Author's Note: Just a quick one shot that fell to paper today. 1957. Indiana and Marion. Immediately after Crystal Skull while still stranded somewhere in Peru.
It's going to be a long trek out to civilization, and that first evening, Indy and Marion take the time to clear the air. We will assume Oxley and Mutt are safely out of hearing.
I am a big fan of the Indiana and Marion stories here. I tip my hat to Battered Notebook, especially, for the wonderful "Journey" which covers this time period.
So, why then did I write this?
Firstly, I got a perverse thought... about a relationship Marion might have pursued and her almost spiteful willingness to let Indy know about that. And secondly, because I came up with a contrivance that allowed Indy to show that he had steadfastly continued to love Marion. I wanted something that he had done over the years, an action or habit that he had consciously adopted that Marion could become aware of when they are reunited. I liked other stories where Indy had her picture in a cigarette case, but I wanted him to do something that was more active and reaffirming than merely keeping a photo where he had once put it.
Indiana and Marion stood facing each other on an outcropping of rock. They got along well enough like this, Marion told herself... as long as they were quiet, as long as the painful parts of the past did not get revisited.
But silence wouldn't work and wouldn't last. They both knew that.
"I don't know what happened or why..." Indiana tried to start off his official attempt at a reconciliation. It didn't really matter what he was going to lead with. With the immediate danger behind them and the freshness of the reunion passed, Marion was ready to be angry now.
"You don't know what happened? Well, you got old, Indy," Marion spat. "I got old. Colin ended up dead. And a kid we never planned on somehow got to be an adult." She was pretty sure her words would hurt Indy. And part of her was shamelessly okay with that.
"I know you're mad," he tried. "You deserve to be mad. And I know after I left that you did what you needed..."
She took a poke at him then. Sharp fingers struck his breast bone.
"You bastard," she uttered with menacing slowness. "Colin was not something I 'did' because I needed a man for me or a father for Mutt." And it hurt Indiana then that when her first tears came, it was over Colin. She let up an anguished noise, but the tears that followed were quieter then. Her control was quickly back in place - that control the world had long required of her. "I loved him... as best I could, because he deserved that. Which is not at all how I loved you. Love you," she said, switching painfully to the present tense. "It isn't that I love you more. Mostly, it's that it was easy to care about him. You, Indy, make things tough.
"If you want to believe I ended up with Colin only because it was hell being a single mother, then I am glad to disappoint you. I was with him as soon as I realized I deserved something. Just something... warm and sweet ... and reliable. If you think that my life has been empty without you, then you are senile and deluded."
"Great," he muttered.
"Harold took some convincing," she continued. "But the bit of living we managed together for two years was ..."
"Oxley?" Jones shot back, sure that he was wrong.
"Yes. Oxley. I thought I'd need to get him drunk, he can be too much of a gentleman," Marion said bluntly. "He was always around in the years after Colin died, but he would never treat me quite the way I wanted."
"You really don't need to tell me all of this," the usually fearless man tried to object then.
"No, I really do!" she fired back. Her chin was held high with indignation and her eyes fairly burned with it. "So, Ox stayed. And he was with us just whatever nights he could be, and we were a family of sorts. And in the mornings when Mutt saw him there? God, that boy was so happy. They'd sit shoulder to shoulder and grinning. Dipping their toast soldiers in their eggs. And I was ...content. Happy enough. I had a good man to wrap myself around at night. A reliable father for my son." She let that sink in. "Ox has been that, Indy. He has been and he is a father to your son. Mutt has had two men he looked to as a father and neither one was you."
"You're killing me, Marion," he whispered hoarsely. And even though she knew that was true, she couldn't stop yet.
"Things couldn't last. I could never love Harold like I do you. He always knew that. But I'll never hate him either. That's an amazing thing, one you only appreciate when your life has been completely dominated by some self-centered SOB who will just leave you when the mood strikes him."
