TITLE:	Working Vacation - Part III (3/3)
AUTHOR:	-Andy- ( see2go4me@yahoo.com )
RATING:	15C
STATUS:	Posted
DISCLAIMER:	This is a derivative work. All characters belong to Joss Whedon, Mutant Enemy, Fox Television, Eidos, and others. I don't own any of them, just the plot and words gluing my story together.
SUMMARY:	Sometime even big girls need a little Faith
SPOILERS:	All seasons of BtVS. Tomb Raider: post AoD
DISTRIBUTION:	tth and my fanfic pages. Anyone else, e-mail me please.

The rest of Lara's vacation passed in a rather uneventful fashion. Even crossing the border for a two day visit to Canada at the end of her trip hadn't been a problem thanks to her British passport. And Montreal was that rare treat for her in recent years, a French speaking metropolis where she wasn't the target of some overzealous official out to make political hay from her visit, no matter how unobtrusive she normally tried to be.

After a leisurely drive down to Boston, and after arranging for the equipment Hillary had sent her to be shipped back to Croft Manor, Lara dropped her rented X5 off at the rental counter before heading to the British Airways check-in. Her late evening flight was the last one until the next day and was already in the midst of boarding when she casually sauntered up to the gate, ticket, carry-on, and laptop in hand.

First Class was almost empty for the flight, with only several minor celebrities and the normal complement of business executives. With the number of empty seats, Lara was surprised to find two women in the seats across the aisle from hers. She was further surprised to find that the woman in the aisle seat was Faith, the rather mysterious and dangerous woman she'd met earlier, who, to all appearances, appeared to be sleeping.

After putting her carry-on and laptop in the overhead compartment, Lara turned to Faith and was about to wake her to take care of their unfinished business when she was interrupted by the sound of someone quietly clearing their throat.

"I wouldn't disturb her." the taller young woman in the window seat next to Faith advised, closing a thick book that Lara could have sworn was written in Sanskrit. "There are some things you just don't interrupt Faith doing. If you value your life anyway. Sleeping is one of them."

"What are the others, besides food?" Lara asked curiously. Having seen Faith in action, she could easily guess that food was one of them but any others probably required a lot better knowledge of the potentially dangerous woman than she possessed.

The other woman, a brunette, giggled. "That would be one of them. The other two are classic Faith favorites," She lowered her voice, "sex and violence. Just don't tell anyone I told you. I'm not supposed to know that about her."

A low voice muttered "I heard that."

"Faith!" she squeaked in surprise. "You're not going to tell anyone are you? They'll ship me off to a convent!"

"No. But I can't make any promises for Lady Croft." she replied without opening either eye.

"Lady Croft?" The young woman stared at her for a moment before turning back to Lara. "You took those pictures?"

"Possibly." Lara looked at the two women with some confusion.

"Yes, Dawn. That's her." Faith said, opening both eyes and sitting up, obviously having given up on her nap.

"Cool! Did you give her a copy of the translation of the prophecy from the altar?" she asked, eagerly looking back at Faith. "Can I?"

"No, and you'll have to ask Giles about that when we get to the London office." Faith told her.

"Sorry." Dawn said to Lara with a disappointed expression.

"That's okay, I can wait." Lara took her seat across the aisle. "But neither of us is dead." she now addressed Faith. "So I believe I'm still owed an explanation for what happened the other night."

Faith raised an eyebrow at the pronouncement. "Nothing much to it. They had a ghost problem. We heard about it, I took care of it. And you got some pretty pictures to look at."

Lara gave Faith the look she usually reserved for Bryce when he was being difficult. To her surprise Faith merely winked at her.

"Faith! That makes it sound like you took out the trash!" Dawn whined.

"That's another way to put it." she grinned at her.

"Can I tell her then? I know I wasn't there but Willow showed me the tape she made from the things Lady Croft's cameras recorded."

"Go ahead." Faith reluctantly answered. "Just leave out the usual."

"Okay, got it. No destiny and no Council." She tried to shift so she could see Lara while she was talking.

"Dawn is it?" At her nod Lara continued. "Why don't you wait until we're in the air. Then you can sit over here." She gestured at the empty seat next to her.

"Cool" From the way Dawn smiled at the suggestion Lara had to revise her estimate of her age downward. She couldn't possibly be as old as she looked.

After Dawn had moved across the aisle and they'd been served drinks by the flight attendant, Lara asked her to begin after checking to see if Faith was awake.

"She's not really asleep yet." Dawn gestured subtly to Faith. "But she will be in a minute. She was in Detroit last week when we heard about your ghosts and she had to go back there to finish up before she could meet me in Boston today. All that traveling can wear you out, even someone like her."

