April 11, 1937

Carmelita, El Petén, Guatemala

He was never mine.

Indiana must have read that line a thousand times since he'd found Marion's diary five months ago, tucked carefully into the breast pocket of an old UChicago sweater of Abner's.

Marion never wore the sweater. In fact, it rarely left the depths of her dresser, and it was just for this reason that Indy had pegged it as the potential hiding spot of that little tawny journal he'd spent so long searching for. Marion was a utilitarian – if she never wore the sweater or, you know, carried around in memory of Abner (Indy quickly discarded that notion), then she was definitely using it for something.

For just over a year now, the two heroes of the Ark – that stupid fucking Ark, with all its mountain-leveling, Nazi-melting, and family-shredding powers – had been deeply involved in what one could only describe as a… tumultuous relationship. But why was it so delicate, so prone to explosions of anger and distrust and unsaid things? Indy still couldn't understand. He was back. He loved her. She loved him. It should've been simple.

Then again, Indy and Marion had never been simple. Lately, the thrill of their (literally and figuratively) fiery reunion on that Nepalese mountainside and the great adventure that ensued seemed as far away as ever. As much as Indy hated to admit that anything about his life was short of adventure film-worthy, his relationship with Marion had definitely fallen into a kind of nomadic, unstable pattern of long flights, ancient relics, and utter instability. It was… boring.

Marcus calls Indy about a "retrieval" job.

Indy unfailingly goes for it, even though he promised Marion that the last one was the last one.

Marion rolls her eyes and packs up their entire life into a couple of steamer trunks.

(She never forgets the booze. He never forgets the guns.)

Indy fights tooth and nail for something old and shiny.

Marion keeps her eyes peeled for a long-term gig.

("Chapman Andrews is looking for a co-director, right? You speak Mandarin, right? I like China. And I like Yvette.")

Indy says sure and promises her this is the last one.

Lather, rinse, repeat.

Okay, Indy thought, reworking the process in his head. So maybe Marion's frustration made a little more sense when he put it like that, but he still couldn't figure out what had gotten her so… Jesus, what is she, even? Her anger's gone. Enough. I think. And, brother, hard as the stubborn little thing tried, she never actually hated me, which leaves what?

Oh. OH.

Fear. Of course, right? That had to be it. All the moving, all the restless searching, the selfish and single-minded disregard for her aspirations to an even vaguely established life.

She's afraid I'm going to leave again, that I want these things more than I want her.

That's just stupid.

All these months, Indy had been scanning his girlfriend's diary in an endless search for clues to their problems. Normally, he was pretty adept at the whole problem-solving thing, but all along it had been right on that page. Those four words.

He was never mine.

He was never mine? He'd always been hers. She must know that! If, for some bizarre psychological reason, she didn't, then he was about to remind her.

"Marion!" Indy called, unceremoniously tossing her journal onto the low kitchen table and heading for the bedroom. Rather impressed at this emotional revelation, one of the very few that ever deigned to enter his adrenaline-and-gold-fueled brain, he repeated, "Marion, I got it! I know what it is, and I know how to fix it, because the thing is that…"

His enthusiasm faded at the sight that greeted him. On the bed, there sat a medium-sized suitcase containing a piles of neatly folded clothes (women's clothes), a small stack of hardcover books (novels, so definitely Marion's books), a large wad of cash wrapped in purple yarn, and a heavily used passport. Marion was sitting languidly in a worn-out armchair in the corner, her legs crossed under her and her right hand dangling a half-smoked cigarette out the window.

"You're not leaving," said Indy, though he sounded a little short on conviction. While Marion had frequently threatened him with a one-way ticket back to the States, he'd never actually seen a packed bag. She'd never followed through, and she wouldn't now.

"No, I'm not," replied Marion, her voice dripping with irony as she crushed the butt of her cigarette on the windowsill and stood slowly, revealing a pair of well-loved oxfords and a blue linen dress under an oversized gray blazer, the sleeves of which were rolled functionally up to her elbows. No doubt about it: those were traveling clothes. Marion made her way over to the bed, stuffing the cash in her left pocket, the passport in her right, and latching the suitcase shut. "I just felt like packing, because it's so. Much. Fun."

Indiana was dumbstruck as Marion calmly picked up the suitcase and started to move past him towards the door. No way was this happing. It couldn't be. No higher power would time his revelation, possibly the key to their survival as a couple, with her finally getting the conviction to leave him.

"You can't leave! Not now, not when… Marion, I figured it out. What we need to do."

Marion stopped and turned on her heel, her usually hazel eyes dark with anger.