Her chest was heaving slightly with the force of what she'd finally said. She looked like she was going to slug him, and frankly, he wished she would. The hurt inside of him was complete. He was gutted with self hatred, and he figured the outside of him might as well take some lumps as well.
"Go ahead, Marion. Hit me. God, I don't blame you for wanting to tear me apart."
There was no venom in her then. Just resignation. "How many times would I hit you, Jones? Once for every year you missed? For every birthday of his? Once for every sleepless night I spent? Or maybe once for every wedding guest I had to contact when you scampered? Should I count up the diaper changes and divide by the number of first days of school? Add in the skinned knees? Shit, you are an idiot, Jones."
"I know. I know. But I love you. I always loved you, babe."
"I didn't just get old, Indy, maybe what I got was smart. Because I decided avoiding the hate and the drama and the aggravation, and the lost feeling when you leave, was the better way to go. So I stopped being angry."
"You could have fooled me." He risked a shade of his lopsided smile then.
"You bring out the best in me," she said sarcastically.
After a thoughtful pause, he tried again. "You don't have to believe me, but when I left I really thought I was just sparing you something worse. If I had stayed I would have screwed things up immeasurably. I left, honey. But, you were always right here," he said touching his jacket over his chest.
"In your heart?" she scoffed.
"I left my heart behind, Marion. I lost it to you. It was always with you - wherever you were – from 1926 on." He let the jacket fall open, and she could see there were numbers printed neatly there on the silk lining. Numbers that would rest over his heart. It took a second for her to take it in. Finally, she recognized the tick marks and symbols mixed there.
"Coordinates? Latitude and longitude? You bury something, Jones?" She cocked her head then and pulled roughly at the leather. "That's the Midwest. God, not Chicago?"
"It's your bedroom on Sycamore in Chicago," he managed in a halting voice.
"And this?" she croaked, as she traced the numbers below the first set.
"That apartment in Connecticut."
"And this?" she demanded pointing lower.
"The last place I heard you were. Years ago. I should have ..."
But she didn't seem to hear him. She gripped the leather in her hands and tugged and assessed it. "This isn't even the same jacket that you had back then." This was not an old, forgotten obsession that he was carrying with him, she was realizing.
"There have been at least three jackets, Marion, since I saw you last. I know these numbers by heart. I've written them in each one – first thing."
"Why numbers, Indy?" she was squinting at him now. She was pushing, she knew, but she needed this answer.
"It hurt too much to say 'I love you' to the emptiness every time I thought of you. But I could recite these numbers over and over the way someone might a rosary... when I needed to.
"41 87 10 101 87 62 45 311," he recited, as his hand came up to touch her cheek. And it sounded like he was telling her 'I'm sorry. I love you,' over and over.
She shook her head to break the spell. "Any other women's whereabouts in there?" she said pulling the jacket further. "I don't see you as a monk."
"Might as well have been." And he touched his jacket just faintly on the right side now. He would not resist her as she opened it. There on that other side she saw a single set of coordinates.
"A lost treasure? Or another woman?" she wanted to know.
"Another woman. My mother. Her grave."
"Oh, Indy." She read the hurt in him then. The soul weariness. None of this, none of these years apart, had gone as he had planned, either.
She sighed and then carefully reached to touched the scars she knew. His chin. The old cut that ran with his eyebrow. There were the newer marks then that demanded her caress, scars -that like his words- told her she would have to get to know this new man. This greying Indiana Jones who was more accustomed to losses than grandiose finds seemed to genuinely need and want her. She ghosted her fingers inside his jacket then to rest over his heart. To sympathize.
They were quiet for a very long time while she touched him, and he held her in his arms.
"I will never forgive myself, Marion."
"You're going to need to, Indy," she said softly. "If we are going to move forward..."
He nodded.
"I should have told you about him," she whispered at last. "I know you would have at least come seen us. Tried. I'm sorry, too. So sorry."
He kissed her then and took her weight into his chest. She felt decades lift away. The last of the hurt left her.
Indiana shushed her needlessly as he put her down. "We're all together now, babe," he assured her. "And that's all I want any more."