Please read The Witches' Library first or very little here will make sense. Set after Tomb of the Dragon Emperor. Also Alex is getting his English accent back. Apparently Luke Ford was doing an American accent in the third movie, but honestly as an Australian myself all I could hear was his Australian accent.
He hadn't exactly missed this place, he realised, with its ivory-covered walls, cobblestone courtyards and crotchety old professors that he swore he knew from his own time there even though at least another two generations had gone past since then.
Maybe they were keeping themselves alive out of pure spite and students' tears. It really wouldn't have been all that surprising.
Jonathan Carnahan strolled down the corridors of Oxford University with a spring in his step, a bottle of wine under his arm. It was a measure of the man that he was visiting that the bottle was still full, the seal still intact.
"George Fisher's office, please."
The pretty girl with the mathematics texts smiled before directing him where to go. Ah, that was one thing missing from his own Oxford experience. In his experience there were few things that couldn't be improved by a pretty smile.
"Georgie!" Jonathan flung himself into the room with all the pomp and flair of a chorus dancer, bottle of wine held up triumphantly like it was the only surviving relic of Atlantis. "Heard you've been in the darkest Amazon for the last year! I daresay that calls for a nice bottle of plonk after a whole twelve months without vice."
"Only you would feel the need to reward yourself just for not getting in trouble for a year." A mussed head popped up from behind a desk groaning under the weight of several boxes and a suitcase. "How did you get in?"
"Laundry cart." Jonathan replied, smooth as ever. "I'm getting a bit old to be larking about climbing in windows, but still want to keep things fresh."
"One could argue that you're getting a bit old to be larking about in general." George shooed Jonathan's questing fingers away from the open suitcase, smoothly closing the lid. "I notice that the old dog is still up to tricks." The professor eyed Jonathan's bottle of wine suspiciously before upending two tins of pencils, blowing them out and handing one to Jonathan.
His nose wrinkled. "Heinz Beans. I would have thought you'd be making a little more now you have tenure."
"I've seen you drink rotgut out of a boot polish lid. Don't tell me now you've gotten picky." George splashed a dram into both tins and the two of them toasted wordlessly. Mm, fruity with an aftertaste of wood shavings.
George stared down into his tin. "This reminds me of our last night in France after the armistice."
Jonathan smirked. "Except there's no massive ginger Australian dancing on tables and you still have your trousers on."
Georgie Fisher grinned, an echo of that tow-headed youth he had been shining in those clever green eyes.
"It's good to see you again, Carnie."
Carnage Carnahan, that's what they used to call him, joking that he probably caused as many injuries as he mopped up. And always the smart-mouthed little bastard he was, Jonathan would shoot back with how he was always taught to be proactive when it came to drumming up business.
"It's good to see you again too, Fish." Jonathan topped up their tins with a flourish like a Spanish publican. "Cheers. Now, if only out backs didn't go out more than we do!"
"Speak for yourself. I've spent the last year on a dig, old mate."
"Yes, yes, dear chap, a year stuck in a forest with a bunch of entitled graduates with more money than brains and no way out other than committing justifiable homicide. Colour me thoroughly envious."
George pulled a face at him and Jonathan grinned in a flash of teeth.
That was when someone slammed their fist hard on the classroom door, and both Jonathan and George looked at the closed office door. After everything that had happened to him since 1915, Jonathan was quite proud of himself for not immediately jumping through the ceiling. "Expecting visitors?"
"No." George gave Jonathan a sideways look. "But that doesn't seem to matter whenever you crop up."
"Oi, guv, you can't pin any of this on me, copper."
The door rattled again. George sighed.
"Sodding students. I swear they've got the nose of a bloodhound, probably queuing up for an extension on an assignment that hasn't even been set yet."
"You have to appreciate their dedication to procrastination." Jonathan said.
