Chapter Text
Darkness ate at her thoughts, curled its tendrils, and pulled her down into the frigid depths. She fought the pull, reached for the dim light above, but it flowed away like sand in the wind.
Soft timbres of voices like music to her ears, the splash of water, the thump of footsteps.
Soft fingers against her cheek. Cold liquid spilled and dribbled down her chin. She swallowed.
Warmth throbbed in her side. Pulsed. Excavated.
Dimmed.
She swam upstream, awash in blinding gold light. Free of all pain.
And yet, she knew this was not her time.
Not today. Not this way.
She cut through the water and felt her feet touch the bottom. Stones hard and unyielding. She shielded her eyes against the blinding light, then turned away toward the harrowing darkness of the shore.
One step, and a heartbeat thumped.
Two steps, and her lungs inhaled.
Three steps, and she stood next to her body, sprawled across the stone.
A gorgeous woman with brunette hair cradled her in her lap and brushed her hair from her face. Her brow furrowed, the scar there deeper than usual. She held a half full wooden cup, which she splashed across the red-soaked bandage.
She knelt and knew this woman.
Andrea Rojas.
Sam smiled, brushed her hand against her cheek, and tilted forward.
Into her body. Into a life she chose.
She opened her eyes to candlelight and warmth, Andrea’s scent all around her and the soft whisper of Andrea reciting a poem. A love poem by Sappho no less. Yet another thread in their growing tapestry.
She smiled and reached up to tenderly brush away a tear. “You found it,” she said, softly.
Andrea blinked and held her closer. “God, Sam! That — that was too close. Are you okay? Any pain?”
“Nope.” Sam grinned, her face wonderfully close to Andrea’s breasts, which would feel amazing under her hands again. “Feel fit as a fiddle. As hearty as a bear. Full of poems to riddle, and hearts to share.”
Andrea smiled and sighed. “You are truly impossible.”
Sam gently took the cup from Andrea’s hand and turned it over. “It’s so simple. A little thing.”
“It is as the stories say. Made by a carpenter’s son.” Andrea’s hand continued to card through Sam’s locks. “I — I tested it on myself. In case I was wrong. But since I didn’t die, I guess I chose wisely?”
“Oh my god, you literally quoted Indiana Jones.” Sam was delighted.
Andrea pursed her lips. “How can I quote what I haven’t seen, you nerd?”
“It is my destiny to be your nerd.” Sam sat upright, amused by Andrea’s look of exasperation. Wow, did she feel good. Was this what a cat felt when they used up one of their nine lives? Joy at having another chance?
“Whatever. We still need to find a way out.” Andrea stood and held out her hand. Sam grasped it and let Andrea pull her too her feet. And of course, Andrea was perfect forehead kissing height, so Sam indulged herself.
“Earlier, before I passed out, you said something about a seal?” Sam handed Andrea the cup.
Andrea dragged her finger over the symbols carved into the stone. “Here. The cup and seal are one, connected and bound or entangled. These writings faded from time, so it’s hard to decipher.”
“Is that a clue we can’t take it?” Sam worried about the entire place falling on their head when they still had no path to the surface. “Like in The Last Crusade where the temple collapses—”
“This isn’t a movie,” Andrea hissed and swatted Sam’s arm. “The world won’t end if we leave with this.”
“Last time you said something wouldn’t happen it did,” Sam pointed out. “Like no one else being here.”
“He’s deader than dead.” She jerked her thumb at the skeleton then waved her free hand around the room. “There is no other door here. We’re fine.” Yet despite the bravado in Andrea’s voice, her grip on the cup tightened to the point her knuckles turned white. “We will walk away from this place. Return home to my father. No more surprises will happen.”
Sam nodded. “Okay.”
Andrea narrowed her eyes. “No comebacks? Witty diatribes? Attempts to convince me otherwise?”
Sam shook her head. “That’s your purview. If this is what you need to happen, then okay. Let’s make it so.” She held out her hand. “Though I can take the pack again. Be your loyal pack mule.”
Wordlessly, she handed over the pack and returned her attention to the cup. As Sam shrugged on the pack, Andrea let out a long breath. “Papá asked me to do this, you know.”
“Wait, he asked you to find it?” Sam blinked, surprised and a little worried.
“Sí, busca el grial, mi pequeña. Cúrame. No vuelvas sin él.”
“Uh, that means?”
Andrea look up at Sam. “‘Seek the grail, my little one. Heal me. Do not return without it.’”
“Wait, he really said that?” Sam couldn’t believe her ears. He’d given his daughter an impossible task. “Did he know for sure where it was?”
Andrea shook her head. “No. I spent months digging through his research, cross-referenced with my own, and found these sites as the most likely. He refused treatment. Refused to see me.” Her fingers traced the rim of the cup. “This is my last chance to make things right.”
