Ok, here it is, the answer to that evil cliff hanger I left y'all on last week. Hee Hee. I hope you like.
Teef - Oooh a new reviewer, and one who likes the story at that! Thankyou!
Lady Lara Croft and harshlightofday - Thankyou again! I'm really glad you both found the last chapter funny - I wanted it to be light to alleviate the utter depression of it, but humour isn't really my thing when it comes to writing, so I'm happy it seemed to work!
Just a few notes to clarify things in this chapter -
We previously found out that Kurtis was planning on stealing the Periapt Tip to take it under his protection, and covering his tracks by framing Lara for it. He felt that Cheney couldn't be trusted with it, but when he found out what Gero was up to, and saw that Lara was willing to sacrifice herself to the Tip to kill Gero, he took her place.
In Home 2: Visit, we found out that Bryce has been secretly making a video game based on Lara's adventures that's suspiciously like our Tomb Raider.
Australian degrees, as far as I can tell from my research, are classified by Pass, Credit, Distinction or High Distinction, so a Pass isn't really that great.
The large block of italics signifies memory, and I have nothing to do with Nintendo, and am making no profit from the blatent borrowing of their name.
Enough black bold rambling, on with the show...
No Man's Land
Thinking back, Lara couldn't remember anything after that. She just found herself there, standing in a corridor with her back to an exterior doorway, reeling slightly as though she'd been pushed into the building, with people all around her running and shouting, some in fatigues, others in normal clothing, a few in medical uniforms.
The noises suddenly started registering in her mind as words – medical terms of blood pressure, heart rate… A gurney was shoved clattering into the building and was sped off past her down a corridor, the figure on it obscured by an entourage of doctors and nurses all shouting and talking over each other and rushing the patient away.
A few soldiers were led after the gurney at slower paces, some limping, others clutching their sides or shoulders or arms, one clasping his hand over his waist, blood seeping through his fingers. The sight of others being injured roused a far away sense of pain in Lara and she realised groggily that her upper left arm was cut quite deeply, small rivulets of blood trailing their way towards her elbow.
The whole corridor bustled with activity around her but it all seemed so far away, like it wasn't happening to her, or it was a dream. With surprise she realised someone was standing at her side and calling her name, and she looked up to see Cheney frowning with slight concern, speaking to her.
"Lara?"
She frowned, trying to remember coming back to the headquarters in England, trying to understand what was going on, but it was so fuzzy and she couldn't quite grasp anything.
"She's in shock!" she heard Cheney call, looking away from her to somewhere else, and then an arm wrapped around her shoulders made her look in the opposite direction, surprised to see a nurse on the other side of her, seemingly appeared out of nowhere and looking at her with the same concern. A slight push on her shoulders forced her to take a stumbling step forward, and, numb, she allowed herself to be led away.
She awoke sometime later to find herself in bed, crisp white sheets and a rough blue blanket tightly tucked in around her, the beep of medical equipment and lowered voices of people quietly bustling around rousing her gently. Blinking away the sleep, she pushed herself up onto her elbows and looked around, finding herself in some sort of medical bay or infirmary. Her upper arm was now bandaged cleanly and she'd been stripped down to just her T-shirt and fatigue trousers.
The memories lost in confusion and trauma after the day's horrific events were back now, washing over her as she lay motionless in their tide, numb.
"Kurtis!!" Dashing forwards to the makeshift cage, the spikes amazingly crumbling away in her hands as if eaten by decades of rust as she went to wrench them apart."Kurtis!" His limp body heavy and cumbersome as she hooked her elbows under his arms and dragged him out into the middle of the room.
"Take point!" Marcus' shouted orders to a few of his men as they appeared at her side, their own cage having decayed similarly now that Gero was dead, two of them lifting Kurtis bodily.
"Go go go!" Marcus shouting again as the whole team scattered through the tunnels with Kurtis, following Lara's lead as she prayed she could remember the map she had only glanced at.
"Return fire!!" A few wayward cult members, suddenly inexplicably present in the outer reaches of the tunnels, firing with handguns or attacking with clubs and knives, and falling and dying as the Company's superior firepower took them down easily as they continued to run.
A wordless scream of hatred from Lara as she viciously tore at the decomposing bars blocking their only exit from the cult base.
"Take off, now! Medical emergency!" The pilots of their plane dashing back to the cockpit as the medic of the team hurriedly retrieved a portable defibrillator whilst another checked for vitals and then began to try manually to restart the martyr's heart.
"Base 4, come in base 4!" Another soldier on the radio, transmitting ahead to request preparation for their imminent arrival at the nearest Company base, hoping to god that there was reason to worry as he watched the medics working tirelessly to revive their colleague.
"Got a pulse!" That one heart stopping moment as Lara waited with baited breath to see if the beat would take hold or not, and that gush of relief as the medic fell back to his heels and announced ecstatically that the patient was back, at least for now.
"Move, move, move!" The soldiers all moving together in practised efficiency to offload Kurtis before the plane had barely touched the runway, running him across the tarmac towards the waiting medical team who pounced on him like vultures to a meal.
