Prelude
She walks in a very particular way, like a brick wall is baring down in front of her, and she is a wrecking ball that could blast through it without a second glance. She walks like the whole world stands in her way, but she knows she could crush them under the weight of her heel. She walks like death is smiling at her, and she's smiling right back. She walks alone, uncontested by her solitude, content with the barren hallways and the empty staff rooms and the silence of the open foyer. With the portraits staring with dead eyes and the piles of ancient books stacked in the corners of every room. She is alone, but not lonely, or maybe resigned to singularity.
Around them, the manor stands rigid, and lifeless. The marble colonnades are static against the coffered ceiling in the main galley, and the pathways winding and weaving through the architecture are breathless and still, beside themselves. Windows remain shut to the rest of the population, tall cherry wood doors remain closed. And within the insides of this dead beast, Lara Croft paces its ribs and polishes its skeleton and orchestrates its swan song with the gentle tapping of her bare feet against hard, cold marble bone. She lives inside the sarcophagi of her expired past, her father, her mother, whom she blamed herself wholly for, her treacherous lovers and her betrayed friends and her own heart, heavy as weighted steel and diamond. Regret is not in her nature. But perhaps in her farthest recesses she wished the beginning of herself hadn't stripped her of it.
I already know that I shouldn't be here. I already know that whatever it is that I was thinking of doing, sneaking into the Manor of Lara Croft and teasing an interview out of her, was pretty illegal by itself. But this entire place has a quietly haunted air to it that's making me feel like I should pull a heel turn and book out. It's like walking around in…in a….alright, for lack of a better word, a tomb. It's impeccably clean and remarkably decorated, but empty, and still.
The Duchess leads me through hallways Zip had shown us through before, and then passed them, into halls behind bookshelves and locked doors and dormouses. Into rooms that breathe on their own.
"I know what the press likes to portray me as," she says as we approach a wall of brick at the end of the series of false tunnels. The way had turned dark, and medieval, our only light being that of oil torches tethered to the walls. I get the feeling that they've been here much longer than the rest of the manor has.
"I'm not press," I say quickly, despite myself. She razes the surface of the stone with her fingertips and pushes a single one in; it creaks expectantly and lets out a series of mechanical clicks.
"Yes, well. That changes very little now, doesn't it?" The wall responds to her beckoning and slides back with massive strained sound; she slips around it with little difficulty. I follow her into the darkness and immediately wish I hadn't.
The door slides shut behind me, and I'm surrounded with blackness. Dark, and something else. Something alive, I can feel it in my guts and behind my eyes and in my brain. This is not an empty room. Desperately I reach out for her, for something familiar. My fingers catch the soft silk of her button down and hold it tight.
A limb wraps around my shoulders and I shriek in response. "Calm down," she says in a whisper; I'm relieved to feel the arm belongs to her. As intimidating as she is, it's hard to feel threatened by anything else when she's around. She walks me a long distance through the darkness, and still I have that horribly eerie feeling that we're being watched, sized up.
We stop, and I'm panicking. I don't want to stop in here. I don't want whatever's following us to catch up. I pull closer to her and shudder, whispering, "Let's go, let's go," flustered.
A light flickers above us, and the thing I couldn't see with the lights off disappears.
We're in a room of glass cases, and inside each was an artifact of some kind, or at least that's what I can assume. Ancient weapons hang proudly, mounted with silvery chains, from the walls; scepters and swords and staffs and tridents and things I can't identify on sight all stare back at us with old, blind eyes.
"What is all this?" I ask quietly, that malicious presence still hanging in the air.
"Possessed objects, mostly weapons of some kind. Pieces I couldn't rightly leave out in the world."
Possessed? I narrow my eyes at the objects suspiciously. Things couldn't actually be possessed. There's no such thing as ghosts or spirits or any of that nonsense, right? The air carries the scent of fire and burning rubble and I'm just about ready to leave now.
"They like to say that these relics were meant for museums, and that I am doing society a selfish disservice by keeping them on my estate. They don't believe that objects can be angry, or vengeful, or evil. Or dangerous." She looks down at me, standing four inches taller and much more confident. "What do you think, Ms. Nishimura?"
"I…" Shaking my head, I search for the words. Possessed…I've been talking to this woman for an hour at most and suddenly she's prying at my entire worldview. Evil. That was a good word for describing the energy in here. Even with the lights on, I can't bring myself to let go of her. If I let go, if her and I become separate entities in the eyes of whatever's watching us, I'll be dead for sure.
The opposite wall slides away the same way the other one did, and we're out. I let go of her strong arm and take a step forward. "Whatever's in there," I mutter, "I'm glad it's staying there."
