Media: The Bourne Identity

Timeline: Jason Bourne stops at the train station to stash the red bag.

Genres: Angst, Character study, Espionage/Spy, Friendship, Romance

Summary: Jason studies the train times while Marie considers her car keys. Two individuals who have been hurt and forsaken by the world. Should they stick together or should they go before the other can do it first?

Notes: I freaking love the Bourne trilogy so much. Jason and Marie have become one of my favorite movie couples. Thanks to Kaila_Falcon for rambling with me about this franchise, hearing what I have to say and providing me with conversation. Plus, her edit featured above inspired me. Go check out her stuff!

Stay here. I'll be back. Ten minutes.

Marie watched him leave with determined strides, his back turned to her as he approached the train station with that bright red bag full of money and passports.

He's not coming back.

Sharp anger pierced through the sick panic from the attack. He was going to leave her to the wolves, just like everyone else.

He left the car keys in the ignition, dangling tantalizingly. At least he didn't leave her stranded. She stared at the keys while running her thumb through a stack of ten thousand dollars. The other ten thousand sat in her bag on her lap.

Her car, her keys, her twenty thousand. She could go. She could leave before Jason could leave her first.

All it had taken was her parents' divorce when she was young to teach her relationships don't last and people don't stay. People are selfish. They do what's best for them and damn those they kick to the curb with more problems than they started with.

There had been other boys before Jason. They were sweet, fun, and decent. A few were loud, obnoxious, and lustful. Either way, Marie never wanted a long-term relationship. She tried it with the first boy. Her hopes and dreams burned to ash when she woke up one morning alone, no note and no goodbye.

She left every single one of them before they could leave her after that.

Jason was no different. He had been a business partner and a means to an end. He had a house and possibly a family. When they reached Paris, they were supposed to part ways. Why did she hesitate?

Maybe as she was Jason's only friend, he was hers, too. He could have easily paid her to drive him to his house just to get a desperate girl in his bed. She'd been beyond lucky that Jason was a sweet, considerate man. He didn't talk much (there are few men in the world who preferred to listen to others over the sound of their own voice), but he trusted her enough to share his troubles with her. In turn, she listened and tried to sooth his worries without dismissing them.

Two lonely people lost in a world that hurt them. Schizer, she didn't want to leave him alone.

Marie didn't want to be alone.

Releasing a frustrated sigh, Marie slammed her head against the carseat. Her mind and her heart played tug-o-war.

  I need a drink.

Although Jason told her to stay as there may be assassins lurking, Marie opened the car door and stepped out into the frigid air. The fresh cold cleared just a bit of the fog in her brain. A liquor store caught her eye.

  Ten minutes, Marie promised as she hurried across the street, keeping her head low. Ten minutes, and then I'm gone.

* * *

Jason's neck was beginning to ache from studying the departure times above. The world moved in a blurred haste, and Jason stood in the middle of it, frozen and lost in the maelstrom.

He looked down at his watch, then back to the train departures. There were too many schedules to fit on the sign, so the destinations and times rotated on multi-sided cards. They made clacking sounds, adding to the noise. He glanced back at his watch again, his brain already measuring and memorizing before he even realized it. The headache was back.

Jason recognized the watch's importance the moment he laid eyes on it in the bank box. While on the fishing boat, he noticed a tan-line around his left wrist. The first thing he did before leaving the bank was returning the watch to his wrist. The snug metal gave him a sense of comfort and familiarity he hadn't felt since. He used it often without thinking, such as now as he tracked which trains were arriving, where they were going, and which one would be the best escape.

Jason shook himself. What was he thinking? He couldn't leave Marie.

He hadn't been thinking. It was instinct—an instinct he didn't understand built up by years of experience he couldn't remember. Who or what hurt him so that he would drop everything and run at the first hint of danger?

More pieces of the puzzle were being presented to him. The apartment in Paris, the assassin sent to kill him, the photos of him and Marie. Someone was out there hunting him down. Jason didn't know whether to face them or run from them. Yet with all of this new information, he didn't have a clue what it all meant... what it meant about him. What did he do that someone would want him dead?

He couldn't leave. Jason adjusted the bag over his shoulder and turned away from his ticket to escape. He needed to stay and figure this out. He couldn't ask that of Marie though. He put her in enough danger.

He realized what this looked like, taking what was left of the money and his passports to a train station. He stashed the bag in a locker and made up a combination on the fly. He didn't remember any important numbers to use anyway. He needed to get back within those ten minutes or she would think he abandoned her.

  What makes you think she hasn't left you? whispered a dark corner of his mind.

