Part of this Lifetime of Dreaming
Title: Part of this Lifetime of Dreaming
Rating: PG-13
Word count: 1331
Pairing: Undisclosed.
BETA: raapsteeltje
Warnings: Insanity? Narration from the perspective of someone’s perception of someone else?
Summary: After Inception, you begin to suspect that what you feel is not your own.
Notes: This is my first REAL venture into Inception fandom (excluding gift!fic). The narration is from someone’s perception (projection?) of someone else. Which is a rather insane way to start off a fandom... *sheepish* Constructive criticism is always loved. :) Title is from the Belle & Sebastian song Little Lou, Ugly Jack, Prophet John, and is as much mine as Inception is.
I.
It starts with a dream.
Most things do these days; what surprises you is that it’s your own.
You awake, gasping, aching and flushed with desire that sits, warm, in your belly. The image of hands and legs and a soft, bare stomach fade from your mind quickly, like snow melting on a too-hot hand, leaving your breath caught and caged in your chest.
You don’t wake up like you used to. One hand reaches for the gun and the other is flipped over to check for needle pinpricks on your wrist.
There’s two; they’re faded, and could be from earlier that day-- but it’s hard to be sure. You kick your legs over the bed and slide out of it as quietly as possible, flicking the gun’s safety off. Your feet pad inaudibly across the tiled floor, and you can feel the hum of white noise under your skin.
No one is in your apartment. You’re alone. It was a dream.
A real dream.
That’s what you try to tell yourself, anyway.
II.
In the painful awareness of the waking world your senses are fooled.
You stare at me. You stare and you stare and you stare as if we aren’t two separate minds with a gaping divide between us and no way to cross it. You look and examine as if you could find a way to break down the walls that separate you from me, as if you could ever really understand me and I could ever really understand you.
Ideas are like diseases, spreading through the brain and infesting every aspect of our life. Our normalcy changes, rotting at the edges as the sickness takes hold. You want and you want and you want as if you could have me, as if you should have me. And you don’t know why.
(The crinkle of my nose, the jokes that only I understand, the way I curl my fingers around my totem every time I am afraid.)
You say “me” as if you aren’t just a series of thoughts, a handful of characteristics thrown together through chaos or chance. Everything is properties. Take away its properties and nothing is left.
In dreams you build and change and grow however you please. In dreams you can watch the landscape in your mind bleed into the world in front of you. You can watch buildings rise, as if they are an extension of you, as if you are God, or the earth itself.
I touch your shoulder and you jerk away.
Stone crumbles. You build it again.
III.
You watch me. You watch how I run my fingers through my hair and how I walk. You look at the curve of my lips. You listen to the sound of my laugh and memorize how I form my vowels. You study me as if you want to be me. As if you’d like to wear my skin over your own.
And you don’t know why. You don’t know where this came from.
Rumour of Inception has spread throughout the dream-sharing world. No matter how quiet we tried to keep it, like all great ideas it had slithered out of our grasps and into other, less reliable hands. These new groups don’t know how we did it, not yet, but soon others will manage it. Maybe they already have. If so, the competition has already begun.
You think my eyes are beautiful.
The thought comes unbidden.
Then again, most thoughts do.
IV.
I press against you, thumbing buttons open, kissing your neck lightly, quickly.
Our breathing is heavy, chests heaving, hearts pumping. I’m warm and solid and sure, so you hold me tightly, your fingers pressing bruises into my hipbones. Blood pounds in your ears; you make a noise in the back of your throat, high and broken. God oh god this is all you ever wanted, all you ever needed. My nails scrape slightly against your abdomen. You can smell the alcohol on my breath, sharp like disinfectant, and suddenly you realize-
Your totem. Grab your totem.
(These feelings aren’t yours.)
It’s warm from your pants pocket, but you trace its shape and you realize...
You aren’t sleeping.
This is not a dream.
I am not a projection.
You run.
V.
You’ve always walked the line between reality and dreaming like a tightrope. Why?
Philosophy doesn’t go over so well in your line of work, so you don’t ask questions like that. You just live and work and hope and despair.
