rick's burning fuse. "We will shed no more blood. But you must leave. Leave this place or die. For the sake of the child, if not yourselves." With a nod, the man walked away, his riders also leaving the city. "You have one day!" he called back, before leaping onto a white stallion. "Yallah!" he called to his men, "Nimshi!"
Rick and Lillian watched solemnly as the riders disappeared into the desert night. Rick plucked the fuse out of the dynamite, tossing it to the side.
"You know I hate when you do that," his sister muttered to him. Holstering her pistol and wrapping both arms around Haytham, pressing him to her.
"It worked, didn't it?" he asked her, faking offense. He started to turn and then saw Evelyn lying on the ground, Rick's elephant gun still in her hands.
"Evelyn?" he asked, voice hushed as he took the rifle away from her before bending over her and helping her to sit up. Lillian watched cautiously as Rick cradled the woman's head in the palm of his hand, "Hey," he continued to speak in that soft tone, helping her up, "Are you alright?"
"Yes, I'm fine," she answered, her voice pitched just as soft as his, "Thank you," she sighed as Rick tilted her face with a hand, examining it for injury.
"See, that proves it!" Daniels exclaimed, his voice filled with excitement. Lillian turned to face the Americans, standing together with the Egyptologist, and smirked at Burns, who had evidently been half-way through shaving when the attack occurred. "Old Seti's fortune's gotta be under this sand!"
"For them to protect it like this, you just know there's treasure down there," Henderson added.
"No," Rick said, "These men are a desert people."
"They value water, not gold," Lillian finished her brother's thought, "Gold gets them nothing out here."
"You know, ah," Burns straightened himself as he walked beside Rick and Evelyn. "Maybe just at night, we could- ah- combine forces."
Rick said nothing, but Lillian gestured to the right side of her face, "You missed a spot," she told the American, going off to get the rest of her things, leading Haytham along with her.
They boy may have spent a lot of time in the streets, but he had never seen a battle like that, and he wasn't interested in letting go of her anytime soon. Lillian was stuck on the warrior leader's phrase, "For the sake of the child, if not yourselves."
It was evident that none of their attackers were interested in harming a child, so what fate, exactly, did the man fear would befall Haytham?
Lillian looked down at the boy clinging to her side, and worried.
"Well that was bracing," Jonathan interjected as the group rejoined around their own fire. "And did I panic?" he asked, raising up a bottle, "Seagrams! Some rather nice gin, those Americans had."
"Can I-?" Haytham began.
"No," Lillian and Rick immediately cut the boy off.
They put the child to bed and the adults all took some healthy swigs from the bottle- each unnerved by the words of the black-robed warrior in their own way.
They got ossified very quickly.
Jonathan collapsed on his blanket, snoring slightly, while Rick tried to teach Evelyn some self-defense. Not that anyone was terribly coordinated at that point. Lillian curled up in her own bed, trying to fall asleep and give them some privacy- for as little tact as her brother had, she had managed to pick up a few social cues in her life.
"Hey, tough stuff, try a right hook," Rick instructed, "Ball up your fist and put it," he adjusted her arm, "Put it up like that. And then mean it," he smacked his right hand, giving her a target, "Hit it right here."
Evelyn nodded, going in for a wide swing while grunting, "I mean it!" she over swung though, and ending up twirling around, losing her balance, leaving Rick to catch her before she fell to the ground. She dissolved into hysterical giggles.
"Oh, okay. You know, when I taught Lil this stuff, I think it really helped that we weren't tanked. Time for another drink," he helped Evelyn sit down as she grabbed the bottle from her sleeping brother's clutches, still giggling.
"Unlike my brother, sir," she slurred, "I know when to say "no."" Despite her statement, she took another swig.
"Uh-huh," Rick nodded with a grin, "And unlike your brother, miss, you- I just don't get."
Grimacing at the strong taste of the gin Evelyn nodded, "Ah, I know." She replaced the bottle in her brother's arm, continuing, "You're wondering: what is a place like me doing in a girl like this?"
Rick grinned, "Yeah, something like that." He was suddenly pretty glad he held off on drinking too much- he didn't want any booze clouding memories of drunk Evelyn. These would be funny for years.
"Well, Egypt," she explained, leaning closer, "Is in my blood," she held on of her hands before him, as if the skin and flesh would give way to the blood itself, and the blood would reveal the connection she spoke of. "You see, my-my father," she picked up a locket she wore round her neck, "Was a very, very famous explorer," she opened the locket, revealing two pictures, "And he loved Egypt so much, he married my mother- who was an Egyptian. And quite an adventurer herself.
Rick nodded, "I get your father, and I get your mother. I get him," he pointed to the sleeping Jonathan, "I get Lil and Haytham. But- what are you doing here?" he looked sharply at the woman, trying to pry her secrets from her. To understand. Rick O'Connell never claimed to be a people person- he generally insulted rather than flattered and was well aware he could be abrasive, but growing up as he did lent him a desperate need to understand people and their motivations- if he didn't understand someone's motivations, it could end with a knife to his throat or Lil's. So while he rarely used his charm except on women he planned to later leave, he always understood people.
Except this girl.
Who was now looking rather incised by his question.
"Oooh," she growled, "Look, I- I may not be an explorer," she pushed herself up into a standing position, "Or-or an adventurer," Rick had to reach out a hand to steady her from swaying, "Or-or a treasure-seeker or a gunfighter! Mister O'Connell. But I am proud of what I am."
"And" Rick asked cautiously, not sure which way her mood would swing, "What is that?"
"I," she declared, still swaying slightly, "Am a librarian. " She turned to him with an adorable grin, falling to her knees before him while he tried to puzzle out exactly what that last statement was meant to illuminate.
Her grin suddenly was wiped away as she grew serious and whispered, "I am going to kiss you, Mr. O'Connell."
"Call me Rick," he told her, nodding and trying not to smile at her antics. Or in anticipation.
She sighed and her smile appeared once more, wide and without pretense, "Rick," she grinned, straightening her face again and leaning into him. His eyes closed and he leaned forward as well, expecting to feel her lips on his at any second.
Except she'd evidently had one swig too many and face-planted, unconscious, in his lap.
Shaking his head in disbelief, he picked her up and put her to bed.
"Well, thank god, I was wondering how long I'd have to keep pretending to sleep," Lillian's voice came from under her blankets, and she rolled over to face her brother.
"You're awake!" he shouted, "Why didn't you say something?"
"Because I was hoping to fall asleep and quite frankly, at what point should I have interrupted?"
Rick sputtered for a few moments before choosing to ignore the question.
"Rick?" Lillian called, sitting up and scotching herself beside her brother.
"What's the matter, Lil?" he asked, ever the concerned big brother.
"That man- the one who lead the attack. It's been bothering me all night."
"What do you mean?" Rick prompted, prodding the fire.
"I mean, he said "leave this place or die," which kind of implied they'd kill us if we didn't leave, but then he said "for the sake of the child, if not yourselves," which kinda implied that it was something…else. That would do the killing."
"I don't know, Lil, that's a bit beyond my way of thinking."
"They wore black robes," she muttered.
"Like the ones we saw before," her brother nodded.
"And…before," she said with some significance. They were silent for several heartbeats, "Rick," she began again, "That…evil. Whatever is out here- in all the sand and blood- it's something…. Rick, what do you think it is?"
Her brother said nothing, staring into the fire, before he turned and pressed a kiss to her forehead. "Go to sleep," he murmured to her, before standing and heading to his own bed for the night.
Somehow, that made Lillian feel even worse than if he had answered the question.
Ossified = 1920's slang for drunk.
The more you know.