Night 57: The Coliseum

[el_aguila]

Touching the sandy grounds of the coliseum was a catalyst, and the progression of day did not mean the end of the process. By fortune or otherwise, this group's efforts were not allowed to halt simply due to the rising sun. Therefore, when nighttime was pronounced, those who had undergone the beginnings of an incomplete trial were pulled from their

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[its_the_mileage]

Indiana Jones and the Quest for the Fedora came to an abrupt halt as the agony spiked and Indy's body bucked convulsively with it. He looked up toward the light and it was Peter, not the bizarre mask but Peter himself, pressing on his chest. Why was he--oh, Indy thought, pressure. Stop the bleeding. Probably what they told you to do in Boy Scouts these days. Nice try, but it wouldn't have been the way to staunch an injury like this, if there'd been a way. He knew he was dying.

His thoughts came back again to his father, just a few months ago this time, lying on the floor of the Grail Temple with a big ugly hole in his body. They hadn't talked about those moments. Indy wished now that they had. He wanted some kind of map, some sense of what his father had thought and felt as he lay dying, before he was healed by the waters of the Grail. He'd spent his life studying the dead; he didn't know how to prepare himself to join them.

Peter was crying, he realized. He needed to say something, try to reassure him. It's all right, kid. This is what I asked you to do. Indy opened his mouth to try to get the words out, then choked them off. It wasn't going to help. There had to be something he could say that would make the next morning a little less awful. It was there somewhere, like the answer to a riddle he couldn't quite solve; he just didn't know what it was. Maybe his father had thought that too as he'd contemplated his own death on that stone floor: I've never once said the right thing to that boy.

There wasn't enough time left to think of it now. He was on the verge of losing consciousness. With grim determination, Indy stretched his hand back above him until it fell on the brim of his hat. He splayed his fingers out, curled them back in; managed to get a grip on the edge and slowly dragged the fedora back down to settle it firmly on his head. He reached down then for Peter's hand and tried to clench it. This was it. This was important. He needed Peter to listen. Indy's breath rattled in his throat.

"Find my father," he forced out urgently, and then he died.