Hey! What's with the document uploader suddenly whacking spaces in my work all over the place?!!
I completed AOD for the second time today - anybody else notice the look Kurtis gives Lara when Muller gets thrown to Boaz? It's like, 'Ah, no loss! LOL. Anyway...
===============================================================
Two days passed uneventfully. I continued my exploration of the house and grounds, and chatted with Lara, Hillary and Bryce, getting to know them. Bryce was a likeable guy, someone I could see myself having fun with. Hillary, though too formal for my taste, was also ok, and if nothing else his intense Englishness was good entertainment. Lara continued to prove herself an enigmatic but extremely attractive personality, and I found myself wondering if a permanent work partnership was on the cards. She was also still sore from her ordeal in Egypt and Europe, and Bryce, Hillary and I observed an unspoken censorship in our conversations with regards to just what had gone on with the Cabal. I was grateful for the silence – it meant that when not immersed in my investigation of the house, I could avoid my memories just by finding someone to talk to. It was when I was alone at night with nothing but the TV and radio in my room for company that my feelings crept back up on me. I would sit in the dark seeing my father in the shadows and his blood in the aging discoloured floorboards until I turned to the liquor that I had asked Hillary to pick up the last time he had been to buy groceries. Taking my money, he had raised an eyebrow and regarded me with a curious glance, but had obviously decided that it was none of his business and, being the prim and proper butler he was, had duly returned with a large bottle of bourbon.
On the morning of the third day I was in the library flicking through a book that I remembered from the Lux Veritatis libraries when I was interrupted from my memories of poring through the book in lesson time by footsteps approaching from down the hall.
I looked up to see Lara wearing clothes not unlike those she had been wearing in the Louvre. Snapping the book shut, I greeted her, "Hey Lara, what ya doin'?"
"I decided it's time to get back in training. You can come and watch if you want," she said, stopping in the doorway and placing her hands on the door jamb as she leaned towards me.
Eager to participate in some exercise, if only vicariously, I agreed, and we set off downstairs, me in a random combination of foot and crutch steps. A couple of times I nearly fell, and I swore as I managed to regain my balance. Lara recognised that I needed to retain my independence, and settled for hovering her hand near my elbow, ready to catch me should I not save myself. After I had managed a few steps without incident after settling into a haphazard movement, I said, "So you're gonna head back out? Save the world some more?"
"I honestly don't know," Lara replied, her voice clearly conveying the confusion I understood only too well.
"You'll get things straight." She would. She just didn't see the end of the tunnel yet. Somewhere inside me a rational voice told me the same, but I wasn't feeling too optimistic either.
At the bottom of the stairs, I continued forward, resolutely focusing on my goal. Lara followed a few moments later, and together we headed for the training arena, for want of knowing what else to do.
Bryce pushed an office chair over to me, and Hillary, also gathered for the show, held it steady whilst I sat. Lara stood at the entrance to the training room, the plate glass automatic doors open ready to receive her. Unholstering her guns, she took a deep breath, and stepped forward. To my side, Bryce attracted my attention by tapping on a monitor, and I turned to see an aerial view of the room, with Lara creeping forward, visibly shaking with adrenaline. I frowned, wondering just what she thought was out to get her in there, but my question was soon answered when a mechanical whirring signalled the arrival of a big metal thing with arms and legs that leapt out at her from behind a plaster wall.
"What in hell is that?" I yelled, as shaken by its sudden arrival as Lara, who froze momentarily before ducking behind a pillar.
"SIMON," replied Bryce. "My pride and joy, and Lara's nemesis."
"No wonder she's so good," I muttered to myself, but her performance today didn't seem to be matching up with what I had seen on the security cameras in the Strahov, or her agility in chasing me in the Louvre. Hoping to fire on SIMON from behind, she had stepped around the pillar, but had misjudged either his intelligence or his speed, because she met him right in front of her, and she stumbled and fell as she was forced to leap backwards to avoid his swiping claws.
"Blimey, she is out of practice," Bryce said, leaning back in his seat and chewing his nail absent mindedly. To me, it looked like she was in trouble, but Hillary and Bryce seemed quite calm and confident that she'd be ok, even though 'SIMON' looked homicidal and deadly.