Sam couldn’t think of what to say, so she wrapped her arm around Andrea’s shoulders and pulled her flush against her side. She kissed her temple. “Whatever you need to do, I’ll be there to help, okay?”
Andrea stared at her for a long moment, then her gaze darted to Sam’s side. She tentatively ripped the bandage to reveal smooth skin with only a faint scar where the wound had been. The jacket and shirt were still in tatters. Her fingers deliciously warm as she trailed them along the scar, but the touch was delicate, almost reverent.
“Against my bitter judgment,” she said finally, “I believe you.”
No one accosted them in the dark corridors to the atrium.
Neither of them spoke, though Andrea held Sam’s hand tightly. Sam sighted droplets of blood all along the path.
Despite the other relics in the room, Andrea had touched none of them. Examined only the grail. Her mouth set in a determined line, while she turned it over and over again in her hand.
Was it really this easy? Walk in and out? Sam didn’t trust it for a second. She listened for any signs of pursuit, for any stray footsteps. Yet nothing happened. They reached the center of the atrium, where the light above had faded from the coming of night.
The raised dais glowed a faint blue in the darkening twilight. The hairs on Sam’s arms rose, and again that sense of being watched curdled through her. She stopped Andrea right before she stepped onto the raised circle.
“Do you think that’s the seal?” Sam pointed to it. “Or some sort of weird supernatural thing? Because why is it glowing.”
Andrea frowned and squatted to study it more closely, the cup still tightly clenched in her right hand. Her finger traced the carved letters in the stone. “Is this the anomaly?”
Sam blinked and shrugged off the pack. She dug into it and pulled out the drone. Flipping it on, she set it to hover over the round circle, then plugged in its cord. The laptop she opened up, and turned on to find the screen all fizzed. She backed up several feet, almost into the prior hallway, before the screen finally resolved itself. Six keystrokes later, and gibberish came down the line.
“Yup. That’s it. I can’t get any decent readings off it.” She switched to the LIDAR interface. This time the data came through less garbled, enough to show the object was indeed round, but nothing about its interior. Tabbing through the other sensors on the drone, she finally gave up and packed it all away. “It messes with the electronics too much.”
“What about that multimeter of yours?” Andrea tapped the stone. “Is this emitting energy?”
Sam tugged that out of the tool pouch and connected the leads to the sides of the circle. “It reads infinity. Which is typical of a capacitor.”
Andrea looked baffled. “That technology wouldn’t have existed back then.”
Sam held up a finger and dug through her pouch for one of Lena’s favorite tools. One she insisted they take with them on any test. A handmade tool specifically for analyzing emissions from objects, sort of like a Geiger counter but with more fancy features that Sam still didn’t know how to work. Why not try it? It was a long flat device with leads on one end. She attached those and frowned.
“It’s emitting radiation but not the typical alpha or beta. I — I have never seen this before.” She pressed save on the data, but just in case — electronics were affected—she hooked up her phone and copied the data from a safer distance. She’d have Lena examine it once they were back home.
“Not harmful is it?” Andrea stood, unnerved.
“In my line of field, anything glowing is probably harmful.” Sam repacked her bag and donned it. “We shouldn’t hang here too long.”
Andrea nodded and stepped over the circle. The moment her feet hit the other side, the pillars and ground shook violently. The circle glowed brighter, heat radiated from it, and the stonework began to crumble.
Sam leaped forward and grabbed Andrea’s arm just as the stone’s fell from under her feet.
“No!” Terror etched Andrea’s voice, and her feet struggled for purchase against the glowing pillar – the only still object in the room. The cup tumbled from her grip onto a narrow ledge just a few feet to the right. Her eyes closed, her breaths in short gasps.
“Andrea, give me your other hand, please. You’re slipping!” Sam struggled to keep hold of Andrea’s arm, but her jacket ripped. She clenched Andrea’s wrist tightly with both hands.
“No regresaré sin el grial, no lo haré,” she repeated over and over. Opening her eyes, she shuddered and the tremor nearly shook her free of Sam’s grip.
“Goddammit, Andrea, your hand!”
Time slowed then for Sam. She watched in horror as Andrea reached desperately for the cup. Her fingers brushed against its rim. The seal under Sam and the cup glowed in tandem.
A second quake ripped through the cavern. The ceiling caved in and rained upon the stonework all around them. More of the atrium shredded and tumbled into the growing maw of darkness. How deep it went, Sam didn’t want to know.
“Andrea, please,” Sam begged. Would the next one send rocks tumbling onto her? Is this how they’d die? “Each time you touch it, another quake!”
