It was a well known fact, not a mere opinion, that Zip could most undoubtedly cook.

He'd put Rachel Ray to shame if given the chance.

I didn't dare deny his wonders in the kitchen, so even though he was currently terrorizing Alister with a disemboweled pig's liver, I allowed such proceedings to take place in fear that if I did not we would have to resort to eating Winston's horribly microwaved Pasta Anytime concoctions he picked up at the local grocery store simply because they were on sale.

No one in the Croft manor is a big fan of Pasta Anytime.

"I say Zip, get that dastardly thing away from me!"

"Oh, but Alister my man, I can't help it. I think this pig had a crush on you. 'Marry me you sexy tweed clad nerd! I want your pale, albino body all to myself!'"

"Pigs do not hold the ability to communicate, Zip," Alister could be heard muttering off hand. "Now please be gone, and take your retched specimen with you."

"Retched specimen? Dude, this ain't no retched specimen. This be dinner tomorrow!"

I was rather upset I did not get to witness Alister's facial contort in response to Zip's previously declared menu choice for next evening. Oh, the things I miss while primping in front of my vanity mirror. I may be explorer extraordinaire, but that doesn't mean I can't indulge in the feminine wonders make up seemed to alluringly offer every once in a while. I do have estrogen coursing through my veins, after all. No amount of decaying temples or extinct angelic races could take that away from me.

"Lara, my dear," Winston petitioned from the threshold of my multi roomed quarters. "Dinner is about to be served."

"Thank you Winston."

I proceeded to make my way to the kitchen, slightly trepidacious as to discover the fate of the infamous pig liver, and whether or not it did really end up wooing Alister to some remote, romantic location.

The mental image of Alister courting the liver of a pig was almost too much to bear.

Then again, the mental image of Alister courting anybody was almost too much to bear.

"Yo, dinner is ready my peeps!"

While Zip was certainly not notorious for the finesse and pleasantries that seem to characterize my family to their grave, the aroma of his savory cooking was simply to die for and as long as he was able to make whatever jumbled concoction Winston so absent mindedly brought back from the local grocery store taste like a royal five course banquet, I decided he could utilize whatever greeting he desired upon the opening of dinner.

"Would it kill you to leave out that ever so habitual prefix of yo?" Winston queried from his typical seat at the opposite head of the table. "It is exceedingly agitating to say the least."

"Your repetitive floral adjectives is what's exceedingly agitating," came the sardonic reply of Alister, even though his choice of speech was no better, who was characteristically buried nose deep into a book of some kind that he had so habitually carried with him to the dinner table. He went to blindly take his seat, of which he undoubtedly presumed to be waiting for him, but Zip's reaction time was delightfully faster and I tried desperately to stifle a smirk as I watched my book worm of a house mate topple to the floor in a flourishing ball of tweed and corduroy as the aforementioned chair was deliberately yanked out from underneath him.

"You should always look before you leap," I commented slyly in a superior fashion, much enjoying the spectacle my comrades unknowingly put on for me every evening.

"Hey!" Alister whined, his pale fists curling up into twin, pent up balls of anger. "I was going to sit there!"

Zip looked down upon a now sprawled out Alister who was busy consuming half of the kitchen's floor space. "And you still can," he replied, a smirk rushing over his ebony features. "Nobody's stopping you."

"Winston!" my fellow archeological guru whined.

"Well I don't see what you expect me to do about it," the man retorted, poking the recently delivered parmesan chicken on his plate, almost as if he expected it to come alive like one of Zip's make shift contraptions. "I'm just a butler."

"Yes, but you're a big butler," Alister continued emphatically, clamoring onto his newly arranged chair. "One with a machine gun and bullet proof vest in his cabinet."

"Are you suggesting I shoot Zip?" Winston inquired, arching an eyebrow in theory.

"Man, you couldn't shoot me if you wanted to. I'd just serpentine like a bat outta hell and leave you coughing up a lung in all my fine dust."

"Now boys," I began in my patented mock motherly voice of discipline. "While I must admit it is terribly amusing to bare witness to mutiny among my own family members, I suggest we eat dinner like a normal civilized family would and actually attempt to hold a conversation for once as opposed to a drawn out argument of who proposes we kill whom."

