Work Text:
It was, René Belloq felt, inevitable.
It had always been, from the first moment he had laid eyes on the fellow student.
The American archaeologist had been so young, then. They both had been.
He had smiled to René and shook his hand and introduced himself as Indiana. It had not occurred to René it was an unusual name at the time. It would take him some time to discover it was a name he had taken for himself, a fact that continued to fascinate René.
His strained relationship with his father René had uncovered rather quickly, though.
And it hadn't taken René even that long to realize he was very intelligent indeed.
René thought back to the times he had sat next to Indiana in the Paris cafes, or parks, or studied together for some exam.
What the young version of him would have thought it he told him how it'd all turn out.
That in the end one of them would have to die.
He would find it difficult to believe, presumably. But as René looked back on their shared history it seemed so inevitable. Like there was only one path, that any crossroads he had seen at the time ahead of him were but an illusion.
Of course he had set out to seduce Indiana as soon as he had met him. He was attractive, and René was a young fool. Indiana had been even a bigger fool and returned his advances.
And it had been surprising but in hindsight so predictable that René would fall in love.
At that point the future had been set in stone, René thought, as he took an another sip from his glass.
He grimaced at the taste of the wine. It was so difficult to get good wine in Cairo...
He watched Indiana stumble into the bar with a bottle of liquor. It seemed he had simply went for anything that would get him drunk.
Indiana looked at him and his eyes widened. "Belloq!"
He hadn't always called him by his last name. Even after René had broken off their friendship and stolen his work Indiana had for a while refused to accept their alienation.
René wondered if he understood, even now, why he had done it.
"I ought to kill you right now," Indiana told him.
René smiled. So, at least they were on the same page.
For a while, after René's career at Louvre had crashed and burned, René had believed there was still a chance. They were so similar, after all. There was a chance that Indiana might fall onto the dark side and join him.
But the years had proved this hope futile.
"How odd that it would end like this for us, after so many... Stimulating encounters."
Stimulating indeed. Indiana had maybe had moral objections, or at least liked to pretend he had, but it hadn't extended into the bedroom.
For a while they had been rivals, often finding each other in an uneasy alliance. But it could have never lasted.
But René wanted to rub Indiana's face in it now.
If he was to die, René wanted him to die admitting he was no better than he was.
If.
Even still, even after knowing it was inevitable, René still was-
"You and I are very much alike. Archaeology is our religion, yet we have both fallen from the purer faith."
René knew. He knew full well Indiana was no stranger to shady deals or taking something purely because he wanted it.
"Look at this," René held out the pocket watch. "It's worthless. Ten dollars from a vendor on the street. But I take it, bury it in the sand for a thousand years and it becomes priceless."
Indiana still refused to look at him. René wondered if he remembered.
How once, when they had been students, Indiana had lifted up a different pocket watch and made a similar observation. Or was it only René who remembered? Who now wanted to call back to that small moment from their past?
But-
"Men will kill for it. Men like you and me," René told him.
They were no longer the two young boys who had been friends. But René wanted Indiana to remember.
"Do you realize what the Ark is?"
And he wanted Indiana to understand why he was doing this.
Finally Indiana looked at him. "You want to talk to God? Let's go see him together I got nothing better to do."
And for that fraction of a second René thought that he had been wrong. That instead of it being one or the other the only way this could end was in mutual destruction.
And he thought it fitting.
The moment was over as soon as it had began.
The scene had almost erupted into violence but the Arab children defused it with their arrival.
René watched the children escort 'Uncle Indy' away.
He could have still gotten Indiana killed. With the children there, the people at the bar would react, but-
As he watched Indiana walk away death suddenly didn't feel quite so inevitable.