A/N: And... I'm back with more Indiana Jones goodness. What happened to the other story, this "Secret" story, you ask? Our computer crashed and I didn't like it enough to restart. So instead I wrote this, which I find much more interesting and fun and maybe even - that's a lie - a little fluffy. Again, understanding is not contingent on reading my other IJ fics, you just need to know that MIllennium and Indiana highly enjoy each other's company. That said, enjoy, constructive criticism welcome.
"Two at seven o'clock!"
"Wait, weren't there twelve of them?"
"Where'd the rifle come from?"
"Under the passenger seat. I only see ten!"
Gunfire from Lenny's rifle was silenced suddenly and followed by a faint, "Damn." Indiana looked over to where she'd been crouched by the fender of the old truck, and saw her slumped against the flat tire, a colorful array of feathers protruding from her neck. He rushed forward and pulled the dart out.
Grabbing her by the shoulders, he shook her frame, hoping to wake her even though her eyes stared blankly upward. "Lenny! Lenny, wake up!"
He thought he heard her moan, but the sharp and blinding pain spreading from the back of his skull took precedence. He had enough time to register that he'd probably been clubbed down before everything went black.
When he came to, he'd been thrown in something akin to a cell. Grey light was filtering in from thatch on one wall, which he named north for no reason other than to give some sense of orientation to the stone box. The roof and floor were both hacked out of the rock, giving the sense that a very small hole had been hollowed out even more to create a slightly larger cave. Oddly, though, despite the ceiling and ground both being slightly concave with a slope towards the thatch wall, the other three sides of the cell were so smooth and straight that they appeared to have been poured out of a mold. On closer inspection, it became clear that the stone walls were actually bricks of the same rock the cave was formed of, and so well built that the mortar keeping them together was almost indistinguishable from the rock, probably granite.
The fine workmanship, odd though it was, lead Indiana to two conclusions. First, the ruins he and Dr. Cage had been inspecting were not actually abandoned; rather, they were inhabited by an intelligent, thriving, and secretive society. The locals, then, were only slightly exaggerating when they said that the temple was haunted by an entire generation of natives that were wiped out by Cortez when he landed in South America. It was incredibly unlikely the tribe was the same generation, more likely it was their descendents. The second conclusion was that this was a prison, not just an individual cell. So there were either other prisoners, or there used to be.
"Hello?" he called out. "Lenny?"
A reply came from beyond the thatch wall. "I prefer Lenard, but Lenny works just fine, friend!" The voice was not the Lenny he knew. For one, it belonged to a man, not woman. It was also faintly Scottish, and Lenny had a lilt that with traces left over from the time she spent in Jerusalem.
"Who are you?" Indy called back.
"I thought you knew! You just called my name!"
"Different Lenny. I was hoping Dr. Millennium Cage was in here too."
"What an interesting coincidence. I'm Dr. Lenard McGuiness, PhD. You wouldn't happen to be a doctor as well, would you?"
"Dr. Indiana Jones, archeologist. Dr. Cage and I were studying the ruins when they got us."
"Not quite so ruined as you thought, eh? Buggers collected themselves a brain trust, then, didn't they?"
"How'd they get you, Lenard?"
"I was out studying the medicinal properties of the local flora when we were attacked." He was silent for a beat, then snorted. "I thought they were savages, but they've kept me around because I dress their injuries better than the local witch doctors. From the little glimpses I've seen, they're fairly civilized. They have a currency, a caste system, and a fairly efficient government, all things considered."
"What do they do with prisoners?" More specifically, what did they do with Lenny?
But before McGuiness could answer, from far away came a hysterical scream, terrified and feminine.
"Is that your Dr. Cage?" asked Lenard. "She got hit with a dart, didn't she? Funny things, those darts. They're a sedative, almost instant the way it works. After you come to, it affects you like a hallucinogen, and not the fun kind. For the next hour or so she's going to be seeing some incredibly terrifying stuff. It won't be totally out of her system for almost a day, though after a bit she'll be able to recognize that none of it's real. They brought this one fellow in, and for his whole stay he thought the thatch was on fire. Tried to roast a rat on it. He was very surprised when he bit-"
The thatch on Indy's cave was pulled away, and a young and naked man, covered head to toe in brown and red body paint, was holding Millennium up. She was flailing hysterically, screaming and kicking and biting at invisible terrors, although by the look of her captor, she'd gotten a few good hits on him, probably by accident. He allowed her to slump on to her knees, and replaced the thatch wall. There were small thuds as the locking mechanism was secured, but they were drowned by Millennium's screams.
Concern replacing his curiosity, Indiana leapt to his feet and toward Millennium. As soon as she saw him move, her screams were renewed from sobs to hysterical terror. She babbled swear words in several languages as she scrambled away from him, crab like and clumsy in her absolute fear. Finding the back corner, she curled up and made herself as small as possible, clutching her head between her knees. Dry heaves shook her frame, breaking her sobbing into a strange rhythm.
