Chapter Text
There was something strange about laying on your deathbed.
There was...an onset of clarity. Marion Williams, formerly Marion Ravenwood, found herself thinking back on her life and realising that she had been very, very stupid. Sure, between her and Indy, she wasn’t the only one to make mistakes, but she was the one who ignored them and, in some cases, passed the buck. It had been easier to blame Indy that to admit it was partially her fault that her family was split down the middle.
Sure, Marion had Mutt and his wife, Jessie, and their daughter, Sophie, and Sophie’s daughter, Lucy.
But Indy had their first child – the child Abner told Marion was stillborn when she was just shy of eighteen – Hazel. And he had Hazel’s son, Dennis, and Dennis’s three kids: Jack, Sharee, and Shauna. And Indy had Mutt’s son Rover and Rover’s son, Spike.
And all of these damn kids had picked a side.
Marion would have liked to think it was Indy’s fault. Mutt certainly did.
Perhaps Sophie was wise. She didn’t know Grandpa Indy too well, she said. And she had watched the way her brother was treated, so she refused to cast judgement. And she refused to let her father rant about it in front of her daughter. She got that from Jessie. She just had more spine than Jessie did. Jessie never said a word against Mutt, feeling that her job as his wife was to support him.
‘...toxic masculinity...’
Even in old age and in a withering body, Marion shuddered at the memory of her own daughter’s voice.
When Mutt had been born, Marion had made the choice not to tell Indy. She thought it was the right choice and married Colin Williams instead. He had then promptly died in World War II. Harold Oxley took the father role for her son and helped support her. Looking back, maybe she should have swallowed her pride and called up Indy.
But she didn’t. And Mutt grew up into the kind of man who believed all those stereotypes about what a man should be. Ox was the beloved Uncle, but Mutt never used him as a model of behaviour. And Ox didn’t view disciplining Mutt as his place, so the most he would do was lightly advise against things like dropping out of school.
Indy was what he needed, that traitorous little voice had whispered in her ear even back then. She had stubbornly ignored it.
A phone call had come from Marcus, but the minute he’d asked about her stillborn daughter, she’d snarled “she’s dead” at him and hung up. She tried to put the whole thing behind her, and she didn’t want it dragged up. It never occurred to her that she should have listened to Marcus.
Then Mutt grew up. He married Jessie and they had Rover and Sophie. They hadn’t named Rover “Henry”, but he still took the nickname. And he was wild. He ran through mud, he climbed trees, he dug holes in the backyard, and he was studious. He was endlessly fascinated with the world around him. He took in information like a sponge. When he wasn’t making a mess of himself outside, he was inside with his nose in one book or another.
Mutt didn’t know what to make of him. He was both a normal boy and a nerd.
Marion knew exactly what to make of him.
The lust for adventure and the thirst for knowledge, the love of intellectual pursuits...it was all Indiana Jones, through and through. Somehow, Rover had inherited Indy’s personality without even meeting him. The last thing Marion wanted was for him to end up just like Indy though. She didn’t want history to repeat itself. So she cracked down on him. She encouraged Mutt to do the same, telling stories (which, yes, were exaggerated) about “a man I once knew like that”.
(She didn’t realise until much later that she had literally verbally attacked him every time she saw him behaving even remotely like Indy.)
Instead of discouraging him, it made Rover angry. More than a few times, Marion had been taken aback at the look in his eyes. It was the same hardened scowl that Indy had directed at Nazis and treasure hunters. And that made her angrier. It made her crack the metaphorical whip harder at him.
Then, at the age of 17, Rover had run away.
Thinking it just a teenaged temper tantrum, Marion assured Mutt he’d be back. He didn’t think this through.
Oh, he came back.
...With Indiana Jones.
At first, they hadn’t known. Rover had stood in front of the mostly closed front door. As was habit by now, she and Mutt had yelled at him. But this time he didn’t go angry or defensive. He stood there with a straight spine and a cool expression, letting them yell at him. Then, when they ran out of steam, he’d shoved the front door open and asked, ‘Is that enough, grandpa?’
