Whatever happened to Lara in those few seconds she became that…thing, it completely destroyed all of the electronics she'd brought with her to the underground, including her semi-automatic and her earpiece/ camera hookup. I could imagine Zip frustratedly pacing the tech room swearing about what he'd just seen, though I can't think that could have been the first time he's witnessed something like that. Not working eight years with this woman, that is.
I tear one of the legs of my jeans and tie it around her shoulder, where I'd shot her. I shot her. Just thinking that statement makes me sick to my stomach. The wound isn't bleeding, but I think maybe the pressure might help with the pain she's obviously still in.
"I'm sorry," I whisper, too emotively for my own good. My breath hitches at the memory of everything that's happened in the last day. "I'm so sorry."
"No," she grunts, jaw locked as I tighten the vice. "You reacted quickly. I'm proud of you."
Hearing that from her makes my chest swell, though the sight of the badly bruised flesh around the bullet scar causes my fingers to quiver horribly. She turns her head into me and presses her temple to my nape. I grab her close eagerly, wrapping my arms around her waist from behind.
"You're alive," she breathes.
"I'm not the one who was in danger that whole time," I sniffle, inhaling deeply into her hair. Her transformation had blown all of the disgusting slime from Vymes' body off of her and left her cold and smelling of ice.
"That isn't important." Yes Lara, you've made it overwhelmingly clear that you don't give a shit what happens to you. I clench my eyes tightly shut and focus on the pulse I can feel against the top wing of her pelvis.
"Yes it is," I contest.
"Thought you would die," she mutters after a long while. "Like the others. Like…" The pause is wet and heavy. "Like Wally. That son of a bitch, I told him not to come. I told him to find another pilot."
I recall what Zip had told me that night she freaked out. 'She thinks she's a cancer. She thinks everyone she gets close to is eventually dead meat if they hang around her too long.'
That's completely fucking unfair. Unfair and tragic. She had been expecting to lose me on this trip. She'd been counting down to my death. What if I hadn't thought of grabbing the gun while she was busy dismembering Vymes? What if I didn't panic and shoot her when she advanced on me? She looks so goddamn tired. The water would have eaten her up inside like it did Vymes.
'Do you think she's any better than me?'
Had she been? She hadn't turned into a disgusting mound of rotten flesh-mud, but she acted out so savagely, like a rabid animal. And the way she looked at me; I knew the second her eyes laid into mine that she would rip me apart if I let her. She had no discrimination for friend or foe. Everyone was her enemy, everyone had to die. The remaining puddle of the Water of Hecate squirmed and crawled like dozens of maggots climbing over each other on the earth just a few feet away; I shivered violently and kicked a pile of dirt over it.
"We should get out of here," she concedes, pushing herself to her feet unsteadily.
"What about those men?"
"I don't think that's going to be a problem." I quirk my brow at her and watch as she leans against a stone pillar to keep herself upright. "God, I feel bloody awful." Mere seconds after she says this, she leans over and vomits about a half gallon of glowing blue something; it looked like what her skin had been made of after exposure. It's writhing about the way the water did.
I swallow hard and avert my eyes from it.
"What the fucking hell is that?" She says disgustedly, curling her nose and stepping back.
"I think that's the last of whatever you just were." She purses her lips and grimaces, covering her mouth with the flat of her palm.
The climb back onto the main floors of the building is, to say simply, a huge pain in the ass. It's the part of the movie they skip to keep the audience from losing interest. Lara was weakened, and I'm in no physical condition to make a straight up ascent. Eventually, we work out a system of alternating roles that gets us to the vent we'd fell from. In no kind of hurry we could manage, we'd literally thrown ourselves into it and nearly passed out on top of each other.
I examine Lara for the first time in maybe an hour; she's pale and sweaty, chest bobbing irregularly and breathing coming in rasps.
"What's wrong?" I ask urgently. Stupid question, yeah, but I don't know what is feels like to go through what had just happened to her.
"Sick," she answers, rubbing her eyes uncomfortably. "Feels like my cells are having an uprising."
"I think you might be in shock." Sounds about right, right? I wipe her forehead with the belly of my shirt. She huffs after a few moments and pulls herself along the vent until we emerge where we'd come in outside of Vymes' office. The entire floor is littered with ash and debris, and the direction we'd left Wally was absolutely obliterated. She takes one look down the hall, winces with a pained hiss through her teeth and turns away down towards the corridors. Even in this condition, she waves at me to stay behind her.
She had been right about the guards. All over the mansion, there was no one. No bodies, no piles of clothes like in the basement of the manor. Not even the sounds of birds when we found our way outside.
"Where is everyone?" I question nervously. She coughs and wobbles to the side.
