It is HIGHLY recommended that you read the first story Tomb Raider and Soul Reaver: World's Collide before you start on this one. It'll make a lot more sense that way.
Four years, nine months later . . .
Run. Double handed flip. Flip, flip, flip. Mid-air summersault. Land. Lara Croft, professional Tomb Raider, landed from a series of flips slightly off-balance and was greeted with a slight twinge of pain from the scar on her right side under her ribs. She gritted her teeth, shoved the pain away, and continued her sprint, ending it in a flip taking her onto one of her training blocks. She inspected the scar, prodding gently. The wound from the battle on Nosgoth had healed as promised, but it still woke and pained her every so often. Lara sat on the edge of the block and sighed, letting her mind drift back to Nosgoth, to the Pillars, Ariel, Kain . . .
And Raziel. She bit her lip as she stood. Unlike her physical wound, that emotional one had never fully healed. He still somehow found his way into her dreams, and she still occasionally woke up remembering the way he held her and wishing for him to hold her again . . .
'Idiot!' she berated herself as she almost missed a step on the thin balance rail. She jumped from the end to another block. 'He was a Reaver of Souls. It was a fling. It's about bloody time to get over it! I'll bet he isn't sparing a thought for me. It's over, Lara.'
She jumped down, raced down a sprinting lane, and rolled at the end to slow her momentum. In sheer aggressiveness to get him off her mind, she climbed fervently and swung across the room on the monkey bars on the ceiling. When suspended, she had a curious notion to see what it would be like to fall toward her own floor, but quickly shook it off. She had had enough falling for a while.
Well, not really. The one and only Tomb Raider had been at home for about four and a half years now, leaving the house only rarely. She knew it really didn't help her missing Raziel since she had nothing else to do, but what other choice did she have? But it had been long enough, now. Lara was ready to go back into the field. She could not stand to stay cooped up in this mansion any longer. She climbed down the ladder and back flipped onto another block.
"Lara?" a voice inquired gently. Lara glanced down to meet the gaze of her butler, Hillary.
"Yes?"
"There's a man here to see you."
She cursed to herself silently. First she put herself in a depressed state by thinking of Raziel, and now she has to deal with another bloody suitor who's only interested in the estate and her money. Just what she needed right now.
"Send the training robot up against him and get him out of here."
"I had expected such to be your command, Lady Croft," he replied, "so I took the liberty of telling Bryce to get Simon warmed up. Bryce is currently crying over the remnants of the machine."
Lara turned slowly back toward him, an eyebrow raised in intrigued curiosity.
"He somehow managed to cut it in two."
Surprised, and sufficiently interested now, Lara dropped off her block and headed out into the hall, pausing only to reattach her guns to her legs. It wasn't often she ran into any suitor who could take down Simon so easily, and if he proved . . . difficult to get rid of, she might just need her guns. But either way, this man might prove of some interest to her.
Out in the hall, she encountered the man calmly leaning against one of the columns. He looked up as she approached toward him, and she was immediately struck by his appearance. He wore solid black slacks, a plain dark blue shirt and odd black gloves that made his hands look somewhat awkward. He tugged at the sleeves of the shirt as if uncomfortable with it. He had prominent cheekbones, wind-tattered ebony black hair, and the most strikingly feral yellow-green eyes.
"Hello again, Lara."
Lara's expression of veneer detachment melted almost instantly into shock and utter surprise as she recognized the voice she hadn't heard for four years now.
"Raziel?!"