"I vote for silencing Alister," Zip shot in voluntarily.

"That's not a vote, that's a dictatorship," came the grumbled reply from the target in question.

"That was not a topic open to debate," I reminded them slowly, my voice dripping with the mock patience I tended to utilize frequently while in their presence.

"You can't use such big words in front of them, dear. They won't understand."

"Thank you for the insight, Winston."

"Ya know, just because you're always spouting out multi syllable words of high fluetent aristocracy doesn't mean you're necessarily smarter than us," Alister remarked in his usual tone of slight annoyance peppered with mock intelligence.

"Well I'm certainly smarter than you," Winston retorted. "Zip is another matter."

"I beseech thee," Zip smirked jokingly, giving Winston a half bow from his seat.

"Why does everyone insist on picking on me? Lara, make them stop!"

This time the uncharacteristic girly giggles I was so desperately trying to hide made themselves prominently known as I sat there with tears streaming down my cheeks. I vainly tried to mask my reactions with a tremulous covering of my hand clasped over my gaping mouth, but it was to no avail. The laughter came out regardless.

"Oh, you three make life worth living."

"You would never know that with all the death traps you take such joy in throwing yourself in," grumbled Zip, stabbing a piece of chicken relentlessly with his fork.

"I always come back alive," I responded curtly, dividing my chicken precisely up into nine even slices of meaty perfection.

"Yeah, but Alister here practically wets himself every time you journey through some lost, forgotten, decaying temple."

"I do not."

"I personally am not in favor of watching you journey through another remote location for quite some time," Winston chimed in, thoughtfully chewing on a piece of chicken. "Why can't you take up another assignment in a nice, low key area like Prague?"

I could feel the muscles in my face contort into a scowl as an invisible cloud of ominous tension descended upon the dinner table. I watched as each of my comrade's faces averted eye contact and found intense infatuation with the floor. All except for Alister.

"Say, isn't Prague where you met that—oww!"

I had gathered that Zip had chosen the impeccable timing of now to drive his heel into his comrade's foot.

"Oh? That Kurtis fellow?" I queried, utilizing mock nonchalance to mask my own trepidation hidden so unprofessionally in my voice. "He was positively primeval. If Boaz didn't get to him I'm almost certain those boxed up sticks of death tar his insisted on constantly smoking would have been the end of him anyhow. She unknowingly did him a favor, she saved him the trouble of chemotherapy."

The three men of the household stared at me with eyes glazed like doughnuts and mouths agape.

"That was a rather thought out soliloquy for someone you supposingly don't care about," Alister remarked keenly from his seat. I thought I heard the unmistakable clamor of Zip's foot coming down harshly on the tile floor, only to be met with nothing but air as Alister gloated triumphantly, "Ha! I moved!"

"You know, Lara dear, it is okay to admit that you miss him."

I scoffed at the words of comfort Winston so unsuccessfully tried to soften me with.

"Not now Winston, I don't have time for the fickle ponderings of melodramatic females. We have to concentrate on Avalon and Amanda. They take priority. Am I right or am I right?"

My head shot up to meet the eyes of my family, who knew much better than to argue with anything that came out of my mouth concerning that particular blond and the location of my mother.

"Well, yes dear I suppose they do—"

"I think he was a dick anyhow," Zip grumbled, again attacking his dinner with relentless vigor and zest. "If he really had half the balls he claimed he had he would have left you more than his stupid frisbee to let you know he was alright."

"I don't recall him ever mentioning his balls," Alister noted scientifically from his chair. I am almost certain Zip would have stomped on his foot again if he had not been the process of masticating.

"No use in pondering it," Winston said with a glare in the duo's obvious direction. "Lara checked out every hospital in the area twice. If he wanted to be found he would have. Now I propose we move on—"

"Twice?" Zip repeated. "I thought you told us you only checked once."

Winston cradled his wrinkly forehead in the palm of his outstretched hand. "Zip," he began. "Please, for the love of all things sacred, shut the bloody hell up."

