I didn't want to believe it. I didn't want to force my eyes into those; emotionless, pained; hard, fearing; pleading, possessed. And possessed he was, even with the Apple on the ground just in front of me. And even as victory, triumph, was so near, my trigger finger trembled, though my hand was steady around my Desert Eagle. I could easily have shot anyone else; anyone- a million Natlas, Sophias, Sets even. He backed further into the corner, stumbling, and ending up sitting on his awkwardly angled ankle. My finger steadied.
But I didn't pull the trigger, because I didn't want to win the only game I had ever lost at – love.
The Apple of Discord twinkled innocently. Was it disgust or longing that kept me looking at him as I slowly crushed it under my boot? It was as if the lights had been switched off – the luminous aura surging through the walls dimmed. Unblocked by the Apple's barrier, the rest of the Illuminati promptly began banging on the barred doors without missing a beat. Yet somehow, the room was deathly still.
The crazed epitome of fear slowly faded from his face, to be replaced with a slow but complete look of insanity, fury. But I knew, for his eyes faltered.
"That was what you were after, wasn't it?" I spoke slowly,
fighting to keep the trembling and breathlessness out of my voice. "The whole
Illuminati- all these years underground with you heading it- has failed,
hasn't it?"
He flinched but snapped back, "Salt to the earth and salt to the wound, aren't
you?"
What gave him any rights to be angry? "And after all these years, you couldn't find the time to tell me a thing?"
"You wouldn't have understood," he said, sotto voce, but surprisingly clearly.
"And I still don't." I folded my arms and leaned against the desk behind me, holstering my Eagle.
He sighed softly. "Lara, everyone wants to change the world. Everyone wants things their way." He too repositioned himself into a more comfortable position. I noisily removed my Desert Eagle and clicked safety off. "We're all so different. Who can truly say who is right?
"Lara, what do you live for in life?" I started slightly, caught completely off guard by the odd question.
Tightly, I replied, "For the longest time, I was living for you. Tomb raiding in your footsteps. Leaving your things where they always were. I loved you, Daddy."
Henshingly Croft seemed to deflate. "Love," he said finally, after a long pause. "We're all living for love, aren't we?
I remained silent. I wasn't answering questions that were really more fitting for schoolchildren.
"It was painful, Lara. I won't pretend." To my surprise his great shoulders shook slightly. I noisily clicked safety off.
"Do go on. You were doing so well."
"Lara, I've missed you. Do you know… know what it took me, to poison my wife,
to stage my death, to leave my only daughter-"
"And to try to take over the world, like the dastardly diabolical Dr. X?" I shook my head. "How could you just leave me like that? Leave us. You do know Winston-" I stopped. "For years I've been searching for you, years after you were pronounced dead in the bloody field. And where are you now?
"I hate you!" The world flew from me. I felt like a spoilt child throwing a tantrum for sweets.
Henshingly looked like he had been slapped. Nonetheless, he continued. "I've been watching you, Lara. I have headquarters all over the world. I was so proud of you, but such pain…watching you grow up, alone… Time after time, I'd wished I hadn't gone; or that I'd told you, when you were still a little girl, on me knee, listening to stories…"
He's wielding compassion as his weapon. The cleverest always did. And they had always won. Not this time.
Henshingly recovered sufficiently. "How has life been since I was dead?"
Anger welled up from deep inside me again, but I fought it down. "Daddy, you've used the talismans to possess people left and right; the leaders of the world yesterday are terrorists today. After all, you do know its history, its nature. Whole nations are at war, soon to be nucleic, and I'm not talking about the football freaks. Not to mention destroying them didn't help in the slightest. And you ask me how life's been?"
Henshingly shrugged it all off. "But how has your life been? I don't have security cameras in tombs." His eyes twinkled. I had the urge to shoot him again but persisted.
I tried to control myself further. Finally I settled for holstering my Desert Eagle and folding my arms. It was pointless to torture my wrists further. "I found the talisman, the original Talisman of Eris in Greece – save the gritty details for later, shall we. I took it back home, thinking it worthless… less than a week later the Illuminati broke into my house." I took a deep steadying breath. "It was too much for Winston- he suffered a heart attack. He… he passed away three days later."
~*~
A dark shape, moving slowly to the bedraggled lump on the ground stealthily, and purposefully. The floor seemed to gyrate with his every step. Shadows spun themselves around the seemingly endless corridor, as the wall seemed to pulsate with the force of doom. He musn't reach it! He musn't reach him! Somehow the words etched in my mind, drawing closer every second.
The shape seemed more solid, more humanlike as He approached. The lump trembled. As He drew ever nearer, I could feel his rhythmic breathing, sucking in and out slowly. The walls quivered. The air turned colder, more stifling with every breath. And suddenly the shape pounced, air filling with horrible, strangled yells as the black sheets seemed to slither off the lump, one by one. Twisted, charred remains spasmed, blending slowly into Him, bearing now a nightmarish, all-too-familiar face…
NO!
The walls, dripping with ink, closed in on the figures with balletic grace, shrouding everything in the darkness; it was whole. But the darkness could not mask the howling, the jarring crunch of bone, the fleshy whispering of tearing muscles…
Abruptly my view swung upwards, like that of surfacing water. This time the scene was of a fuzzy, pearly white backdrop, with misty, cloudlike wisps floating languidly around.
Hey, that's all I've got now. Sorry. Please review!