A/N: This is a story I had originally begun on The Sanitarium, and was pursuaded to post it here too. My screen name over there is Demon Huntress. Just in case you didn't know, I own nothing, nada, zilcho, except for the plot. This is an extremely watered down version of the original, more adult story, for obvious reasons. If you think you can handle the complete version, email me and I'll send you the link to the Sanitarium, where it lives. ;) As always, constructive critisism and reviews are extremely appreciated! I'll be posting the rest of this story within the next few days. One last thing; this story has cursing and adult themes so read on at your own risk!

Proof I'll Return

Chapter one: Returning The Favour

By DH and dedicated to Filthy bunny for all our horny ramblings inspirational chats. Love girl!

A storm raged outside in the night, thundering against the closed window of the Library.

Lara sat, legs propped up on the desk in front of her, laptop open, various newspaper articles and old manuscripts littering the surface. She closed her aching eyes in the harsh light of the laptop in front of her and leaned her head back, intending on resting them for just a few moments…

She tensed beneath his grip, the hard, cold steel pressed to her throat a sharp contrast to the warm hand that trailed slowly down her arm, sparking at her nerve endings, leaving a path of burning heat behind it. A shiver coursed her body as it continued its lingering route across her stomach to flick the other gun from its holster. It was only when his hand went into her backpack that her sense-fogged mind snapped back to reality, and she whirled around to face him, to knock him out and escape-

-and she stared back into eyes of such an intense colour…

Lara jerked forward, waking to the sound of a particularly loud thunderclap. She glanced at the time. Bugger, I fazed out for a few minutes there. She stood, intending to clear the mess of papers away before going for a shower and heading to bed, and it was then she noticed the window was open.

It definitely hadn't been open before she'd closed her eyes a short while earlier.

She slid her Desert Eagle from its holster, walking stealthily towards the window, and checking outside. There was water on the windowsill, like someone had crept through it.

Noticing the small trail of water that led out of the doorway, her senses became heightened at the prospect of danger, the sound of her heartbeat becoming louder. Someone could have just killed me, Lara thought, incredulously. She berated herself for not having been more alert, but was now more preoccupied with the knowledge that someone was in her house.

She edged her way cautiously to the doorway, arms tensed, gun in front of her, and began to follow the barely visible imprint of water droplets that marked her path. She turned a corner swiftly, brandishing the Desert Eagle ahead of her, hazel eyes narrowed on the trail that continued on to the center of the hall, and vanished.

Not a single drop of water anywhere else to see on the carpet. She stood at the end of her trail, puzzled.

Then a single bead of water fell from the ceiling and hit her cheek, traversing in a cold path down one side of her face.

Her heart slammed to a halt against her ribcage as she craned her head slowly upwards towards the shadowy ceiling. A dark male figure was perched high above her, skillfully balancing himself in a split jump between the rafters, strong legs against each wall of the narrow corridor.

Pointing the gun at him she made to aim, but he swiftly dropped to the floor in a crouch, sprinting off in the other direction. Lara gave chase, turning the corner to see the hallway was a dead end, pushing herself faster to catch up with the man in front of her, to trap him there. He's going to hit the wall, she thought, as it loomed up on him, Lara close behind, reluctant to shoot unless she had to.

After all, Winston had only just got the old bloodstains out of the carpet.

As she skidded to a halt to avoid crushing into it herself, he ran directly for it, showing no signs of stopping, and kicking powerful legs off the wall, he ran up it to do a complete back flip to land straight behind Lara, dust rising from the carpet at the impact of hard boots. The speed of his movement caught her by surprise and she was pushed roughly against the wall, her own gun wrenched from her grasp and turned on her.

"We have got to stop meeting each other like this, Lara," His voice was husky in her ear, out of breath.

Lara's eyes widened as she realized who the man pinning her to the wall was.

"Kurtis?" she asked in disbelief, as the last time she'd seen him he had just used telekinesis to throw her from a room with a homicidal mutant in it. She suddenly understood how he had just managed the unnatural burst of strength, and had telekinetically pushed his muscles up the wall and into an unfair advantage.

"It would've been nice of you to ask that before you tried blowing a hole in my head," he replied, voice filled with the familiar sarcasm, not loosening the firm grip he had on the gun or Lara. "Can I let you go now without worrying you'll try rearrange my face?"