You’ve seen how you could end up: a forgotten body in a basement, stuck in your dreams. In your nightmares. The thing is, you don’t remember when you stopped caring.
You see me everywhere, in everything. You catch sight of light glinting off someone’s hair, or a profile with a nose just like mine, and suddenly it’s all you can think about. It tears you down; your thoughts crumble and break around me, fading into dust.
In dreams you start in the middle. But I know you don’t remember your birth. I know you have trouble recalling exactly what it was you did yesterday, or what you had for breakfast this morning. You try to grasp a beginning to this story of yours, try to fabricate a reasonable start. You try to remember how you got here, staring at nothing while the sun beats into your eyes and thinking of the way I look when I’m sad.
You know how it will end. With a gun shot or a heart attack or quietly in your sleep.
And maybe, just maybe, you’ll wake up.
VI.
To perform Inception you have to know your target. You have to know your mark’s fears, loves, hates, hopes, dreams and desires. You have to be able to navigate the mind, shimmying your way through its crevices and planting the ideas in the forgotten corners. You have to know exactly what will tear a person apart or pull one back together.
These thoughts come unbidden.
You haven’t slept naturally in years.
VII.
The building you live in is old. The bricks are chipped and the roof needs to be patched. Vines crawl up the sides, digging their roots into the solidity of the wall. I wouldn’t go there unless on a job. You wouldn’t go there unless you were hiding.
I don’t see you for years.
I see you every day.
I will never see you again.
VIII.
When you’re in your own dreams your totem tells you nothing; you fool yourself much too easily.
IX.
I touch your shoulder and you jerk away, and as the skyline collapses you tell me to leave.
I tell you that I can’t. You tell me that I won’t.
You imagine that somewhere, somehow, I am touching your face as you sleep, wishing you’d come back.
You imagine that I mourn you. You imagine that I don’t care. You imagine that I never existed, and that we were together.
You imagine that what you feel is real. You imagine that it was planted. You imagine that there is a difference between the two.
You imagine that you were normal, held a normal life and worked a normal job.
Your city dies.
X.
We kiss and we kiss and we kiss and we kiss.
This is not... I am not...
If I shoot, will you wake up?
Rating: PG-13
Word count: 1331
Pairing: Undisclosed.
BETA: raapsteeltje
Warnings: Insanity? Narration from the perspective of someone’s perception of someone else?
Summary: After Inception, you begin to suspect that what you feel is not your own.
Notes: This is my first REAL venture into Inception fandom (excluding gift!fic). The narration is from someone’s perception (projection?) of someone else. Which is a rather insane way to start off a fandom... *sheepish* Constructive criticism is always loved. :) Title is from the Belle & Sebastian song Little Lou, Ugly Jack, Prophet John, and is as much mine as Inception is.
I.
It starts with a dream.
Most things do these days; what surprises you is that it’s your own.
You awake, gasping, aching and flushed with desire that sits, warm, in your belly. The image of hands and legs and a soft, bare stomach fade from your mind quickly, like snow melting on a too-hot hand, leaving your breath caught and caged in your chest.
You don’t wake up like you used to. One hand reaches for the gun and the other is flipped over to check for needle pinpricks on your wrist.
There’s two; they’re faded, and could be from earlier that day-- but it’s hard to be sure. You kick your legs over the bed and slide out of it as quietly as possible, flicking the gun’s safety off. Your feet pad inaudibly across the tiled floor, and you can feel the hum of white noise under your skin.
No one is in your apartment. You’re alone. It was a dream.
A real dream.
That’s what you try to tell yourself, anyway.
II.
In the painful awareness of the waking world your senses are fooled.
You stare at me. You stare and you stare and you stare as if we aren’t two separate minds with a gaping divide between us and no way to cross it. You look and examine as if you could find a way to break down the walls that separate you from me, as if you could ever really understand me and I could ever really understand you.
Ideas are like diseases, spreading through the brain and infesting every aspect of our life. Our normalcy changes, rotting at the edges as the sickness takes hold. You want and you want and you want as if you could have me, as if you should have me. And you don’t know why.
(The crinkle of my nose, the jokes that only I understand, the way I curl my fingers around my totem every time I am afraid.)