Lara looked at her in surprise. "You heard about these ghosts last week?"

"Yeah. We sort of keep an eye out for things like that." Dawn shrugged. "You'd be surprised how often stuff like that happens. Keeps us busy."

"So you do the same things as Faith?"

"Oh. No. My sister won't let me and besides, Faith has some unique skills I don't have." She looked over at Faith again. "I just do research, translations, that sort of thing. When I'm not in class anyway."

"So what really happened?"

"Well, for one thing it wasn't really ghosts."

"I'd actually figured that out." Lara smiled. "The few ghosts I've run into don't do things like that."

"We were a bit suspicious also. It was actually one of those doomsday cults that were wandering around a couple years ago."

"Doomsday cult? You mean those people who sat around and waited for the world to end when it became 2000?"

"Yes. Sort of. These guys thought the calendar was wrong. They thought they would help things along." She looked closely at Lara. "And they weren't exactly people."

"So all of that chanting they were doing was supposed to end the world." She let the rest of it pass without asking what she meant by that. If they weren't human Lara wasn't sure she wanted to know what they really were.

"Yes. Kind of silly actually. Ending the world takes a bit more than that." Dawn shook her head.

"You've seen people try to end the world before?"

"Yes. I've got personal experience with that kind of thing." She grimaced and rubbed her stomach. "Fortunately, we normally hear about such things before they can get very far."

"So Faith stopped them from ending the world?" Lara looked over at her in surprise. Asleep she looked so innocent and carefree, more likely to grace the home of some wealthy celebrity than to be involved in such activities. "Does she do it that kind of thing often?"

"It's one of her specialties. I think she was a bit disappointed it was over so quickly. And even if they'd finished their ceremony the world wouldn't have ended. They had the correct date but they were in the wrong place. They misread their prophecy. They needed a druidic sacrificial altar in North America. The one they were using was neolithic. Or at least a fake neolithic altar. So it wasn't real anyway."

"Okay. So that is all fake?" Lara had been suspicious. The site hadn't quite felt right when she'd first visited it.

"Yes." Dawn laughed. "The real one is somewhere in western Canada. The one in New Hampshire was built by someone who saw it. In the journals I've seen he never really explains why he did it."

"What about the druidic altar they were supposed to use? Does that actually exist?"

"We're not really sure yet." she shrugged again. "We have a couple people looking for it now but there isn't any record of druidic activity of the correct age anywhere in North America. If they find it we'll keep an eye on it."

Lara spent the next several hours discussing some of her other adventures with Dawn, who seemed very interested in the traps and puzzles she'd run across in different ancient ruins. Eventually they both settled in and joining the rest of First Class; sleeping for the rest of the trip and not waking until the plane was preparing to land at Heathrow.

On the way out of London, watching the early sunrise as Hillary drove her home, Lara wondered if she would see either of them again and realized that even with all of the talking she'd done on the plane she still didn't know a lot about either of the two women or whom they worked for. They'd been very circumspect about some things. She had several additional names to give Bryce and some idea of what their organization seemed to do but everything else was too vague to tell her much.

A week later a slim package arrived at Croft Manor. Inside were several photographs, a letter, and a two page document. Most of the photographs seemed to be of her, taken when she was wearing her body-suit at the site in North Salem, with no indication of who had taken them. The last three were a surprise. They were of several large stones, one laying flat in a manner similar to an altar, taken from several angles.

The document consisted of one page covered in what looked to Lara like Ogam, a language she was only slightly familiar with. The other page appeared to be some prophecy about the end of the world with comments in the margins explaining several points.

Lara opened the letter, hoping it explained the other items. A business card similar to the one Faith had given her but with a different name and e-mail address fell out of the envelope. She had already had some idea who had sent it but the package had been delivered by a courier who wouldn't tell Hillary who it was from. This just confirmed it.

Lady Croft,

We thought you would appreciate the pictures. Faith took the ones of you. I won't repeat what she said about them but I believe it was a compliment. The other pictures are of what we believe to be the druidic site on the east coast of Canada. I've included the original prophecy with the translation. It appears to be longer than the one the cult had. Theirs appears to be missing several passages that I've noted on the translation, that probably explains how they ended up in the wrong place.

If you need any help in the future please let us know at the address on my card.

Dawn Summers

"Well, Hillary?" She asked after showing him the letter.

"Interesting... And for some reason her name seems very familiar."

"It does, doesn't it." Lara said contemplatively, staring at the business card in her hand.

• This is Lara's first encounter with the Council. She hasn't connected Faith and Dawn to Sunnydale yet. Notice how suspicious she is even at this point. To read about her first encounter with a slayer - check out the Red Raider Prologue