He had to remind himself that it was the toxin in her system making her this way, because it was bizarre to see a normally fearless woman curl up in the fetal position. He knew it happened, but in her sleep when there weren't enough blankets or when he came back and she'd arranged herself in the void of where his sleeping body had been. He also had to hope that it was fear of the hallucinations and not her intense anger he'd been the brunt off the whole trip.
He took another step forward.
She flew at him suddenly, scratching at his face with her nails. Evidently, the fear hadn't totally erased the all consuming hate she'd been pointing in his direction since she'd arrived yesterday evening. She wasn't a big woman, and her terror made her ineffectual, but surprise got the better of him. She managed to open a large gash down his filthy face before he swept both her wrists together in his left hand. With his right, he tugged at a tear in his shirt until the sleeve came off, which he used to tie her hands up.
Thus disarmed, she returned to weeping and collapsed on the ground.
"Blindfold her. She's hallucinating, if you remove the visual stimuli, she should calm down a little. Also, restrain her. She's going to hurt herself out of blind terror."
Petulant and struggling to remove his other sleeve, he snapped, "Since you're such an expert, why don't you do it?"
Lenard laughed, a short bark, and added, "If she knows you well enough, talk to her. Familiar things will calm her down sooner. If she's lucky, she'll fall back asleep."
While she was slumped on the ground, he quickly wrapped the other sleeve around her eyes and scooped her up. She began to squirm and scream, but once he'd situated himself in a corner, as comfortable as he assumed he could be, given the cold granite floor and walls, he wrapped his legs around her waist and hooked a finger into the sleeve holding her hands. With his other arm he held her body firmly against his chest, immobilizing her.
He tried to think of something to say, but nothing came to mind. Clamping a hand over her screaming mouth, he shouted, "McGuiness?"
"Oh, ready to listen now, are you, lad?"
"Does it matter what I say?"
He barked again, managing to sound both like a sheep dog and a mischievous grandfather. "Sweet things, friend, tend to do the trick. Sweet things and stories."
Sweet things and stories. Sweet stories. Indiana blushed. He could tell stories. Sweet, however, was not in his repertoire of conversation skills. And he was embarrassed that McGuiness, whom he'd never officially met, would hear.
But then Lenny bit down on his hand, drawing blood, and he had to replace his hand on her shoulder to keep her restrained. He decided that he'd best throw his inhibitions about affection away for the moment before she maimed him.
"Good god, Lenny, shut up."
Another bark. "Try again, lad."
He glared at the thatch before beginning anew, "Lenny, calm down. You're Dr. Eleanor Cage, you're only afraid of snakes and leaky pipes in your library. You speak English, Farsi, Hebrew, Spanish, Russian, and seventeen dialects of all of them."
It could be his imagination, but she seemed to have calmed, if only marginally. If he let her go, she could still take out an eye.
"Sweet, lad. Be sweet."
"Shut up," he growled under his breath. "Sweet… I don't do 'sweet,' and you know it, Lenny. Let's see… You live on the top floor of the Rose Hotel on fifty-eighth and fifth, and you can't see the walls because of all your bookshelves. You like to cook Egyptian food for me Saturday nights, and when we've finished eating we sit on your couch and have a glass of red wine and somewhere between the floor of your living room and your bed we put ourselves into a sex induced coma. I'll get up before you and make omelets, yours with green onion and cheese because you don't like mushrooms and mine with garlic and mushrooms and ketchup, and once we've showered and gotten dressed, we walk down fifth and argue about something that happened a long time ago. And when we pass the Tiffany's, I'll point and ask which one you want, and you always point at a spoon or a mirror, even though I'm looking at the rings."
At some point she'd grown quiet, although her heartbeat was still going a million miles an hour. And at some point after that she drifted off to sleep.
"She won't marry you, eh?"
Indiana remained silent.
"Something wrong with your plumbing, then?"
"What? No! She just… Neither of us are wired for monogamy. It's more of a joke than a serious proposal."
The other doctor made a noncommittal noise and fell silent again, giving Indiana the sense that he considered himself far more experienced in the ways of women.
"You married?"
"I was. Turned out she was a banshee with a taste for younger men."
Dr. Jones laughed, in turn waking Lenny. She began flailing again, and this time she managed to hit his jaw so hard he saw stars. With a sigh, he started up again.
"Jesus, you've got a hell of a right hook. Ok, here's one. Last night you agreed to marry me. You said that when we got back home, you'd let me get a ring from Tiffany's for you."
"Wasn't I also drunk?"
