Inception fic: Justement, Je Regrette Les Zombies (14/14)
Title: Justement, Je Regrette Les Zombies (14/14)
Fandom/Pairing: Inception, Arthur/Eames, Ariadne/Fischer
Overall Rating: PG-13
Overall Warnings: Language, violence, character un-death
Wordcount: 1,858
Notes: It's been a good run! I want to thank all of you for sticking with me through all my laziness and my disappearances. However, it kind of worked out. The last chapter of the Zombie Apocalypse is posted on Friday the 13th. It's kind of cool.
So here we have the epilogue. I hope you all find it satisfying, because it's much better than the first one I wrote. A final, HUGE THANKS to my beta, towel_master for her general amazingness. :)
Chapter One
Summary: After college, all Arthur wanted to do was live a normal life hacking into government databases. But if the flesh-hungry zombies are any indication, the universe has different plans.
-------------------
Previous Chapter
---------------------
December 31, 2014: One Year Later
“-Doct-crrxx-octor Yusuf to exam room three. Your authorization is needed to release patient Rhimes. Repeat, Doctor Yu-”
“-suf, fuck, Yusuf how much of that fucking vaccine do we have? Fuck, fuck, fuck,” Eames-
-sighed.
Overhead, the fluorescent lights buzzed and dimmed, then heroically strived for full brightness, only to repeat the cycle. One of the bulbs a little way down the hall finally gave up the ghost and burned out, its light disappearing with one quiet pop-
-of gunfire down the hall. They can barely hear it over the shrieks of the zombies, over Arthur’s hoarse screams. The infected’s frantic pounding on the door grows more rapid as the hinges begin to give. The door groans once, twice, and Phillipa and James start to cry harder, clutching to their grandmother’s pant legs even as Marie backs up into a corner and cocks her shotgun.
This is it. They all know that-
“-the vaccine has been distributed as far east as Russia. Russia, can you believe it?”
Eames glanced up, gaze fixing on a passing doctor as she talked to her colleague.
“Dominic Cobb and his wife are out there setting up refugee camps and leading the relief efforts. I hear they’ve created over seventy of the-”
-infected, streaming in and trampling over those who fall to the shower of bullets that greet them. They come in an endless tide, relentlessly pushing forward through the narrow doorway toward the survivors. In a closet on the back wall, Phillipa and James hide with their mother and Arthur, who has fallen silent and still.
Eames doesn’t have time to worry about that.
Instead, he worries about Ariadne and Fischer, backs against the wall. He worries about Mark, who has just run out of bullets. About Yusuf, hands shaking. About Marie and Miles, holding hands, guns aimed at the ever increasing horrors. He worries about Cobb and Saito, who he can’t see.
About anything but Arthur, who has stopped moving. Anything but Arthur, who has stopped breathing.
So he plants his feet at takes aim and knows that this is it. This is-
“-great news. They’re an inspiration to us all. But I really can’t imagine leaving my kids, even with their grandparents, to go gallivanting around the world,” the other doctor said.
“They’re hardly gallivanting, Paul. They’re saving the world.”
“I know, they’re heroes. I just can’t imagine doing it, is all. But I guess that’s what heroes are for, right? Doing things you can’t? Now, about those charts…”
Eames looked down at the mug of tea in his hands, long cold, and took another sip. The mug’s bright blue paint was chipped and cracked, a too-cheerful counterpoint of color against the stark white of his hospital pajamas. He shook his head and closed his eye before looking back up at the people passing by.
“Body count’s rising higher and higher every day,” a man muttered to himself as he skirted around a group of other doctors. “I see it, and I see them. I’ll go insane, soon. If I see one more woman with pale skin and blonde hair or another guy with dark hair and dark, dead eyes I may just put a gun to my head and-”
-pulls the trigger as fast as he can, again and again, trying to take down anything that’s still moving. Eames feels the teeth sink into his wrist, into his shoulder, and as he goes down all he can see is Arthur; head tipped back, eyes open. Arthur, Arthur.
Not moving.
And then Eames closes-
-his eyes stung.
Eames’s fingers tightened spasmodically around his mug, and he set it down on the bench beside him to keep it from slipping out of his shaking hands. He wondered if he should go back to his room, but sitting out in the hallway was the only way he learned anything anymore. No one told him any news for fear it might aggravate his…condition.
He supposed that they would come looking for him soon.
After a moment of deliberation, Eames slipped his hand into the pocket of his robe and curled his fingers around the cold, metal case of a lighter, pulling it out to examine it for the millionth time since it’d been returned in the bag of personal possessions. He had every detail memorized, but he liked to hold it all the same. To convince himself that it, at least, was real. Sometimes he just needed a reminder.
Above, the speakers crackled to life again and their harsh metallic words ricocheted around the drab grey walls of the hospital corridor and embedded themselves in the air by Eames’s head.
“Ariadne and Robert Fischer please repor-crxxx-cafeteria 6, Saito is waiting with the supplies shipment. Pi-crxx-ot Mark H-crxxx-to the landing bay, please.”
Eames toyed with the lighter’s flint, its clicks comforting now in the low rumble of the conversations passing by him. He tried not look too much like he didn’t belong, or someone would call and they-
-are here, suddenly. The room is filled with the roar of gunfire, and distantly Eames thinks he can hear a lawnmower. Survivors-what seems like millions of them-are pouring into the room. He wonders if his fever is causing delusions.
His head is pounding, and he’s sweating and trying to ignore the teeth ripping into his stomach. Eames half-hopes that this kills him soon, because even though rescue has come, he can’t see Ari and Fischer through the infected. Their screams have long stopped. Marie and Miles are somewhere-were somewhere-to his left. Mark and Yusuf were swept off in the confusion, leaving a wake of twitching zombies fighting the salvation that will damn them.