And through it all, Lara a useless bystander, swept along with the tide as the very people who in all probability were meant to kill them had put their humanity before their orders in order to save her partner as she stood incapable of doing anything other than stare and choke back a sob.
A kindly smiling nurse appeared at Lara's side, shaking her out of her reverie. Startled, she looked up and then asked, almost afraid of the answer, "Kurtis?"
"He's fine," the nurse replied, smiling warmly and nodding. "Very weak, but fine."
Lara laughed in relief, shaking her head and grinning to herself. "Can I see him?"
"In a minute. How are you feeling?"
"I'm alright," Lara replied, nodding earnestly. "A little thirsty, maybe."
The nurse smiled warmly and then turned away. Reaching out, she swept back the privacy curtain by Lara's bed to reveal Kurtis, looking somewhat the worse for wear and surrounded by monitoring equipment, lying asleep in the next bed. Her heels clicked noisily as she hurried off to fetch some water for Lara, who smiled again as she padded over to her friend's bed, seating herself quietly in the adjacent chair.
"Go away," said Kurtis, feigning sleep.
"I'm sorry?"
"You're bad for my health, leave me be."
"Tsk."
"Tsk yourself! Go away!"
"Make me."
"Can't be bothered. Feel like hell."
"Then you're just going to have to put up with me, aren't you?"
"Hmph."
Lara chuckled and then leant back in the chair, accepting the water from the nurse who quickly excused herself again. There was silence for a few moments and then, deciding to break it, Lara said in mock offence, "What do you mean I'm bad for your health?"
"You chase me through the Louvre, I get knocked out. You let out the Proto-Nephilim, I get attacked. You send me after the third Shard, I get knocked out and attacked and then stabbed. You try and commit suicide, I end up dying. Are we seeing a pattern here?"
"I think you're paranoid," Lara said dryly.
"Go away," Kurtis repeated. Well, at least he still had his sense of humour.
There was silence a while longer before, still pretending to be angry with her as he did his best to sound uninterested, Kurtis asked, "You ok?"
"I'm fine," said Lara, nodding.
"What happened to your arm?"
"I'm not sure. Don't really remember. We got attacked by some cult members on the way out, it probably happened then. It's all a bit of a blur."
"Oh."
More silence.
"Apparently, apart from the whole having my heart restarted thing, I'm absolutely fine," Kurtis began, conversationally.
"Good. Good."
"The doctors think the Tip quite literally drained the life out of me. Didn't actually do any damage apart from killing me, but of course that's no big obstacle for modern medicine. Probably helped that Gero wasn't actually a god per se."
"Good to hear."
"Yeah, I thought so."
Silence yet again.
"So you wanna watch some TV?"
"Sounds good," Lara replied before Kurtis had even finished speaking, both of them jumping at the chance to do something other than talk, neither of them showing their concern for the other.
Bryce stepped out of his hotel room to a waiting Hillary and groaned. "How much sleep have we not had?" He turned to lock the room behind him.
"Well," said Hillary, leaning against the wall and rubbing his hands over his face tiredly, "you wanted to go on this gameshow."
"And as the responsible adult here, you failed in your duty to talk some sense into me." Bryce hefted his backpack further onto his shoulder and then said, "Come on," leading the way out of the hotel to meet Akira and Takeshi and sign up for a whole mess of physical activities that probably required a good night's sleep beforehand.
A nurse arrived with their dinners and Kurtis turned down the volume on the TV before painfully pulling himself up to a sitting position so that he could eat. Everything ached, everything hurt, and right now he was really wishing he wasn't such a nice person, because at least then he wouldn't be sacrificing his life only to be resurrected to one of hospital food, splitting headaches and everyone giving him grateful, concerned glances. He also might have a clue where he was.
"Lara – where exactly are we? Are we back in London?"
"No, we're at a Company base near Las Vegas, it was the closest one to our position and you needed care."
"Still in America?" He thought for a moment and then said, "You know, that's actually kinda obvious from the fact that I was just watching Showtime."
"So," said Lara, taking a casual bite of mashed potato as if she wasn't about to ask something deep and meaningful, which he knew she damn well was, and he could well do without it at that particular moment in time, "why did you do it?"
Kurtis sighed, hesitating in his movement to take a bite of pork and staring down towards his plate. "Because…it was the right thing to do."
"I thought you'd decided the right thing was to steal the Tip and hide it away under your protection." Lara said quietly.
Kurtis laughed, a hint of bitterness in the sound. "That's probably more of a right thing than what I did, but there you go."
"What do you mean?"
He looked up then, deciding he at least owed her some eye contact. "The Tip…it needs me. I'm the last of its protectors, and I should look after it. Frankly, in the big picture, throwing you to the lions in order to protect the power of the Tip is probably the better thing, but when it comes down to it, the little details tend to seem pretty important."
Lara poked at some green beans with her fork, staring at her plate and pouting slightly. Then she looked up through her eyelashes and said, "You'd rather let the Tip fall to Cheney than see me die?"
"I knew you'd look after it – figure something out, destroy it, I don't know."
His words had apparently upset her because, sighing heavily, she swung her legs off the side of the bed where they were resting and made to stand up, saying, "I should go."
