*A/N: Please forgive me, my italics weren't working...
_______
"What is her condition?"
"Stable, sir."
"Good."
Voices filled Lara's throbbing head as her still body became aware of her new surroundings. The foreign tones sounded much farther away than they actually were; Lara thought as if she were in a dream. But this was no dream.
"Mmmph..." The Tomb Raider moaned as one eyelid slid open. Instantly, she noticed that she was not confined to her own bed, but a hospital bed in a large room. Her attention shifted to the three doctors that hovered about her.
"There she is, sir! She's alive at last."
A friendly smile greeted Lara as both of her eyes opened; she quickly winced in pain as she tried to raise herself from the scratchy material of the white hospital sheets.
"Now, now, Ms. Croft. Don't try to go anywhere. You've sustained a number of injuries and we've been worried sick that you weren't going to make it. Lost a lot of blood, you did."
Still groggy, Croft squinted to refocus her vision. Almost as if new memories washed upon her like a sudden, violent current, Lara's eyes flashed open and she tried to ignore the burning sensations all over her body.
"Where are my friends?" She said, trying to stay calm. But all serenity was lost when the doctors exchanged apprehensive looks.
"WHERE ARE THEY?" Lara demanded, her wounds threatening to murder her on the spot if she didn't settle down. One doctor had the balls to utter an answer the Tomb Raider did not ask for:
"You need to rest, Lady Croft. Don't worry about your friends, they will be here when you're well and good."
Lara sneered, "How dare you! I asked you a question! Tell me where they are... now."
The male doctor that had voiced his mind just a moment ago tried to retaliate, but a colleague of his put her arm up and stopped him. With a warning glare toward her colleague, she now turned her attention toward Lara.
"I'm not one to usually go against authority, Lady Croft, but I'm afraid that now is the best time for you to see your friends. Keep in mind that one of them..." the female doctor cut off.
"What?" Lara asked. "What happened!"
The doctor choked on her words, but resumed nonetheless:
"One of your friends is in a serious condition. We don't know if he's going to make it."
Lara's face could do nothing but fall. Her full lips had not the strength to frown nor tremble; she was simply under the influence of fear and anticipation. What the doctor was talking about, Lara was not sure. But she knew that soon, she would find out.
Quickly, the female doctor removed the IV from Lara's wrist and bandaged it up tightly. Making sure that Lara wasn't going to fall, she lent Lara her arm.
"Please, Lady Croft, you are not well. I'm doing this only so you will return to your bed after you have seen the condition of your friends. Please don't make a fuss."
Disgust approached Lara's lips. "I appreciate what you're doing, Doctor, but my emotions do not reside beneath your reign."
Silently, the woman nodded and led Lara, bruised and battered, down the hall where Alex and Bryce were waiting.
It seemed like an eternity before Croft reached their destination. Tope walls were all that she saw; tope on tope on tope as she walked. Nothing could have been more boring. It was like a bad lead into the climax of a terrible movie. But Lara would not be disappointed with this outcome; it would not be boring in any way imaginable. She turned the knob on the door and entered.
In the new room, Alex sat on his white hospital bed, head in his hands. His hair was mussed and his complexion, pale. As fast as she could, Lara hobbled over to her comrade and climbed onto his bed and sat next to him.
"Alex," she called softly, "look at me."
She wished she hadn't asked. When West's eyes appeared through the cracks in his fingers, Lara gasped and placed a quick hand to her lips. Alex's eyes were bloodshot, yet the coloration was unnatural for any human being. What this meant, Lara did not know.
"The doctors say they don't know what's wrong," he confessed sadly. "They sting so bad, Lara... and I can't feel my legs. The docs said they were fractured in three different spots and my arm is broken," he said, showing her his cast. Lara's features softened as she reached out for Alex. Carefully, she wrapped her arms around him and buried her face in his neck; secretly she hoped that everything was going to be all right.
"Bones mend," she said optimistically. "Bruises fade... and you're still alive, aren't you? Let's thank God for that."
But Alex merely sobbed more. "I think you'll have one less thing to thank God for in a minute."
"What do you mean?" Lara inquired carefully. She watched the expression on West's face sink even more. His heartbeat was rapid and his cries only grew louder. A mix of internal and external pain claimed him as he tried to speak:
"It's Bryce, Lara..." he whispered. "...they don't think he'll make it."
Sharply, the tomb raider's head snapped in the direction of another hospital bed, this one, deathly quiet. Suddenly, Lara was very afraid of what she might find in that bed. Would it be her friend, her tech, Bryce? Or would there merely be a lifeless corpse waiting to make her acquaintance?
