halfway gone!

[anamuan]

I've passed 150k words this year, which is half of my yearly goal for getyourwordsout. Obviously this means I'm volunteering to write you commentfic.

Rules:♠I will write for: Inception, Merlin, J2, Generation Kill, JE, Gundam Wing, the odd Jdrama maybe. I mightmightmight be able to be bullied into writing for Hawaii 5-0

Comments

whether I wake or winke 1/?

[anamuan]

Arthur meets Arthur in a dream. He'd have to, since Arthur is just a projection, some fragmented part of his own subconscious. It shouldn't matter, like all interactions with your subconscious don't really matter. You only learn the things you want to learn when you're talking to yourself.

It's odd, though, so it does matter. The other Arthur introduced himself.

Individual projections are nothing, throwaway splinters of yourself that'll all regroup or rejoin everything else later because they were never really separate in the first place. Individual projections don't have names.

They should definitely not give your own name back to you saying it's theirs. This is the sort of thing that makes you sit up and pay attention because your subconscious might have something important to say.

Arthur looks nothing like him--he's broad and golden, shining yellow hair and tanned skin. He's also kind of an ass, and when Arthur tells him that, other-Arthur gets a funny look on his face and says, "People keep saying that." That's when the timer runs out and Arthur wakes up.

Other-Arthur, golden-Arthur is waiting for him next time he goes down.

"You can't be here," Arthur blurts, because it's the first coherent thing he thinks. Everything else before it is a just a swirl of worried panic. It's Arthur's dream so they aren't supposed to be his projections, but Cobb's more than proven that you bring things in with you anyway.

"It's not like I can leave," other-Arthur snaps. Arthur supposes he could have a point; there's no reason to believe the subconscious can control itself any more than the conscious can. "This is the only time it isn't all dark anyway," he says, but Arthur doesn't have time for that. Eames is down here somewhere for the test run. Arthur needs to take care of this before he finds them.

"What do you want?" he asks.

"I'm looking for someone," golden-Arthur says instead, deflecting. He glances to the side. "Someone's looking for you too," he says, and that's Eames, coming around a corner. He's on the wrong level, street level, with both Arthurs on an overpass, and that gives Arthur a few more seconds.

He sighs. "Stay out of sight at least, ok?" Later. He'll have to deal with this later. He jogs down the penrose stairs and comes out in front of Eames just as he's passing.

"There you are," he says. Arthur resists the urge to check to see if other-Arthur is still in the overpass, or if he's gone wherever projections go when they aren't.