Title: Archaeologists are a girl's best friend
Author: Proton Star
Disclaimer: I don't own the characters; LucasFilm does. No money is being made from this.
Fandom: Indiana Jones, most particularly Indiana Jones and the Crystal Skull but it also mentions a few things from Raiders of the Lost Ark.
Characters: Marion Ravenwood, Mutt Williams and Harold Oxley.
Ratings/Warnings: PG-12, spoilers for the film, canonical character death is mentioned.
Notes: Forgive me archaeologist friends, I know exactly what I am doing wrong.
Summary: If Ox was the best friend any woman could want, then Marcus Brody was a close second.
If Ox was the best friend any woman could want, then Marcus Brody was a close second.
When it became clear that Indy wasn't coming back any time soon, and even if he did Marion was more likely to throw things at him than take him back, Marcus found her somewhere to live and a job to do, because she didn't want to be a charity case. She met up with Colin again while she's working, translating some Nepali texts for an old colleague of her father's. Colin was back over from England co-ordinating a joint Air Force taskforce, or something like that. The stupid thing was, she originally knew him because he was one of Indy's friends. Colin hadn't heard about what had happened, and came over looking for Indy to say hi and catch up. Instead he and Marion went out for a dinner that wasn't quite a date.
Colin wasn't an archaeologist. Didn't even have a trowel for anything other than gardening. It wasn't a relief, or anything like that, but it was different.
He marries her despite Marion s reputation, which college town rumour has only added to, her temper, and the fact that she's five months pregnant with Indy's kid.
And they are happy, riotously so.
Until one day, Colin flies off and doesn't come back. She grants that being shot down by the enemy is a better excuse than the complete vanishing act that Indy pulled, but it still leaves her with a three-year-old and not enough money coming in.
The women of the town know how to deal with the widow Williams better than they ever knew how to cope with the unmarried and pregnant Marion Ravenwood, but it's still lucky that Marcus somehow finds her another job before she strangles someone for being an interfering busy-body.
Marion has known Ox for years, and doesn't hesitate to move herself and Henry to Peru when Marcus tells her than Ox needs an assistant.
What Ox actually needs is, in no particular order, an assistant, a dig manager, an archivist, a translator, a navigator, a cook, a better security detail than Marion is able to offer, a co-author and someone to deal with spiders. Marion does what she can and she thinks she does it well.
She and Henry are on their own for the first six months, outfitting a base of operations for when Ox gets back from his tour of the US and Europe trying to raise funds. Marion spends her time improving her schoolgirl Spanish and learning Quechuan. It's fun really, helps her teach Henry English while she's learning other languages. Henry's still Henry then, Mutt's a much later affectation, from schoolfriends when she sends him to ... actually she can't remember which disaster of a school it was. There were several. Since they can't all have been terrible, she puts at least some of it down to Henry, who seemed to have inherited a disinclination to take direction from all three of his parents.
The reason Ox had to raise more money, other than archaeology always needs more money, is that, although he's dug in Peru before, it was further north. All the information he'd found up there said the crystal skulls, if they are anywhere, were in this region. So Ox had to move base to down here, and that sort of change takes cash, lots of it, cold, hard and green.
The locals near Ox's new base are friendly, then they find out that Marion is not married to Ox. That's when the questions and funny looks start. Why wasn't she married to him, who was the child's father and so on.
Then they met Ox and they all say, every single last one, "why didn't you say you were his caretaker?" Ox does overhear one of the repetitions and he would, probably, have been slightly offended, if he hadn't been looking for Marion to ask if she knew where he'd put his hat. Which was typical!
Marion prefers "guardian", which is an alternative translation of the same word, but it all comes out to the same in the end.
Marion is Ox's co-author on several papers. She'd didn't expect anything else from Ox, he was one of the good guys, but she knew academia well enough to know that there's plenty of people who wouldn't give their dig manager co-authorship. When she's credited, it's as M. Williams. She'd never been co-author on any of her Dad's papers, she wasn't old enough to make much of a contribution and she's never taken anything she hasn't earned. But the Ravenwood name has a certain reputation, one for chasing after myths. Even if she knows her Dad was right, she can't prove it and it's not the sort of notoriety you want if you're trying to raise money for a dig.
Eventually a few people realise that M. Williams is Marion Williams is Marion Ravenwood, and that's when there's jokes about hopeless quests and fairytales. Few people know about Ox's hunt for the crystal skulls, they assume the fantasy he's beguiled by is the myth of El Dorado. Which is an easy enough misunderstanding, because who wouldn't want to be the one to discover a city of gold. It doesn't exist, of course. The whole story was so obviously a mistranslation, probably by the conquistadors, and, understandably, no one enlightened them. That argument diverts people from asking more questions. If there's one way to distract archaeologists, it's by starting a conversation featuring the word "mistranslation". They either argued about whether it was, or they shared stories about mistranslations they'd seen or made. Ox published enough work on the Mayan artefacts they did find that no one thought to ask him about crystal skulls he hadn't found, yet, or make more than a few aside comments about cities of gold.
Marion has seen enough not to doubt that the skulls might be real, and for all that Ox was a very absent-minded professor, he wouldn't have spent all of his time, and all of everyone else's, on a wild goose chase.
Ox treats her as an equal partner on the dig, because she works the same hours. Ox also tries to do his part in raising Henry. He leaves all the discipline to Marion, because, as he said, "I am not cut out for the role of pater familias," but everything else he gets involved in. Often enough, she gets absorbed while working on something, because she's a Ravenwood after all, and by the time she takes a break it's ten o'clock. On those occasions, she tends to find Henry already in bed, with Ox reading him a bedtime story. Okay, so quite often those bedtime stories are dig reports of the great and the good, but it sends Henry off to sleep alright and she's grateful for it.