Indiana Jones had been leaning on the porch wall just outside the door, with that scowl on his face. ‘More than enough, kid.’
He hadn’t aged a day since the 30s.
And he hadn’t explained it. He’d entered their house with a teenaged boy (who she’d later discover was her other grandson, Dennis, and a woman with fading blonde hair).
‘Come on, Rover,’ Dennis had said. ‘Let’s go grab the rest of your stuff.’
Marion had seen Indy’s hand wrap around his bullwhip as the two boys went to brush past them. Mutt was not familiar with his biological father’s whip, or his temperament when he was angry. He instead reached out to stop his own son brushing past. But he didn’t even make contact.
KUH-RACK!
Indy hadn’t hit anyone. He’d just used the sound of the whip for scare.
And it worked.
Mutt had jumped at the sound, Rover and Dennis had brushed right past him, and then the woman had wandered forward. ‘Oh, that’s nice! Let’s punish the behaviour without addressing the cause. That’ll fix the problem right up!’ Sarcasm dripped from her tone.
‘Who the hell are you?’ Mutt had demanded.
‘Your big sister.’ She’d idly looked around. ‘Abner, the big, fat liar, told mom I was stillborn.’
Mutt froze.
Marion’s mind blanked. ‘...What...?’
‘But he also told you dad knew about me.’
‘Nah,’ Indy said. ‘First I knew about you was when you were 14.’
‘When we met.’ Hazel had nodded. ‘And we had no idea until Grandpa noticed the similarities between us and sent out some enquiries.’ She snorted. ‘Man, Abner ought to have counted himself lucky he wasn’t around for Grandpa to get his hands out when he found out. You could just about see the steam coming out of his ears when he came in to tell us.’
‘Heh, Scottish rage,’ Indy mused. ‘I wouldn’t have wanted to be the guys that told him cause they thought he’d actually be outraged on Abner’s behalf.’
‘They probably got clobbered.’
‘...What?’ Mutt asked.
‘But that’s not what we’re here to talk about.’ Hazel wandered over to the wall and inspected, of all things, Marion’s wedding certificate. She cocked an eyebrow. ‘Rover left because he was treated like shit here.’
‘What did you say?’ Mutt turned on his sister.
Before Marion could calm him. This was her daughter, after all. She’d been so sure she was lost and gone...wait a minute.
It’d then occurred to her: the phone call from Marcus. She spun on Indy.
‘You had Marcus call me!’
Indy shrugged. ‘I figured if you heard my voice, you’d hang up immediately. You didn’t know dad, so he’d just sound like a random Scottish person calling you. Marcus basically volunteered. So you can’t say we didn’t try to tell you. You didn’t listen. You hung up on him before he could tell you that Hazel was alive.’
Marion scowled.
Hazel, in the meantime, turned to face her brother. ‘You heard me. You yelled at him for getting dirty. You never listened to a word he said. You disparaged him for his intellectual pursuits.’
‘Men don’t...’ Mutt started.
‘Oh, lovely!’ Hazel barked snidely. ‘You were trying to pass your toxic masculinity onto the boy!’
Mutt went to stand nose to nose with her, the way he usually did when he felt threatened. Hazel’s fist shot out into his solar plexus. With a grunt and widening eyes, Mutt went down.
‘Stupid boy,’ Indy muttered.
‘And let’s not forget what happened when he walked in the door.’ Hazel pushed him down to the ground. ‘No “are you okay”; no “what happened”; no calm conversations. Just yelling about how stupid and ungrateful he was.’ She looked at her mother. ‘Both of you. It gave me flashbacks, to be honest, and not very nice ones.’
‘Jones kids run away when they feel like they’re not being treated fairly,’ Indy said. ‘I did it. Hazel did it. And now Rover’s done it.’
Marion jerked.
