I am not making any money with this. I do not own Lara Croft, Tomb Raider
etc.
Only to be archived at Fanfiction.net and 'Lara Croft's Tales of Beauty and Power'. All other sites email me first to gain permission.
Disclaimer, Thank-Yous and some other notes at the end of the story.
========================================================= The Last Revelation Part V: Broken Skies by Heidi Ahlmen (siirma6@surfeu.fi) =========================================================
Chapter 1
"Egypt, once again. I have a personal love affair with the country and my heart leaps in joy if I find out the next lead in my latest search will lead me there. Usually I have works piled up - that means I can prioritize or just pick the one that pleases me the most. There was something left from the old scavenger I used to be, as I realized this trip to Egypt would mean robbing Jean's life work from him. His pet project.
But, as few competitors as I have in this dangerous business, there's always a chance someone will get the prize before you. Competition is tough. And bloody.
A reporter on one of my rare interviews once asked if my father was proud of me. To think of it now, I must've groaned something for an answer, but yes, I do sometimes think back to when I was told I no longer had a family.
It's like a spiritual slap to the face. Nothing in the world can really describe it better. You feel when it hits but it doesn't hurt right away.
And Father, yes, I do remember. I do remember how I sometimes, still a child, already bright enough to question your actions, planned to write a book of you when I grew up. "How To Be A Truly Horrible Father".. I was a raving teenager back then, but don't go believing I was the kindest of children before that. I behaved extremely well for a little girl with no parents.
The strangest but the most logical thing about the situation was that I truly did not care what curse he was laying on me that Saturday when I was twnety-one and ready to decline marriage. To all the sceptics out there - go try it yourself: live in boarding school from the age of six, come home at the age of 21 and see if you still care and love the parents you've only seen as often as other children see their most hated relatives. As often as I saw my parents.
"How can you possibly be so unlike your mother, bless her. She was a lady. You sound like a streetwoman."
Slap. Not a very painful one, but yet a slap. Offering a passage to a needed rush of adrenaline.
"If that is you final word, Miss Croft, then I shall inform you that from this day forward I do not have a daughter."
Slap. Hard. No matter how many years away from home - he was my father. Never a dad. Never a daddy. Yet he was my father.
And I was no longer afraid of him.
I apologize. I don't mean to complain. If it wasn't for the valuable lesson about independence my father taught me - I would not be here today. Perhaps. But yet don't take it as if I was apologizing of disgracing my father's name. That I've always done gladly. So much rebelling teenager still is left in the soul bearing the name Lara Croft.
I'm not being very upper-class, am I?
For the record - I have to say that it was not entirely his fault - as overly forgiving as it might sound like. Father - I know it's not all about me. I remember where it all began. "
Lord Henshingly Croft remembered, too.
He put the received back on the phone, and left the hall. Gesturing his servant to go away, he entered the library and sat down. Another phone lied on the library table.
He had just received a phonecall he had always sworn he would get sooner or later - but still a phonecall he feared more than losing his own life. The voice of a Mr DuCarmine had informed him of his daughter's death.
The empty manor withheld a strange atmosphere. Emptiness was everywhere - behind the chandeliers, under the softly lit wall-to-wall carpets. His dogs were nowhere in sight.
A sudden yearning for a glass on cognac hit his mind as he thought he'd become temporarily insane again. Temporarily insane in the form of hearing and seeing ghosts.
He was a lonely man in a lonely life.
Ghosts. His wife was there again. She must've been. Wandering ominously up and down the stairs, keeping an eye on him. She haunted him, at least in his mind. Now he wondered whether her daughter would haunt him, too.
Lara Angeline Croft was dead. Lost in the sands of Egypt.
Lord Henshingly sat down on the library armchair. Squeezing the armrests, he let the memories come. The beginning of his separation from his prodigal daughter.
Westminster Cathedral, London, 11th March 1974
The chauffeur parked the car. Before stepping out into the twilight, Lord Henshingly took some time to brace himself. Aware of the newfound responsibility that was sitting next to him, he turned.