"What we need to do? We? You are such a child, Indy!" her voice rose, and she dropped the suitcase in order to free her hands for the wild gestures that were so characteristic of her tirades. "I've been doing everything I can do, everything I know how to do, to keep you happy and keep you here and keep this relationship in one piece, and I'm done! How many times have we been through this: what we need to do, the compromises we need to make. What about everything I've left behind to follow you to the ends of the goddamn Earth, with nothing to show for it but sore feet and a few thousand bucks from those stupid trinkets that, for whatever reason, Marcus continues to buy off you? I could have a life in Chicago, Indiana – hell, I could probably even have one with you – but you just couldn't deal with being out of harm's way and out of the archaeological spotlight. You'll always…" she faltered for a moment, closing her eyes briefly and taking a deep breath before looking straight at him. "I am done playing second fiddle, Indy. You'll always choose archaeology over me."

Even though it completely confirmed his 'fear' hypothesis, Indy wasn't quite sure what to say to that. The fact was, most of it was true, except for one very important point.

"I never chose archaeology over you."

Marion scoffed and leaned against the wall, crossing her arms defensively in front of her.

"You can't be serious, Indy. Of all the points to contest, you had to pick the most definitive and undeniable fact of the entire time we've known each other?"

Shaking his head in confusion for a few moments, Indy suddenly realized what she was talking about. Of course… of course, he knew something was missing from those journal pages.

"He never told you, did he?" asked Indy quietly, frowning. Now it was Marion's turn to look confused.

"Who never told me what?"

"Your father. Abner. About the day we…"

"Of course he did," Marion interjected. "He told me everything. How he offered you the chance to work with the Tutankhamen collection if you'd leave me alone. How you agreed without a second though. How you…"

"I was going to come back, Marion! I told him that!"

That effectively shut her up, causing Indy to sigh gratefully at this chance to finally make his point, something that rarely happened during their arguments. Of course, this was because she was usually in the right, but it seems there's a first time for everything.

"Abner did give me choice. He told me that he'd known about us for… I don't know, pretty much as long as he could have. He was always more perceptive than you – than we gave him credit for. And boy, did he care about you—"

"Get to the point," she snapped, not sure if she liked where this was going.

"Yeah," Indy breathed, still working out how to approach this 'point.' "Even though Abner said he didn't approve, he seemed calm about it. Then, he told me I had to choose. Him or you. God, I almost died right there, but he even gave me an easy out, said that he'd been able to convince Carter to get me access to the Tutankhamen collections in the Cairo Museum. That's shit no one but the excavators had even ever seen before. It was a choice, he said, between a summer fling with a silly girl…"

"He didn't say that!"

"He said that, Marion. Let me finish, would you? You never let me finish."

"Fine. Finish."

"It was a choice between a fling, and lab work on the most important archaeological finds of the twentieth century. Obviously I had no idea that those ceramic analyses would get me the professorship at Marshall, but I knew it was big, and I knew… I told Abner that I'd go to Egypt, because I was arrogant enough to think that I could work his system. You would be eighteen and off to college in less than a year, and I'd have this huge publication under my belt, at which point he'd have no power over either of us. I wanted to say goodbye and tell you everything, but…" Here, Indy found himself at a loss for an explanation.

"You wanted to have it all. Go to Egypt, get the treasure. Come bad, get the girl. Frankly, it sounds like you could have, if you hadn't been too emotionally distraught and fraught with guilt to explain your thought process to me."

Indy smiled. He loved how easy a way Marion had with words, but the smile faded when she added:

"That's funny, though, since you clearly had the presence of mind to sneak into the house and sleep with me before going off to make your career."

That wasn't exactly the response he'd been anticipating.

"Well, when you put it like that…"

"Goodbye, Jones."

And with that, Marion pulled a straw fedora off the door hanger, picked up her bag, and walked out of the room as if nothing had happened. She paused only to pick her diary up off the table in the kitchen, not bothering to question what it was doing there, and then again to battle with the old, rusty door.

Its slam shook Indy out of his reverie, and for a moment he just stood stupidly in the bedroom, his brow furrowed as he tried to walk himself back through what should have been a very successful argument.

Then, he sighed – he'd been doing a lot of that today – and traced Marion's steps out to the hall. He stopped when he reached the door, a hint of a smile gracing his lips, the self-confident smirk of a man who thought he knew exactly what he was doing.

"Five," he murmured. "Four… three… two… one…"

Nothing happened. This was new. Usually… okay, let's try again.

"Five… four… three… two… one…"

Okay, now Indy was getting nervous. It never took Marion this long to come back after an argument, convinced by the fact – inexplicable as it was – that they couldn't actually live without each other. Not to mention the fantastic make-up sex. Oh shit, what if she was actually…?