As George stumped away, leaning heavily on his wooden leg, Jonathan went around the other side of the desk and dripped into the big leather chair that had been shaped by generations of arses and did a little twirl. Because old habits died hard and all that, he tried each drawer on the off chance they just happened to be unlocked. What could he say, he had always been an insatiable looky-loo.
He heard the murmur of George's voice and the outraged trill of an indignant student. Fishy George Fisher had made a sport of baiting students even when he was a student, which made his choice of vocation a complete and utter mystery. It was like if Jonathan had a hankering to become a bobbie, or Rick suddenly developed an unalterable lure for the theatre.
"No." Georgie's voice boomed through the walls, causing Jonathan to drop the atrocious student essay he had been perusing. Bloody hell.
"-but Professor-" a student whined. "That's not fair!"
Jonathan straightened. That voice. He knew that voice. The accent that had the English carefully combed from it in some attempt to appear adult. Except when he was angry, of course, and all the King's English came flooding back in one long whine.
"Oh, bullocks." Jonathan whispered as he listened to his friend and the student verbally duke it out in the classroom beyond. He cracked the door open. Maybe he could just pick up a textbook and casually walk out, or even leg it out the window. Jonathan grimaced. No, the lattice-work didn't look like it would support a particularly robust rose let alone a full-grown man with perhaps a little more padding around the middle than he should have. Exit, pursued by a bear.
"-that is final." George turned to head back to his office and Jonathan snapped his head back around the door. The loo! Lock yourself in the loo! He was across the room with his hand on the powder room door handle when George entered, pursued by the irate righteous student in question.
There was absolute silence and Jonathan winced as he realised he had been spotted.
"…Uncle Jon?"
Ah, bugger.
Well, at least he derailed the argument by sheer force of his very presence. That had to count for something, right?
Jonathan wrinkled his nose before slowly turning around.
Alex O'Connell was standing there, blinking in astonishment. He was in a tweed suit, the shirt untucked and the tie twisted off to one side, giving the impression that he had dressed himself out of the clothes Rick had chucked on the floor. Jonathan attempted to muster up a smile.
"Howdy, partner."
"I'm going to have to ask you to leave, Mr O'Connell." George said in his best I Am A Professor voice.
That was it. Alex's back immediately went up, shoulders squaring. Jonathan winced again, recognising in him Evy's Bembridge Scholars or Death stance.
"But sir! What about my degree?"
George's normally open and agreeable face folded into a dark scowl speaking volumes about a teacher well and truly at the end of his tether, and Jonathan suddenly had a flash of intuition about why his old mate had voluntarily spent twelve months with the mud and malaria of the Amazon rather than soothe the fragile egos of the snot-nosed scions of the well-to-do in their ivory tower.
"You mean the degree that you've dropped out of three times in the past year?" George's voice started in a low register, and Jonathan just knew if let go, the man would end up in a good bellow, all Eton-given elocution vanishing like it had never been there. You could take the boy out of Manchester... "You mean the degree your mother begged me to get you into? The degree that destroyed my credibility when I vouched for you? That degree?"
Alex was beet-red. "Yes! I mean, no, I-" The more flustered he got, the more English Alex sounded.
"Why are you even here, Mr O'Connell? You are no longer a student."
"Yes." Jonathan said curiously. "I thought you were on a job in Syria."
Alex looked like he wished to argue further, but must have had at least one skirret of sense rolling about in his empty head that told him to hold his tongue.
"I can't- sanctioned excavations want qualified people," he finally admitted reluctantly.
Egads! Universities wanted people on their digs who actually knew the scientific method of archaeology. Who would have thought it? Jonathan snorted, and his nephew glared at him like it was personally his fault that you could no longer stick a shovel in the ground and call yourself an archaeologist.
"Don't give me that look, young man. I have my degree."
A somewhat bewildered look crossed Alex's face as he came face-to-face with the realisation that his terminally unreliable Uncle Jon had indeed successfully completed his studies. He did an about-face to face George once more, face pleading, eyes as big and wide and innocent as Alex could make them. Jonathan rolled his eyes. Little blighter, using all his tricks.