His daughter, age six and a half, was sitting face turned away from him, staring into the street. Wearing a black duffel coat she looked like a dark cherub from a renaissance painting. Fingering her dark curls, she seemed to be wondering something very deeply.
"Lara?" he tried, choking in his own words.
"Yes, Father?" she replied quietly. Lara turned, face turned down, curls bouncing as she turned her head.
"Let's get in, shall we?"
His daughter did not reply. Just stared at him for a second, her facial features slightly twisted - a cry waiting to come out.
Lord Henshingly exited the car and waited for the chauffeur to open the other side door for Lara.
He was ready to weep for his wife.
The church was dimly lit, the scent of beeswax candles everywhere. They cast shallow shadows on the wall ornaments, marble carvings and mosaics. Outside it was already dark, snow silencing the traffic noises.
It was the coldest March he could remember.
Lara's hand tightly gripped in his own, he found her presence somehow very calming. Perhaps yet too young to understand the true significance of the day, she still seemed awfully quiet. If she had cried he'd have understood.
But this unnatural calmness on the day of mourning for the death of her mother, seemed almost haunting. He was angry at Lara's strength, as he himself was shattering to pieces.
A choir was singing as they sat down in the front row. Notes from Mozart's Requiem floated in the thickness of the church air - to be soon vanished in the same air, as other notes took their predecessors' places.
Lara was holding onto his arm as they sat, neither of them wanting to check their watches to see how much they had left before the ceremony.
Another part of Mozart's dying mass was sung. A violent one, a plea from the composer to God to not send him to the flames of Hell. Soft soprano voices framed the male voice's raging allegro; a high-sung Voca me made Lord Henshingly's heart ache. Voca me - Save me. A silent prayer escaped the man's lips.
Lara sat silently, swinging her legs under the church bench. It wasn't anything playful - she was merely keeping herself occupied to avoid being forced to think about where she was.
Then suddenly she got up and leapt down from the bench. Lord Henshingly tried to reach her hand, but she ran out of the reach of his fingers. She hurried towards the altar dais, slowing down her pace as she approached it. Candlelight danced on the surface of her green-black checked satin and velvet dress. Tears running down Lara's cheeks, she made her way through a line of people to the coffin lying in front of the altar. Kneeling down beside it, the little girl crossed her fingers and started praying, tears running down her cheeks even more intensely.
Lord Henshingly Croft turned away.
He opened his eyes. There was no cathedral, only his own library, with a homely fire burning in the fireplace in front of his armchair. Unnoticed, tears had crept in his eyes but not yet fallen on his cheeks.
Half a year after Angeline's death he had sent his daughter away. First he had buried her on the left wing of the house with a private teacher. After a few sad months Lara had been sent to a boarding school.
Aware of his duties, he wiped his eyes and grabbed the phone, full of silent determination.
"If you're hearing this message, I must be out. Be a dear and call my cellphone, the number's 454 2846 274." Gillian Croft's answering machine burped out.
Only other close living relative of Lara's, Aunt Gillian, as the women was usually addressed as, made her living by painting and sculpturing and had a small gallery on Isle of Wight. Not one of the most civilized people in Lord Henshingly's eyes, he wondered how the sister of such ordinary sparrow could have been such a perfect creature as his wife had been.
As her daughter was. As he dialled Gillian's cellphone number obediently, he remembered how he had playfully suggested to her wife to put a fraction from a well-known fairytale to Lara's Christening invitation cards. A fraction from "Snow-white and the seven dwarfs". He had always thought the description of snow-white had fit her daughter so well when she was little. A beautiful little creature she had been.
How he had hoped to keep her.
Life had taken her away.
Gillian answered. "Hallo?"
"Gillian, it's me," Lord Henshingly said.
"Oh it's you then, dear. If this is one of those "how's my dear daughter" -calls, I really have to suggest once again that you call her yours."
"Oh shush Gillian. I'm sorry to hear that I'm not a very looked-forward caller."
"So what's the occasion?" Gillian coughed on the other end.