Cautiously, slowly, Croft inched off of Alex's bed and neared the still figure, that was Bryce. His body seemed so diminished underneath the pale sheets that draped limply over him. It was only when she was completely over him when Lara took in his complete status. The tears were simply too much.
There he lied, Bryce, her faithful friend, so unjustly wrapped in plain sheets in an unadorned room with ordinary people in such a crude fashion. This was no way for a hero to be laid; this would not do at all. Lara's breathing started to intensify.
Bryce.
He had saved them all at the mansion with Simon. Without him, none of them would be alive. He had found the information on the Pacific Amulet. Without a complaint, he traveled thousands of miles from England to Tuvalu and shared in the tremendous burden of the Amulet. He had saved her life when the beast bored down on her, rendering her helpless. Bryce had always been there... and now he was dying.
How do you save someone so many times... and then die yourself?
It wasn't right. And it wasn't fair.
Lara became angry, so angry that she began to smack her fists down upon the tech himself.
"No! I told you not to leave! I told you not to die, and look what you're doing. Don't do this, Bryce. I haven't recognized all that you've done for us, and I'm sorry. Just don't leave us..."
Smash! Smash!
Beep... Beep... Beep...
"Wha-...?"
Suddenly, Bryce's heart monitor went from a steady pace to inhumanly erratic. His body began to convulse, causing him to lurch violently into the air. It was uncontrollable. The nurses and doctors ran in, but no one could stop it. Some spasms left him flying three feet into the air. If Lara were anyone else, she would have blamed herself for causing the sudden convulsions. But Lara Croft knew better than that.
Hurriedly, she ran back to her room, wincing in pain with every step. Slamming into the door of her hospital room, she snatched her backpack off of a table and sprinted back toward Bryce and Alex's room.
"Lara!" West yelled, watching her plunge her hand into her bag. "What are you doing?"
In a split second, Lara's hand emerged from her pack with a single .30 caliber. Alex's eyes widened in horror; he bit his tongue. It was all he could do to keep from shouting out and telling her to stop. But Croft was on to something; she never produced a gun without reason.
Digging through the crowd of doctors, Lara pushed them all away and vaulted onto Bryce's bed. Straddling over him, she could feel the many hands of the nurses pulling her away. Numerous shouts, accusing her of being insane, floated into her ears. But there was no time for games! Bryce needed to be shot... she needed to end his pain...
"Get off!" Lara shouted, sending two orderlies and three nurses flying across the room. Two doctors followed suit, skidding across the floor on their rear-ends. Shouts were directed toward her, but the barrel of the gun lowered and directly aimed for Bryce's heart.
A single tear slid down Lara's flushed cheek. And then she pulled the trigger.
BANG!
Lara Croft held her breath as she released her hold on her weapon. She was now covered in blood, spatters of dark crimson claiming her face, hands, and clothing. Like a plague, the white sheets that she and Bryce were on, were overcome with red liquid; he bled until it soaked every fiber of the bed, until it overflowed onto the floor and traversed to every corner of the room. Still, the crimson puddle expanded, stretching its nonexistent arms to anywhere that they could reach.
It slid casually underneath the wooden door.
It flowed deeper and darker across the gray-flecked tile of the hospital floors.
Traveled underneath the nurses' desks.
Soaked into the drains in the bathrooms.
The lifeless entity did not stop when it reached the sliding glass doors to the outside world; it merely cascaded on top of the glass, creeping underneath and through the cracks, onto the pavement, into the parking lot.
Deeper and darker.
When every last sight of the floor had diminished, and all that anyone could see was blood...
It disappeared.
And in the room that Lara, Alex, and Bryce were in, Bryce's eyes fluttered open triumphantly. His lungs desperately craved the oxygen around him, and he took several deep breaths through his mouth. The blood, splattered across Lara, was gone. The bullet wound through Bryce's heart... gone.
Every employee from the hospital was frozen with shock, but the Tomb Raider and her friends erupted into joyous laughter.
"Bryce! You're alive!" Screamed Alex in disbelief.
"Yeah," the tech said, thinking for a moment, "I am!" Then he gave Lara a reproachful look.
"That's the second time you've shot me," he said sternly, but then smiled with a boyish grin. "And I'm never going to forget it."
About to explode, Lara fell on top of Bryce and hugged him roughly. She was so happy that nothing could compare to what she was feeling. No words could man create and have them equal to the rapture that she was experiencing.