You say “me” as if you aren’t just a series of thoughts, a handful of characteristics thrown together through chaos or chance. Everything is properties. Take away its properties and nothing is left.
In dreams you build and change and grow however you please. In dreams you can watch the landscape in your mind bleed into the world in front of you. You can watch buildings rise, as if they are an extension of you, as if you are God, or the earth itself.
I touch your shoulder and you jerk away.
Stone crumbles. You build it again.
III.
You watch me. You watch how I run my fingers through my hair and how I walk. You look at the curve of my lips. You listen to the sound of my laugh and memorize how I form my vowels. You study me as if you want to be me. As if you’d like to wear my skin over your own.
And you don’t know why. You don’t know where this came from.
Rumour of Inception has spread throughout the dream-sharing world. No matter how quiet we tried to keep it, like all great ideas it had slithered out of our grasps and into other, less reliable hands. These new groups don’t know how we did it, not yet, but soon others will manage it. Maybe they already have. If so, the competition has already begun.
You think my eyes are beautiful.
The thought comes unbidden.
Then again, most thoughts do.
IV.
I press against you, thumbing buttons open, kissing your neck lightly, quickly.
Our breathing is heavy, chests heaving, hearts pumping. I’m warm and solid and sure, so you hold me tightly, your fingers pressing bruises into my hipbones. Blood pounds in your ears; you make a noise in the back of your throat, high and broken. God oh god this is all you ever wanted, all you ever needed. My nails scrape slightly against your abdomen. You can smell the alcohol on my breath, sharp like disinfectant, and suddenly you realize-
Your totem. Grab your totem.
(These feelings aren’t yours.)
It’s warm from your pants pocket, but you trace its shape and you realize...
You aren’t sleeping.
This is not a dream.
I am not a projection.
You run.
V.
You’ve always walked the line between reality and dreaming like a tightrope. Why?
Philosophy doesn’t go over so well in your line of work, so you don’t ask questions like that. You just live and work and hope and despair.
You’ve seen how you could end up: a forgotten body in a basement, stuck in your dreams. In your nightmares. The thing is, you don’t remember when you stopped caring.
You see me everywhere, in everything. You catch sight of light glinting off someone’s hair, or a profile with a nose just like mine, and suddenly it’s all you can think about. It tears you down; your thoughts crumble and break around me, fading into dust.
In dreams you start in the middle. But I know you don’t remember your birth. I know you have trouble recalling exactly what it was you did yesterday, or what you had for breakfast this morning. You try to grasp a beginning to this story of yours, try to fabricate a reasonable start. You try to remember how you got here, staring at nothing while the sun beats into your eyes and thinking of the way I look when I’m sad.
You know how it will end. With a gun shot or a heart attack or quietly in your sleep.
And maybe, just maybe, you’ll wake up.
VI.
To perform Inception you have to know your target. You have to know your mark’s fears, loves, hates, hopes, dreams and desires. You have to be able to navigate the mind, shimmying your way through its crevices and planting the ideas in the forgotten corners. You have to know exactly what will tear a person apart or pull one back together.
These thoughts come unbidden.
You haven’t slept naturally in years.
VII.
The building you live in is old. The bricks are chipped and the roof needs to be patched. Vines crawl up the sides, digging their roots into the solidity of the wall. I wouldn’t go there unless on a job. You wouldn’t go there unless you were hiding.
I don’t see you for years.
I see you every day.
I will never see you again.
VIII.
When you’re in your own dreams your totem tells you nothing; you fool yourself much too easily.
IX.
I touch your shoulder and you jerk away, and as the skyline collapses you tell me to leave.
I tell you that I can’t. You tell me that I won’t.
You imagine that somewhere, somehow, I am touching your face as you sleep, wishing you’d come back.
You imagine that I mourn you. You imagine that I don’t care. You imagine that I never existed, and that we were together.
You imagine that what you feel is real. You imagine that it was planted. You imagine that there is a difference between the two.
You imagine that you were normal, held a normal life and worked a normal job.
Your city dies.
X.
We kiss and we kiss and we kiss and we kiss.
This is not... I am not...
If I shoot, will you wake up?