We sit in the foyer for a long time, and we talk. By the crackling fireplace she pours tea for us; she makes mine just right without me even telling her what I like. Honey and cream. The fire spits glowing flireflies into the mantle as she tells me stories, like my grandmother used to.
Her voice is so warm and low in the darkness that I feel like I could fall asleep to it. The hot cup in my fingers and the ten-thousand thread count blanket on my shoulders keep me comfortable as she tells me a particular story that she says no one's ever heard before.
Only three people know this one, she says quietly, her tone grim. I'm going to tell you about Queen Himiko, and her Stormguard. And the lost island of Yamatai. I'm going to tell you what really happened.
She tells me about many deaths, from the beginning. About how she and her mother, Amelia Croft, crashed into snow covered mountains in Asia, how she disappeared in Avalon and died. She tells me about her father, Richard Croft, and how he was murdered by an ageless woman who later manipulated and tortured her. And she tells me about the man who taught her how to live on after without anyone's help.
Conrad Roth. She doesn't ever reference him as her father, or a father figure, but I see it in her eyes. They light up as she speaks of him; it makes me smile. I like seeing her that way.
Then there's a boat. A ship. And a crew. She shows me pictures, like the one in the journal labeled 'Mathias'. She's always the youngest one in the group, 20 years old, but she looked so happy amongst them. There are pictures of her mapping sea courses with a dirty looking old guy named Grimm, and of her reading histories with a man called Von Croy, and of her chatting with a husky, dark skinned cook named Jonah. There's a white haired man who instantly gives me the creeps, a tv host I remember from back in the day, James Whitman. And an unfriendly looking engineer named Josilin Reyes. All of them were at least in their mid-thirties.
Then, she tells me about the storm.
The ship cracks in half, and the ocean swallows it.
And spits them out on the island of Yamatai.
The name sends familiar shivers down my spine. She tells me of her nauseating fear, and how in just a few hours it got a hundred times worse. Bodies. Blood. I imagine Lady Croft shoving an arrow into Whitman's throat as she recalls the endeavor in vivid detail; he'd attempted to hold her hostage, to turn her over to the enemy, and he'd not known his mistake until he was gone.
"My first kill," she narrates. "And scores after my last." My insides knot, and somehow I still don't hate her for it. He shouldn't have taken me, she says. Had it been one of the others, it would have motivated her, maybe, to save them, to save the others.
But then, Roth was killed. And the shit hit the fan.
Up until this point, her tale had been described in colorful detail. But now, she speaks quickly and choppily and I can tell she's snipping parts of the story out. She shakes and tightens her body up like a wind up toy, taut and spring-loaded, and I collect her every word as it spills from her lips.
I wanted to kill them all. I had nothing left, she recounts with bated breath. I want to make them suffer.
So she turned into a predator. She hunted them, until she got her way to the top, an insane cult leader named Mathias, the man who'd killed the last people on earth who cared for her, by proxy. He bargained for his life though, by revealing Lara's suspicions about the storms to be correct; that they were supernatural, and even if he and every one of his men were dead, they wouldn't cease. He led her to the source, and as she went to destroy it, he turned on her.
Bullets. My eyes drift slowly down her body, down to the raised scar on her side; I'd thought earlier that it looked a lot like she'd been impaled. I feel my lips part in hesitation. I wanted to touch her, she's so fixated on the fire in the mantle that I probably could have and she wouldn't have noticed.
I finished Mathias, she shakes her head. And lit fire to the Sun Queen's temple. Her body went up in the flames, and the clouds just…parted.
She leans back into the plush couch and covers her eyes with the flat of her palm, and stays like that for a long time; she looks worn with a lifetime's worth of exhaustion by the time she's finished. I watch her silently, and against my better judgment I lift my left arm and drape my blanket around her shoulders. She startles in a small way, hints at a smile, and relaxes.
"I'm sorry," I whisper.
"You should be afraid, Miss Nishimura."
"Sam," I correct her, contemplating her words before very, very lightly resting my head against her strong shoulder to illustrate my point. She tenses, but doesn't move away.
"You…must be lonely."
She says nothing, but sighs tiredly and closes her eyes.
"So…Himiko was real?"
"Yes," she replies. "I couldn't believe it either; I'd seen the supernatural before, in the mountains that took my mother, but nothing so…tangible."
"And I'm actually related to her?" That was a funny and disturbing thought.
"Well, that I can't confirm," she breathes. "But if you are, I'm glad you weren't there with me."
My focus wanders to her hands in her lap; they're scarred, with nails cut short and long fingers thin and lean. "Why's that?"
"You would have been the perfect sacrifice. Mathias was looking for anyone of Asian descent to bring directly to the ritual where Himiko would choose a new host. Or something of that sort." She looks at her palms. "I'd no reason to fully understand what Mathias thought he was doing. After Roth was killed, I had a one track mind."
"I wish you would share this story with everyone," I mumble. She deserved to be respected and recognized for all of this. "I wish you'd let me…"
"No, Miss Ni- Sam. That place is evil, and it needs to be forgotten. Like the weapons in the cellar. Many would think I was mad, an attention monger, and the rest would question. They would rent boats and ships and they would sail to find answers. It's better off left in myth."
I think on her words for a while as she fixates again on the random patterns of the fire.
"It's late," she ponders. I look to the gilded grandfather clock in the corner. Two am. A yawn tickles at the back of my throat, but I subdue it.
"You going to bed?" The question seems invasive leaving my mouth for some reason.
"I don't sleep unless I can't avoid it," she muses. "I need to take a look at some maps I think." I lift my head up and she stands, stretching tall as she does. Her long muscles tense and display like peacock feathers and her silk button falls from her shoulders as she drops her arms back to her sides.
"What a lovely little mystery we have." She gathers a blanket from the far side of the mantelpiece and brings it to me. "You should rest. I'd imagine you've many things to think on."
"You're letting me stay?"
"Better here with my secrets than out there." She wears a bitter smile with her words, and my chest heats like an oven. I reach out as her hand leaves the blanket next to me and I grab her wrist tight. Her eyes flash then, viper's eyes that gleam at the hint of a threat before striking back. I speak before I'm struck.
"I told you," I say sternly. "I'm not a liar. I won't tell anyone, Lara."
She seems to startle at the use of her first name rather than the formal I'd been using.
After a moment she pulls away gently and turns her back to me, going off towards the labyrinthine hallways with her head held with a dignity I think I'd be crushed under if I had to carry. I watch her disappear behind the heavy mahogany door; she glances back at me for a moment, eyes and face unreadable as they always are, before she slips away and the door closes with a soft 'click'.
I spend the rest of my time awake listening to the crackling of the burning wood and the empty groan of the old manor as it shifts rigidly with the wind outside.