Part I: Interlude
'Reunion'
In Prague
Blood.
So much blood…the floor underneath her feet was slick with it. It seeped through the circular holes in the metal flooring, making scarlet swirls in the water beneath. Lara's eyes narrowed momentarily in distaste, and she stood for a moment, trying to imagine what had happened there. Then, bending down, she slowly scooped up Kurtis' strange weapon, her mind still running scenarios.
Suddenly, the disk came to life in her hands, and she experienced a mild shock as the blades extended of their own accord. The weapon twisted strangely, humming, tugging her insistently first this way, then that, and finally in the direction of the large, darkened hallway. A faint smile illuminated Lara's features as she followed its urging.
The hallway was dark indeed. After she had gone a few metres, she couldn't see a thing, and she found herself wishing for one of the flares she had always carried with her on expeditions. Kurtis could be lying, injured and unconscious, close by in the dark, and she'd never know unless she actually tripped over him. Lara passed a hand across her eyes; they still hurt from the explosion of searing white light that had signaled the end of the Sleeper minutes before, just as her ears still rang with Karel's shattering howl of pain and rage.
She continued walking. Mercifully, after a few more moments, she found she could make out the rough metal of the walls to either side. The hallway was coming to an end, opening out into a huge cargo bay like the one she'd entered the fortress through. Large grey containers littered the area, and a high metal walkway ran along an entire wall to her left, linked to the floor by a narrow ladder. On the far side, another hallway was visible, identical to the one she stood in. Could Kurtis have come through here? If he was badly injured, as was almost certainly the case, it was hard to see how he could have got this far alone. Scanning the bay, Lara detected no sign of movement, friendly or otherwise.
She glanced down at the disk, now lying dormant in her hand.
"Come on..." she murmured, raising it in the air."Help me find him..." but it remained still and unresponsive. A corner of her mouth quirking in resignation, Lara quickly considered her options. In the absence of a clear lead, she decided to simply follow the way ahead and look out for signs of Kurtis as she went.
Be careful, Lara...she mentally warned herself. Eckhardt may have been dead, and Karel defeated, at least for now, but others of their accomplices could still be here. Caution was definitely called for. Flattening her back against the cold metal, she leaned out and peered warily around the corner before moving into the open area. She listened for a moment, then slid forward. It seemed safe enough.
The mazelike loops and turns of the Strahov's long corridors were silent, with no sign of enemy or ally. With an unpleasant feeling of being the only rat left on the sinking ship, she quickened her pace.
When she reached the dark outside it was an entirely different story. Men in uniform, armed, were milling everywhere, accompanied by bristling Alsatians.
She drew back against the wall, biting her lip. Presumably it wouldn't be long until they started investigating the fortress, but even if they found their way through into the lower reaches, Eckhardt's lab had been pulverized along with the mortal remains of the Alchemist himself- and the Glove. She doubted there would be enough evidence to exonerate her. The whole thing sounded like something out of the X-Files anyway. And what would that make me-Scully, alone and Mulder-less?
No, she could not afford to consider the police her friends. She sought out the shadows and moved stealthily away, the falling snow covering a multitude of footprints.
x x x
Her return to England, like the previous one, had been unglamorous, born out of nothing more than the fact that she simply didn't know what else to do. Bone-weary, needing to remain anonymous, she'd retrieved the late Cleaner's jeep and driven to the nearest port.
Having no money left, she had purred and batted her lashes at the grizzled captain of a cargo ship, promising "payment" that he'd never receive, since she'd slipped from the hold and disappeared into the night like a cat the minute the ship docked at Portsmouth.
She had scouted round the loading area, but the only lorry driver who'd been willing to give her a lift had insisted that she sit with him in the front, looking her up and down and grinning in a way that made her feel dirty. So rather than spend the journey keeping his paws off her, she'd ended up walking all the way back to Surrey along the A3, a journey that took most of the night, face lowered against the cold and lashing rain with only the occasional rumble of passing trucks for company. Then, since her key was probably inside a Rottweiler somewhere in Paris, she'd found herself in the unenviable position of having to break into her own house.
The drainpipe running up the outside wall of her bedroom had seen better days, but it held her weight-just. It had started to wrench itself away from the brick as she swung sideways and grabbed for the balcony railing. Halfway through the window, she was just beginning to congratulate herself on an effective break-in when a white light shone straight into her eyes, blinding her.
She squinted into the dazzling glare. Holding a hand in front of her beleaguered eyes, at the edges of the light she could just about make out a menacing shape, something long and thin with a circular, spiked end.
Since when did I keep a mace in the house? she thought, alarmed, not liking her weary body's chances of defending itself against such a fearsome weapon.
"Halt! Friend or foe?" came a reedy but determined voice from beyond the light.
"Winston!" said Lara, torn between relief and annoyance. She dropped stiffly to the carpet. "I thought I'd sent you on an extended leave of absence?"
Winston flicked off the torch and drew himself up as much as his arthritic back would allow. "In fact you did, Miss Croft, but I came to you along with this house, and until I die or it falls to the ground, I intend to remain here. Besides, someone had to feed the fish…"
He shuffled over to the light switch. As yellow illumination flooded the room, she got a good look at the object he was still clutching in his other hand. It was white, and the "spikes" on the end were in fact clusters of bristle.