Jason couldn't blame her if she did. Being around him was dangerous, surely she knew that. Marie wasn't stupid. Any intelligent, self-preserving person would remove themselves from the danger, take all evidence, and report him to the police. And Jason would be the first person to encourage her to do so.

Still, deep down, he hoped she would still be in the car so he could check on her and say goodbye.

Empty-handed now, Jason shoved his hands in his pockets as he stepped out into the frigid air. As he neared the beaten Mini Cooper, he could see through the windshield and his heart dropped to his feet. He jogged forwards and peered inside to be certain.

The car was empty. He glanced around, worry tight in his chest.

Marie was gone.

Had she been kidnapped? Had they been caught? Was the car surrounded?

Or had Marie come to her senses and left him.

This was the right move. The smart move. Marie got herself away from him. She was safer this way.

Jason swallowed his hurt. He wanted this. Marie needed to be safe and he needed to be alone so that no one got hurt.

The world suddenly felt too big... or Jason felt too small. It was too quiet, too cold, without Marie's presence at his side. His mind became loud with strategies, plans, and ideas with no one to discuss them with.

He didn't want to be alone.

Jason looked around again, just to be sure. He caught sight of her leaving a liquor store with a paper bag in hand, and Jason breathed a sigh of relief. Of course, she would have taken the car with her if she had left.

Jason made a disbelieving gesture with his arms, which she ignored. She slipped into the passenger's side while he took the driver's.

"I told you to stay in the car." His exasperated tone betrayed his fear.

"I needed a drink." Marie's voice trembled, but she was talking now. Good. "I didn't think you were coming back anyway."

She carried the same fears as him. Being abandoned, being alone in the wide world that hurt them, they both knew it all too well. Leaving before you could be abandoned was a cruel comfort, and yet neither of them took their chance.

* * *

"You got to go to the cops. Right now. You gotta go before this gets any worse."

She knew it. He was leaving her alone. Only decency brought him back so he could push her away himself. She should have left first.

"What about yourself?" She barely managed to keep her anger in check.

"It's going to be okay." He didn't know that. He pulled a dark blue book of his pocket and waved it at her. "You take my passport, okay? You show this to them. You have that picture, you have the twenty thousand, you tell them everything that happened. Everything. They're going to believe you. They have to believe you."

They have to believe her. It's the only way he could keep her safe.

Instead of taking his American passport, Marie took another shaky sip of her liquor. She stared out the windshield, thinking with the precious moments they didn't have.

"Marie," Jason sighed after too long a pause. "You can't just sit here. It's not safe here."

"Safe? This is from inside the embassy." She gripped her photos tightly. "Who can do this?"

"I–I don't know."

"This is from yesterday. How do they even know that we're together?"

Jason didn't realize how much influence Marie had on his emotions. She kept him calm, grounded. With Marie nearing hysteria, Jason found his own voice rising as his distress bubbled to the surface.

"Look, I'm just–I'm trying to do the right thing for you. Okay? That's all I'm trying to do."

"Right? How are you going to make this right?! By sending me there alone?"

"Do you think I want you to go to the cops? You think that's good for me?"

"You want to go? Fine!"

"You go to the cops, I have to run..."

"You go to the cops and tell them what happened!"

  "I don't know what happened! I don't know who this guy was! I don't know about that picture, I don't know who I am!"

All of the stress and confusion and fear of two weeks exploded through Jason's lips. Normally soft-spoken, his outburst stunned Marie to silence. Immediately after he had, Jason regretted yelling at her.

They sat in silence, breathing heavily. The cramped car was hot with the kind of anger that dwelled in fear. Fear of the unknown, fear of death, fear of being left alone.

"Look," Jason began, calmer now. "You're acting like I'm trying to burn you here. I'm just trying to do the right thing."

Marie laughed bitterly. "No one does the right thing."

"I can't run with you." He wanted to. Oh, so badly he wanted to run with her; to not be alone. "I can't... We run, I got to live like this." Always hiding, always looking over his shoulder, fighting to stay alive. "I don't even know who I'm hiding from! These people know who I am. I gotta stay here. I got to figure this out."

"So figure it out."

That's it. She's not leaving, and Marie refused to be left behind. She's throwing her lot with him. No matter what happens, she's staying at his side. People don't do the right thing and people leave, but Marie doesn't have to be like that. Jason was different. He was trying to do the right thing, even if she disagreed. Staying with Jason and helping him figure out his identity, that was the right thing to do.

She needed a friend, and so did he.

Jason read all of this in her eyes; in her beautiful, determined expression. A gentle warmth settled within him. One person in this world cared about him enough to stay, even without knowing who he is or what's to come.

"Last chance, Marie," he warned as the French police closed in around them.

She buckled her seatbelt.