There was a silence as I bit the interior of my cheeks to keep from laughing again at Winston's uncharacteristic choice of vocabulary.

"Ooh, you made Winston swear," Alister mocked, poking Zip in his well formed arm muscle.

"Well excuse me for taking an interest in Lara' personal life," Zip muttered.

"You three are my personal life."

"Oh, my," Alister squeaked whilst in the middle of his peas. "Was I actually included in something?"

"Bittersweet default," Winston offered flatly.

There was a moment of respective silence as Alister sat contemplating the previous comment.

"So, like, aren't the Nephilim still lurking around?"

Winston glared daggers, uzies, and machine guns all in Zip's general direction.

"What?" he asked, feigning innocence. "I can't help it if I find the prospect of angels and humans getting jiggy with it highly infatuating."

"Only you would find such a horrid act such as that infatuating," Alister grumbled, beating his mash potatoes with his spoon. This was always the extent of his anger, or so I have gathered from all the opportunities I have bared witness too. He'd stab something on his dinner plate, usually followed by a snarky remark, and then resume his previous mundane activity, whatever it happened to be.

"Well, I for one find Avalon much more infatuating at the current moment," I chimed, delicately placing a piece of chicken on the tip of my tongue.

"So weren't there, like, three sleeping Nephilim?"

Zip was persistent to say the least. The very least.

"Zip, we've been over this already," Alister pointed out, swallowing a glob of vegetables.

"Yes," I confirmed briskly, my eyes performing an involuntary roll in their sockets. "There were three."

There was a characteristic pause as my comrade sat absorbing this straightforward fact.

"Didn't you only kill off two?"

The dead air that hung at the table after his previous muttered quip was suffocating.

"I got one," I answered after a moment of unsettling tension. "And the Lux got the other."

"And whatever happened to Christmas Carol?"

Alister glared at Zip, an action that was almost habit by now. "I believe you meant to say Karel."

"Yeah. That dude."

"He blew up the last I saw," I stated nonchalantly, stirring my peas around with nervous anxiety.

"Well did you ever find the body?"

"You idiot!" Alister shot out, clamoring his fisted spoon down on the table with great vigor. "You can't find the remains of a corpse after an explosion! They've already been blown to smithereens!"

"I believe Zip is trying to point out Karel may still be alive," Winston piped in dryly, stating the obvious in a matter that Zip was deriving so much joy from frolicking around.

"Well if he wanted a rematch he should have confronted me a long time ago," I dismissed. "Right now I have other matters that deem my attention necessary."

"You'll have to learn to multi-task if Karel comes back from the dead," Zip murmured half heartedly, for Winston looked as though he was ready to lunge for his jugular.

"I'll multi-task when it is necessary," I answered, rising from my seat with unfinished plate in hand. "And right now, I don't deem it necessary."

With that last conceit lingering in the sweltering air, I turned around and sauntered out of the room.

o-o-o-o-o

I have always adored water. The cleansing, soothing affect it has on my soul is priceless. Even massages are not so enjoyable. But the pool? Ah yes, my pool was a thing of wonder that I reveled in every spare moment I got. Even though, technically, I did not have a spare moment to speak of currently, I opted to travel down to the confines of the aquamarine cave regardless. After the little dinner side chat we just shared, it appeared as though I would be needing more than to simply irrigate myself to wash all matters away in the chlorine infested bliss.

I sat with my legs dangling in the cooling wetness for a long while, teetering on the decision of whether or not to take a head first plunge. A swim implied a shower, for my showers were never a thing of speed, and I desperately had research to indulge in tonight. Luckily, Winston appeared to help make my choice a lot easier.

"Lara, my dear, do you need anything?"

I looked over my shoulder, all previous hardness having seeped away from my features like rain does on the dry, cracked earth of Peru after its annual thunderstorm.

"No Winston, I believe I'm fine, but thank you."

There was a pause of uncertainty as my beloved butler sat wavering in the threshold uneasily. He momentarily personified a pendulum as he slowly shifted from side to side under the doorway, simultaneously racking his mind for something of comfort to present to me.

