The Seven Swords of Diya: An Indiana Jones Fan Fiction - Part 2

Chapter 273: Kamchatka Wilderness, Soviet Union, 1960

Kamchatka Wilderness

Soviet Union

1960

Lizavet and Shorty stared at Indy.

"You're an orphan?" Lizavet asked softly.

Indy swallowed, tugging at his hat to hide his face. "Mom died. Dad retreated into his work. I was left in the middle... confused and alone."

Shorty moved forward. "Why didn't you tell me?"

"There was no need," Indy replied. "It was 1935, Shorty. You needed a father. You got crazy me. You adopted me better than I adopted you."

Emily sat up. "And... Dad... you raised me without Mom..."

"Em, your mother was an orphan too. Abner was her step-father. Her mother died, just like mine. And Abner died too young to meet any of his grandkids."

Lizavet watched Indy's expression. "You were surrounded by death. You were afraid you had caused it. So you shut down..."

Indy swallowed. "At Mom's funeral... all the relatives gathered. They told me that I should be happy. They told me that it was ok. They didn't know. They didn't know I had seen something. They didn't know Mom had died in China of some disease that no one understood. They didn't know that I saw..." He blinked and shuddered, shaking away the memory. "I have no idea what I saw. When I tried to explain it - my tutor finally got angry at me and told me I was imagining things. Later, I met with some... scholars of the mind. They later pioneered what became the career field of psychology... they suggested it was nothing. So... I told myself there was nothing..."

"May I see what you saw?" Lizavet asked.

"You don't need to," Indy replied. "I saw it again when the Nazis opened the Ark of the Covenant. I saw a beautiful angel of death. And when I saw that come out of the Ark in 1936 - I knew. And I immediately yelled to Marion to shut her eyes... because in that instant... I was that eight year old kid, watching his mom die. And shutting my eyes was the only way I knew how to stop it." Indy swallowed. "After I got back from excavating Edo's Nanking war crimes - shutting my eyes didn't work anymore. So I hauled my family back out into the field of archaeology and treasure hunting. And that's why Em is half blind and she's got facial scars... and now more scars..." He fought his trembling hands, deep shame and embarrassed fury, all while being trapped in regret.

Shorty spoke, "Is that how you knew when I froze facing the apkallu, that I was back to being a little kid?"

Indy nodded. "Because I'd been there..."

"Please let me see," Lizavet whispered.

Indy swallowed, trying to steel his nerves. "Ok, Lizavet. Have a look."