"But how?" Alex questioned. "Why?"
Lara released Bryce and sat back up. "I can't believe that I didn't realize this earlier! Just when Bryce started to react to my hitting him, it dawned on me... It was the same thing in the chamber when the demon attacked me mentally.
"See, a demonic entity isn't created to perform physical attacks, so what other way is it to fight? Mentally. Given this information, it dawned on me that it could also possess people. Devouring Vladimir's body not only gave it substance, but it gave it the mind as well. The body was merely a way for it to have an even higher hand up on us humans.
"So when we saw the body of the demon being sucked into the engraving, the demon wasn't really there. It transferred to... It transferred to a soldier that tried to kill me before I could escape! That was why he wouldn't climb the rope... And then it must have possessed Bryce in hopes to avenge itself. But Bryce, unfortunately, was handicapped, therefore, rendering the demon helpless until its host recovered.
"It got weary of waiting, so it turned on Bryce and caused the convulsions, hoping to kill him off so that he could enter someone else. But it was caught in the act, thankfully. And now Bryce is safe... and alive."
The three tremendously wounded friends exchanged smiles as the doctors and nurses came back into the room. Later that same day, the trio were kicked out and sent home due to... undisclosed reasons.
_________
Alone, Lara sat in her study, fire in the hearth and almost-finished novel laying in her lap. She smiled to herself as she recounted the adventures that she had with her friends. The Amulet of Ilse was more trouble than it was worth.
How many lives were taken to destroy that artifact?
Many more than needed to be.
But through it all, everything had worked out to a superlative ending, with a demon vanquished, two priceless artifacts destroyed, and a friendship to never be broken.
Death had reared its ugly head, but they had conquered it numerous times. And whenever defeat, sorrow, agony, or even death dared to show its face around the Croft Manor again...
Lara, Alex, Bryce, Hillary, and Simon would all be waiting.
.
THE END
.
________________
.
*A/N: Thank you all SO MUCH for reading and reviewing! I can't believe this story is finally over! Oh no, yes I can! Haha! Exactly One Year Today, I started this story, (12-26-03) and now it is finished! I sincerely hope that everyone enjoyed it! And hey, if you want, you can read my other fic that has Lara in it... The Taste of Life. She'll be a major character in that fic as well. Anyway, thanks to everyone and have a happy New Year!
_______
"What is her condition?"
"Stable, sir."
"Good."
Voices filled Lara's throbbing head as her still body became aware of her new surroundings. The foreign tones sounded much farther away than they actually were; Lara thought as if she were in a dream. But this was no dream.
"Mmmph..." The Tomb Raider moaned as one eyelid slid open. Instantly, she noticed that she was not confined to her own bed, but a hospital bed in a large room. Her attention shifted to the three doctors that hovered about her.
"There she is, sir! She's alive at last."
A friendly smile greeted Lara as both of her eyes opened; she quickly winced in pain as she tried to raise herself from the scratchy material of the white hospital sheets.
"Now, now, Ms. Croft. Don't try to go anywhere. You've sustained a number of injuries and we've been worried sick that you weren't going to make it. Lost a lot of blood, you did."
Still groggy, Croft squinted to refocus her vision. Almost as if new memories washed upon her like a sudden, violent current, Lara's eyes flashed open and she tried to ignore the burning sensations all over her body.
"Where are my friends?" She said, trying to stay calm. But all serenity was lost when the doctors exchanged apprehensive looks.
"WHERE ARE THEY?" Lara demanded, her wounds threatening to murder her on the spot if she didn't settle down. One doctor had the balls to utter an answer the Tomb Raider did not ask for:
"You need to rest, Lady Croft. Don't worry about your friends, they will be here when you're well and good."
Lara sneered, "How dare you! I asked you a question! Tell me where they are... now."
The male doctor that had voiced his mind just a moment ago tried to retaliate, but a colleague of his put her arm up and stopped him. With a warning glare toward her colleague, she now turned her attention toward Lara.
"I'm not one to usually go against authority, Lady Croft, but I'm afraid that now is the best time for you to see your friends. Keep in mind that one of them..." the female doctor cut off.
"What?" Lara asked. "What happened!"
The doctor choked on her words, but resumed nonetheless:
"One of your friends is in a serious condition. We don't know if he's going to make it."
Lara's face could do nothing but fall. Her full lips had not the strength to frown nor tremble; she was simply under the influence of fear and anticipation. What the doctor was talking about, Lara was not sure. But she knew that soon, she would find out.