"You should be dead- there was so much blood-" she paused as a thought occurred to her. "How do I know you're not Karel?" she demanded, turning her head against the wall to try and look behind her, struggling to ignore the sensation his wet, lean body pressed up against her was having on her skin. She could just see his face as his clear azure gaze narrowed.

"I could ask you the same question. But I guess your gonna just have to trust me," he added pointedly.

Lara tried to recall where she had heard those words before.

"You're trusting me?" he had asked, head turned to the side, dark hair framing the beautiful crystal eyes observing her with confusion.

"Would you mind telling me why you were sneaking around my house, or have you decided you missed stalking me and rendering me defenceless, as you invade my personal space?"

"As much as I enjoy these little get-togethers of ours, this isn't a personal visit. I came for something of mine. For once, I'm not the one doing the stealing."

"You're right, you're probably not Karel. No one could impersonate such a cocky bastard as you," she spat at him.

He gave a short deep laugh, his breath lightly fanning her ear. She found herself watching his lips as they curved upwards, such a small movement altering his masculine face into an irritatingly sexy smirk. It confused her, making her want to punch it straight out the back of his head, and at the same time- somewhere in a dark corner of her mind was forming other ideas about what she could be doing to it.

Gaining control over her thoughts and looking back over her shoulder to see him, she raised one eyebrow at him, eyes still focused on the lips that were a tantalizingly short distance away, and added; "If this is how you greet someone for a business visit, I'd hate to see you making a personal one. Now would you please back off? You're making me wet."

"Didn't know I had that effect on you, Lara," he replied conversationally, eyes sparkling darkly, and stepped back from her, still holding the gun. She shivered in the absence of the heat his body had provided through his wet clothes as he moved away.

Keeping the gun and both eyes trained on Lara, he cocked his head to the side and spun the Desert Eagle around one finger thoughtfully for a minute, considering her and how likely she was to castrate him if he handed back her gun. He seemed to reach a conclusion as he stopped the barrel in his palm, offering it back to her, end first.

She took it warily, eyeing the Boran X in his holster, knowing full well he would be more than capable of taking her on if she turned on him. It was one of the things she admired about Kurtis; he was the one man who had proved himself her equal, in strength of body and mind.

"What was it you were insinuating I'd stolen from you?"

"My Chirugai."

"You mean that disk thing you left behind? It's in the Library. Come on."

She kept slightly behind him on the short walk back to the room, one hand on the gun at her hip, keeping a careful eye on his soaked form. I'm only staring so intently at how his wet clothes cling to the muscles on his body so I can catch on to any moves he's planning to make really quickly, Lara inwardly tried convincing herself.

Her conscience wasn't having any of it.

They arrived back into the library and she crossed over to her desk chair, reaching into the jacket hanging there to pull out a heavy metal disk with five holes adorning the sides.

"Here you are, your frisbee. Go have fun now, and try not to cut yourself on it," she told him sardonically.

"It's not a frisbee." He raised a hand towards it and five curved blades sprang from the side of the disc with a deadly "ching", causing Lara to drop it for fear it might detach her wrists.

It never hit the ground.

"Frisbees don't do that." He smiled sideways at her.

A warm orange glow surrounded the Chirugai as it hovered a few feet off the floor, and it spun effortlessly through the air towards its owner. It gave him a kind of authority as he held it, like a scythe to a reaper. He ran a rough palm over the surface, before lacing his fingers into the gaps.

"Nice trick. Now why didn't you just magic it straight to you?"

He looked up at her, striking blue eyes from beneath dark spikes of hair. "Why were you carrying it 'round in your jacket?"

"I asked first. And why did you come here?"

"I came 'cause I needed to find out what happened in the Strahov after you left."

"Long story," she replied shortly, deliberately riling him with vague details, "What happened to you? You left an awful lot of blood behind for someone who just got up and walked away…" she looked at him suspiciously, still not completely convinced he wasn't Karel. After all, who could have survived that amount of blood loss?

He sighed. "I can see this is gonna' take a while. Croft, why don't you just answer me straight? I'll tell you what you want to know, if you tell me. Deal?"

She paused, deep in thought for a moment. Slowly, she nodded.

He stepped closer. "This's the fastest way I know. Hold on." The last sentence sounded like it should have included the words "Its gonna be a bumpy ride".

He took another step in, and she looked at him. Behind his blue eyes, there almost seemed a dark storm growing, and his eyes slid out of focus as he laid a hand gently on the side of her face, long fingers splayed out against her jaw line. She watched his eyes flicker shut behind dark, spidery lashes and her world went momentarily black.

