Prompt Post No. 6

[inception_anon]

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[Fill 7/9] En haut et en bas

[anonymous]

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Arthur is gone when he wakes up, but that's only because it's half past two in the afternoon. There's a note on the bedside table that reads, Sorry I had to go. Urgent call from Cobb. Eames reads that name out loud, and thinks, He's calling him Cobb. Like in Arthur's mind, Dominic Cobb has subsumed Mallorie, and if Arthur can keep Cobb together, then he can keep Mal somehow safe as well. It's a valiant, desperate thing.

Thank you, it says on the other side of the paper.

It's a week, or a month, or a year later that Eames visits Mal's grave with a red rose in his hand. He places it next to her tombstone and crouches down on his heels.

"Hey, Mal," he says. "Been all right?"

We all miss you, he thinks. Of course Cobb does. Your children and your parents. And Arthur-- Arthur misses you. I miss you. I'm sorry I never made it, after I heard you were pregnant again. I shouldn't have put that off. Wish I could have seen you.

Hey, you know about what happened with me and Arthur, right after your funeral? Course you do. Look, Mal, I just want you to know, I didn't take advantage of him or anything like that, I want that to be clear, but-- well, there are some things I can't stop from happening. It just so happens that I fell in love, Mal.

Is that all right? I mean, I know he's got his hands full trying to help Cobb through this, and I'm not going to try anything, won't even tell him, I swear, but-- Mal, is it all right that I fell in love, the day we buried you? Or do you feel like I've pushed you aside?

He wonders.

But then his eyes come to rest on the rose he's set on the ground, and it makes him think, Mal, you can't like red roses best. Everyone likes red roses best. And her answer, her voice like a songbird, I would love to be unique, but there's simply nothing better than romance.

That was Mal, a woman who liked red roses best, and didn't care what anyone thought of her. Mal was someone who loved red roses, loved romance, loved everything about love, and the warmth of her hand when he felt it was that of a person who knew how to love.

Mal was someone who loved, to the end, despite everything-- and even to her fall she didn't want to go alone. She didn't want to leave alone. Even when she jumped, all she was doing was reaching, reaching for the love she thought was waiting for her.

And Eames thinks, that's the Mal he remembers. That's the Mal he knows. Mal who lived and breathed love. Mal, who would do anything to coax love into the light-- even on the day of her own funeral-- even with her body reduced to ashes and fragments of bone, even for a love so tentative, just a flicker of it in the fireplace of his heart, afraid to feed it lest the flames shatter the delicate balance of a world plunged into grief--

Mal, you brilliant, crafty girl, thinks Eames. Was it your doing? Was it you all along?

It's a week, or a month, or a year after the funeral that Eames sits by Mal's grave, and contemplates the notion of a ghost playing matchmaker to two idiots she used to know. Then there's a rustle of grass behind him, and he turns to see Arthur, Arthur with an armful -- a real armful -- of red roses, just beginning to bloom.

You're really something, Mal, you know that? he thinks as he stands up. Arthur looks a little tired, but that might just be the flight. The fire in him flares a little, and he imagines Mal leaning against the brick wall in an evening gown of satin, stoking it gently, smiling with her lips pressed together.