She plucked it out of his hand. "A toilet brush? I see. Presumably, your plan was to cause me to collapse with laughter and then beat me to death with the bristly end."
"It was the only thing to hand at the time, Miss Croft," replied Winston with dignity.
He had kept her bed fresh, the pillows plumped and the lavender-scented sheets neatly turned down. She'd never quite had the heart to tell him that she didn't like lavender; he'd been using it since Great-Aunt Deborah slept in this room as a young woman.
Collapsing into the bed without even bothering to wash first, she slept for hours without dreaming.
x x x
The next day was one of those brilliantly clear winter mornings that looked warm until you stepped out into it, blazing sun and not a cloud in the cornflower blue sky.
Turning off the flow of water, Lara leant back against the cool shower tiles and stared moodily out at the wooden towers of her assault course. It would have been all too easy to forget the whole thing, Kurtis, Nephilim and all, and head off to South America on some random artifact-gathering quest. But that would have been mere circumvention; everything that had happened in her life during the past four years had led her to this point, and if there was one thing Lara Croft believed, it was that things started should be also finished.
The only question was how to finish it.
The next few days, which seemed to merge endlessly into one another, were spent recuperating and trying to work out her next move. Chafing at the uncertainty and forced confinement, she drifted from room to room, snapping at a patient, undeserving Winston whenever he crossed her path. Waiting for something, anything, to happen.
She scanned the news channels several times a day for word of Kurtis and found none. His deadly disk sat on her chaise longue all the while, unresponsive to her repeated pokings and proddings, like a sullen dog that would acknowledge no voice but that of its master.
Living like a prisoner made her mood steadily worse, so that even Winston started to arrange his duties to keep himself out of her way. Boredom and anxiety combined to key her up to such a pitch that when the alarm system began wailing in the small hours and her window crashed inwards in a shower of glass, it was a relief.
She was wide awake on the instant, kicking back her bedcovers. Her pistols were in her hands a split second later, targeting unhesitatingly the dark shapes dotted all over her balcony and moving towards her with trained precision. She dived sideways, opening fire.
The skirmish was brief and its outcome inevitable; she was hopelessly outnumbered and without room to maneuver. Still she managed to pick several of them off before her pistols clicked empty, and she found herself backed up against the remains of her French windows with better than half a dozen assault rifles targeting her head.
She steeled herself, but the expected coup de grace didn't come. She was at their mercy, but they weren't advancing.
Orders to capture and not kill, perhaps?
The one closest to her confirmed her thoughts. "I'm afraid you'll have to come with us, Miss Croft."
Interesting. It seems someone wants me alive…
She decided to test the theory. Snatching up the disk, she laced her fingers through the holes, and brought it up to her own throat.
Gritting her teeth, she willed the thing to obey her. To her shocked relief it sparked and quivered and the blades actually sprang out. Why it should choose this moment to animate itself she had no idea, but she was glad it had. She held it threateningly close to her jugular, and just as she thought, the men backed off, shooting apprehensive glances at each other. But it was still a stalemate.
Just as she was thinking this, a hand fell on her shoulder without warning, and another clamped firmly over her mouth. She struggled furiously, to no avail; she was dragged backwards onto the balcony, her arms pinned against her sides. Silently, she cursed herself for letting one of them get behind her.
As she fought to free herself, she felt the disk being pulled from her hand, and a masculine voice sounded close to her right ear.
"That's mine, I think...Ms. Croft." Its master's voice.
The grip on her arms was released simultaneously, and Lara whirled round to face someone she'd almost given up hope of seeing again, large as life and apparently unharmed.
He spared her a quick grin, then turned and fired rapidly over her shoulder at the other men, the disk darting in ahead of his bullets to blaze a trail of fiery disorientation, whirring from one man to another and leaving spurting red in its wake.
"Timely," was all she said before her well-honed survival instincts kicked in, and pulling herself together, she mimicked his actions. Their combined firepower made short work of their enemies, whose bodies were soon strewn all over her bedroom floor.
The now-bloodied disk curved a lazy arc back to the upraised hand of the man behind her, who holstered his gun and tossed his dark hair out of his intense blue eyes.
"Hey, Lara. How've you been?" said Kurtis Trent casually.
Thanks and donuts to everyone who reviewed chapter one! I think it may have confused a few people, so just to explain-chapter 1 is the very end of the story, the aftermath, and the rest of it is effectively one long flashback showing how they got to that point, OK:)
It was actually Star Wars that inspired me to do that. I was watching the prequels and loving the way they lead closer and closer to the status quo we know so well, at the start of the original trilogy. Doing it "backwards" in that way gave the whole thing, for me, a special kind of emotional resonance (I admit to getting quite choked up when I watched babies Luke and Leia being delivered to their new homes, to the accompaniment of their familiar theme music) That's why I thought I'd try a similar structure with this fic.
It's my 28th birthday in a week. Review and give me an early present!
Jordy xx
(can you tell I'm not much of a Legend fan...?)