"Please, Professor, give me another chance."
At least dear old Georgie had known Jonathan himself long enough that there was no way he was going to fall for-
After a moment George nodded. "Mid-year enrolments open next week. With credit you may graduate in another two years."
"Two years?" Alex exploded in the way that kids under 25 tended to do, because two years was absolutely forever, don't you know.
"All papers will need to be resubmitted and reassessed, and your fieldwork will need to be signed off on by a qualified person." George's eyes narrowed, his tone implying that there would be no special treatment. "Someone who is not in your immediate family." He stressed. Yes, no getting Mummy to do your homework.
"But I've passed all my theory-"
"-then it should be easy enough to do it again-"
"-and my fieldwork was assessed by Professor Wilson-"
"Who turned out to be a Chinese spy." George said flatly. Jonathan sat on one of the desks, swinging his legs underneath him, head pinging back and forth like he was watching a match at Wimbledon. "A revelation that was apparently news to you despite working together for years."
Alex coloured.
"Mr O'Connell, you're smart and you have good instincts for this work, but your intuition when it comes to people is shot. You can't lead a team if you cannot comprehend the most base of humanity. Greed, jealousy, hate, if you're unable to identify and anticipate those in the people around you, you march yourself and others to your deaths."
The words Chinese Spy hung between them.
"You must learn caution, and control your impulsivity. If you don't there is a very good chance you will die."
Jonathan, Evelyn and Rick had been trying to get that through Alex's thick head for the last couple of decades, but it never seemed to carry that much weight when they were in and out of their own sticky situations, making it look rather do as I say, not as I do. And of course, Alex was never going to stand the hypocrisy. Who would have thought it, what.
Alex was quiet, pondering. Jonathan briefly wished he could take a photograph to send Rick. It actually looked like the kid was considering George's words. Of course, George was the professor that could possibly sink any future career. Rick was only just his father.
"I understand." He said finally, looking up from his shoes. "You're right. If I'm going to lead my own digs my team will have to be able to rely on me, rely on me not to lead them into danger and not do things on impulse."
Jonathan and George looked at Alex, waiting for the other shoe to drop. After a long moment Alex's troubled brow smoothed and he met George's eyes unwaveringly.
Jonathan suddenly had a horrible sinking feeling.
"Professor, what if I could organise my fieldwork to be assessed by a qualified, well-known figure in the field?"
Oh.
No.
"I work with the team, I pull my weight, and I prove that I belong here."
"Mr O'Connell-" George sighed.
"Professor Fisher, there's nothing wrong with my theory work, you know that. If I can get a vetted professional to agree that my fieldwork is good-"
"You want me to pass you if you can fool someone into thinking that you can do the work?"
"I can do the work-" Alex mercifully cut himself off before he went off on another tangent. "This person has a high level of professionalism, and expects a lot of the team, sir. Doctor Magnusson won't write me a letter because I ask her nicely."
George's eyebrows rose.
"Doctor Sigrun Sarsgard Magnusson?"
Little. Bastard.
Jonathan held up a finger. "One minute, George." His hand snapped out and grabbed his nephew's arm, fingers digging into Alex's bicep. With a burst of strength he wasn't expecting, Jonathan propelled Alex into the inner office and slammed the door shut.
"What the hell do you think you're doing?" He demanded.
Alex's penitent expression immediately faded.
"Uncle Jon, you always told me to seize an opportunity if it came my way." The kid grinned, a flash of perfect white teeth and sparkling blue eyes. "This is me seizing the opportunity."
Thanks to his careful machinations it wasn't often that he came up against the cold consequences of his actions. Jonathan really hated himself sometimes.
Alex slung his arm around his uncle's shoulders, eyes gleaming, teeth flashing, like the two of them were about to embark on a great adventure, and Jonathan was thrown right back into the days where he would do the same to Alex. Madcap quests! Strange sights! New people! Life was a nonstop adventure!
