I'm back! I told you guys I was never giving up on the fandom and I never will! Here's to more submissions in the future!

Special thanks to my friends at Croft Manor for their creative input and another thanks to Max (Reasons Lost) for beta-reading this for me.

All feedback appreciated!


Hangovers, with their ability to bring someone crashing back down to Earth in a fiery blaze after flying high the entire night, were the bane of every college student's existence. Practically sweating alcohol as she groaned out her regrets from the night before, Sam once again swore she'd never drink again. Slowly, she opened her eyes to find she had passed out in the bathtub.

Waking up in a strange location the morning after was starting to become a familiar occurrence. Every night since she had arrived at UCL, things happened over the same sequence of events: she'd go to classes-with the exception of the one or two she had missed-before heading straight to the apartment of a friend she had made the first day named Molly. From there Sam would down shots in quick succession with Molly and some other girls and lose track of what happened the rest of the night. She would almost always wake up someplace strange with no recollection of how she got there.

She groaned and held her face in her hands when her head began throbbing. Mom was right, fuck tequila… she thought to herself. She'd gone partying before during her high school years, without the knowledge of either of her parents, of course. But for all the parties she went to, she had never gotten hangovers as nasty as had perpetually plagued her since she'd gotten to college. When she wondered what had changed, her phone decided to remind her as its text tone went off. Wincing at the way the sharp noise reverberated through her head, Sam pulled her phone out of her pocket and, squinting against the light her home screen emitted, checked to see who had messaged her. Her stomach sank when she saw Jess's name on her screen. "Shit…" she muttered under her breath, unlocking her phone to read her texts.

Is everything alright? I just saw your texts from last night. Had she texted Jess while drunk? With a newfound sense of panic rising in her chest, she scrolled up the screen to see that she had indeed done so. Phrases such as "I can't do this," and "it hurts too much," flooded the chat history and the more Sam read, the more horrified she became. Locking her phone, she slung an arm over her eyes and hissed out an assortment of choice profanity.

So much for not being the annoying ex… she thought to herself. She missed Jess, and she'd be lying if she tried to tell herself otherwise, but they had promised to give each other space for the time being. Only now she had gone and broken that promise with no clue how she could dismiss her drunken antics as nothing serious. Deciding she'd figure out how to respond to Jess later, she removed her arm, wincing at how comparably bright the bathroom was to the insides of her eyelids. She lit up her phone's home screen to check the time since she had forgotten to before, and her eyes widened when she saw that it was nine thirty in the morning. "Fuck!" She blurted out, doing no favors for her throbbing headache, and scrambled clumsily out of the bathtub. She had already missed the first lecture of her literature class that week, and if she didn't get moving she'd miss another one as well.

She stood up and scrutinized her appearance in the bathroom mirror to see if she was presentable enough to be seen in a public area. After straightening her shirt and brushing some stray hair from the shaved side of her head to the other, she gave an approving nod to the mirror and stumbled out into the living room to search for her belongings. She racked her brain to try to remember where she'd left her bag, which was nowhere to be found. Bumbling around the apartment, over bodies, and around empty bottles, she ducked under the kitchen table to check there, but was greeted by someone's well-hidden vomit heap, instead. Disgusted, she backed away, ringing her head like a bell on the underside of the table as she went. Blinking tears from her eyes, she spotted her bag on top of the table. She snagged her bag and a pair of sunglasses from the face of one of the passed out bodies, headed for the door, and made her way out of the building.

The moment she exited the complex, the sounds of the busy London streets hit her like a train and sent her into a fit of vertigo-induced nausea. She had definitely overdone it the night before. Swallowing thickly to keep anything from coming up, she made her way down the street to campus as quickly as she could manage without keeling over in sickness.

While she walked, her thoughts sluggishly drifted back to Jess and how she was going to explain her texts from the night before. No matter what angle she approached the situation from, she couldn't come up with a good excuse for her behavior. She considered just letting the matter drop and not responding before promptly discarding the idea. Doing so would only serve to further worry Jess.

Lost in her thoughts as she was, she looked to the left rather than the right when she reached the intersection where she needed to cross. She jumped back onto the sidewalk and nearly lost the contents of her stomach when a car swerved past, honking. Her hand flew up and she put her first two fingers on display for the driver; she had at least mastered British vulgarity, even if she had not adjusted to traffic flowing in the opposite direction she was used to. When her heart had stopped racing, she attempted to brave the intersection once more after ascertaining there were no cars. She crossed the street without further incident to reach the outskirts of campus and spotted the building where her class was held not too far away.