‘Rover’s not a Jones,’ Mutt grunted, trying to push himself up. Marion suddenly realised he’d never been in a proper punch-up – not the kind of thing Indy was used to; and not the sort of thing Hazel was also clearly used to. Hazel had punched him in a weak spot very hard. And those hands were probably used to fighting men who actually wanted to kill her.
Hazel laughed. ‘Oh, you poor dumb fool.’ She reached down, grabbed her brother by the collar and dragged him up to his feet. ‘Born in July but mom only married Colin Williams in January. That’s seven months. She was two months pregnant with you already when she got married.’
Mutt jerked.
‘Did you really not work this out?’ Hazel pointed to the wedding certificate. ‘You’ve been walking past this all your life, and it never occurred to you? What happened here was a mere marriage of convenience. Because dad’s got issues. Everybody knows it. He left mom in November. Oh, look. That’s the full nine months before you were born.’ She went sarcastic again. ‘I wonder who your biological father could possibly be!’
‘No!’ Mutt jerked back. ‘My father was a World War II hero!’
Hazel scoffed. ‘War heroes aren’t real, Mutt. Soldiers are cannon fodder to the guys running the war, but if they don’t make it sound glamorous, no one will want to go and you’d get an influx of draft dodgers. Colin Williams wasn’t a martyr; he was a victim. Heroes are nice stories for kids, but, in the end, that’s all they are.’ She paused and watched him gawk. ‘But...I might say our dad is as close as you come.’
‘Hazel,’ Indy said in a light tone of reprimand.
She smirked at him before returning her attention to her brother. ‘I met him when we both ended up fighting Nazis. Nothing heroic about that. It’s survival. He ended up fighting Nazis cause he was going after the same artefacts they wanted. Nothing heroic about that. It’s literally his job. But this is a man who puts aside his own personal safety when he sees other people who needed help. This is a man who found a teenage girl surrounded by Nazis and fighting for her life and he helped her. He never knew his own relation to her until later. And when he found out, he took her in. No question, no hesitation. He was her father when she really needed one. When we met Rover, we had no idea he was related to us. Indiana Jones helped him anyway.’ She paused. ‘I don’t believe in heroes...but dad comes pretty damn close.’
Mutt was left gawking at her.
‘Man, Aunt Hazel’s incredible,’ Rover suddenly said. ‘I’ve never seen anyone render dad speechless.’
‘Yeah, mom does that,’ Dennis said.
Marion spun around. The two boys were standing behind them with several bags. ‘Where do you think you’re going?’
‘The kid’s seventeen, Marion,’ Indy said. ‘If he wants to leave, he can. And after the way you treated him – I’m betting cause he reminds you too much of me – are you really that surprised that he’s taken up dad’s offer for a tour of the world’s famous monuments?’
‘After that, I’m taking him in,’ Hazel said. ‘He’ll go back to school, so don’t worry about that.’
‘You can’t...!’ Marion started, turning on Indy.
‘You screwed up here, Marion.’ Indy turned and held the door open for the boys. ‘Time to pay the piper.’
‘I screwed up?’ Marion had demanded. ‘What about what you did?’
‘Geez, old grandma really likes deflecting, doesn’t she?’ Dennis huffed as he pulled Rover out.
And, just like that, they left.
At the time, Marion never considered that she was in the wrong; especially not when she had to admit to Mutt that, yes, she had married Colin out of convenience, and yes, that guy in the leather jacket and the fedora was his biological father, and, yes, the girl that punched him to the ground was his older sister.
She would later (much later) find out that Sophie had witnessed the whole thing. And then Sophie started secretly writing letters to her brother which had led her to meeting her Aunt Hazel, Indy, and Henry Sr. in the end. Sophie was one of the few people who was truly neutral in their family. She loved both sides and hated the opposition.
Then, Hazel approached Marion when she was out running errands one day.
‘Hello, mom.’
The opening line was just so much like her father, it made Marion jump. Hazel was alone and, it turned out, she was here to talk.