"The way I see it, Uncle Jon, it's simple." The blast of pure charm would have been overpowering if Jonathan hadn't been capable of doing the very same thing. He unpicked Alex's fingers and shrugged his nephew's arm off his shoulders.
"Do tell."
Alex looked momentarily crestfallen that Jonathan didn't immediately jump up and down with delight.
"Well, Old Fish is about to agree. I've got the old man right about softened up."
Jonathan raised an eyebrow. That 'old man' was six months younger than he was. "Right softened up."
Alex, ever oblivious, blundered onwards. "And then you get me onto the lady doc's team, charm her into giving me a glowing reference, and bam!"
Bam indeed. Jonathan had never wanted to box the little blighter's ears more than he did right then. "It seems to me that your little conspiracy seems to be riding quite firmly on me being a willing party to this odorous little scheme." Jonathan's eyes narrowed. Seemingly finally hearing the edge to his voice, Alex's bright smile faded.
"Uncle Jon, is something wrong?"
Yes, consequences. This was truly a beast of his own creation.
LATER…
Trains. He hated trains. He hated trains and he hated boats.
So this train on a boat was interminable.
He flicked through the novel Evy had recommended him, unable to get his eyes to focus long enough to make it through the first page. After a long moment he tossed the book aside and sunk down into the bench, stretching out his legs to rest on the cot opposite, puffing a lock of hair that had fallen over his face out of his eyes.
There was a moment of silence, and then the compartment door slid open. Without looking, Jonathan knew who was there.
"D'you need money for the lolly cart?"
"No." Alex paused, his brow crinkled up in thought. "Well, not right now."
With a groan, he straightened in his seat. "So, my dearest nephew, climb up on Uncle's knee and tell me all about what's worrying you."
"What? Nothing's worrying me. Why would you say that?"
Jonathan hooked a leg over his other knee. "Maybe because you're loitering on the threshold like a swooning heroine in a novella?"
His nephew grinned, letting go of the doorframe and stepping into the compartment. "Can't have that."
He paused.
"Uncle Jon, I just wanted to say. Thanks. For backing me up with Fish and the doctor."
Jonathan's eyebrows rose. "You didn't exactly give me a whole lot of choice. A jolly heads-up about your little scheme would have been nice before making me a witless accomplice."
"You never give anyone a head's up to your schemes."
"That's because over the years I have carefully fostered the expectation that I have an ulterior motive in everything." Jonathan replied. "It saves time when people just expect that there's something in it for me."
"Maybe I should start doing that." Alex mused, sitting on the bench seat beside him. "Keeping people off-balance."
"Pff, you've got your father's honest face. Neither of you can lie with a gun to your head."
"Hey, I can lie plenty fine."
"Maybe, but your face can't." Jonathan poked his nephew in the cheek and Alex battered his hand away, grinning.
"Uncle Jon?"
"Sorry, my limit for awkward enquiries is one. My office hours are from 10 to 3."
"Do you think I'm doing the right thing?"
"What?" Now that took him aback slightly. Alex had been quoting Herodotus since he was a tyke, proudly correcting visiting historians at the universities Evy had been invited to talk at. "Son, you've been wanting to be an archaeologist since you could talk. You've annoyed your professor into giving you a degree just so he won't have to deal with you anymore."
At that, he actually looked a little bit awkward. "That's not exactly-"
"That's exactly it and don't try to pretend any different." Jonathan said. "And now you don't want it?"
"I don't know, Uncle Jon. It's just – do you ever think you became something because of your parents?" Alex frowned. "I mean, your parents were also archaeologists, and I don't see it as a career you would have picked out for yourself-"
Ouch. "My dad was a rogue and a family disappointment and my dear old mum had an eye for treasure and the finer things." Jonathan said. He was well aware that he and Evy had Carnahan cousins out there somewhere, but when Father stopped kowtowing to the family he was all but dead to them. "In a way I was as set up for this life as you. I thought you liked the work."