Her voice was hoarse from the screaming, but the hysteria was gone. The usual amusement wasn't there yet, but at least she was back to coherency.
Elated, he spun her head away from his shoulder, far enough that he could kiss her roughly on the mouth. "Thank God you're back."
"Also, 'sex induced coma' isn't as sweet as you think it is."
Indiana heard the phone ring, and figuring that Millennium was still asleep, left his omelet on the stove and began to round the corner of the kitchen to where a quaint ivory colored handset and receiver rested on her desk across the hall.
"Don't! I've got it!" Lenny darted under the arm holding open the study door, wearing his shirt and an old pair of underwear. Picking up the receiver, slightly breathless, she answered, "Hello?" in a suspiciously sweet voice, her back turned on Indy.
There was an answer, and she fawned, "Oh, Walter, I wasn't expecting your call."
Bullshit.
"Yes, I'm both surprised and pleased."
Pleased by a phone call? What the hell am I here for?
"Today? I'm afraid I'm… previously engaged. Tomorrow, though, I could devote an hour or so to you."
Just an hour? Chump.
"Well, if you insist." Flirtatious laughter. "No, I would love to give you my entire day. Trust me, darling, it is more of a treat than a chore."
Son of a bitch, I'm leaving tomorrow.
"Tomorrow, then. Yes, so am I. Goodbye, Walter."
Lenny turned; hanging up the phone, and almost ran into a glowering Indiana.
She paused for a beat, and ducked back under his arm, which hadn't moved the entire time. It was less of a duck and more of a cautious bending of the head because she was so short. "Is there a problem? Your omelet is burning."
Silently, he stalked over to the stove, and while his eyes were fixed on the woman, he threw the burnt omelet in the trash and started anew.
"You have a date tomorrow?" Crack, went an egg.
"I do. With Walter."
"Would this be the date you just made on the phone?" Crack, went another egg.
She watched him carefully. She was usually pretty good about suppressing it, but in the light of her kitchen and both of them standing in nothing but their underwear, she couldn't help but mentally trace the lines left by the other women. "It is."
Crack. "Let me get this straight. You made a date, in my shirt, while I was standing behind you, both of us practically naked after a long night of love making, and you're not even embarrassed?" Crack.
"Don't use the euphemism 'love making.' It was just a lot of sex, like every Saturday night." She took up her position, leaning in the doorjamb of the kitchen, arms folded.
Crack. "Well that's great." Crack. "I'm glad it means so much to you." Crack.
"Indiana."
Crack. "Good thing I'm taking off tomorrow, then. Wouldn't want to get in your way." Crack. "Tell me, is Walter better or worse in the sack?" Crack.
"That's none of your business. You're-"
Crack. "Bullshit!"
She jumped forward and snatched her carton of eggs out of his reach. "You're wasting my eggs."
He looked down at the pan, filled with the eleven eggs he was using more for punctuation than to fill an insatiable need for an omelet this morning. Looking back at her, he asked, "Is that a euphemism for something?"
She threw her hands up in the air and turned to leave. Over her shoulder she shouted, "You are the biggest pig I've ever met!"
He followed, his shoulders hunched in fury. "ME? You're the one making dates while I'm naked in your apartment. You could at least pretend to be faithful until I'm gone!"
She whirled around, and he could have sworn that her hair had raised with her eyebrows. "FAITHFUL? Faithful to what, Dr. Jones?"
"What do you mean to what? To me, Dr. Cage!"
She laughed, and despite the warm Sunday sun coming in through the drapes, it sounded evil. "You? Tell, me, sir, when did I become exclusively yours? Was I uninvited to the duel that determined whose property I am?"
"Millennium –"
"Did you joust, then, or were you civilized enough to use your dueling pistols?"
"I didn't think that you were so old fashioned that it would be necessary!"
She snorted. "Unfortunately, Indiana, I am not as modern as you. On second thought, I must be more modern because I believe I'm entitled to some level of equality."
"What the hell does that mean?" He took a step forward, and was rewarded with a jab to his sternum.
"There is no "us," and therefore there's nothing to be faithful to!" She jabbed again as he was about to protest. "If you can go sleep with whomever you want while you're on your stupid little adventures, that says two things to me."
"Enlighten me."
Jab. "I was going to anyway. If you'd just shut up and listen to someone other than yourself for once! It tells me I can date while you're gone, and if I happen to find better sex, what difference does it make to you? You've got a warm bed waiting for you on every continent!" Jab. "And the other thing it says? It says you don't care enough about me to be faithful, so I don't have to either. I'm just your American warm bed."
To say he'd been floored would have been an understatement. To say he'd been blindsided would have been, too. Perhaps blindsided and floored at once would work, although physical logistics would come into question.
She stood still, for once, staring him down. "I've been waiting for you to get your act together since 1936."
