- Godavari, come back with my Kurtis right now!! Tut. ;-) You're probably going to get the burning marshmallows ready by the end of this chapter, but rest assured all is not clear just yet and if Kurtis thinks he's home free....well, we'll just have to see.
- Lara-is-my-rolemodel - Lara spelt out 'Baphomet', a name known to be important to the Knights Templar, though no-one can agree why. In this story I took the theory that he was a sort of martyr highly respected by the Knights. Thanks for your compliments. :-)
Great reviews, everyone, keep 'em coming!

A Reminder - at the end of Home 1, we found Lara almost drowning in an underwater maze in her mansion, the computer having malfunctioned and locked her in. At the end of Home 2, we found out that the malfunction was not due to a virus as originally thought, but to Kurtis getting drunk and rewriting the program, which he then forgot about. His guilt caused him to leave without saying goodbye. Remember that, it's important.

Second Assessment

"Hello, Lara." Kurtis swallowed, wondering if she was going to pull the trigger.

"Do stand up." Lara kicked the door shut and shoved the chair back behind it, keeping the gun trained on its target. He obliged, clambering to his feet and rubbing his injured leg. "Please, take a seat." Lara's voice brooked no argument, and her actions suggested the chair placed against the door. Doing as he was told, he sat down, watching Lara warily as she opened a drawer in the sideboard and pulled out a packet of garden ties used to secure plants to canes. Kurtis realised what they were for and glared at the plants out on the balcony that the ties obviously belonged to. Straightening up, stiff and tired after the night's events, he readily clasped his hands behind the chair back and moved his feet next to each of the front chair legs. Lara, one hand still holding the weapon, used the other hand and her teeth to secure a tie tightly around her captive's wrists and then moved on to his ankles, setting the gun down.

"I was far more accommodating when I held you captive." Lara didn't answer, so Kurtis continued, "Any other time, I might be up for this game, but this really isn't – "

"Shut it, Kurtis." Lara, finishing her job, picked up the gun again and went and settled in an armchair opposite him, pointing the gun lazily in his general direction. "Now, I'm a little confused. Be a gentleman and clear things up for me, would you?"

"With regards to us? Well, I like a little friction in my relationships – " That particular stalling tactic was quickly ended when a bullet whistled past Kurtis' ear and embedded itself in the door.

Kurtis let out a low whistle, determined to carry on joking. "Uptight much? Someone will have heard that, y'know."

"Student's cars are notorious for backfiring. They have better things to spend their student loans on than MOTs."

"Alright – fine. How do you wanna play this?"

"Seriously. Explain everything. From the beginning."

Kurtis sighed a long tired sigh, and then closed his eyes and let his head drop back. "Great – I haven't slept in twenty hours, I've been tomb raiding with the best, I'm tired, I'm hungry, and she wants to talk. Just like a woman," he groaned.

"Kurtis!"

"Alright, alright!" He shifted in his chair, trying and failing to get more comfortable.

A shrill ring screamed out into the room, breaking the silence with an almost audible smash, backed up a split second later by an identical alarm from a nearby identical source. The two sounds clashed disharmoniously, torturing Bryce and Hillary into picking up the ringing phones by their beds before they had even woken up.

"Good morning, Sir, this is your six a.m. wake up call."

Bryce's sleep fogged brain couldn't even identify the meaning of the words, let alone where they were coming from, but Hillary, on the other phone, was quicker off the mark. "Thankyou," he said, hanging up. Bryce's extension phone accordingly went dead just as he realised what was going on. He stared around the still dark room, the furniture visible only as shadows lit by the streetlights creeping in from around the curtains, and then groaned, letting his head hit the pillow once more.

"Come on," Hillary strained as he forced himself to get out of bed. "We have to get down to Newcastle-under-Lyme and buy that dagger back." He flicked on the bedside light, adding an ethereal warm orange glow that coaxed Bryce's eyelids into flickering open.

"Where is Newcastle-under-Lyme anyway? Never heard of it."

"The Midlands, somewhere. Near Stoke-on-Trent, the man said."

"Stoke. Great." Bryce threw back his covers and sucked in a breath through his teeth as the cold night air still lingering in the early morning hit him. "Always wanted to go there."

"Lara's due back tonight," Hillary called from the bathroom.

"I know," Bryce yelled back, and then, to himself he muttered, "And we'd better be back first or there'll be hell to pay."

"From the beginning," Kurtis said under his breath as he decided where to start, and then, more audibly, "Ok. From the beginning." He shifted again and settled his eyes on Lara, curled up in the chair with the gun pointing in his general direction and a steaming cup of tea in her other hand.

"Don't suppose I could have one of those?"

"Has anybody ever told you that you have ADD, Kurtis?"

"Fine, fine." Another resigned sigh. "After I left your place I decided to stick around and see the scenery. Not been to England before. I rented a car and set out travelling the length of the Trent River, visiting my namesakes as it were. There I was, in this little brewing town called Burton on Trent, enjoying the local beer and talent, walking along the river bank, when these guys come walking up behind me, grab my arms, shove a gun in my ribs, and march me off to this black van. I think it was a Ford, maybe a Vauxhall –"

He was cut off by Lara, shouting him down with loud, snapped words. "Facts, Kurtis, get to what I need to know, I don't have all day. Stop stalling."