"Well then, may I offer my ear instead?"

A small smile crawled across my fuchsia lips as I toyed with the invitation in my mind. In a nonvocal response, I chose to deliberately pat the vacant concrete next to me.

Winston slowly made his way over and began to strip himself of his black patent leather shoes. He hiked his pants up with the torpor that only comes with age and then dismounted his wool socks before sticking his feet into the pool next to mine.

"I lost someone once," he began slowly, timidly.

I arched an eyebrow in response.

"Not to the permanence of death," he admitted, "but they never returned, none the less."

"Kurtis can't really be defined as a someone," I answered, presuming he already knew what was on my mind. "We only had two conversations, and both were centered around business."

"But they were conversations, no?"

"...yes," I surrendered. "I suppose."

"And I also presume the fact that he contained the possibility to kick you hind quarters in a fight was highly appealing."

Leave it to your butler to be able to read you so well.

"It was unpredictable," I replied, unwilling to admit anything else.

"Which is what you thrive off of."

"Only in temples."

"...and what of the occasional relationship?"

"There never was any relationship," I countered. "There never will be." I locked gaze with my loyal friend, my liquid brown eyes scanning his ice blue ones, searching for some inaudible sign that he had some grasp—no matter how desperately flimsy—on where I was going with this. "He's gone, Winston. He's not coming back."

There was the infamous reappearance of dead air lingering between us, almost as fatal to a conversation as that horridly putrid gas Eckhardt had one of his diabolical henchmen seep into the Louvre was to a normal human being.

"Now what was it Zip was so unintelligently blabbering about?" Winston pondered, after a dramatic moment of silence, feigning thoughtfulness. "...about not finding bodies...?"

"I found blood," was my retort. "That was enough."

Winston seemed to think of this for a moment, having no witty repertoire at hand.

"Perhaps you will find him in Avalon."

"With mother?" I laughed at the mere absurdity. "I didn't know you were a comedian, too, Winston."

"There is nothing comical about hope."

"But reality is another matter," I quipped hastily.

Ha. I got him there.

"Your father was never concerned with what others referred to as reality," Winston responded softly.

"I," I began, slowly, deliberately, "am not my father."

"Yes, but you are his daughter."

"Thank you for pointing out the obvious."

My words were harsh, but my tone was playful, and besides, Winston knew better than to take me seriously. It was one of the things I so desperately adored about him. Alister, on the other hand, would go into cardiac arrest and swiftly commence groveling at my feet begging for forgiveness lest his soul be tortured for all eternity.

Winston half chuckled and began to arise. "Well, my dearest Lara, I shall now leave you to your own devices. I think you've had about all the conversation you can take for one day. Will you be needing anything further?"

"No thank you," I replied, and as soon as Winston was out of my splash zone, I dove face first into the lapping waves of the pool with my clothes still on and my shoes still tied.

o-o-o-o-o

AN: Ode to those who appreciate the light known as Kurtis, and have no fear, ye of little faith, for his light shall return in the next chapter. POVS alternate every chapter, incase you have not figured that out yet (or for some strange reason thought Kurtis underwent a sex change, identity crisis, name mistake, and two serious implants and none would be the wiser.) I really hate that I had to point out the alternating POVS, but feared for life and limb lest my small base of Kurtis fangirl readers disembowel me for lack of his caustic narrative. It will be back in chapter three. I promise. I've already started working on it. Many thanks to your kind word, for such is the reason I have updated this quickly. I'm like...wow, this is actually doing really well for a TR fanfic. I didn't know how many reviews were typical per chapter in the TR fandom, and am very gracious that you have decided to grace me with nine reviews for my measly prologue. (Very benevolent of you, I am much obliged. Hence I shall deliver more Kurtis promptly.) Keep those wonderfully encouraging words coming, for they really do make a significant difference in the speed of updating (for me at least) and I treasure everything you say and hold it close to my rapidly beating heart. Thank you for your time and generosity. Hopefully the endeavor was returned in favor with a few smalls smirks thrown your way in signs of mirth if nothing else. I like to pretend I am funny. Let me keep my fantasy.