Apologies to those waiting for the next chapter of Falling. I'm back to work, but fighting it out with several plot demons. In the meantime, I hope you enjoy this.
Marion post 1926, pre-Raiders. Fits with my Indy/Marion story Falling, but will stand alone. Please read and review
The Space in Between
That last year of school is harrowing. Marion knows Abner has spoken to the headmistress, ensured that her freedom is even more curtailed than before. She hardly even cares . There is no way she will escape him now, not with the way things are. His long held trust in her has been shattered, and he tells her again and again he wishes he could have raised her better.
This amuses Marion, because really he hasn't raised her at all. She has spent her whole life existing as some kind of tiny adult, needing physical chaperoning and academic education but not emotional nurture. No one has ever cared for her that wasn't employed to do so.
Marion thinks Nepal is a stupid idea from the outset, but Abner has long since abandoned any belief in his daughter's sense of judgment and they set out anyway. It is Marion's privately held opinion that they are going a damn long way for a chance that makes a long shot seem certain. So Alexander the Great made it almost into the Himalayas after all that time in Egypt. So an artefact that would make his army invincible must have sounded like a grand idea. There is nothing but circumstantial evidence linking Nepal to the Ark, and that evidence is hazy at best. Abner is reaching and Marion knows it. Still, Abner's been on this case since before Marion was born, and he needs something to show for his work. The Headpiece to the Staff of Ra was a major breakthrough, but subsequent breakthroughs have not followed and Abner is not the only one getting frustrated.
It's not a big dig this summer. After years and years of failure the university has lost patience. First tenure was differed and then the grants got smaller and then he was finally dismissed altogether. Abner maintains this is a good thing. "No sense in dragging a bunch of students out there when it's just going to be surveying. You and me and a couple of hired hands should do. We'll find a promising site and go back to Chicago and haul over a bunch of green undergrads next year."
Marion has grown tired of arguing. In any case, she knows he hasn't really trusted his students since the Jones fiasco. She hates that. She hates that Abner has never really had anyone to work with since then. Because after that summer, he never gets close to the students, never lets them help him. She knows that's part of why he was dismissed. She hates that in her foolishness and her goddamn easiness, she took that from him. That betrayal of trust, inflicted by both Marion and Jones, lost Abner Ravenwood the man he loved like a son and the daughter he loved like nothing else. It feels like everything has gone downhill from there. There are no more fancy dresses, no more first class ocean liners. The trip to Nepal is financed with the last of the money from the sold house.
They settle in Patan because of some local legends that Abner likes the sound of and get to work. They acquire a dusty tavern to pay expenses and build a small cabin half-way up the mountain,
near the sites that interest him in particular. He pours over maps and ancient scrolls and climbers' reports and other assorted junk that Marion is sure has nothing to do with the Ark. She helps as she can. There's not much to do without finds to catalogue and notes to make, so she goes about learning the language and runs the bar with a detached efficiency that seems to come naturally these days.
The avalanche happens in early august and it's by random fucking chance that Marion isn't up there with him. She's in the town, at the Raven, taking a drink after a long hard day. The sound of it is deafening and she runs outside in time to watch as the dark spot that is their cabin is swept away.
Everything is destroyed, everything, and Marion has no idea what to feel. He was somewhere between best friend and jailer and she decides to figure that out after she figures out how she's gonna survive.
It takes her awhile to realize, but not much changes. She tends the bar, she wins bets on drinking games and, when the money is good enough and she is desperate enough, she takes on work of a more intimate nature. The first of those men is an Australian climber, an adventurer, who teaches her how to throw a punch and seems to understand that she won't let herself feel anything thing more than a sort of friendship for him. It's a bittersweet experience, because she hasn't been with a man since Jones and despite the money it makes and the companionship it brings, she would still rather avoid the unpleasant associations.
She survives just as she did before Abner died, existing in a sort of half-life, just trying to survive. Her own wants mean so little now. Especially considering those wants are what got her stuck this hell-hole. There is only one driving ambition- get out and get away. Because she's a real life Scarlett O'Hara, fallen from all that is bright and good and beautiful and the only way to cope is to think about it tomorrow.
But when she does have to think about it, it's easier to hold someone else responsible, because she's strong as all hell, but she just can't bear owning up to the guilt for everything that's happened since the summer of 26. So it's his fault, she tells herself over and over. Blame Jones. Blame Jones the Rake, Jones the Seducer. Blame Jones who ruined everything.
Marion tells this to herself, repeats it aloud even, and while it sounds reasonably true, there is a part of her that knows she is lying just a bit. She may have been a child, but she got exactly what she wanted. She sighs. Sometimes it feels like tomorrow is coming a damn sight too soon.