Scrambling to her feet, Lara took off at a run, diving behind a mock up of an altar. She fired over the top of it, following SIMON's path as it leapt and sailed through the air, landing behind her. Gasping, she thrust her weapons back in their holsters and ducked as SIMON lunged for her. As the machine recovered, Lara took the opportunity to stand and side flip, but SIMON grabbed for her ankle, and she fell, landing on her side and having the wind knocked out of her. She rolled onto her back just in time to intercept SIMON's arms as he hovered over her and thrust a saw at her skull and a claw at her throat.
She definitely seemed to be struggling as SIMON matched his strength against hers in an effort to connect his weapons with her jugular, and I wasn't sure that training this intense and dangerous was a good idea if you got killed before you even got out in the field. I found myself feeling slightly worried, and my eyes darted to the two men either side of me to gauge their reaction. Hillary seemed to be picking up on my concern, but Bryce brushed it off.
"She's fine," he said, waving us away. He was contradicted a second later when one of the monitors flashed a large red 'Danger' sign with a smaller sub-sign, 'Component 3032 Circular Saw Within Danger Margin – 1.0cm of Target'.
"Bugger!" yelled Bryce, and he sprang into action, frantically typing a few short commands into the computer and exhaling in relief as the monitors all showed, through various outputs, that SIMON was deactivated.
"I'll get a first aid kit," Hillary shouted as he ran off, and Bryce ran for Lara. I pushed myself out of my chair and onto my crutches and made for her as fast as I could, ignoring the pain in my stomach.
"Are you alright?" I heard Bryce ask her as he reached her side, but Lara just got to her feet and tore off, out into the hallway. Bryce made to follow her, but I put out my hand and grabbed his arm, stopping him.
"Let her go," I said. Hillary, staring after her a few yards away where he had stopped dead as Lara nearly collided with him on his return, had a look of deep concern etched on his face that stayed as he looked to us. There was silence for a moment, and then the clattering of more footsteps as Lara began to run again.
"Give her a few minutes," I clarified.
Bryce nodded and moved to kneel at SIMON's side, busying himself with the controls, and Hillary said, "Of course," before turning to return the first aid kit to its cupboard. In any other situation I didn't think that my words would hold much authority with such a close knit family, but they had obviously decided that right now, having been in Paris and Prague with her, I understood Croft better than anybody else.
Half an hour later, Hillary came and sat next to me at the training control computers. Bryce was sat on the floor not far away, making some adjustments to SIMON's circuitry.
"What happened to her?" Hillary asked bluntly, and I shook my head as I continued to stare at the floor.
"I can't tell you. She should do it, when she's ready."
"She nearly got killed!" he spat back at me, but I didn't speak or even react. I knew what was wrong with Lara at her core, and I knew it had nothing to do with Eckhardt.
"She's never had a problem with SIMON before," Bryce spoke up. "He keeps her on her toes, sometimes he nearly wins, but he's never really managed to threaten her before." He sounded sad.
"Has she ever had any problem before? With any aspect of her training?" I asked.
"No," sighed Bryce. "As long as I've known her, she's been on top form."
"Mentally as well as physically," Hillary cut in. "She's always bounced back from her ordeals. It's just since Egypt...if she'd just talk to somebody..."
"You think she's losing it, don't you?" I asked them both. They nodded reluctantly.
"Yeah," I breathed as I pushed myself to my feet and turned to go and find her, "so do I."
I spotted the top of her head over a hedge and set off towards her, finding her sitting hunched and sniffling quietly on a beautifully carved and weather worn stone bench. She didn't show any signs of noticing my arrival, and I sat next to her, looking out at a distance over the flower beds ahead of us, squinting slightly in the sun.
After a few moments of silence, I ventured with a comment that I thought hit the nail on the head.
"You just need to find your confidence again."
"What makes you think I've lost it?" she asked.
"Bryce said you nearly died last year, and now you can't even win against SIMON, something you've never had trouble doing before. He's worried about you, worried you're losing your touch. Hillary, too."
"What did Hillary say?" Her voice was timid, and I thought she was about to start crying again.