Unable to stand the thought that she was actually following through this time, maybe even already getting on her bike to the nearest Maya village, where they had a phone and would definitely be able to call a driver. What if her anger had inspired superhuman speed, and she was already at the Flores airport, and…

Indy rushed into action, wasting six precious seconds in a struggle with the rusty doorknob – he should've fixed this the other day when Marion brought it up. Suddenly it gave, launching his entire weight onto the front porch at full speed and almost bowling over Marion, who just gave him a bemused, slightly condescending look. "Klutz," her eyes said. At least now they were back to good old hazel.

"You were counting again, weren't you?" she asked, sounding a little impatient. "Don't act like I'm so predictable, Indy; it's insulting."

Too relieved at her presence – okay, so maybe his fear of her developing superhuman speed had been a little irrational – Indy just kissed her lightly.

"Am I predictable?" he asked.

"Depends," Marion responded, shrugging noncommittally.

"On what?"

"On my prediction." She smirked.

"Alright then," he played along. "And what do you think's going to happen next, Marion?"

"I think… I think we're going to kiss and make up, for now. We'll be okay for a little while; I'll pick up everything and enjoy the adventure, and you'll make more of an effort to assuage my fear of your wanderlust. It's too bad, though, because you're totally incapable of taking my sacrifices seriously, and I've yet to accept your obsession with dead men, so soon enough we'll get back to fighting and threatening and leaving until neither of us can take it anymore and this whole thing just implodes. Explodes. Does something unpleasant. That's what I think."

"Yeah? Well…" Indy was tempted to counter her pessimism, but the inevitably ensuing argument would only prove her point and undo all the progress he'd made this afternoon (had he made any progress?), so he resorted to just kissing her again. And then, without entirely knowing why, he said it.

"How about you marry me instead?"

Silence.

"Excuse me?"

"You heard me. Would you prefer I ask in Spanish? Russian? Ancient Greek?"

Indy felt his palms begin to sweat at her hesitation, even though he could hardly blame her.

"Yes."

Uh, he hadn't really meant that part about the languages, but okay.

"Quiero que nos casemo…"

Marion laughed then, revealing the most blinding, beautiful, unreserved smile and pressing her palms to his chest, lifting all the weight and tension of the day from Indy's shoulders.

"No!" she exclaimed, trying to clarify. "I mean… yes, I will marry you. It's insane and hasty and probably a horrible idea, but the truth is that I'd like nothing more in the whole damn world than to marry you right here, right now."

He felt himself returning the smile, letting himself bask in the overwhelming happiness of the woman in front of him – his fiancée – and pulling her to his chest, relaxing into her and him and them in a way he hadn't in weeks, maybe even months.

"If I could, I'd… I'd… God, I love you," he murmured into her dark, dusty, wavy, messy, perfect hair.

"Not God, dear, just Marion," she quipped back into his chest, pausing for comedic effect before looking up at him with an expression of totally unfettered affection. "I love you too, Indiana Jones."

As the sun set below the long horizon, casting gold and crimson shadows against the otherwise perfectly green landscape of the Guatemalan rainforest, Marion closed her eyes and let herself be enveloped in Indy. Her Indy. For a moment, she even let herself entertain the possibility that this was the beginning of an entirely different way of life for the two of them. It could be a new world, one where they would live perfectly ever after, with no more disputes, fears, secrets, miscommunication, or wild goose chases across the globe and deadly battles for arcane objects.

Just her, and him, and maybe even… no, that was jumping the gun a little bit. But who could tell? This time it might work out. It would work out. It would be happy and thoughtless and safe; it would be her and Indy, and maybe the world would finally pay her back for 28 years of unkindness and frustration.

Everything would go right, she decided, because that's how these things are supposed to go.

Author's Note

And then some crazy shit went down, and George Lucas made a really horrible 4th movie about it.

But I didn't write this story for the ending, because we all know what that is. I wrote it because by the time I hit 16 (when I started this story), I couldn't stand not knowing the Indy-Marion back story and just had to create one. It definitely hit the spot for me, and though I can't speak for y'all, I hoped it helped at least a little with filling in those mysterious years.

Thank you, thank you, and THANK YOU for reading. This is the first story I've ever finished, and I'm so glad and proud that you were all able to go through it with me. Maybe some of you are even my original readers from 2008… holy crap, 2008. I am extremely sorry for the delay. Writer's block is supposed to last 3 weeks, not 3 years.

I actually just wrote these past four chapters last month in the course of about six hours. I was on an excavation where we only had internet once a week, which forced me to find other ways to fill my free time. Besides darts and beer-chugging with my archaeological homies.

Thanks again, a million times over. I wish that I'd written enough to be able to philosophize on the relationship between a story and its readers, but I can't. Give it a few more years.

Gros bisous sans fin,

Elizabeth