Chapter 14

It did not take long for Max to locate Lara. He had heard the kitchen door open and close, and as he went outdoors, he saw that Lara was moving gracefully along her jungle gym (as Max had called her assault course).

As good as Lara was, Max was able to jog along the pavement next to the course and easily beat Lara to the end. As she stopped at the finish flags, Max was trying to determine if the water hazard from the course was the only liquid dripping from Lara's face.

Lara would not look at Max, she placed her hands on her hips and gazed back at the course, regaining her breath control.

"I'll go, just say the word..."

"I think it would..."

"...and give me a decent reason why."

"What?"

"I want to know what I did to you. I mean, I know what an butt-head I am - that's no surprise. But most people, if they are going to get pissed at me, do it pretty quick, not wait until we are having our second dinner together."

Max withdrew a cigarette and lit it.

"Lara, I'm your friend - whether or not you are mine is another matter and not important at the moment. To be honest, I really don't have that many friends. People are either scared of me, or hate me, or are just groupies who don't give a rat's ass about me - they just wanna be buddies with 'The Man.'

"But, you are none of those, so I guess that makes you a friend by default, I don't know. All I do know is that I want to help my friend, 'cause it looks like she's hurtin' here. Am I wrong, or is this normal for you?"

"Never," she replied quietly, her back still towards him.

"Okay then, what is it?"

"I don't know."

"You can do better than that..."

"You."

"Me?"

"You're making me like this."

"I'm not following. Tell me what I'm doing, and I'll stop."

At this moment, Lara turned around, her face was a twisted mask of angst - though there were no tears.

"When you are around, this is how I am. When I think about you and our little adventure, this is how I get. I don't know what to make of these feeling and I sure as hell don't know how to stop them - except for you not to be around. I'm sorry." If it were still part of her psyche to cry, Lara would have.

For a moment, Max looked not into the eyes of the Tomb Raider, but those of a young, wide-eyed girl who had died on the side of a mountain. To this girl, the death of a family pet was the worst trauma she had ever known, the world of the Tomb Raider was just too much to deal with.

Max did not know all of the variables that were in play, but there was a kind of connection that the two shared, and Max was able to somewhat localize her source of pain.

"Hey, let's take a walk."

Lara did not respond, began to move along with Max.

"Not long after we first met, I said something about our lives being a little bit similar, and you didn't seem to think so then. I hope that you have changed your opinion a little bit since then."

The look on Lara's face said that she had.

"When I first got into this line of work, I worked alone - well, there were always subjects around, but I had to both stay out of their way and watch my own ass. Well, trying to do all of that stuff at once made sure that something was going to suffer, and it was audio. You couldn't hear a damn thing in my early stuff, so I hired a sound guy to come along with me.

"Michael was his name, and the guy was no idiot - a former SEAL - but everywhere we went, the footage was terrible, even though he was doing his job - know why?"

"You weren't working alone any more."

"Exactly, but even more than that. See, the people who I tape are going to be in that situation whether I am there to document it or not, but if it were not for me, Michael would not have been there. You're right, I was scared of him getting hurt, and that kept us from getting into the kind of situations that I was famous for. I was not able to function with that responsibility hanging over my head."

"So what did you do about it?"

"Well, I turned out complete crap for about six months, then talked to some guys at Sony who set me up with a smart sound mixer and I could just set and forget."

"And Michael?"

"He's a buyer a very successful military mail-order company."

"So you never truly solved the problem."

"Well, I haven't gotten that way with you..."

"But I am a subject, not a partner."

"Yeah, I guess you're right. Well, I'm just here to diagnose the problem, your results may vary."

"Of course."

"So, can I stay?"

"I've never really been one to back away from a challenge - you may stay."

The walked for a while longer, chatting about this and that - keeping the tone light. Lara was still having difficulty keeping her emotions in check, the image of Max hitting the ground after her 9 mm slugs had found their mark was replaying in her head. It soon dawned on her that then was the moment that this surge of feeling had started, it had just taken her a while to actually deal with it.

Max was comforting, but was out of answers to truly help Lara. As annoying as the emotions were, she also accepted the fact that they were a part of her. Lara Croft, as inconvenient as it was, was not a robot and at the moment she was hurt - as sure as if she had a broken bone that required healing.

She tried to look at this as any other challenge that she had to overcome - like maintaining her high level of physical fitness - the reward of which would be her ability to honestly work with a partner.

True, Lara had worked alone in the past (with a few short-term exceptions), her adventure with Max had shown her that the two of them were capable of things that neither of them could do alone - but that meant that she had to trust.

Lara had seen in films and on the tele where on character would say, "I've got your back," and the two would survive the battle. In reality, Lara had only known one thing that would effectively "get her back" and that was a nice, solid rock wall. Being able to let go and allow someone else to protect you was bad enough, but also having to look out for them was almost intolerable.

Much of Lara's survival over the years had more than a little bit to do with her agility and maneuverability. Max could move through the jungle well, but could he climb up a stone wall while razor-spikes were bearing down on him? Lara had managed that feat, and if she could not then it would be no fault but her own.

As their stroll was coming to an end, Lara chose to not worry about Max for a while, and even felt a little good about herself for realizing the problem, and beginning to deal with it.