When the Ruskies surrounded her with a ring of torches and untied her from the tent post, Marion knew something big was going down. She had spent enough time tied up in their stinking tents in this hellhole of a jungle to know that they couldn't be striking camp after sunset. Usually she devoted all the time between horrible discomfort and blissful oblivion to imagining her American friends who scoffed at the Red Menace, and the stories she could tell them. Tonight, she hadn't even gotten to the part when she told them about pissing in the jungle in front of a live audience before the Reds lurched her to her feet. They clutched at her arms with meaty fingers and ushered her roughly through the small encampment, their harsh voices swallowed by the dense jungle.
Marion didn't take kindly to this at all. It had been a long, hot march that day, and she just wanted to sleep. Besides, it wasn't like she was there to make life any easier for these damn Commies. And the hand belonging to the Comrade on her left was inching toward a forbidden zone.
"Get off me! Get off me, ya damn Ruskies!" She twisted, trying to dislodge Leftie's fingers. Mid-twist, she stumbled into the firelight.
Several things happened at once.
Irina Spalko filled Marion's vision. The woman reminded her of a long-legged, cold-eyed spider, squatting over the camp. Marion curled her lip. Spalko glanced back at her, allowing contempt to flare in her normally dispassionate gaze before turning away. God, Marion hated that woman.
A shout from her right caught Marion's attention, and she saw her son Mutt, being held back by some very burly Russians. Had Mutt not been her son, Marion might have been overwhelmed by a simultaneous mixture of relief, fear, and anger. As it was, Mutt was her son, and was somehow able to do that to her nearly on a daily basis. So she tipped right past mixed emotions and into the comforting single-mindedness of rage. Why the hell was he in Peru? She knew she had told him in no uncertain terms to stay put in Chicago. She opened her mouth to lay into him but good. Mutt, for his part, already looked sullen and defensive.
Before she could fully form what she was going to say to Mutt about his unexpected appearance, another voice cut through the babble of Russian.
"Marion!?"
She froze. Oh, she knew that voice. She turned her head slowly, and there he was.
Marion drank him in for a moment, savoring the utterly gobsmacked look on his face before expanding her vision. Still wearing that beat-up old hat, she saw, and he needed to shave, as usual. More lines on his face, but she'd picked up some lines of her own in the last twenty years.
Indiana Jones whirled toward Mutt, his eyes wide and frantic. "Your mother is Marion Ravenwood?"
Oh, this was going to be rich.
-- -- --
Notes: I've been playing around with this since I saw Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. Marion was always my favorite of the Jones ladies, and was fun to write. I kind of want to expand this, but I need to watch the movie again to make sure I'm accurate. So until then, this piece stops where it is.