Images began to flow rapidly past her eyes, like the constant flicker of a bad television. It was almost like seeing her life flash before her during a near death experience, and Lara had had her fair share of those. She caught sight of a few visions, Eckhardt bargaining for Kurtis's life, Boaz rushing towards her, and Kurtis boosting her to safety, remaining behind to fight the huge creature.

She was suddenly aware of another figure in her subconscious, a solitary static figure, which stayed watching the memories alongside her. She recognised it was Kurtis.

A final few reflections went past her; Karel transforming into Kurtis, trying to trick her, beside her, she felt Kurtis's surprise penetrate her mind; her attaching the Sanglyph to the Sleeper, the room exploding alongside Karel; and returning to Boaz's lair only to find Kurtis's Chirugai in a pool of blood. Outside of her subconscious, her hands tightened their grip on him.

Sadness and then hope as it sprang to life in her trembling hand. Darkness, complete, consuming darkness. Memories of Egypt, yelling for help, nobody hearing her. Somewhere beyond where she was now, her body felt a warm touch draw her closer.

Suddenly, a different set of pictures began to fill up the empty space left behind by hers, new ones that were definitely not her own. She was confused for a moment until she realized who the subject of all the images were- Kurtis.

She was in Kurtis's subconscious, reeling through his memories. Fighting Boaz, for so long before killing her, watching another bug-like creature crawl out from the great hulking corpse, shooting the bug down. She felt- Kurtis felt pain, exhaustion, and then pity as he walked over to Boaz with a gun in his hand. Turning away, only to be stabbed. Unbelievable pain, darkness, and then light. Endless wandering through corridors, occasionally slipping in and out of consciousness, and eventually finding a way out. Trying to maneuver a bike to the nearest motel, and sleep, infinite, restless sleep.

Haunting dreams of his past, tied up in a room for days, fighting through demons three times the size of Boaz, his father, dead in a pool of blood, eyes wide and glassy.

She felt rough fingers twitch gently against her neck as she came back into herself. They both opened their eyes with a gasp, surfacing from invisible waters to the sweet feeling of air caressing their throats. Kurtis snapped back into his body and swayed backwards slightly, pulling his arms away from her to catch his balance. He regained his stance, shaking his head slightly to disperse the cloudy feel he always got when separating mind from body.

"Whoa." Was all she could say for a few seconds, if somewhat breathlessly, before salvaging some presence of mind from the mist that hung about her head. "What were those last few images?"

"I figure I saw something about Egypt in your memory you wanted to keep private by mistake- I was returning the favour," he replied, catching his breath.

They left it at that with the unspoken agreement: We're even.

She looked him up and down, gradually unearthing a new respect for his abilities. "What else can you do that you haven't told me?"

Oh, nothing much else. Why? Asked a deep voice in her head, innocence concealing a thick layer of sarcasm. All she could do was stare blankly at him, full lips parted in surprise. Had she just imagined that? That's it; she was officially losing her mind. And it was all his fault. She hated that he could do that to her, make her feel completely defenseless, even with pistols strapped to both thighs.

Then just shoot me if you hate me so much, he smirked at her.

Desperately willing herself not to think of how sexy his smile was, Lara put a hand to her head. Okay, okay! Stop it with the brain rape already! I already have a hard enough time wrestling with my conscience trying not to kill you, without both of you breathing down my neck!

You have a conscience? How lovely for you.

Yes, it's that little thing in the back of your head that tells you not to set things on fire. You should listen to it sometime, or have you strangled it already?

They glared silently at each other, in a silent battle, neither wanting to back down first.

Nearby, Winston passed the door on his way to wash the laundry. Pausing at the door for a moment, he saw Lara and a strange man, both looking as though they were trying to make the other spontaneously combust with the sheer power of their gaze. They just stood there for ages, fighting some unknown internal struggle. Winston raised an eyebrow, causing a hundred different wrinkles to reassemble on his face, shrugged, and carried on with the basket full of pyjamas.

Hang on, Lara thought, recalling a memory of Kurtis's she had witnessed a few moments earlier. You were stabbed right through the stomach.

He looked quickly away. No answer.

"Take off your shirt."

He just turned to look at her, his beautiful eyes blank.

"Your shirt, you know, that thing you wear-"

"I know what a shirt is, I'm not stupid."