"Vymes was an illusion. Just a shadow . Perhaps he turned all of his men into shadows, too."
The laser system was still active, or so it seemed. Lara put her foot through the first stream of light, and there was no reaction to it. Alarms didn't blare, people didn't start shooting. I put my foot through the second one, and still nothing. Stiffly, we walked through the sprawling lawn, step by wobbling step, and paced into the underbrush on the outskirts of the property.
"Where are we going?" I ask after a long while of what felt like aimless wandering in the sprawling forest.
"Waiting for Zip to pick up the signal from my emergency beacon." It didn't seem like she could muster an answer more elaborate than that, so I left it alone. Hopefully the beacon is analog and not electric based. It kind of sucks that she's so much taller than me; I couldn't help her stand and I couldn't provide support more than clinging to her arm and praying she didn't just fall over. She's one hundred percent muscle and she's dense as a damn stone; I don't think I could carry her.
The sky is clear, and the mists had lifted, leaving the environment sticky and uncomfortable. As the sun begun to set, the toll Vymes had taken on Lara becomes more and more evident. She lowers herself against a wide tree trunk and groans, sitting down on the wet moss. She doesn't throw up again, but it's kind of obvious she wants to.
"I think you should get the rest of that junk out of your system, sweetie." I rub her back gently. She curls her legs up to her chest and rests her head against her knees, and remains quiet. It's getting cold, and dark. I hope Zip's found us; I don't want to spend tonight out here.
A helicopter descends on us in the middle of the night, and wakes us both. I'm sore as shit and Lara really looks bad when Zip leaps out of the cockpit and runs to us.
"Jesus," he says gruffly. "Can she walk?" The helicopter's motors were still on, whirling with horrible noise above us.
"I don't think so," I croak nervously. He hoists her into his arms without a second thought; I trail behind him, shielding my face from the propeller's wind as I step into the pit. There's another pilot, waving us in, and suddenly I really think its Wally sitting there. It's not, obviously, but I'm still glad Lara's not awake to see him. Zip pulls the giant door shut, and the ground lifts under us; it's a strange, satisfying feeling to finally be separating ourselves from that evil place.
He lays her down gingerly next to my seat, flickering a flashlight in her eyes. "Talk to me, girl," he says. "Tell me what's going on?" She moans forcefully and turns onto her side, smacking the light out of her face. He sighs and clamps his huge hand over her forehead.
"She's cold as hell," he says to me. "What happened? Did she get shot or something?"
I rub the back of my neck and suppress the butterflies in my stomach at the thought of earlier events. "Do you know anything about the Water of Hecate?" I ask unsurely; I really had no business even talking about something like that.
"Yeah, I helped Lara find it when she made that deal with Vymes the first time. She said it had some weird ability to project souls. It was some fucked up shit, from what I remember. I couldn't believe she actually gave it to him." His arms slip out of his thick coat as he throws it over Lara and props her head up on the balled up hood.
"Yeah, well…He wasn't a person when we went down there. He was some kind of….monster."
He runs his fingers through his thick dreadlocks. "Shit."
"He had her, forced her to touch the water, too. And…jesus, Zip. Vymes was big. Huge, even. Bullets didn't do shit, nothing could even tickle him. But she ripped him apart like he was made of paper after she changed. Not a monster, but something else. Something even worse, maybe." I rest my arm on her chest and feel for her heartbeat. It's a low, dull pulse that warms me just enough.
He sits quietly in thought for a while, watching her. "That doesn't surprise me too much, I guess. She's a force to be reckoned with without any supernatural help."
Silence falls between us again as the helicopter bobs and weaves gently out and away from Vymes' territory. I shiver and pull Lara's head into my lap, pushing her braid to the side and brushing her bangs out of her face. She mumbles something I don't understand and exhales softly; Zip watches us in a pondering way and scratches his brow.
"I'm glad she let you go with her."
I glance up at him, then back down to the woman resting on my thighs, then to the nasty red and purple bruise that had spread out from my wrapping around her shoulder and crawled all the way down to her chest.
"I'm not sure I feel the same," I mutter grimly.
"I'm sure she does."
I pick my eyes off of her too fast for my own heart, praying I'd heard him correctly. He read her better than I ever could; he'd known her for so long already, and their interactions were different from anyone else's. I trusted him, his opinion. "You think so?"
"She enjoys small victories just the same as big ones," he nods, tapping her booted foot with his fingertip. "She'll be thrilled you're unhurt after all of that. And besides, who knows what would have happened to her if you hadn't taken that shot? She'd probably still be possessed; Lara's never been a fan of being possessed."
I smile lopsidedly. "So this kind of thing happens all the time around here, too?"