Lord Henshingly Croft sniffled. "This time it is me who is going to tell the news on Lara."
Gillian's tone changed. She sensed not all was right. "Yes?"
A short silence.
"She's gone," he simply stated.
"Of course she's gone, she'd always up and going, you know that." Gillian chatted, yet her tone revealed she had understood but not comprehended what he was saying.
"She's gone, Gillian. She failed her escape from a collapsing temple in Egypt. I always knew something like this would." his voice trailed off.
Gillian was silent. Nothing to say.
"Gillian? I know this is a bit early, but." "Wait, let me get this coat off first. It's a hell of a rainstorm out there. I don't know what to. I. She was." her voice, filled with tears of disbelief.
"Gillian, I know. I always told her to be careful when she was little, she never listened, she never."
"It's not her fault, Henshingly. God knows what she was doing in there, but I know her well enough to say it must've been something important."
"Important to her, I'm sure. Important to archaeology, yes."
"Don't judge her. You always judged her. Yet she never hated you." Gillian's tone was accusing, bitter. She wasn't sure if she herself believed the part about hate. Melodramaticism or not - Lara wouldn't have touched the subject of her parents with a six-foot pole.
"I couldn't at the time, believe that."
Gillian finished off his argument. "We've had this conversation. She'd have been dead long ago if she had not left home. You know that. You can't hold down wild horses. You had something to ask me?"
Lord Henshingly could her Gillian crying at the other. He felt tears pooling into his eyes, again.
"She'd have wanted, you know, to. Would you. Would you please play at her." he didn't want to say anything more. His voice would have betrayed him.
"Of course." Gillian said silently. With neither of them having anything further to say, they shared a wordless mutual agreement to end the call.
"I'll see you then, in the." Gillian shut off, crying. Lord Henshingly placed the received back and left the room. Cognac would be exactly what he needed. Two, in fact. Ten. Twenty.
His girl was dead. So was he. For all the mistakes he'd made.
-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~
As always, comments and reviews would be much appreciated - they're the fuel that feeds this creative furnace.
siirma6@surfeu.fi
Only to be archived at Fanfiction.net and 'Lara Croft's Tales of Beauty and Power'. All other sites email me first to gain permission.
Disclaimer, Thank-Yous and some other notes at the end of the story.
========================================================= The Last Revelation Part V: Broken Skies by Heidi Ahlmen (siirma6@surfeu.fi) =========================================================
Chapter 1
"Egypt, once again. I have a personal love affair with the country and my heart leaps in joy if I find out the next lead in my latest search will lead me there. Usually I have works piled up - that means I can prioritize or just pick the one that pleases me the most. There was something left from the old scavenger I used to be, as I realized this trip to Egypt would mean robbing Jean's life work from him. His pet project.
But, as few competitors as I have in this dangerous business, there's always a chance someone will get the prize before you. Competition is tough. And bloody.
A reporter on one of my rare interviews once asked if my father was proud of me. To think of it now, I must've groaned something for an answer, but yes, I do sometimes think back to when I was told I no longer had a family.
It's like a spiritual slap to the face. Nothing in the world can really describe it better. You feel when it hits but it doesn't hurt right away.
And Father, yes, I do remember. I do remember how I sometimes, still a child, already bright enough to question your actions, planned to write a book of you when I grew up. "How To Be A Truly Horrible Father".. I was a raving teenager back then, but don't go believing I was the kindest of children before that. I behaved extremely well for a little girl with no parents.
The strangest but the most logical thing about the situation was that I truly did not care what curse he was laying on me that Saturday when I was twnety-one and ready to decline marriage. To all the sceptics out there - go try it yourself: live in boarding school from the age of six, come home at the age of 21 and see if you still care and love the parents you've only seen as often as other children see their most hated relatives. As often as I saw my parents.
"How can you possibly be so unlike your mother, bless her. She was a lady. You sound like a streetwoman."
Slap. Not a very painful one, but yet a slap. Offering a passage to a needed rush of adrenaline.
"If that is you final word, Miss Croft, then I shall inform you that from this day forward I do not have a daughter."
