Work Text:
Lara was watching the men work in her garden, piles of soil on the formerly pristine lawn. Fruit trees had been carefully (very carefully, Winston had been watching like an eagle) moved to another location and so the work on the new part of her assault course could continue. She had only had it for a year but it already wasn’t enough for her. Apart from some minor changes, the largest new constructions would be the shooting range so she could train her aiming skills. That had required her to move the finish line further, but she welcomed the slight lengthening.
“Lady Croft,” the chewing, hulking construction team leader approached her. “Installing those targets will be a breeze, but we might’ve got some wrong information on tha’ area behind. You want a new whole structure there?”
“Not much of a structure, but yes,” Lara set her hands on her hips. A short wide path onto an elevated area couldn’t be too difficult for them. “Is there a problem?”
“Well, Lady, we can call it a problem, or we can just call it a wall.”
Lara turned to where he was pointing and understood his misgivings. Her garden was sprawling, it was hard to run out of room. But not impossible. In her enthusiastic planning she had forgotten to check the dimensions and completely overlooked the fact that there was nowhere to build the finish line.
“I see,” she crossed her arms.
“I s’ppose we could break down the wall and build over the road outside if the parcels neighbouring with this one are also yours. You’d still first need to get a permission for moving the road and then rebuilding it out of your own pocket. Got to say, Lady, quite an expensive mistake.”
“Yes, I see what you mean,” Lara said thoughtfully. “For now, work on the other parts of the course. I will think about this.”
“Sure thing, it’s till going ta take us some time, you’ve got some unusual playground ideas,” he laughed.
“I would hope so,” Lara smiled, but as she turned, walking back into her house, her smile fell off her lips. She had really not thought this through. Was she willing to break down her wall and rebuild the road that would be replaced by her finish line? It would be an easy choice, if it didn’t include dealing with the bureaucracy concerning public roads. That would be frustrating and possibly very expensive. And lengthy.
But she didn’t want to make her shooting range any smaller. Another option would be moving large parts of the whole assault course, maybe breaking the back wall by the swimming pool and make the beginning of the course more to the east? It wouldn’t be that easy either, she couldn’t just move the whole course – not only would that cost a lot of time and money, there was a right turn in the middle of the course which would have to be dealt with by rearranging some other parts so the turn would stay where it was.
The more Lara thought about it, the more she knew every solution would cost her, if she wanted to keep her intended plans. If only she had more room in the front, just twenty metres or so, just a bit more space that would just… appear there?
A problem that had been caused by her not checking the dimensions…
Now Lara was aware of the concept pocket dimensions. But if anyone asked, she would neither confirm nor deny if the amount of things her backpack could fit into itself was natural. Surely, surely she had some artefact that could manage it on a slightly larger scale? She had so many of them and her cataloguing was spotty at times, not to mention she didn’t always know all that each artefact was capable of as she wasn’t interested in using them. But maybe this time?
She spent the rest of the day going through her many finds, and continued days upon days later, while the work in her garden continued and was slowly nearing its completion – everything but the finishing line.
The foreman talked about the problem with Lara again one day after the shift and she promised to resolve it shortly.
She didn’t go to bed that night, working on finding the perfect artefact. She knew there had to be one.
The next day when the workers arrived at her estate, nothing seemed different from outside the garden. But when they entered it, it was with a baffled surprise that they discovered the wall behind the almost-finished shooting range missing – or at least a significant part of it, like a large semi-circle hole, creating a sort of stone arch. Beyond it was a fairly roomy place, maybe ten metres by twenty metres, plain brown soil, enclosed by the same sandy brown wall as the rest of the garden.
“Did I miss anything?” one of them mumbled.
Another scratched his head. “How? The road’s still there, we’ve just drove on it.”
“Don’t worry too much about it, gentlemen,” Lara said from behind them with a content, tired smile and they turned to look at her. “Just make sure the finishing line is built to my specifications.”
“Um, yes madam.”
“Good.”
Lara mourned the loss of one of her artefacts a little, but not much. It was still there, still hers, she just couldn’t admire it any more because the most effective way of creating the pocket dimension she wanted was to bury it deep into the ground.
At least she would now have the assault course she had wished for, without worrying about bureaucracy or the laws of nature.