Quickly, the female doctor removed the IV from Lara's wrist and bandaged it up tightly. Making sure that Lara wasn't going to fall, she lent Lara her arm.
"Please, Lady Croft, you are not well. I'm doing this only so you will return to your bed after you have seen the condition of your friends. Please don't make a fuss."
Disgust approached Lara's lips. "I appreciate what you're doing, Doctor, but my emotions do not reside beneath your reign."
Silently, the woman nodded and led Lara, bruised and battered, down the hall where Alex and Bryce were waiting.
It seemed like an eternity before Croft reached their destination. Tope walls were all that she saw; tope on tope on tope as she walked. Nothing could have been more boring. It was like a bad lead into the climax of a terrible movie. But Lara would not be disappointed with this outcome; it would not be boring in any way imaginable. She turned the knob on the door and entered.
In the new room, Alex sat on his white hospital bed, head in his hands. His hair was mussed and his complexion, pale. As fast as she could, Lara hobbled over to her comrade and climbed onto his bed and sat next to him.
"Alex," she called softly, "look at me."
She wished she hadn't asked. When West's eyes appeared through the cracks in his fingers, Lara gasped and placed a quick hand to her lips. Alex's eyes were bloodshot, yet the coloration was unnatural for any human being. What this meant, Lara did not know.
"The doctors say they don't know what's wrong," he confessed sadly. "They sting so bad, Lara... and I can't feel my legs. The docs said they were fractured in three different spots and my arm is broken," he said, showing her his cast. Lara's features softened as she reached out for Alex. Carefully, she wrapped her arms around him and buried her face in his neck; secretly she hoped that everything was going to be all right.
"Bones mend," she said optimistically. "Bruises fade... and you're still alive, aren't you? Let's thank God for that."
But Alex merely sobbed more. "I think you'll have one less thing to thank God for in a minute."
"What do you mean?" Lara inquired carefully. She watched the expression on West's face sink even more. His heartbeat was rapid and his cries only grew louder. A mix of internal and external pain claimed him as he tried to speak:
"It's Bryce, Lara..." he whispered. "...they don't think he'll make it."
Sharply, the tomb raider's head snapped in the direction of another hospital bed, this one, deathly quiet. Suddenly, Lara was very afraid of what she might find in that bed. Would it be her friend, her tech, Bryce? Or would there merely be a lifeless corpse waiting to make her acquaintance?
Cautiously, slowly, Croft inched off of Alex's bed and neared the still figure, that was Bryce. His body seemed so diminished underneath the pale sheets that draped limply over him. It was only when she was completely over him when Lara took in his complete status. The tears were simply too much.
There he lied, Bryce, her faithful friend, so unjustly wrapped in plain sheets in an unadorned room with ordinary people in such a crude fashion. This was no way for a hero to be laid; this would not do at all. Lara's breathing started to intensify.
Bryce.
He had saved them all at the mansion with Simon. Without him, none of them would be alive. He had found the information on the Pacific Amulet. Without a complaint, he traveled thousands of miles from England to Tuvalu and shared in the tremendous burden of the Amulet. He had saved her life when the beast bored down on her, rendering her helpless. Bryce had always been there... and now he was dying.
How do you save someone so many times... and then die yourself?
It wasn't right. And it wasn't fair.
Lara became angry, so angry that she began to smack her fists down upon the tech himself.
"No! I told you not to leave! I told you not to die, and look what you're doing. Don't do this, Bryce. I haven't recognized all that you've done for us, and I'm sorry. Just don't leave us..."
Smash! Smash!
Beep... Beep... Beep...
"Wha-...?"
Suddenly, Bryce's heart monitor went from a steady pace to inhumanly erratic. His body began to convulse, causing him to lurch violently into the air. It was uncontrollable. The nurses and doctors ran in, but no one could stop it. Some spasms left him flying three feet into the air. If Lara were anyone else, she would have blamed herself for causing the sudden convulsions. But Lara Croft knew better than that.
Hurriedly, she ran back to her room, wincing in pain with every step. Slamming into the door of her hospital room, she snatched her backpack off of a table and sprinted back toward Bryce and Alex's room.
"Lara!" West yelled, watching her plunge her hand into her bag. "What are you doing?"
In a split second, Lara's hand emerged from her pack with a single .30 caliber. Alex's eyes widened in horror; he bit his tongue. It was all he could do to keep from shouting out and telling her to stop. But Croft was on to something; she never produced a gun without reason.