Trent looked offended, clicked his jaw in annoyance, and started again.

"I got picked up by The Company. I'd heard rumours about them, it's hard not to when you hang around some of the people I deal with. I'd heard they were government, real powerful, not the kind of people you wanna be messing with. Anyway, they get hold of me and tell me the whole story. That they're actually above the governments, in a kind of international co-operative venture that deals with the worst of the global security threats. They're made up of the best of the best from hundreds of countries, all working together. Even countries that are at war with each other work side by side when it comes to The Company, and it's all run by this guy, Mr Cheney. Now, the six most powerful nations in the world each have one representative on an oversight committee that keeps The Company in check, and Mr Cheney answers to them and them only. So you can imagine this guy's pretty powerful.

"Therein lies the problem. Mr Cheney, so he tells me, works to his own set of rules, doesn't think that he really needs anybody to tell him what to do. He's on a total power trip and he's running all sorts of unofficial missions to sort out the security threats they have to deal with. The Periapt Tip project is one of them."

He stopped then, and swallowed thirstily, adding a dry cough for effect. "Could I please have some water? Please?" Lara sighed but conceded, standing and moving into the kitchen. As soon as her back was turned Kurtis began flexing his wrists, straining against the plastic holding them together and grimacing as the thin strips cut into his flesh. A snap sounded and he just managed to grab the broken plastic between his fingers before it fell to floor, well within Lara's view from the armchair. Just then the water running in the kitchen stopped, and he quickly settled down again, holding his wrists against each other as if nothing had happened. Lara returned with a glass and straw, holding it to his lips and letting him drink.

"Thanks," he said between sips, and then he continued as Lara returned to her seat. "The cult I told you about is very, very powerful and dangerous. They're committing murders, kidnappings, planning assassinations, the works, because their leader thinks that he's some kind of god and wants to rule the world. Don't they always? It needs to be dissolved as quickly as possible."

"Which is why Cheney wants the Tip, and he's doing it on the quiet because his superiors wouldn't accept his plan, yes you told me. What this has to do with what else you've told me and why he wants me, I don't follow."

"I'm getting to that," Kurtis snapped irritably. "Don't interrupt. Anyway, you're wrong, we lied."

"Oh well, there's a surprise," Lara grouched, rolling her eyes.

"We told you that Cheney wanted the Tip for its symbolism, rather than its true power. That's not true. Originally The Company were just going to shoot him, imprison the authority figures and then kill anybody in the cult that didn't back down, that's their usual way of handling these things. It didn't work."

"How so?" Lara was interested now, leaning forward and openly hanging on his every word.

"The guy's not actually that crazy. Bullets can't kill him."

"The Company shot the cult leader and he didn't die?"

"Survived eighteen bullets," Kurtis confirmed, nodding. "So the final Periapt Shard, the Tip, becomes the only solution. They did their research, tracked it down, retrieved it, and then kidnapped me so that I could help them find you. They couldn't get you themselves because the operation would have shown up on their computers, and Cheney didn't want the oversight board finding out that he'd failed to kill the cult leader in the first place. Cheney's powerful, but he's not untouchable. He fails on an important thing like that and he'll be made to disappear the same way countless numbers of terrorists, informants and criminals have disappeared on his orders."

"And what's my role in this now that we know that I'm not here to get them the Tip?"

"You won't like it," Kurtis said, looking worried.

"Kurtis," said Lara warningly, waggling her gun.

"The Tip needs a user who's strong and pure. That's why your first impression on Cheney mattered so much, why you had to show you could get through the Periapt Complex, and why they had you in mind in the first place. It's pretty clear from your past adventures, Croft, that you're one of the few people in this world that's worthy of the Tip."

"Then why the lies? Why not tell me this from the beginning?"

Kurtis's eyes slid shut and he sighed heavily, clearly reluctant to answer. "The Tip gets its power from the soul of the one wielding it. To do its job, it drains their life force, and they die. You don't get power like that without giving something in return." He gazed at Lara, sitting in numb shock with the gun still limply held in her hand and her eyes staring into nothingness. "I'm sorry, Lara." His voice was sincere, meaningful.

"I can't believe you would do that to me." Lara looked up at him then, her eyes disbelieving and betrayed.

"Do what? Lara, I told you, we're going to steal the Tip off him first," but she wasn't listening and his sentence ended to a silent room as she got up and jogged into the kitchen, needing space to think.

"Lara!" Kurtis shouted, but she didn't answer. It wasn't the reason he'd freed his hands earlier, but he quickly tore the ties off his ankles anyway and ran after her, coming up behind her where she was facing the wall and leaning heavily on the worktop, still shocked, and touched her arms lightly. "Lara."

She didn't even seem surprised at his sudden escape – maybe she had been expecting it all along. Still turned away, she said quietly, "How many times have you betrayed me, Kurtis? And why do I keep on forgiving you?"

