29 ~ Tomb Raider
With everything that had happened lately - finding the journal, speaking with Bridget, losing Carol, discovering the truth of her parents leaving and about how wrong she had been about them - she had completely forgotten about the staff.
Thank you for the reminder, Ancient One.
She still wasn't completely certain about what had happened there at the London Sanctum. She kept looking at herself as though she suspected her astral and physical forms to separate again suddenly. But they didn't, thank goodness. That had just been weird.
This mission, if that's what you wanted to call it, regarding her powers had always been about her discovering where her powers came from, what her parents were doing (investigating witches tombs and magical objects). Now that she had figured that out - there was still a lot of digging around to do there, and unanswered questions, but at least she had a more firm idea - she could now focus on finding out what happened to them to make them disappear.
She could focus on that, as well as focusing on herself and her powers.
If she figured out what happened to them while they had been trying to help her, then she would in turn be helping herself, like they had wanted to, had been trying to do. Like Carol said she needed to.
Carol had left her old suit here, hadn't taken it with her. Nora wondered if she had forgotten it, but then settled on that Carol had probably been aware she was leaving it, and was doing so for a purpose.
After fiddling around with the gauntlets for a while, Nora managed to figure out how to change the suit's colours - she spent a long time just sliding her finger along the gauntlet's screen, watching the suit flash an intricate rainbow before her eyes. Instead of red, blue and gold, she eventually settled on red, fuchsia and silver. She even removed the gold star from the front of the suit and decided that with her 3D printer she could create a silver design of one of the glyphs on the staff.
All suited up, she took up her weapon.
You are magic. Carol had said it.
You are magic. The Ancient one had said it.
And, somewhere deep inside, she believed her parents believed it too. They had never stopped believing in her, even when they were gone and she had stopped believing in them.
But did she herself believe it?
"You are magic," she whispered.
Maybe not yet, or at least not fully, but eventually, she might just believe it too.
"You are magic..."
She pushed all the furniture in the living room out of the way, creating some empty space for herself. She proceeded to practice with the staff, swinging it around, feeling the connection between herself and it, as well as the warm glow from their powers at last making contact.
"Ha, piece of cake," she said softly with a faint chuckle, after a good few times of swinging the staff smoothly around in a sequence. It was light and well-balanced in her hands, like it had been made for her, like they were, well, meant for each other. They really did share a connection.
Despite the staff's lightness, she could tell that if you got hit with it, it would hurt a lot.
"Ouch!" She spoke too soon - or, well, thought too soon. The next twirl she missed catching, and the edge of the staff came down and bonked her on the head. Okay, maybe not such a piece of cake, after all. Not yet, anyways.
"Hope you didn't make a special trip just for me," she told Fury when he arrived.
"Naw, was in Belfast with an old contact. But you'd be worth the trip."
"Ha, thanks."
She told him about the staff.
"What are you going to do now?"
She shrugged. "Good question. Some mates from the museum have been trying to get me to join their internship program for a long time, so I might look into that. It's something, for now."
"You know, we're always accepting applications."
She chuckled. "Yeah, thanks for the offer, but no. I don't think there's a place for me in your swanky secret society."
"Security and intelligence division."
"Whatever."
"We could set you up in one of our London offices."
"I'll think about it."
"Okay, cool. Keep in touch, yeah?"
"Yeah. Thank you again, Director Fury. For everything, really."
He nodded. "You're welcome, Nora."
She heaved a sigh. "This isn't over yet. I found out what happened to me, but I still have to find out what happened to my parents. They were trying to help me, and I want to try and help them. What have I got to lose?"
This feels like a good place to end but there is one chapter left! :) I wanted to end things on more of a cliffhanger! ;)
Thank you so much for reading and, once again, I hope you enjoyed! :) See you all in the final chapter!