‘How’s Rover?’ Marion asked as they sat down for drinks.
‘Seems to be enjoying grandpa’s tour,’ Hazel said.
‘I wasn’t aware that Indy was talking to his father,’ Marion said.
‘I think they mended that fence in ’38.’ Hazel shrugged and took the bottle, pouring them both drinks. ‘It was before I showed up, at any rate.’
‘Your father’s ten years older than I am.’
‘Same event,’ Hazel said. ‘It involved the Holy Grail. Long story.’
Marion blinked in surprise. ‘Indy’s immortal?’
‘For a certain definition,’ Hazel said. ‘Grandpa too. He was fatally shot inside the ancient temple and dad had to test the Grail to be sure it was the real one before giving it to him.’
Marion scowled. ‘And I guess Indy spent the whole time running in and out of your childhood too.’
‘On the contrary,’ Hazel said with a tight voice. ‘Dad never missed a single birthday or a single Christmas. Sure, I went to boarding school but in case you didn’t read the papers at the time, there was a war on, and dad was unusually placed to know how to deal with these guys.’
Marion had frowned. ‘You grandfather always said he was a bum.’
Hazel looked at her. ‘By “my grandfather”, I presume you mean Abner.’
‘Yes,’ Marion said. ‘He...’
‘I know who he was,’ Hazel cut her off. ‘But, understand this, mother. To me, Abner will never be anything more than the prick that cast me out as a baby and condemned me to those people.’
Marion had winced. ‘He...meant well.’
‘No, he didn’t. Don’t justify for him. Basically everyone who heard about what he did has wanted to hand him a knuckle sandwich.’
Marion’s back instantly went up. ‘And what about your father? He walked out on me while I was pregnant twice! Do they have something to say about that?’
‘I’m not going to repeat myself, mom.’ Hazel finished her drink and set the glass down. ‘But at least when dad screws up, he admits it. You treated Rover like crap, you failed to so much as tell dad he’d gotten you in trouble, and yet all you focus on is what he did wrong.’ She stood up. ‘If you’re not willing to put on your big girl boots and admit you messed up too, I have nothing more to say to you except this: you can pick up the bill.’
And Hazel walked out. For years, Marion had convinced herself this was all Indy’s fault. He’d taken half the family away from her. Her gut had even dropped when Sophie told them that Rover had legally had his name changed to Henry Walton Jones IV, and then when he named his son Henry Walton Jones V. Marion even worried that, eventually, Sophie would stray.
Then she grew old; then she laid on her deathbed with nothing to do but think and she’d realised the truth.
Indy was angry at their behaviour, but he’d never been antagonistic towards her half of the family. He still sent them all birthday cards and Christmas cards every year, without fail. All the anger and hostility; the “us vs. them” had come from Marion’s half of the family. Indy’s half had never engaged in that sort of thing.
No, that was all her and Mutt.
So...as she lay dying, Marion had made a last request of Sophie.
She wasn’t sure when he would come, but she knew he would.
Sure enough, late into the night when Mutt had gone home and visiting hours were long since over, Marion heard someone sit in the plastic chair next to her hospital bed. Only one man she knew could move so quietly as to enter a room that he wasn’t supposed to be in and remain undetected until he sat in a chair that naturally creaked by the nature of the material it was made out of.
‘Hello, Marion.’
Marion cracked her eyes open. He was sitting there, watching her with an unreadable expression in his eyes.
‘Indiana Jones,’ she rasped. ‘I must look horrible.’
‘You’re beautiful,’ he said. ‘You always have been.’
‘Liar.’
Indy cracked a tight smile. ‘I wasn’t expecting you to want to see me now.’
‘Really?’ she asked. ‘Because now is the best time for me to look back on my life and have regrets.’ She swallowed. ‘I’m sorry, Indy.’
Indy cocked his head. ‘What for?’
‘You were right,’ Marion said. ‘I should have told you about Mutt and Hazel before...’ She trailed off.