A hundred scathing remarks to that statement that were busy coming together in her head were suddenly, miraculously gone as he crossed his arms over his stomach and peeled the soaked shirt away from his body and gently free of the wound, the conditioned muscles of his arms and torso tightening and relaxing with the movement.

He took a sharp breath at the harsh scrape of the fabric against the deep gash when he pulled it away from his back. She narrowed her eyes and leant over him to see his back.

"Holy sh- Kurtis- It goes straight through you!"

"You don't say."

"How are you walking around?" She stepped closer to examine the vicious wound that marred his one side of his tanned flesh, "That must be so painful- how is it healing so fast?" She brushed it lightly with her fingertips.

He took a sharp breath and caught her wrist with a strong hand. Their gaze locked for a lingering moment, something indescribable shimmering out through the depths of his baby blue eyes. The pads of his rough fingers and the strength and confidence of his grip on her forearm made her skin burn in a way that was alarmingly sensual.

Lara turned away, breaking his eye contact and his hold. She picked up a med kit and laid the contents out on the table, trying as hard as she could not to look at the shirtless warrior sitting next to her, clad in only damp clothes that clung to his shape in a way that made her want to peel them all off him and -

Argh! Lara mentally slapped herself in the head.

She picked up some cleaning fluid and set to work on the damage. He sat silently still, trying to ignore the sensation of her breath flowing warmly across his abdomen.

"What's this?" she asked, trailing a finger down a black marking that curved over his hipbone and disappeared below his waistband.

"It's a tattoo. All the Lux Veritatis are marked like this at a certain age. It starts here-" he twisted slightly, showing her his back.

Lara's eyes widened when she saw the intricate black markings sprawling over his broad shoulders, down one side of his back and waist, to disappear into the waistband of the combat trousers he wore. Kurtis seemed the type of man to have a tattoo, dark and mysterious, but the astonishing thing was to see one that was so complex, elaborate, and beautiful on such a hardened, war marked body.

She traced it with her fingers, from left shoulder to right, down his right side-

He shivered. Why did he feel so naked right now with only his shirt off?

She noticed his reaction and smiled to herself, before quickly returning to wrapping up the injury. She got up on the table on her knees to wrap it around and fasten it-

Bad move.

She paused, her right knee between his legs, and their bodies so close, she could almost feel the heat of his skin radiate through her clothes. He remained extremely still, looking straight ahead at eye level with her lips, the atmosphere crackling with electricity.

She sat back on her thighs, only to find this pressed her leg more firmly against his. Her skin flared and as she looked up at him-

-and she stared back into eyes of such an intense color…

They pressed against each other, neither remembering who kissed who first, all that Lara's misty head could register was Kurtis. His warm hands, his delicious scent, the silky touch of his skin over the hard, conditioned muscles of his body, all other trains of thought were lost, as Kurtis filled her senses, his mouth moving hotly against her own. She pushed closer to him, fisting her hands into his dark hair, pressing as close as possible, straddling him. Legs either side of his thighs, she gripped his tighter with her own, forcing them closer.

They pressed against each other, neither remembering who kissed who first, all that Lara's hazy head could register was Kurtis. His warm hands, his delicious scent, the silky touch of his skin over the hard, conditioned muscles of his body, all other trains of thought were lost, as Kurtis filled her senses, his mouth moving hotly against her own. She pushed closer to him, fisting her hands into his dark hair, pressing as close as possible.

He made a soft noise against her mouth, of either pain or pleasure, but at this point the lines between each were so blurred that as he caught her bottom lip in his mouth and bit lightly, she didn't even notice she had cried out loud.

She awoke the next morning in her own bed. Kurtis must have carried her there that night. She sat up and looked around the room for him, but he wasn't there. Lara felt her stomach fill with lead. She had lost him again, but this time he must have chosen to leave. This somehow made her feel worse.

With a heavy heart she pulled aside the covers to get out of bed, but not before noticing something glinting on the pillow next to her.

She picked it up and a smile lit up her face.

His Chirugai.

He had left it for her, so she would know he hadn't gone far, and he would be back. Proof he'd return. As if it had sensed her touching it, it started to glow a warm orange colour, like fire. She felt it pull her arm towards the door, the familiarity of the situation making her want to keep smiling and never stop.

She let it pull her out of the door and into the ensuite next door where she could hear a shower running.

Lara's smile became a seductive one, and she stepped into the soft light of the morning sun that lit up the bathroom.

I won't let him win this time… she thought with determination.

Her conscience still wasn't having any of it.