“Mi Papá,” she wept, fear twisting her voice. “Es todo lo que tengo…”
Her pained words speared Sam’s heart. Even not knowing Spanish, she knew Andrea’s meaning. “No, not just him. You’ve got me. I’m not leaving you.” Sweat from the seal’s heat made her hands too slippery. Andrea’s wrist slipped further. Desperately, she clenched Andrea’s hand tighter. “We will get out alive, now please, your hand!”
Andrea’s face was pale, sweat dampened her hair. Only a few feet away, the cup taunted them on its ledge, just out of reach. Tears stained her cheeks, fear in her eyes, her eyes on the cup.
Poetry had reached her before. This poem Sam crafted on the spot. “Eternity / flashed before her eyes / a spiral dance / across sun-kissed rivers / and moonlit prairies / the owl’s song / coos in darkness / that glints with the light / of a billion twinkling stars.”
Andrea hung limply, her weight pulling her slowly from Sam’s grasp. Her face twisted in despair and pain, her lips turned downward. Her other hand reaching vainly for the cup.
“Sharing this eternity,” Sam recited, while rocks and pillars cascaded around them and ripped more stones into the abyss. “skin touching, / breaths tickling her ear / as the words of her lover / blooms in her soul.”
At the word lover, Andrea looked up.
“Together, they lie / in a tender embrace / their hope planted as seeds / to grow with love / toward a timeless future / and a glorious present.”
Andrea’s eyes shone with tears. She reached with her other hand and grasped Sam’s wrist. “A wonder unlike all before,” she whispered. “Caught in the wells of sincerity / take me home, take me home.”
Sam adjusted her grip to snare both of Andrea’s hands. She pulled upward with all her strength, skidding backward, while the world crumbled to dust around them.
Andrea scrambled, her feet against the stone, and upward they tumbled. Sprawled on the glowing seal in the waterfall of dirt and stone. Sam’s arms curled tight around Andrea’s body, and she shielded her with her own. The quake thundered and roared until the fury deadened to a trickle of dirt.
Dust settled. A quiet simmered with the beat of their hearts and ragged breaths.
Sam held Andrea tighter, her face in her hair. That was too close.
Andrea buried herself against Sam, and she wept. Her sobs a quake of their own, but Sam didn’t let go. As promised.
###
Sam didn’t know how long they laid there, holding each other tightly. But she soon realized the cavern’s collapse had created a landslide. One that lead to the surface. The remains of the ruins were hidden deep under the debris, no sign of an atrium nor any hallways to relic rooms. All of it lost in the massive piles of rocks and the yawning abyss before them.
Andrea made no move to stand. She had curled into Sam as if to escape, so Sam picked her up in a bridal carry. The stone beneath her no longer glowed. She picked her way up the landslide, each step careful due to the precious burden she carried.
No words were spoken. Only the wind and the soft calls of birds carried sound to Sam’s ears. The sun hung low on the horizon, the nearby peaks almost obscuring it, the sky ablaze in red and orange.
When her feet finally touched the surface, Sam wanted to weep in relief. “Look Andrea, the sky. Mountains. Hear the birds? The wind? We survived. And made a lovely new hole. I bet the wildlife will love their new jungle gym.” She hoped the humor would uplift Andrea’s spirits.
Andrea lifted her head then. She didn’t let go of Sam, her arms curled around her neck. “Even in this, you see beauty? I lost the grail. I failed.”
Sam carried her around the massive hole and toward their camp. It lay further up the saddle pass, where she had pitched the tents in the shadow of the mountain’s face. “Maybe so, but you still briefly found it. That’s victory. And today we witnessed magic. A seal and a cup, entangled and brilliant enough to shake the foundations of the earth. Isn’t that amazing?” She kissed Andrea’s forehead, still at a perfect height, even while Sam held her tightly in her arms.
Andrea sighed and pressed her face into the nape of Sam’s neck. “He’ll hate me, Sam. I return empty handed.”
“No, you return with knowledge and wonder,” Sam corrected. “I still have all your finds in my pack. I got the data readings from that seal saved. We have the LIDAR maps. And a beautiful story of hope, care, and rugged determination against all odds.”
Andrea huffed but didn’t reply. Instead, she lifted her head and looked back. The sinkhole was barely visible now. Broken trees and rocks coated the clearing, and shadows blanketed the landscape. The sun hid behind the peaks. Stars began to stud the sky.
“Was it worth it?”
Sam found a rock and set Andrea upon it. She settled next to her and grasped her hands. “Hey, look at me.” She dipped her head to catch Andrea’s gaze. “It was worth it. Because I got to meet you.” She brushed Andrea’s hair from her eyes and laid her hand on Andrea’s cheek. “And I meant what I said. I’m here for you. In what ways you’ll have me.”
Andrea pressed her hand over Sam’s hand. “You make no sense, Sam Arias. Better if you let me fall.”