She approached the structure, checking the time on her phone as she did so to see, with a sinking feeling in the pit of her stomach, that she was ten minutes late. She frantically yanked one of the doors open to let herself into the lobby area before stopping dead in her tracks. She had just realized that she didn't know what room her class was in, much less where that room was. Doing her best to not give in to panic, she pulled her class schedule up on her phone to see that she was in room one hundred and thirteen and looked around to see if there were any signs on the walls to direct her to where that was. She soon found one hanging overhead, and went down the hallway to her left to her class's alleged location. Sure enough, there was a class in session when she peeked into the correct room. Bracing herself for the immense amount of embarrassment that was likely about to ensue, she turned the door handle downward to let herself in.

The professor, a middle aged man with black hair specked with silver, mercifully paid her no mind when she entered. Perhaps he didn't see the use in taking time out of class to grill students for being late, or maybe he felt that students who made a habit of missing class or arriving late weren't worth the effort of giving attention to. Most likely, however, the reason he didn't acknowledge her was because he was in the middle of lecturing. Not wanting to push her luck, she hurried to the back of the room where she could remain inconspicuous and suffer in hungover silence. Not that long after she took a seat, she noticed a few people giving her strange looks and soon realized she still had sunglasses on, and quickly took them off. Despite how much her head pounded with nothing to protect her eyes from the intense lights hanging overhead, she pulled her notebook out and tried to key into what the professor was saying.

"Now then," he said, clearing his throat, "now that we've finished going over skills and techniques for effective essay writing, it's time that we got into actual literature…" his gaze slowly drifted back and forth across the room from beneath his glasses. "But before we do, I feel compelled to ask this since there's always a few international students…" Sam clicked her pen to keep herself distracted from the drum pounding in her head, "anyways, who here has no experience with reading Shakespeare's work?"

Sam looked up from her pen-clicking to see that five students had their hands up before returning her gaze back down to her desk. "Not to worry," the professor said, "I will be available to provide assistance to those who need it. The main thing you need to keep in mind is that learning Early Modern English and how it is structured is the key to understanding Shakespeare's work." He clapped his hands together, causing Sam to jump and wince, and rubbed them against each other before continuing, "Alright! That being said, our first reading will be Macbeth, which you can all get a copy of at the end of the lecture when I set the box out."

Sam had to resist the urge to groan in despair. She had read Shakespeare's plays in high school, sure, but she had read the No Fear Shakespeare versions, and something told her that she wouldn't be able to get away with that in college. The professor approached the whiteboard and picked up a marker. "Speaking of understanding Shakespeare's work...something else that I've found to be helpful with regards to reading comprehension in my experience is examining the context of the text. Who was the author of the text? What was happening when it was written? When were these things happening? Where were they happening? Why are things happening? Who, what, when, where, and why. Sound familiar? These are the questions you need to be asking yourself whenever you go to read a text. So, I'm going to take the time to examine the context of Macbeth with you, and then you're on your own for the rest of the course. My goal here is not to give you answers, but rather give you the tools you need to get those answers…"

All around Sam, students nodded in understanding but all she could understand was how nauseous she felt. If she could just get through the lecture, she swore she would never touch tequila again. The professor pulled the cap off of the marker he was holding and wrote William Shakespeare in large letters on the board, "So...who was William Shakespeare. Anyone? Go ahead, Miss." When Sam looked at the person he pointed to, she did a double-take and felt her jaw drop. Was that…

Jess?

She blinked and quickly realized the girl in question was not, in fact, Jess. Their hair color and height were pretty much the same, certainly, but outside of that there were distinct differences between the two. For one thing, the girl she was looking at was more toned and muscular than Jess, but not in a way that was unattractive. Her eyes were also more sharp and intense, and her body more shapely…

Sam felt herself rapidly going red, and averted her gaze to the professor as he regarded the girl expectantly. When she began to answer in a posh English accent, Sam felt her cheeks grow only redder.

"He was an English poet, playwright, and actor born to a middle-class glove-maker in Stratford-upon-Avon in 1564. He married Anne Hathaway and had three kids with her before leaving them all behind sometime in the late sixteenth century to travel to London to begin his career in theater. He died in his hometown at the age of fifty-two and is credited by historians as the author of...I believe it was thirty-seven plays?"