Slightly numb, all he could think to ask was, "And now?"
She slapped him, and as her arm came around she pulled his shirt off and let it fall to the floor. "I'm waiting for you to put your clothes on and get out of my apartment."
So in silence, her top half uncovered, she watched him dress and leave, the entire time not apologizing. Not because he didn't want to, but because he didn't know how.
"Another glass, dear?"
Millennium was already feeling a warm glow from the wine, a lovely cabernet Walter had brought home from the restaurant. "Mmm that would be pleasant."
As he leaned forward for the glass and the bottle, the doorbell rang. "Curious, I'm not expecting anyone at this hour." And with his furrowed eyebrows, Walter went to open the door.
Sara, Millennium's friend and assistant at the library, stood there, dripping and disheveled. "Where's Lenny?"
The aforementioned doctor stood from where she'd been comfortable sprawled on Walter's couch. "What's the matter?"
Digging in her purse as she blew past Walter, who was a mixture of indignant and curious, she began explaining, "I was about to leave tonight cause I'd just finished that extra shelving you wanted done before your date, you know the stuff I said I'd get done so you wouldn't be late, and as I was walking out, a telegram came for you. I opened it-"
"Of course you did."
"- and it's from Indy." Producing the telegram in question, she read, "In Panama. Stop. Curious find. Stop. Needs translation. Stop. Racing clock. Stop. Help. Stop."
Waving her hand, Lenny re-sprawled herself on the couch. "He's more than competent at his own translations, he's just being immature."
"About what?" asked Walter.
Ignoring him, Sara continued. "But Lenny, you never know. With all the trouble that comes his way, 'Need help' could mean more than just translating a rock."
"What trouble?" he tried again.
Lenny was unconvinced. "I don't want to go. I don't even want to see him until he apologizes."
"And how does he apologize if you won't see him?"
"Apologize for what?" Walter was becoming desperate.
She sighed, and held her head in her hands for a moment. "When's the next flight?"
Sara grabbed Lenny's coat and threw it at her. "You have a ticket on a plane that leaves in an hour."
Lenny, still not at full capacity, had one arm of the bleeding Lenard draped over her shoulder, and Indiana was supporting the other half. Because of the height difference, she had very little effect on how much weight Indy was supporting, and was there more to steer than anything. The lump on Indy's head from being clubbed was more tender than it had been before, and was giving him a massive headache.
All things considered, they could have done worse.
"So, when we get home, do you want to get that engagement ring yourself, or should I pick it out?"
She shot him a nasty look. "I'm still angry with you."
"Damn it, I apologized!"
"Of course you did. Was this before or after I got myself so inebriated that I agreed to get married?"
"Before."
Lenard moaned a little. Shock was making him pleasantly silent.
"Oh yes, I remember now. It was after that beautiful native girl came and asked for seconds at your 'oasis of manhood,' which lead to the drinking."
Indiana couldn't help but smile a little. That was a new one, he'd have to remember that. "I asked you to come down here. Doesn't that count for something?"
"No! In fact, it counts against you, because despite your good intentions, so far I've had your conquests paraded in front of me, I've been drugged into hallucinating that the planet is made of snakes, I've almost been sacrificed to a local deity, and now I'm dragging a half dead Scot through the jungle." She paused. "Just so you know, this is not how archeology is supposed to be."
Indy was silent. He'd intended to bring her down here, sweep her off her feet, and prove that there was actually a spark of commitment between them. That local girl had been an accident. There should have been warning labels on the local liquor. "Does it help if I'm thinking of you when I'm sleeping with the other women?"
If looks could kill, Indiana would have been dead on the spot. She said nothing, but a wave of intense and almost palpable hate washed over him from the small, angry woman's direction.
"Jesus, Lenny, what do you want from me?"
Lenard muttered something incoherent, but obviously painful. On an unspoken agreement, they paused and laid the older man down, whose red hair was riddled with lines of grey, and tied a new compress on the knife wound in his side. The impromptu surgery complete, they both sat, side by side, resting for a moment.
Quietly, Lenny began talking, to herself or otherwise Indy couldn't tell. "I want you to commit to me. God damn it, I want you to stop sleeping with other women, and I want you to understand why I want you to stop sleeping with other women without explaining it. I understand that you have to have these stupid adventures, and that you have to put yourself in harm's way, but I want you to come back for me, not because you're just waiting for the next thing that needs to be found." She looked at him, a mixture of hate and irritation and hurt playing on her face. "And I wouldn't mind if you loved me, but we can start with baby steps."
He smiled at her, obviously relieved, which just made her angry again. Before she could stand or hit him, though, he put a hand on the side of her face and wiped the bright blue paint off her lips with his thumb before kissing her, long and deep. "I can love you, Eleanor."
Leave your flames at the door and let me know what you think!