"Lara…" Kurtis said loudly, dropping his knife and fork to the tray and stopping her in her tracks. "I…it's all grey, isn't it? Fuzzy. Right and wrong…to begin with I was the bad guy, then I turned good, but in doing that I was being bad because I was putting you ahead of my heritage…there is no absolute." Lara, sufficiently intrigued by his words, sat back down, and he continued on.
"My father always used to tell me that there are no good guys and no bad guys. There are only people doing what they believe is right. The only thing that makes them good or bad is how people perceive them based on the evidence that they see. Take Cheney, for instance – from the things I've seen in this place, the guy's evil, but ultimately what he's doing, it's good stuff. Gero – totally crazy, whacked out guy, bent on world domination and genocide, but from his perspective, he was probably doing the world a favour.
"The people who fight the fight – there are no sides. The leader of the Order once told me, 'If history recorded our means as well as our ends, there would be a lot more evil to recount. To do good, one must fight, and to fight is to do evil. The trenches are empty, and the factions are undefined. There are only the soldiers standing side by side in No Man's Land, fighting for their beliefs, the blood that they spill hidden against the petals of the poppies, only the results visible to those who would judge.'"
Lara's head bowed as she took in Kurtis' words, and then she nodded slowly. "A wise man, your leader," she said, smiling somewhat forlornly. Then, leaving the rest of her dinner, she stood and walked away.
Bryce's ears, ever honed to anything technological, picked out one singular word from the cacophony of unintelligible Japanese being thrown around by the dozens of people in Tokyo that day to sign up for the newest edition of that slightly eccentric gameshow, Takeshi's Castle. "Nintendo."
Bryce's head snapped up from where he had been filling in the application form with the help of a translator there to ease the transition for the many tourists joining in the fun, and stared over to his left at the group of men in full business attire introducing themselves to the Team Admissions desk.
"Did he just say, 'Nintendo'?" Bryce said to the translator.
"I think he said they were a team from there, yes," the translator, a young Australian language student on his holiday work experience placement, said. "I'm not really sure – I'm only a second year student and to be honest I'm only on course for a pass."
"Well now's your time to practise towards a credit," Bryce said calculatingly, never taking his eyes off the businessmen as he grabbed the student's arm and hauled him away from his desk, "let's go and say hello."
"Bryce! What are you doing?" Hillary demanded, realising that Bryce was off on a tangent again and darting after him, but before he could receive an answer they had attracted the attention of the Nintendo executives, and were now being regarded curiously.
"Hello!" Bryce began, grinning and holding out his hand to shake that of the team leader, "I have a game demo that I think you might be very interested in seeing." The student just stood there, looking terrified, so Bryce, still grinning at his target, elbowed him in the ribs, prompting a broken, stuttered stream of Japanese in a bad accent as he began to translate.
The businessman, smiling politely, said something in return and began to turn away. "He says you'll have to go through the official channels. I think," the student said.
"You think?" said Bryce, before darting over to stand in front of the executive once more. "Please, Sir, you know as well as I do that no-one will listen to me!"
Sighing irritatedly, the businessman looked to the Australian for a translation and, eventually working out what was being said to him, decided to end the meeting nice and quickly. "Tell him," he said to the student in Japanese, "that if he wins Takeshi's Castle, I'll tell my secretary to set up a meeting for him."
Lara casually walked over to Cheney, who was standing on a balcony looking down on a team that had just returned from a mission that had left them bloody, broken, dirty and one man down. Staggering towards the medical area, held up by each other's arms, or being rushed off on gurneys, the team limped back in from what looked to Lara like an ambush, the team leader following slowly behind, weary faced, with his dead soldier limp in his arms, blood staining his commander's jacket.
"Ambush?" Lara asked quietly, coming to stand next to him and leaning on the railing, watching the team drag themselves away.
"It was expected," Cheney said stonily, "they were bait. Team Seven is out there now cleaning up the prey."
Lara remained silent for a few moments and then asked, "Why are we still alive?"
Cheney barely reacted, just continuing to look down on his team. "What makes you think that I wanted you both dead?"
"That's what Kurtis seemed to think."
Cheney gave a small laugh, smiling ironically. "Mr Trent is very perceptive."
"Yes. He is."
"Marcus was inspired enough to disobey me and to try to bring you both back in. He succeeded, and until I decide whether to overrule that decision or let it go, I'm letting you live. You're still both massive security risks, and it would probably be easier if you were both…out of the picture, but that's hardly reason enough to kill you. I won't take such a permanent action until I've thought things through."
"That didn't stop you ordering Marcus to make sure neither of us ever left those caves."
"You were supposed to die anyway, and as for Mr Trent – well, it's easier to kill someone that you don't feel indebted to."
"So you might turn on us yet," Lara said, almost to herself, rubbing her hand over her upper arm as though cold.
Cheney laughed again, slightly bitterly, and turned away from the balcony to face her. "I'm not a monster, Ms Croft. I'm just a man who has to make some very tough decisions." He smiled then, a little sadly, and strode off purposefully.
"Shades of grey," Lara said to the empty building around her.