"He wants you to see someone, a counsellor or something."
She sat, a small, scared child, waiting for me to tell her what to do, or perhaps trying to work it out for herself.
"People like us, we feel. Counselling, talking, none of it will help, not enough. You need to get back out there and fight again – convince yourself you can still do it, or die trying." With this I turned to look at her, and she met my eyes, her own red from upset and large with shyness.
"Did Bryce tell you what happened in Egypt?"
"How could he? He doesn't know himself yet. You've not told anyone, remember? All we know is that you got buried under a collapsing pyramid and then turned up alive three months later."
She didn't look away as she began her story, but instead held my gaze with one of her own that grew ever more frantic and desperate. "It was dark. I couldn't move. My ankle was broken, my ribs cracked, I had concussion, I couldn't see a thing, and there was no way out. I dug, lost consciousness, dug some more. I don't even remember half of it, but I do know that somehow I ended up with some nomads who took care of me. They said that Werner and the others had left a couple of days before. Didn't stay long, did they?"
Bingo. "Oh, so that's your problem. You can't go back out there because you don't think, if something goes wrong, that your friends will back you up."
"I didn't have any back up in Prague," she said, suddenly angry.
"You had me."
I formed the words succinctly, with truth and conviction, challenging her with my eyes to deny it. She couldn't, and looked away, glaring. I continued, my voice softer. "Lara – Bryce, Hillary, they'll help you. They won't leave you. I don't know the details but I don't for one second believe that they gave up on you in Egypt easily. You gotta get two things sorted in your head – first, you're still strong, you can still do it, and you need to do it. It's who you are. Second – you've always got somebody there to help you when it gets too much, and it will get too much. No-one can do everything on their own. Bryce, Hillary. Me. We'll be there."
The last addition to her list of helpers surprised even me, as I realised that I meant it. I hadn't just said it to placate her. Coming back to the matter at hand, I decided that I had said enough, and got up to leave. She needed to think.
"What about you?" she called after me after I had travelled not more than a few yards. "How are you managing?"
"Oh, y'know," I said casually, stopping but not turning, "muddling through. All you can do."
I completed AOD for the second time today - anybody else notice the look Kurtis gives Lara when Muller gets thrown to Boaz? It's like, 'Ah, no loss! LOL. Anyway...
===============================================================
Two days passed uneventfully. I continued my exploration of the house and grounds, and chatted with Lara, Hillary and Bryce, getting to know them. Bryce was a likeable guy, someone I could see myself having fun with. Hillary, though too formal for my taste, was also ok, and if nothing else his intense Englishness was good entertainment. Lara continued to prove herself an enigmatic but extremely attractive personality, and I found myself wondering if a permanent work partnership was on the cards. She was also still sore from her ordeal in Egypt and Europe, and Bryce, Hillary and I observed an unspoken censorship in our conversations with regards to just what had gone on with the Cabal. I was grateful for the silence – it meant that when not immersed in my investigation of the house, I could avoid my memories just by finding someone to talk to. It was when I was alone at night with nothing but the TV and radio in my room for company that my feelings crept back up on me. I would sit in the dark seeing my father in the shadows and his blood in the aging discoloured floorboards until I turned to the liquor that I had asked Hillary to pick up the last time he had been to buy groceries. Taking my money, he had raised an eyebrow and regarded me with a curious glance, but had obviously decided that it was none of his business and, being the prim and proper butler he was, had duly returned with a large bottle of bourbon.
On the morning of the third day I was in the library flicking through a book that I remembered from the Lux Veritatis libraries when I was interrupted from my memories of poring through the book in lesson time by footsteps approaching from down the hall.
I looked up to see Lara wearing clothes not unlike those she had been wearing in the Louvre. Snapping the book shut, I greeted her, "Hey Lara, what ya doin'?"
"I decided it's time to get back in training. You can come and watch if you want," she said, stopping in the doorway and placing her hands on the door jamb as she leaned towards me.
