Disclaimer: Of the characters I can claim only very few of them as my own - namely Rebecca. I do not make any claim on the characters featuring in "The Mummy".

Chapter 11 - Resolution

Rebecca dragged herself upright, biting her lip at the pain that flared down her arm and through her leg. Jonathon was stood in the middle of the chamber, a cruel, abstracted smile on his face. Now he had the power, and the insanity of a god. She could see it flowing through him. She wished that she at least had the power's she'd possessed before she'd killed Ardeth, but even they were denied to here, coming as they had from the pendant even before it had been fully awakened.

She stared at Ardeth. His death had been everything that she had once wished for - agonisingly cruel and painful. She shivered in the cooling air. Revenge was not what she had expected it to be.

"Admiring your handiwork?" Jonathon smiled sardonically at the young woman, who huddled against the wall.

"No. I was just thinking." She looked up at Jonathon. "About what I said - about my life being fractured. It struck me that I'm not the only one. His was too. I … saw it in your mind, before. He was an honourable man, despite everything that he did. It hurt him cruelly."

Jonathon laughed. "He was just good at his job."

"No. I've watched him for years, planning my revenge. I saw the pain he went through, the regret when he had to kill those who were innocent, his guilt at the deaths of his men. Then, I didn't care. But now … I don't think his life was much happier then mine. It wasn't a complete life."

Jonathon just shrugged

"And what about you?" she asked softly. "Where is your loving wife? Your children? Your life is at least as incomplete as mine. What do you do when your sister and her family are together? Much as you might wish it, your life is not what it could be?"

"It will be now" Jonathon said, eyes gleaming, brandishing the pendant that hung in his fist.

"Much as I hate to admit it, power isn't the answer. It can make your life better, but what about everyone else's? All the other people whose lives are as fractured as ours? To make them better we have to work at it, not just find some quick answer. I thought I could, but I was wrong. I can see that now, for the first time." She coughed, choking on the dusty air, and then smiled raggedly. "Besides, what would do with all this power?"

Jonathon looked around. The chamber was dark and cold now, the storm clouds in the sky blocking out the sun so completely that it might never have existed. He looked down at the bodies of his friends and family, and that tired young girl who lay against the wall, at once beautiful chamber which had been partly destroyed in the pursuit of power.

"I could never have given it up. I had too many grudges to bear. But you're different Jonathon. I said so, and I did mean it." She pulled in another ragged breath, feeling broken ribs in her chest breaking together. "Can you imagine what it would be like? To have all the power of a god, with all the understanding of human nature, and all that a human nature is capable of? It would be worse than any god which was never human, which never truly understood humanity."

Jonathon stood there in the dark and the cold, while a chill wind blew across his face, and dark whispers echoed through his mind. And the voice of Evelyn, back in Cairo, standing with her son and wondering at the change in the weather. He could see her so clearly. He could have that - a son and wife of his choosing. This power made it lie in his grasp…

He held the pendant at arms length, and stared at it. The stone was cloudy now, dark and sullen, as if feeling his indecision. "All this, for nothing." He glanced once more at the bodies of the dead.

"It doesn't have to be. You could bring them back."

Jonathon stared at her in amazement, and then shook his head. "You need the Book of the Dead to do that."

"You're a god, Jonathon. You can do anything." Rebecca coughed raggedly, blood trickling down her chin. Jonathon stared at her for a moment longer, then started towards her in concern. "I'll do you first" he said, reaching for the power within his mind. Strangely, now that his act was for others, rather than for himself, the voices from the stone were fading away.

"I'll keep" Rebecca said softly. "You do the others first." He looked at her curiously, then a kind of understanding entered his eyes. As he turned away, and knelt beside Ardeth, Rebecca lifted from the ground the knife she had tossed away, the knife she had used to begin this. As she lifted the knife she tilted her head towards the sky, and smiled. She seemed to see a break in the clouds, could feel the warmth of the sun on her skin, they way she'd felt it the first morning she'd seen Hamunaptra rise with the morning sun.

As Ardeth pulled in a deep, shaky breath, Jonathon patted him on the shoulder. He stood up and moved quickly towards Rick, heart lightning as he did so. He knelt down and brought Rick back to life. He wasn't sure how he did so, was too overjoyed to see it worked to care. In turn Rick drew in his first breath, like Ardeth no longer marked with wounds of any kind.

Jonathon stood up, satisfied, considering the pendant that swung in his hand. "Perhaps there is something in this whole god business after all" he commented, turning towards the woman. And stopped. She lay against the wall, sightless blue eyes staring into the distance, her hand at her side, the knife fallen from her fingers. The smile on her lips was sad, but sweet.

He slowly walked towards her, and knelt down beside her. He reached out his hand, touching her shoulder, preparing to bring her back to life … and then stopped. If it was death she had truly wanted, tehn who was he to deny her that. He sighed, then gently closed her eyes. Resting his hand on her shoulder again, he reached out with the power. He body slowly faded away.

Jonathon sighed again, then carefully eased himself up. "I never even knew her name" he whispered softly. He took a deep breath, then raised the pendant high in the air. Images flickered through his mind - everything he could have if he wanted, everything he'd lose if he did this, what he could have become. He threw the pendant down. It hit the broken rock that had once made the roof, and shattered. The shards scattered across the floor, and were lost.

He took a deep breath, and smiled as he felt the touch of sunlight on his cheek, glanced up to see that the storm clouds had left as if they never were. "I know exactly what I could have become" he told the empty sky. "And it's lucky for me now that I won't."

He turned and waited in the chamber, waiting for those he had saved to wake up, and wondering what he would tell them when they did.

As the three men left the chamber, two not quite able to remember what had occurred before, and laughingly unwilling to accept that the third could accept all credit, the third to quiet for them to easily understand, the sunshine shone though the broken roof, glinting on what had been left behind - the hilt of a fractured sword, memorial to a girl with a fractured life.