‘Hazel wasn’t really your fault,’ Indy said. ‘You were seventeen, and it was your father. Then you thought she was dead.’
‘But I should have listened to Marcus.’
Indy shrugged. ‘All that meant was that the loss of Hazel damaged you to the point that your first instinct to any discussion of her was to shut it down.’
Marion closed her eyes. ‘Abner taught me to do that.’
‘That doesn’t surprise me.’
Marion looked at him.
‘Abner did something that he knew was wrong,’ Indy said. ‘I don’t know if Hazel told you when she went to talk to you, but everyone who heard the story after the fact – from me to dad to her in-laws to even Marcus – wanted to lay Abner out for it. He would have known that would be the general reaction he’d get, so he wouldn’t have wanted it discussed.’
Marion smiled. ‘Out of a desire not to get his nose broken?’
‘Pretty much,’ Indy said.
Marion smiled weakly. ‘Why did you put up with it? You took Hazel in without any question. You did the same thing for Rover. And all of their kids consider you the person to call when they’re in over their heads. Rover just reminded me of you and I treated him like a dangerous animal that needed to be collared.’ Her stomach clenched in guilt at the thought.
‘You’ve always been more emotional and prone to anger than me,’ Indy said. ‘And the only thing you ever did to piss me off was related to the kids. And I wasn’t even aware of that until Rover. I did a lot more to piss you off.’
‘But you still don’t view it as a reason for what I did.’
‘Should I?’ Indy asked pointedly.
‘...No.’ Marion quickly wetted her lips. ‘Were you upset about Colin?’
‘At first, yes,’ Indy said. ‘I introduced you, and then you married him rather than tell me I’d gotten you into the position I had. But these days...I only pity him.’
Marion looked at him curiously.
‘You never loved him,’ Indy said. ‘You just needed a husband to avoid losing Mutt. It was a whole systematic procedure by the time he was born. Colin desired you, sure, maybe even loved you, but you never returned the feelings. This guy literally died married to a woman who only married him cause she needed a husband, for a son that wasn’t even his. That’s the saddest thing I ever heard in my life.’
Marion had to crack a smile at that. It was true. She had never loved Colin. He was just conveniently there when the doctors made it clear that if she didn’t have a husband, she would lose her child. Colin had known but he went ahead and married her anyway. Now, with Indy actually saying it, she could admit what she had always never said.
It was pitiful.
‘What about you?’ Marion asked in a soft voice. ‘I’m sure I wasn’t the only one to move on. I heard the stories about you with plenty of women over the years.’ And now she understood how he could keep drawing in young and pretty ones.
‘Oh, yeah, there were a few,’ Indy said. ‘But they all had the same problem.’
She looked at him.
‘They weren’t you, honey.’
Marion smiled. ‘You still love me then?’
Indy smiled, and Marion realised there were tears in her eyes. ‘Forever. And I do mean that literally.’
And Marion knew. It was like Hazel had said the first time she’d seen her since the day she was born: Indy had issues, and everybody knew it. It was something he acknowledged about himself. And he still had the respect, love, and trust of most of their family. Because, for all his flaws, Indy pulled through when you really needed him to. Marion knew that they loved her, but they hated what she had done over the years.
No...no. Hazel, Dennis, Rover, Sophie, Jack, Sharee, and Shauna hated that she refused to acknowledge her fault.
‘Then do me one last favour, Indy.’ Maybe it was cruel. ‘Hold me until it’s over.’
It was going to be over tonight. She knew that.
Indy stood up and moved over. He climbed onto the bed next to her and Marion turned into his chest. He wrapped his arms around her and kissed her forehead. Marion inhaled the scent of dirt and dust and the scent that was just purely Indy. And the thing Marion hated the most was how much time they’d lost because both of them had been foolish. Not just him.
Both of them.
Marion closed her eyes for the last time.
She felt something wet land on her white hair. ‘I love you, Marion.’