He shrugs and grins in a small way. "Explosions, possessions, ancient evil water that turns you into a demon, all a day in the life of a Croft." He pauses, weaving his fingers together on his knees. "Takes a strong person to go through that. You too, Sam. She's gonna be real happy you managed to come back in one piece. Most people in your position aren't that lucky."
Those words make my eyes wet almost instantly. I swallow the lump in my throat and sniffle, hiding my reaction the best I could. I'm pretty sure he catches it anyways.
I somehow manage to get a split-second's worth of sleep on the flight back, hunched over Lara as she progressively began to get her color back. The farther we separated ourselves from the source of her sickness, the better she looked, until she finally opened her eyes as we landed and grumbled. I'd nearly started crying again when I woke up and she was staring up at me with the most relieved looking expression I think I'd ever seen on her.
"You shot me, you ungrateful cur," she jokes raggedly, slapping the side of my thigh under her head. "How dare you?"
I bark a laugh and help her sit up. Her head is obviously still swimming. "Christ," she bites, grabbing onto the ceiling loops to get herself to her feet. She looks around, dazed, and a sharp tinge of distress passes over her face and she makes eye contact with the pilot.
"Easy, Lara," I urge quietly, hooking my arm inside of the crook of hers. I'm reminded how heavy she is when she stumbles out of the pit and nearly falls over; Zip catches her before she hits the ground, thankfully, since my puny self wasn't gonna do anything to slow that fall.
"I'm so tired," she drawls, hoarse with exhaustion. My body hurts, my brain hurts, everything just feels bad. I really can't imagine doing this voluntarily, nearly every day. Zip wraps her arm around the back of his neck and holds her waist to keep their balance; I think he knows better than to carry her when she's conscious. I get the door to the massive manor open for them as they approach, grinding my teeth at the horrible racket the helicopter made as it took off.
"I'm gonna decalibrate the emergency beacon before someone else manages to track us, just in case," he mentions as he sets her down on the foyer couch. "Keep an eye on her."
I nod at him broadly, squeezing her hand and kneeling next to the couch as he went to the huge glass room by the double staircase.
"He got me good," she winces.
"You got him better."
"You got me good, too."
I hang my head. "I'm sorry."
She runs her fingertips up my forehead and into my bangs, pulling my hair back and leaning me in very close. Her lips press between my eyes firmly, lingering after they lose their purse. I can feel her warm breath on the bridge of my nose; it makes my heart quiver. "You have good instincts," she whispers. "Trust them. What you did back there saved both of our lives. I just wish Wally had been so lucky."
"How do you feel?" I ask gently, daring not to move.
"Wasted," she grimaces. "But not nearly as bad as before." She pulls her hand away from my head and I withdraw back only a little. "I'm going to miss that old git. I remember he got himself shot in the fight with Aulgood when we snuck in through the skylights. 'Don't worry, Sheila. I'd got skeet bites worse than this,' he'd said. He was a tough one." Her eyes are clear and firm, not stone like they had been when I first met her. There's a comfortable quiet that blooms as she settles into the cushions, kicking her boots off and wriggling out of her belted holsters.
"Shouldn't you be getting back to the real world, Miss Nishimura?"
I quirk my brow at her, off-guard. "Are you really gonna tell me to buzz off after all that?"
"Not at all. I think you've earned the right to come and go as you please." She continues thoughtfully, "But you have a life outside of all of this, don't you?"
I sit on my heels and hum to myself. "I guess. Alex is probably wondering what's been happening and who knows what's going on with that whole internship deal."
"You haven't talked about that in a while."
I look around at the grandness of this spectacular, almost other-worldly place. The marble columns, the glass ceiling. The massive art pieces and priceless artifacts decorating the space. It was like being inside another universe when I was here; suddenly, the real world didn't seem so real anymore.
"I don't know. I guess a job at the History network doesn't sound so exciting as of late." I grin at her, and she joins in the motion knowingly. "But I really should just go and check on things." I perk up as an idea crosses my mind. "You can come with me! I mean, I don't know if the great Duchess of Abbington dare venture into the peasant streets." I make a ludicrous hand gesture mocking a queen's wave and she slaps my shoulder playfully.
"Don't be ridiculous. I'm not that kind of royalty."
"Duh," I drawl. "Come on, it'll be fun. Just a simple outing for a day." My eyes catch the twisted purple on her chest. "Well, after you get a chance to recover."
"Please. I've lived through much, much worse. We can leave tomorrow. Shouldn't negate responsibilities, as they say." Her eyelashes waver in her vision for a moment, hung heavily.
"I think maybe we should both get some sleep first, though," I mutter. She shifts uncomfortably on the couch.
"In an actual bed, preferably."