She didn't want to go home.
London held a certain appeal, she had to admit. It was, after all, where she had made a home, where she had married her husband and where she had given birth to her son. It was where she kept her memories, those little trinkets of past adventures - and misadventures - shared with her family. But as she looked out onto the vast expanse of endless golden sand, she knew that London would never hold her heart. She was born in the desert, and she had died in the desert once already in this current incarnation. She wondered if she would die a final time here, too.
"Whatcha thinkin'?" Rick asked as he came up behind her. She smiled to herself as he wrapped his strong arms around her slender waist.
"How lonely Heaven was without you."
"It got pretty bleak down here, too," he mumbled darkly.
"Do you think Imhotep was sorry for what he'd done?"
The silence could have been attributed to his thinking about it, but she knew better. He didn't want to say. He didn't want to think about it. "I think he was," she continued. "I don't think he'd realized how wrong he was about Anck-Su-Namun until she ran away from him, and I think he felt sorry after that."
"Sorry for himself, maybe," Rick growled. "He deserved what he got."
"No one deserves that kind of betrayal, Rick. Not even him. It would have been analogous to my casting you into the pit. How would you have felt if I had done that?"
"I know you wouldn't."
"He was pretty sure she wouldn't, either. It killed him to see that we have what he didn't."
Rick laughed. "He killed himself, Sweetheart. We didn't do anything."
"Maybe," she sighed. The sun was setting over the sand dunes and distant pyramids, and the land glowed red, the shadows shifting as if the sand had a soul.
"It sure is pretty out here. You know, when you're not being chased by ugly mummies, ancient curses or big scary bugs."
"Or vicious pygmies."
"Those, too."
Evie snuggled into her husband's arms, but her thoughts ran elsewhere for just another moment. Her thoughts wandered back to the pit at Ahm Shere, to the cursed man who had sacrificed everything for the woman he loved and gained nothing in return. Her mind projected the image of the handsome, tragic man's resigned smirk, and the last frames of his life as he cast himself into Hell.
He didn't kill himself. He was already dead.
Document created with wvWare/wvWare version 0.6.7 -->