"I did. I do. I just wonder sometimes, you know?"
He knew. If left entirely to his own devices Jonathan would have spent his life snoozing in the sun like a lizard. "I won't deny that they of course influenced me, but the stark facts are that I am where I am because I was my own charming self." He grinned. "And look back at everything you've done so far, you little manipulator. This is you. This is who you are. And unfortunately because of that you need that degree. You can't just write 'adventurer' on your resume anymore."
"Ha. Yeah." Alex's shoulders straightened a little.
"Better?"
"A bit." The kid said. "About the other thing. Do you think, you know, could-?"
"Uh-uh. Like I said before, I'm not greasing the wheels here. You make your own impression."
"I am making an impression." Alex complained. "It's just not the right one."
Well, Jonathan couldn't exactly say he was wrong there. But then again, he himself didn't exactly make the grandest first impression on Doctor Magnusson either. Maybe it was genetic.
"Pull back that ego and I'm sure you'll be fine."
"Yeah."
"You know what you're doing. You just need to prove that to the doc."
"Yeah." Alex straightened. "I got this. And I don't need you to charm anyone for me. I'm charming enough on my own."
"You remember what I said about pulling in that ego?"
"Aw, come on Uncle Jon." The kid shot him an all-boys-together grin. "You know I like older women."
"I can see that's doing wonders for you." Jonathan said flatly. "How's Lin?"
The question was decidedly all-too pointed, but Alex apparently didn't hear the prickliness.
Alex scratched his ear. "Oh, you know, she decided to go travelling. See the world."
Jonathan's eyebrows shot up. "Without you?" The last time he'd seen the pair they were practically joined at the hip. Or at the lips, and Jonathan had resigned himself to watching a re-enactment of Rick and Evy's early days all over again. Vomit.
"She wanted to do it herself." Alex said. "She said so in the letter."
Jonathan's eyebrows climbed even higher. "So she dumped you?"
That provoked an immediate reaction from the young man. "She didn't dump me." Alex fired back. "She just wanted to see the world without – and the letter – and-" Alex's eyes widened and he flopped back into the seat. "I've been dumped, Uncle Jon." The kid sounded so despondent that Jonathan bit back his inappropriate chuckle. He knew that there was a part of Alex that was as innocently clueless as Evy was, but that cluelessness had never really reared its head in such a laughable way before.
It took young Alex staring forlornly at the wall of the carriage that Jonathan realised that perhaps he should say something encouraging and uplifting, as the elder member of a previous generation.
"Listen, Alex." Jonathan wasn't the rousing speech kind of person. He was more of a sit back and laugh as you perish in an inferno created by your own stupidity. The only thing he tended to inspire was a deep-seated hatred in people. He sighed and tried again.
"Lin has... for a long time, longer than either of us can comprehend, Lin was chained to this... destiny." He stared at his interlocked fingers.
Oh Lord, he sounded like someone out of Evy's books.
"And now, her life is her own, for maybe the first time ever. Her mum isn't here and the world is something completely different from the one she knew. That young woman needs to figure out who she really is and find her place in this world. And she can't base her entire personality around being... your girl."
"Why not?" Alex groused, and Jonathan flicked his hand up, slapping his nephew sharply across the back of the head. Alex yelped.
"You may think that you're so mature and sophisticated, but, my boy, you have a hell of a lot of growing up yet to do." He said shortly.
"I really liked her, Uncle Jon." His nephew said plaintively.
"I know." Jonathan said. "And as trite as it sounds, if it's meant to be, you'll meet up again some time, some place. These things seem to happen, especially with this bloody family. But Lin needs to be your equal, and needs to feel your equal."
The two of them were silent for a moment.
"Right." Jonathan slapped his knees before standing up. "Come on."
"Where are we going?"
...
..
.