Slap. Hard. No matter how many years away from home - he was my father. Never a dad. Never a daddy. Yet he was my father.
And I was no longer afraid of him.
I apologize. I don't mean to complain. If it wasn't for the valuable lesson about independence my father taught me - I would not be here today. Perhaps. But yet don't take it as if I was apologizing of disgracing my father's name. That I've always done gladly. So much rebelling teenager still is left in the soul bearing the name Lara Croft.
I'm not being very upper-class, am I?
For the record - I have to say that it was not entirely his fault - as overly forgiving as it might sound like. Father - I know it's not all about me. I remember where it all began. "
Lord Henshingly Croft remembered, too.
He put the received back on the phone, and left the hall. Gesturing his servant to go away, he entered the library and sat down. Another phone lied on the library table.
He had just received a phonecall he had always sworn he would get sooner or later - but still a phonecall he feared more than losing his own life. The voice of a Mr DuCarmine had informed him of his daughter's death.
The empty manor withheld a strange atmosphere. Emptiness was everywhere - behind the chandeliers, under the softly lit wall-to-wall carpets. His dogs were nowhere in sight.
A sudden yearning for a glass on cognac hit his mind as he thought he'd become temporarily insane again. Temporarily insane in the form of hearing and seeing ghosts.
He was a lonely man in a lonely life.
Ghosts. His wife was there again. She must've been. Wandering ominously up and down the stairs, keeping an eye on him. She haunted him, at least in his mind. Now he wondered whether her daughter would haunt him, too.
Lara Angeline Croft was dead. Lost in the sands of Egypt.
Lord Henshingly sat down on the library armchair. Squeezing the armrests, he let the memories come. The beginning of his separation from his prodigal daughter.
Westminster Cathedral, London, 11th March 1974
The chauffeur parked the car. Before stepping out into the twilight, Lord Henshingly took some time to brace himself. Aware of the newfound responsibility that was sitting next to him, he turned.
His daughter, age six and a half, was sitting face turned away from him, staring into the street. Wearing a black duffel coat she looked like a dark cherub from a renaissance painting. Fingering her dark curls, she seemed to be wondering something very deeply.
"Lara?" he tried, choking in his own words.
"Yes, Father?" she replied quietly. Lara turned, face turned down, curls bouncing as she turned her head.
"Let's get in, shall we?"
His daughter did not reply. Just stared at him for a second, her facial features slightly twisted - a cry waiting to come out.
Lord Henshingly exited the car and waited for the chauffeur to open the other side door for Lara.
He was ready to weep for his wife.
The church was dimly lit, the scent of beeswax candles everywhere. They cast shallow shadows on the wall ornaments, marble carvings and mosaics. Outside it was already dark, snow silencing the traffic noises.
It was the coldest March he could remember.
Lara's hand tightly gripped in his own, he found her presence somehow very calming. Perhaps yet too young to understand the true significance of the day, she still seemed awfully quiet. If she had cried he'd have understood.
But this unnatural calmness on the day of mourning for the death of her mother, seemed almost haunting. He was angry at Lara's strength, as he himself was shattering to pieces.
A choir was singing as they sat down in the front row. Notes from Mozart's Requiem floated in the thickness of the church air - to be soon vanished in the same air, as other notes took their predecessors' places.
Lara was holding onto his arm as they sat, neither of them wanting to check their watches to see how much they had left before the ceremony.
Another part of Mozart's dying mass was sung. A violent one, a plea from the composer to God to not send him to the flames of Hell. Soft soprano voices framed the male voice's raging allegro; a high-sung Voca me made Lord Henshingly's heart ache. Voca me - Save me. A silent prayer escaped the man's lips.
Lara sat silently, swinging her legs under the church bench. It wasn't anything playful - she was merely keeping herself occupied to avoid being forced to think about where she was.