She looks mildly pleased with my response. "We don't have to go back that way, do we?"
"No," she replies, lighting the torches on the walls. "I wouldn't fancy that myself."
We walk through another series of rooms, many of which were strangely configured. The Scion fragments need to be kept separated, she narrates. This key opens the Armory of Themopolis. The Ankh of Osiris can be used to resurrect the dead, but with unforeseeable consequences. She tells me stories of events and people and places that existed far beyond our reach, all accompanied with the artifacts to prove her tales. I listen dumbfounded as she tells me how she's died before, many times in fact, and gone to a different place every time. Once, to an Egyptian underworld, where a pharaoh tried to bride her for spoils. Once, to Avalon, where a God-Queen tried to end the world. Once, to a sacred high place where all of the Gods in the Universe told her she wasn't welcome. Once, where a woman with black wings gave her a small stone and a sword and banished her.
She holds the Black Mandala in front of her and it quivers between her fingers. She hooks Thor's Gauntlets to the backs of her hands and they with bright blue light. She holds Excaliber in a vice grip and it whines like tempered glass.
My eyes couldn't be any wider. This collection, this could change the way everyone in the world saw everything! She could prove afterlife, she could bring the dead back to life, she could open wormholes and portals and other dimensions, if everything she said was true.
But is it?
She places the King Arthur's sword back on its ivory stand.
"If you won't let me do a report," I say hesitantly. "Why did you bring me here?"
Croft remains motionless, her back to me, for a long moment before she sheathes the blade and turns. "I enjoy your tenacity, Nishimura. But for all that I've shown you, do you really think anyone out there would believe a word of it? These are all myths to them. But you can feel it, can't you?" She exhales and walks to the other end of the room; I follow her without question. "These 'trinkets' and 'falsities' and 'legends', they're alive. Bloody hell, they have emotions and memories and intelligence. If these were fantasies, they would be empty, the way a kitchen knife is, or a fake skull. But they have substance that is beyond what we can comprehend. I'm at peace with that. But the rest of the world is not."
She's saying they aren't ready. Hell, I sure as hell wasn't, and under other circumstances, I'd laugh, tell her she's crazy and I'd be done with all this. Honestly I don't know what's stopping me from doing just that.
My doubt must be obvious because she sighs, and opens the next door. "Alright, Miss Nishimura. I will show you something that will make you understand."
Her steps towards the only fixture in this room, a golden bowl held on a white marble pedestal, are calculated and quietly, as if she'd suddenly entered a sacred place. Tentatively, she dips her hands into the bowl, the water bending the shifting around them, murmuring something to herself as she does. As she pulls her hands out, the liquid slides from them in an unnatural way and they emerge, bone dry. She instructs me to do the same and, my curiosity at its highest, I do. The water isn't water, it's alive, crawling, like maggots in a hoard. I try to jerk away but she holds them under, muttering again in a language that I'm sure has been dead for a long time.
A suddenly, my mind is open. I see the doorways of Hell and the shifting sands of ancient deserts and I see Gods fighting each other for some of the very pieces in the rooms before. I see my ancestors, I see the Queen my grandfather used to tell me stories about and her army, her stormguard, marching in her honor. I see oceans and empires and dynasties rise and fall and rise again. I see Atlantis and Themopolis sink into the sea.
I see my dead grandparents, rosy cheeked and dressed in purple satin robes.
When I come back to the world, I'm crying and Miss Croft is the only thing keeping me from collapsing. "I shouldn't be here," I sob, beside myself. "What did you do to me?"
"I showed you," she whispers, helping me to the cold floor to sit.
"No one else can ever see this." She nods in agreement. "Wars will start. People will freak out."
"I know," she says evenly.
"You were right to never do those interviews. Everyone would think you were completely fucking crazy."
"I know."
After a while of trying to absorb everything I just saw, I swallow hard and attempt to pull myself to my feet. Her hand is cool to the touch when she helps me up. "Sorry," I sniffle, wiping my face dry.
"Don't be. I reacted different my first time, but only because I'd already known the supernatural exists. I could have shown you something similar with the Scion, but the Well of Life's water is a bit more gentle."
God, this is all insane. Only, it isn't. It's real. She's real. And for the first time in my life I feel significant. I feel like I'm part of something important, something greater than myself.
"Thank you," I mutter. I don't think she hears me, but it's just as well.
When we come back up to the manor, the air smells different, fresher, I guess.
"Shall we have tea?"
I shiver, and nod.
a/n: Getting pretty deep into Tomb Raider lore with this one. Hope everyone still enjoys it :)