Sam shook her head. “You deserve life, Andrea. One full of love. That you chose for yourself.”
Andrea sighed. “Right. Choose. All I know is what Papá taught me. This path was carved before I learned to speak.”
“Nah, it seems that way now maybe, but I think our dramatic reenactment of Indiana Jones the Last Crusade proves that hypothesis wrong.” Sam winked.
“Nerd.” But at least Andrea smiled this time.
“One of the best!” She stood and held out her hand. “How about we take this a step at a time, and I’ll be with you all the way.”
The moon had started to rise behind them. It lit their path in a comforting glow. Andrea’s hair shone almost in that light, her face reddened in a blush, and her eyes piercing through to Sam’s soul. When her hand clasped Sam’s, it felt almost like a promise.
Together they walked, hand-in-hand, to the campsite. Again, neither spoke, but the silence wasn’t painful or uncomfortable like before they fell underground. No, this time warmth exuded between them, as if Sam walked with a partner that she’d always known.
The camp hadn’t changed. Nothing out of place. They quietly made dinner, cleaned themselves up, but when they entered the tent, Andrea pulled her sleeping bag to the center and zipped it together with Sam’s.
Sam didn’t hesitate. She crawled in with Andrea and pulled her into her arms. This time when Andrea kissed her, it was tentative, shy almost. As if she didn’t know quite what to do. Very unlike the almost desperate sex they’d had in the caverns.
So Sam led the way again. Her touch and kisses soft and reverent, because Andrea deserved softness and tender care. If Sam believed in magic, she was convinced their love-making that night bloomed with it. Folded their feelings into a tapestry of hope and healing. Sam desperately hoped this wouldn’t end up circ*mstantial.
Because if she was honest with herself, Sam had somehow, against her bitter judgment, fallen in love with the most prickly, frustrating, and tender woman alive. Lena was never going to let her live this down.
Andrea fell asleep first, and Sam carded her fingers through her lover’s hair. The soft susurration of night in the Patagonia mountains eventually lulled Sam to sleep as well.
The next morning, Andrea chose to break camp. They spent it quietly packing, until the satellite phone rang from Sam’s pack.
Sam snatched it and answered. “Lena?”
“Sam! Thank god. I’ve tried to contact you for a few days now and heard nothing. Then got reports of landslides and quakes near you. Are you two all right?”
“In a manner of speaking…” Sam had no idea how to explain. “We’re breaking camp to head back.”
“So you found it?”
“Yes and no? It’s a long story, Lena. I’ll share it when we’re back.”
Andrea looked up from the box in which she’d stored their tent. “No one will believe us, Sam.” She jammed in a tent pole and shut the lid with a click of a latch. “I hardly believe it.”
Sam didn’t care if no one believed them. “Babe, it doesn’t matter if they do or not. We know the truth.” She turned her attention back to the call. “Anyway, Lena, we should be back within a day.”
“Babe, huh?” Lena’s voice held a touch of amusem*nt mixed in with her concern. “Thought you two weren’t getting along.”
“Well, um, things changed?” Sam could feel the heat of her blush, and she dug her boot into the ground embarrassed. “You tell Ruby I love her, and I’ll see you all soon. Bye!” She quickly hung-up before Lena could say another word.
“Not keen to tell your buddy you slept with me?” Andrea teased.
“Actually, I want to shout it from the mountaintops,” Sam admitted. “But I wanted to talk to you first.” She tucked the phone back into her pack and added it to their camp supplies. “Do you want to — to continue us? Beyond this adventure?”
Andrea leaned back on her heels and stared at the box in front of her. For a long moment, she was silent, a crease between her brows. “Do you?” She looked up then, her voice quiet. Her turquoise eyes held a quiet vulnerability.
“Yeah. Yeah, I do.” Sam knelt next to her, but didn’t reach out to touch her yet. Not with how rigid Andrea held herself. “I promised to be here for you, and I meant it.”
Andrea smiled, though a hint of sadness crept into her expression. “I believe you. Hard not to when you keep proving your idiotic loyalty. So why not? Can’t be any worse than your puns.”
Sam knew her well enough now that this was Andrea saying yes, which made her want to whoop with joy. “So does this adventure mark our first date? Because I gotta say, it was a hell of a one. Maybe next time let’s not almost die a dozen times?”
“What? You dislike death-defying dates in underground tombs?” Andrea teased. Her fingers toyed with the zipper on Sam’s jacket. “Fights to the death with crazy Templars?”
“Once is enough, thank you very much.” Sam leaned forward and gave Andrea a peck on the lips. “Next date I’ll plan.”
“Will need rock slides and sand traps. Else it is not a date.” Andrea grinned and leaned forward to capture Sam’s lips with her own.