Then suddenly she got up and leapt down from the bench. Lord Henshingly tried to reach her hand, but she ran out of the reach of his fingers. She hurried towards the altar dais, slowing down her pace as she approached it. Candlelight danced on the surface of her green-black checked satin and velvet dress. Tears running down Lara's cheeks, she made her way through a line of people to the coffin lying in front of the altar. Kneeling down beside it, the little girl crossed her fingers and started praying, tears running down her cheeks even more intensely.
Lord Henshingly Croft turned away.
He opened his eyes. There was no cathedral, only his own library, with a homely fire burning in the fireplace in front of his armchair. Unnoticed, tears had crept in his eyes but not yet fallen on his cheeks.
Half a year after Angeline's death he had sent his daughter away. First he had buried her on the left wing of the house with a private teacher. After a few sad months Lara had been sent to a boarding school.
Aware of his duties, he wiped his eyes and grabbed the phone, full of silent determination.
"If you're hearing this message, I must be out. Be a dear and call my cellphone, the number's 454 2846 274." Gillian Croft's answering machine burped out.
Only other close living relative of Lara's, Aunt Gillian, as the women was usually addressed as, made her living by painting and sculpturing and had a small gallery on Isle of Wight. Not one of the most civilized people in Lord Henshingly's eyes, he wondered how the sister of such ordinary sparrow could have been such a perfect creature as his wife had been.
As her daughter was. As he dialled Gillian's cellphone number obediently, he remembered how he had playfully suggested to her wife to put a fraction from a well-known fairytale to Lara's Christening invitation cards. A fraction from "Snow-white and the seven dwarfs". He had always thought the description of snow-white had fit her daughter so well when she was little. A beautiful little creature she had been.
How he had hoped to keep her.
Life had taken her away.
Gillian answered. "Hallo?"
"Gillian, it's me," Lord Henshingly said.
"Oh it's you then, dear. If this is one of those "how's my dear daughter" -calls, I really have to suggest once again that you call her yours."
"Oh shush Gillian. I'm sorry to hear that I'm not a very looked-forward caller."
"So what's the occasion?" Gillian coughed on the other end.
Lord Henshingly Croft sniffled. "This time it is me who is going to tell the news on Lara."
Gillian's tone changed. She sensed not all was right. "Yes?"
A short silence.
"She's gone," he simply stated.
"Of course she's gone, she'd always up and going, you know that." Gillian chatted, yet her tone revealed she had understood but not comprehended what he was saying.
"She's gone, Gillian. She failed her escape from a collapsing temple in Egypt. I always knew something like this would." his voice trailed off.
Gillian was silent. Nothing to say.
"Gillian? I know this is a bit early, but." "Wait, let me get this coat off first. It's a hell of a rainstorm out there. I don't know what to. I. She was." her voice, filled with tears of disbelief.
"Gillian, I know. I always told her to be careful when she was little, she never listened, she never."
"It's not her fault, Henshingly. God knows what she was doing in there, but I know her well enough to say it must've been something important."
"Important to her, I'm sure. Important to archaeology, yes."
"Don't judge her. You always judged her. Yet she never hated you." Gillian's tone was accusing, bitter. She wasn't sure if she herself believed the part about hate. Melodramaticism or not - Lara wouldn't have touched the subject of her parents with a six-foot pole.
"I couldn't at the time, believe that."
Gillian finished off his argument. "We've had this conversation. She'd have been dead long ago if she had not left home. You know that. You can't hold down wild horses. You had something to ask me?"
Lord Henshingly could her Gillian crying at the other. He felt tears pooling into his eyes, again.
"She'd have wanted, you know, to. Would you. Would you please play at her." he didn't want to say anything more. His voice would have betrayed him.
"Of course." Gillian said silently. With neither of them having anything further to say, they shared a wordless mutual agreement to end the call.
"I'll see you then, in the." Gillian shut off, crying. Lord Henshingly placed the received back and left the room. Cognac would be exactly what he needed. Two, in fact. Ten. Twenty.
His girl was dead. So was he. For all the mistakes he'd made.
-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~
As always, comments and reviews would be much appreciated - they're the fuel that feeds this creative furnace.
siirma6@surfeu.fi