"I couldn't risk telling you the truth! I needed you to help me steal the Tip, and since we were going to do that before Cheney got a chance to trick you into using it, I figured it didn't really matter! Lara, I wasn't going to let them – "

Lara spun round, suddenly energised with anger and advanced on him, forcing him to retreat across the kitchen as she spoke, spitting her words with a venom he'd forgotten she possessed. "The same way it didn't matter about telling me the truth before walking out on my hospitality because either way, I didn't die? The same way it didn't matter that Bryce went through hell torturing himself over the accident because the truth was it wasn't his fault?" She shoved him, sending him stumbling back against the other work surface, just catching the edges to prevent himself from falling. "Bryce found out what you did, Kurtis! Days and days without sleep, going through every line of code in those computers, trying to assure himself that the 'virus' was really gone, that I wouldn't get trapped in there again – Bryce went to hell and back over that, and then he found out what you'd done." He was backed up against the cooker now, with nowhere to go as Lara pinned him there, her eyes boring into his with accusatory fire and her fingers digging painfully into his already sore wrists as she blocked his escape. "In some twisted, drunken hacking session, you nearly got me killed!" Her voice rose in volume with that final damnation, forcing Kurtis to lean even further back in fear even as he felt his anger surging forward into an equally intense retaliation.

"It was an accident!" he found himself screaming back, his face thrusting forward towards hers from where she had beaten it back in a forced retreat. She took a step back, surprised at the outburst when only a moment ago he had seemed so cowed. "A horrible, unforgivable accident! I had no idea what I'd done until it was too late! I didn't even remember until you were already trapped! Don't you think I regretted it? Don't you think that from that one, stomach wrenching moment when I realised what was going on, until way, way too long after, that I could barely live with myself?"

She hadn't thought that at all. From the moment Bryce had told her what he'd found out, relieved that he wasn't responsible but also seething that Kurtis could have done that to her, Lara had had own her battle. One that she had been fighting within herself in an effort to reconcile everything that she thought had happened between them with everything that she now imagined had happened between them. In her own sleepless nights wondering just what, if anything, she had done to make him want to kill her and to force him to try and realise it under a drunken lack of judgement, it had never even occurred to her that he might have been fighting his own battle of conscience with regards to his actions. Standing in the middle of the kitchen, she only blinked away tears that weren't there and stood, accepting his argument, suddenly vulnerable in his heartfelt tirade.

"All my life I grew up with the tough approach. My dad put me through hell in my training. I guess I never really escaped it, because what I did, I did in some twisted act of love. I know it's crazy, but I was trying to help you. I wanted you to believe in yourself again." His eyes searched hers, seeking understanding, begging forgiveness. "I went up to my room and I nearly slit my wrists. I don't know why I didn't. Cowardice, I guess. I couldn't face you. I couldn't tell you the truth and I couldn't lie to you, so I left." Kurtis sagged, his eyes dropping to the floor, before his whole body gave way, weary from the physical and emotional trauma of the day. Flopping to the floor, he tiredly sat back against the kitchen cupboards and rubbed his forehead. Several minutes passed, the room silent. The shadows gradually lightened as the rising sun poked through the curtains, illuminating the flat in a cheerful, warm, late summer's glow from the early morning cold white dawn.

"You should have told me." Lara's words were softly spoken, but they still boomed through the quiet, attracting all attention.

"I know."

Lara dropped to her knees and crawled the short distance to Kurtis' side, leaning against the cupboards herself and putting one hand gently on his bent elbow where he was still rubbing his forehead, in turmoil. "We're both pretty screwed up, aren't we?"

At her unusual words, Kurtis looked up, only to find her staring back at him with a smile playing around her lips, her eyes forgiving. He laughed. "Yeah, I guess we are." One arm lifted up and curled around Lara's shoulders, pulling her close in a friendly hug. She returned it, squeezing, and he rested his chin on her head and closed his eyes contentedly. "When am I ever gonna learn?"

Lara only smiled in return, distracted by the thoughts behind her suddenly hard eyes.

"I'm worried. This sudden freedom away from Lara looking over my shoulder like a hawk is great, and all, but I'm really, really worried that we're not going to get this dagger back in time." Bryce looked to Hillary, driving them on their way down to Newcastle on the trail of the Dagger of Xian, who spared him an understanding glance back.

"I know what you mean. But come on, Lara isn't that bad. She's not watching our every move and sending warning glances our way every time we breathe."

"Are you kidding?! She doesn't even trust me to book flights without her demanding a word for word rendition of the conversation I had with the woman at the airport!"

"Come now." Hillary tutted disapprovingly.

"I'm serious!" Bryce turned in his seat to face Hillary more squarely as he offered his evidence. "She bosses me around, she insults me, she regularly inflicts far more damage on SIMON than necessary, she has no sense of humour for my jokes, and no appreciation for the art of technology."

Hillary sent a sideways glance to Bryce with a knowing smile. "And you wouldn't have it any other way."

Bryce managed to feign injury for all of two seconds before breaking into a grin and settling further down into the passenger seat. "'Course not."