Eager to participate in some exercise, if only vicariously, I agreed, and we set off downstairs, me in a random combination of foot and crutch steps. A couple of times I nearly fell, and I swore as I managed to regain my balance. Lara recognised that I needed to retain my independence, and settled for hovering her hand near my elbow, ready to catch me should I not save myself. After I had managed a few steps without incident after settling into a haphazard movement, I said, "So you're gonna head back out? Save the world some more?"
"I honestly don't know," Lara replied, her voice clearly conveying the confusion I understood only too well.
"You'll get things straight." She would. She just didn't see the end of the tunnel yet. Somewhere inside me a rational voice told me the same, but I wasn't feeling too optimistic either.
At the bottom of the stairs, I continued forward, resolutely focusing on my goal. Lara followed a few moments later, and together we headed for the training arena, for want of knowing what else to do.
Bryce pushed an office chair over to me, and Hillary, also gathered for the show, held it steady whilst I sat. Lara stood at the entrance to the training room, the plate glass automatic doors open ready to receive her. Unholstering her guns, she took a deep breath, and stepped forward. To my side, Bryce attracted my attention by tapping on a monitor, and I turned to see an aerial view of the room, with Lara creeping forward, visibly shaking with adrenaline. I frowned, wondering just what she thought was out to get her in there, but my question was soon answered when a mechanical whirring signalled the arrival of a big metal thing with arms and legs that leapt out at her from behind a plaster wall.
"What in hell is that?" I yelled, as shaken by its sudden arrival as Lara, who froze momentarily before ducking behind a pillar.
"SIMON," replied Bryce. "My pride and joy, and Lara's nemesis."
"No wonder she's so good," I muttered to myself, but her performance today didn't seem to be matching up with what I had seen on the security cameras in the Strahov, or her agility in chasing me in the Louvre. Hoping to fire on SIMON from behind, she had stepped around the pillar, but had misjudged either his intelligence or his speed, because she met him right in front of her, and she stumbled and fell as she was forced to leap backwards to avoid his swiping claws.
"Blimey, she is out of practice," Bryce said, leaning back in his seat and chewing his nail absent mindedly. To me, it looked like she was in trouble, but Hillary and Bryce seemed quite calm and confident that she'd be ok, even though 'SIMON' looked homicidal and deadly.
Scrambling to her feet, Lara took off at a run, diving behind a mock up of an altar. She fired over the top of it, following SIMON's path as it leapt and sailed through the air, landing behind her. Gasping, she thrust her weapons back in their holsters and ducked as SIMON lunged for her. As the machine recovered, Lara took the opportunity to stand and side flip, but SIMON grabbed for her ankle, and she fell, landing on her side and having the wind knocked out of her. She rolled onto her back just in time to intercept SIMON's arms as he hovered over her and thrust a saw at her skull and a claw at her throat.
She definitely seemed to be struggling as SIMON matched his strength against hers in an effort to connect his weapons with her jugular, and I wasn't sure that training this intense and dangerous was a good idea if you got killed before you even got out in the field. I found myself feeling slightly worried, and my eyes darted to the two men either side of me to gauge their reaction. Hillary seemed to be picking up on my concern, but Bryce brushed it off.
"She's fine," he said, waving us away. He was contradicted a second later when one of the monitors flashed a large red 'Danger' sign with a smaller sub-sign, 'Component 3032 Circular Saw Within Danger Margin – 1.0cm of Target'.
"Bugger!" yelled Bryce, and he sprang into action, frantically typing a few short commands into the computer and exhaling in relief as the monitors all showed, through various outputs, that SIMON was deactivated.
"I'll get a first aid kit," Hillary shouted as he ran off, and Bryce ran for Lara. I pushed myself out of my chair and onto my crutches and made for her as fast as I could, ignoring the pain in my stomach.
"Are you alright?" I heard Bryce ask her as he reached her side, but Lara just got to her feet and tore off, out into the hallway. Bryce made to follow her, but I put out my hand and grabbed his arm, stopping him.
"Let her go," I said. Hillary, staring after her a few yards away where he had stopped dead as Lara nearly collided with him on his return, had a look of deep concern etched on his face that stayed as he looked to us. There was silence for a moment, and then the clattering of more footsteps as Lara began to run again.
"Give her a few minutes," I clarified.