Great… Sam thought to herself, cute accent, hot… But a fucking know-it-all. She crossed her arms over her chest and frowned while the professor regarded her with an intrigued expression for a moment or two.

"What's your name, Miss?" The girl shifted in her seat slightly before responding.

"It's...Lara Croft, sir." The professor raised a brow at her and studied her with a new expression on his face that Sam couldn't decipher.

"And what are you studying, Ms. Croft?"

"Archaeology, sir."

"I see, that would explain it. Why haven't I heard from you in class until now?" Lara Croft only answered with a shrug, "Regardless, very well answered. Yes, so that would answer the who, where, and part of the when…" he began writing shorthanded notes on the board while he continued, "So, Macbeth, Shakespeare's bloodiest tragedy, was most likely written in 1606 which gives us the rest of the when. Now this time period would have been early in the reign of King James I…"


Sam couldn't have been happier to leave class. By that point, the only thing she could focus on was how badly she wanted ibuprofen and something greasy to settle her stomach. She pulled her phone up to see if burger joints existed in London when it rang. She took one glance at the caller ID and immediately groaned in despair when she saw the name Jessica Burgess. She tapped the still-vibrating phone on her forehead and deliberated over what she should do. She briefly considered not answering before discarding the idea on the grounds that doing so would only serve to further worsen the situation. Instead, she took a deep breath and tapped the green answer button.

"Hello?" She asked as calmly as she could.

"Sam? Oh thank god…" Sam's stomach sank; Jess's tone was one of pure, undiluted worry, "Are you okay? What's going on? You didn't answer my texts this morning…" Sam held the bridge of her nose between her thumb and index finger.

"Yeah, no, sorry I'm actually really embarrassed about that and I feel awful for bothering you…"

"Bothering me? Sam, just because we're broken up doesn't mean I suddenly don't care. The only thing bothering me is my concern for your well-being." Sam sighed and began walking while she continued to talk on the phone.

"I was just really drunk last night when I sent those texts and in hindsight it was really stupid of me to drink that much."

"Drunk words are sober thoughts, you know…" The statement caught Sam so off guard she stopped dead in her tracks. "Do you maybe feel like us being in contact is making things harder for you right now?" Sam took a moment to think.

"I...honestly don't know," she said, resuming her stroll, "I feel like my head's spinning and I can't tell if it's from the hangover or not. London's such a huge city and I feel like the students here are so much smarter than me…" There was a pause. "Jess?"

"I'm still here," she responded, "just thinking is all. Do you remember why you wanted to go to UCL in the first place?"

"New country, new start...away from my family." Sam found one of the campus benches and sat down.

"Exactly."

"So…?"

"I think you just feel a bit lost right now because you're finally on your own and you're trying to figure out who you are rather than who your dad wants you to be."

"I can tell that you're about to do that thing where you make some mind-blowing point that completely changes my perception of the world…" Sam remarked.

"Well, yeah, kind of. Think about it. More than anything you want a fresh start away from all the bullshit. You want to have the freedom to assert who you are to the world and own it with a combination of grace, sass, and elegance. The problem is that no matter how badly you may want it, nobody can have a fresh start if they're hung up on the past… I'm just concerned that you're having trouble letting go right now-I mean, I know I am and I'll openly admit it. And that's not a good thing for either of us because it's preventing us from moving forward and bettering ourselves." Sam could feel her heart pounding in her throat; Jess had a valid point. She swallowed thickly past the obstruction.

"So...what do you think…?" Her voice trailed off without her finishing the question. She already knew the answer.

"I think that it would be in both of our best interests to distance ourselves for the time being-not forever! Just...until we've both moved on is all. And I know that we said we doing that before but this time I'm being serious."

"If you think that's best," was all Sam managed to say through the tightness in her throat.

"I do." There was another pause. "Listen, I have my 8am in an hour or so and I actually went on a run before calling so I have to hop in the shower now…"

"Okay…" Sam heard herself say. Jess took a deep breath.

"I just want you to know that I am sorry though. For everything. Just please know that." There was a click on the other end of the line followed by complete silence.

"Yeah...me too…" Sam said to no one while still holding the phone to her ear, "I'm sorry, too."


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