Digging through the crowd of doctors, Lara pushed them all away and vaulted onto Bryce's bed. Straddling over him, she could feel the many hands of the nurses pulling her away. Numerous shouts, accusing her of being insane, floated into her ears. But there was no time for games! Bryce needed to be shot... she needed to end his pain...
"Get off!" Lara shouted, sending two orderlies and three nurses flying across the room. Two doctors followed suit, skidding across the floor on their rear-ends. Shouts were directed toward her, but the barrel of the gun lowered and directly aimed for Bryce's heart.
A single tear slid down Lara's flushed cheek. And then she pulled the trigger.
BANG!
Lara Croft held her breath as she released her hold on her weapon. She was now covered in blood, spatters of dark crimson claiming her face, hands, and clothing. Like a plague, the white sheets that she and Bryce were on, were overcome with red liquid; he bled until it soaked every fiber of the bed, until it overflowed onto the floor and traversed to every corner of the room. Still, the crimson puddle expanded, stretching its nonexistent arms to anywhere that they could reach.
It slid casually underneath the wooden door.
It flowed deeper and darker across the gray-flecked tile of the hospital floors.
Traveled underneath the nurses' desks.
Soaked into the drains in the bathrooms.
The lifeless entity did not stop when it reached the sliding glass doors to the outside world; it merely cascaded on top of the glass, creeping underneath and through the cracks, onto the pavement, into the parking lot.
Deeper and darker.
When every last sight of the floor had diminished, and all that anyone could see was blood...
It disappeared.
And in the room that Lara, Alex, and Bryce were in, Bryce's eyes fluttered open triumphantly. His lungs desperately craved the oxygen around him, and he took several deep breaths through his mouth. The blood, splattered across Lara, was gone. The bullet wound through Bryce's heart... gone.
Every employee from the hospital was frozen with shock, but the Tomb Raider and her friends erupted into joyous laughter.
"Bryce! You're alive!" Screamed Alex in disbelief.
"Yeah," the tech said, thinking for a moment, "I am!" Then he gave Lara a reproachful look.
"That's the second time you've shot me," he said sternly, but then smiled with a boyish grin. "And I'm never going to forget it."
About to explode, Lara fell on top of Bryce and hugged him roughly. She was so happy that nothing could compare to what she was feeling. No words could man create and have them equal to the rapture that she was experiencing.
"But how?" Alex questioned. "Why?"
Lara released Bryce and sat back up. "I can't believe that I didn't realize this earlier! Just when Bryce started to react to my hitting him, it dawned on me... It was the same thing in the chamber when the demon attacked me mentally.
"See, a demonic entity isn't created to perform physical attacks, so what other way is it to fight? Mentally. Given this information, it dawned on me that it could also possess people. Devouring Vladimir's body not only gave it substance, but it gave it the mind as well. The body was merely a way for it to have an even higher hand up on us humans.
"So when we saw the body of the demon being sucked into the engraving, the demon wasn't really there. It transferred to... It transferred to a soldier that tried to kill me before I could escape! That was why he wouldn't climb the rope... And then it must have possessed Bryce in hopes to avenge itself. But Bryce, unfortunately, was handicapped, therefore, rendering the demon helpless until its host recovered.
"It got weary of waiting, so it turned on Bryce and caused the convulsions, hoping to kill him off so that he could enter someone else. But it was caught in the act, thankfully. And now Bryce is safe... and alive."
The three tremendously wounded friends exchanged smiles as the doctors and nurses came back into the room. Later that same day, the trio were kicked out and sent home due to... undisclosed reasons.
_________
Alone, Lara sat in her study, fire in the hearth and almost-finished novel laying in her lap. She smiled to herself as she recounted the adventures that she had with her friends. The Amulet of Ilse was more trouble than it was worth.
How many lives were taken to destroy that artifact?
Many more than needed to be.
But through it all, everything had worked out to a superlative ending, with a demon vanquished, two priceless artifacts destroyed, and a friendship to never be broken.
Death had reared its ugly head, but they had conquered it numerous times. And whenever defeat, sorrow, agony, or even death dared to show its face around the Croft Manor again...
Lara, Alex, Bryce, Hillary, and Simon would all be waiting.
.
THE END
.
________________
.
*A/N: Thank you all SO MUCH for reading and reviewing! I can't believe this story is finally over! Oh no, yes I can! Haha! Exactly One Year Today, I started this story, (12-26-03) and now it is finished! I sincerely hope that everyone enjoyed it! And hey, if you want, you can read my other fic that has Lara in it... The Taste of Life. She'll be a major character in that fic as well. Anyway, thanks to everyone and have a happy New Year!