Bryce nodded and moved to kneel at SIMON's side, busying himself with the controls, and Hillary said, "Of course," before turning to return the first aid kit to its cupboard. In any other situation I didn't think that my words would hold much authority with such a close knit family, but they had obviously decided that right now, having been in Paris and Prague with her, I understood Croft better than anybody else.
Half an hour later, Hillary came and sat next to me at the training control computers. Bryce was sat on the floor not far away, making some adjustments to SIMON's circuitry.
"What happened to her?" Hillary asked bluntly, and I shook my head as I continued to stare at the floor.
"I can't tell you. She should do it, when she's ready."
"She nearly got killed!" he spat back at me, but I didn't speak or even react. I knew what was wrong with Lara at her core, and I knew it had nothing to do with Eckhardt.
"She's never had a problem with SIMON before," Bryce spoke up. "He keeps her on her toes, sometimes he nearly wins, but he's never really managed to threaten her before." He sounded sad.
"Has she ever had any problem before? With any aspect of her training?" I asked.
"No," sighed Bryce. "As long as I've known her, she's been on top form."
"Mentally as well as physically," Hillary cut in. "She's always bounced back from her ordeals. It's just since Egypt...if she'd just talk to somebody..."
"You think she's losing it, don't you?" I asked them both. They nodded reluctantly.
"Yeah," I breathed as I pushed myself to my feet and turned to go and find her, "so do I."
I spotted the top of her head over a hedge and set off towards her, finding her sitting hunched and sniffling quietly on a beautifully carved and weather worn stone bench. She didn't show any signs of noticing my arrival, and I sat next to her, looking out at a distance over the flower beds ahead of us, squinting slightly in the sun.
After a few moments of silence, I ventured with a comment that I thought hit the nail on the head.
"You just need to find your confidence again."
"What makes you think I've lost it?" she asked.
"Bryce said you nearly died last year, and now you can't even win against SIMON, something you've never had trouble doing before. He's worried about you, worried you're losing your touch. Hillary, too."
"What did Hillary say?" Her voice was timid, and I thought she was about to start crying again.
"He wants you to see someone, a counsellor or something."
She sat, a small, scared child, waiting for me to tell her what to do, or perhaps trying to work it out for herself.
"People like us, we feel. Counselling, talking, none of it will help, not enough. You need to get back out there and fight again – convince yourself you can still do it, or die trying." With this I turned to look at her, and she met my eyes, her own red from upset and large with shyness.
"Did Bryce tell you what happened in Egypt?"
"How could he? He doesn't know himself yet. You've not told anyone, remember? All we know is that you got buried under a collapsing pyramid and then turned up alive three months later."
She didn't look away as she began her story, but instead held my gaze with one of her own that grew ever more frantic and desperate. "It was dark. I couldn't move. My ankle was broken, my ribs cracked, I had concussion, I couldn't see a thing, and there was no way out. I dug, lost consciousness, dug some more. I don't even remember half of it, but I do know that somehow I ended up with some nomads who took care of me. They said that Werner and the others had left a couple of days before. Didn't stay long, did they?"
Bingo. "Oh, so that's your problem. You can't go back out there because you don't think, if something goes wrong, that your friends will back you up."
"I didn't have any back up in Prague," she said, suddenly angry.
"You had me."
I formed the words succinctly, with truth and conviction, challenging her with my eyes to deny it. She couldn't, and looked away, glaring. I continued, my voice softer. "Lara – Bryce, Hillary, they'll help you. They won't leave you. I don't know the details but I don't for one second believe that they gave up on you in Egypt easily. You gotta get two things sorted in your head – first, you're still strong, you can still do it, and you need to do it. It's who you are. Second – you've always got somebody there to help you when it gets too much, and it will get too much. No-one can do everything on their own. Bryce, Hillary. Me. We'll be there."
The last addition to her list of helpers surprised even me, as I realised that I meant it. I hadn't just said it to placate her. Coming back to the matter at hand, I decided that I had said enough, and got up to leave. She needed to think.
"What about you?" she called after me after I had travelled not more than a few yards. "How are you managing?"
"Oh, y'know," I said casually, stopping but not turning, "muddling through. All you can do."