Marion thinks Ox quite enjoys it though, and as a thank you she tries to do the parts of the job she knows he hates. That includes going to conferences when Ox can't be bothered, which normally happen quite early on in the conference season. It's not that Ox doesn't like conferences, or people, but there's only so many times that you can hear the same dig reports and the same gossip before they bore you until the next year.
Once Ox's has had his fill, Marion goes instead, and that's when she hears all the gossip Ox hasn't passed on. Like quite why Indy keeps avoiding any conference that Ox might go to. Indy's speciality wasn't the Maya, sure he knew a bit, enough for undergrad teaching and the occasional treasure hunt, but it wasn't his field, so there was no reason for him to be at Mayan conferences, except gossip, contacts and a line on his next treasure hunt, so she hadn't expected to see him, but she was tickled that he was avoiding everything Maya because Ox punched him. According to reports, probably slightly exaggerated, Ox nearly broke his hand punching Indy. He probably hurt himself more than he hurt Indy. She didn't need him to do that, she's thoroughly capable of punching Indy herself. But she appreciated the thought.
It's at conferences that Marion starts getting offers to go work back in the States. She considers it, and then feels guilty about it. The US jobs would pay more, plus Henry was going to start school soon, and she had to be there for him in the holidays because there's no one else to look after him. Her mother died when she wasn't much older than Henry was now, and her father had died almost ten years ago. But, at the same time, it felt like she was running out on Ox who'd never done her anything but good.
She eventually spilled her guts to Ox over a bottle of something local and deadly that he brings back to the camp one evening. "You might as well tell me what the problem is," he said, putting two glasses down between them on the table.
He listened to her, thought for a moment and said, "nonsense, dear heart, take the job. You'd only be up there for the summer season, and it's too hot to dig down here then."
So that's how she splits her time, summer in the USA and winters in Peru. It means she gets about three months per year with Mutt, one in summer, one over Christmas and one around Easter. It's not enough, but it'll have to be.
Mutt mostly understands, something Marion clings to through the worst of his rebellious stage. She's not sure when her sweet little boy who could count in Quechuan turned into this boy who sulks and dances to rock and roll. She thinks it must have happened at the same time as he lost the language. It's not practising when she sent him off to school in the US. She should have made him practise. Right now, there's no time for that sort of recrimination, mostly because she's busy trying to get him to read the book that he's been assigned over the holiday. Marion really doesn't want him to be kicked out of the fourth, no, the fifth school he's attended. Of course, he's refusing to read it, and she's lost her temper and he's gone storming off to his bedroom. The doors are too heavy to slam, but he's given it a good try.
Ox has sat through the row with the practised air of someone who has already had a week of this, and three weeks at Easter. He lets the dust settle before turning to Marion, "give me an hour and I will sort this out."
Marion gives Ox the hour, waiting with a bottle of something interesting for when he comes back. Ox is chuckling when he does. "He'd already read it."
Marion drew a deep breath. "Then why ... no, how do you get him to tell you?"
"Oh I told him I was all out of books and wanted to know if it was worth borrowing. He said it was alright, and said I could borrow if it I didn't mind waiting till Wednesday, because he wanted to put the finishing touches to the book report." Marion felt frustrated. This was the same kid who, almost literally, swore that he was having nothing to do with the book. Ox continued. "I don't think the difficulty of the work is the problem, I think he doesn't understand why he has to do it." Marion understood that feeling alright, but she'd reserved it for home economics. "I tried to explain that he couldn't follow either of his parent's footsteps without a college degree, and needs must."
And Mutt would go along with what Ox suggested. Somehow Ox, who was every cliché about scatter-brained unworldly academics brought to life, was the one person in the world Mutt actually listened to. Mutt ignored Marion, teachers, guidance counsellors, head teachers, three different policemen, a state trooper and, on one truly spectacular occasion, a justice of the peace. But Ox he listened to!
Ox was doing his best not to find it amusing.
"I still don't get why you think this is funny," said Marion.
Ox picked up his cup. "You have to remember Marion, that I knew you when you were this age." Which was true; while her Dad had preferred Indy, Ox was another of his protégés. Indy'd broken the old man's heart almost as much as hers.
"I was never this bad." She wasn't. She would have remembered.
Ox looked at her, biting his lip to stop himself laughing. "I would like to remind you of the incident of the rowing club and the hair dye."
"That was one time. Well two times, but the second time they really deserved it." As much for not being prepared for her to do it again as for what they d done.
Ox didn't say anything in reply, just sat down tilting his head in a way designed to say 'I told you so'. She sat down in the chair opposite; arms crossed. Marion supposed they probably ought to be working on the dig report, but it was a nice night and it was good to take ten, fifteen minutes here and there to take it all in. Ox's mouth was still doing amused but his eyes had that faraway look. He was thinking about what they could learn once they find out who made the crystal skulls and how. Her own thoughts were more practical, mostly focussing on finding space for anything they might find during next week's digging. That was how their team worked, Ox was all hopes and dreams while she figured out how to get there, and it worked well. Marcus knew what he was doing when he suggested they work together. It wasn't quite the future she'd imagined when she was fifteen, and it wasn't perfect because Henry was going to drive her grey before her time, but it was a lot better than the future she imagined when she was twenty-five.
End notes: I know Ox ought to have put two and two together and guessed Mutt was Indy's son but Marion never told him because she presumed he knew, which he didn't, and he never knew that Indy's real name was Henry so didn't guess from that either.
Probably the thing I liked best about Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull was how much Mutt loves Ox. Large parts of the first half of the film are Mutt going "and we must save Ox" and ignoring or complaining when Indy is mean about him, and it's adorable. So I wanted to write a fic about that. Only it turned into Marion 'n' Ox against the world instead, which was not intended but I also quite like 😊