Work Text:
Werner looked up, raising his bowed head. The dust was still settling around the collapsed entrance of the pyramid. It didn’t feel real. Not yet. After everything in the past few days, after the period of time he remembered only in hazy glimpses, as if moonwalking, or like someone else’s puppet, coming back to himself only to see – No, no more Seth. He should have said it. Everything had happened so fast. And Seth…
Seth!
There was no time to mourn yet, Seth had to be sealed away for good and whatever Lara had done, she hadn’t had the Ceremonial Tablet with her, she couldn’t have read it to make it last.
How lucky Seth used Werner to find it then, to bring it with him.
Limping over to his car, Werner quickly pulled out the artefact in question, old and slightly crumbling, but legible, as he knew. He must have tried reading it before – no, not him, Seth. At least the god hadn’t destroyed it.
Werner held the Tablet and read out loud, his cane forgotten, set on the roof of the car. He read on, his voice strong and unwavering, not permitting himself to make another mistake. He read on, even as his throat turned dry and scratchy from the desert air.
He read on, until the end.
A strange energy swirled around him, and Werner knew he had succeeded.
Only then he allowed himself to collapse to his knees, both in relief and in grief.