The closet is open.
The infected, he thinks, must have been shot off of him by the rescuers. He doesn’t know. He supposes that he may just have stopped feeling the bites, may have stopped caring. Because he can see, just out of the corner of his eye, Arthur lying only three feet away.
Arthur has a new bite on his shoulder and his eyes are glazed over, his body battered and bruised. His skin is graying again, Eames thinks, though he can’t really tell as his vision blends the surrounding room into vague blurs of color. All around him, bodies are moving, people are running and talking but Eames isn’t listening.
He reaches out his hand and slowly, slowly curls his fingers around Arthur’s. And just for a second, Arthur’s hand is in his, cold and unmoving, before Arthur is picked up and carried away. His hand-
-touched Eames’s shoulder, warm and comforting. Eames looked up and half-smiled, accepting the proffered Styrofoam cup of soup gratefully before moving his mug of tea to rest on the floor instead of the bench. Arthur accepts the seat gracefully and bumps Eames’s shoulder with his lightly.
“Shouldn’t you be in bed?” he accuses gently, sipping at his own soup. “I’m pretty sure that you’re not supposed to be up and about for this long without a medical professional present.”
“Hypocrite,” Eames snorts. “I’ve seen your chart. You’re not supposed to even leave your examination suite.”
“It’s been a year,” Arthur protests quietly, ducking his head to avoid the gaze of another overly-curious patient and nervously smoothing down the front of his robe. “If I’m going explode or relapse into a flesh-eating monster, I think I would have done it by now. They can’t keep me in there forever. And besides,” he said, sighing, “I never get to see you. They’re worried that I’ll trigger your psychosis again or something.”
Eames is a little annoyed by how carefully Arthur is watching him.
“Darling, I’m starting to think that no one here except Yusuf is even qualified to practice medicine. I’m fine. I just need to prove it to them in a way they understand. I don’t even remember-”
-bodies on the floor, the screams, the blood, and Arthur just lying there, motionless. Hope is here, but too late. It’s too late, too late, too late-
“-anything at all from that day before I woke up in the hospital. They said I was lucky, that I was a zombie long enough for the fatal wounds I’d been inflicted to close to a manageable level. That’s all I know.” Eames took Arthur’s hand in his and squeezed lightly.
“James,” Arthur began carefully, squeezing back, “they told me that you didn’t wake up for two weeks.”
Eames shrugged. “One day, two weeks, it doesn’t matter. All that matters is that we’re both alive, right?”
“Right,” Arthur agreed. “And when they finally let us out of here, I’m going to marry you properly.”
Eames raised an eyebrow. “What was wrong with the first time?”
“You mean aside from the fact that we only got halfway through the ceremony before they took us back to our rooms or the fact that Mal isn’t actually qualified to perform a marriage?” Arthur grinned, then leaned in to kiss his almost-husband.
“Of course aside from that,” Eames said, laughing, but a bit hurriedly because he had just caught sight of their frustrated attendants weaving through the crowd towards them. “Arthur, I love you. And of course I’ll marry you properly. I promise.”
“I love you, too,” Arthur assured, giving Eames hand one last squeeze before he felt the hand of his nurse on his shoulder. “I’ll see you soon.” He kissed Eames again, then stood, allowing Jenna to lead him away, back toward the room and the cameras and the stale air that never moved. He glanced over his shoulder to watch Eric argue softly with Eames not about having to be confined to his room, but would he please stay in the common area?
He smiled.
Life doesn’t always go the way you plan it. Sometimes, instead of going to school and graduating and having a normal life, you fall in love, break up, and then get attacked by flesh-eating monsters. Sometimes you yourself turn into a zombie, then end up marrying a conman in a rushed, half-finished, completely unofficial ceremony while the men in white coats try to gently coax you back into your room. Sometimes things like that just happen.
But that’s okay.
It had been a year. One year since the end of the horrors, at least for Arthur and Eames. One year since the vaccine was perfected and administered. One year since the help came, not too late, and saved the lives of twelve people who thought they were all they had left in the world.
Arthur sat on the bed and watched the hands of the clock inch slowly around its face, the hour hand chasing the minute hand chasing the second hand for a long time, a long time, then smiled.
“One year,” he whispered, and kissed the ring Eames had given him, all those months ago. The clock chimed once, twice, three times-all the way to twelve. He smiled. “Happy New Year."
-----------------------
The end. I hope you all enjoyed reading this fic as much as I enjoyed writing it. I had such a wonderfult ime sharing it with you all, and thank you so much for your wonderful feedback and encouragement! You all make me smile. :)
Thank you, and see you soon with something COMPLETELY DIFFERENT!
--------
Final Stats:
Total word count: 59,730
Total page count (Word, 1" margins, 12 point Times New Roman): 153
Total time from start to completion: ~Mid August-May 12, so about...9 months?
Total love for readers: OVER 9000 <3
Fandom/Pairing: Inception, Arthur/Eames, Ariadne/Fischer
Overall Rating: PG-13
Overall Warnings: Language, violence, character un-death
Wordcount: 1,858
Notes: It's been a good run! I want to thank all of you for sticking with me through all my laziness and my disappearances. However, it kind of worked out. The last chapter of the Zombie Apocalypse is posted on Friday the 13th. It's kind of cool.
So here we have the epilogue. I hope you all find it satisfying, because it's much better than the first one I wrote. A final, HUGE THANKS to my beta, towel_master for her general amazingness. :)
Chapter One
Summary: After college, all Arthur wanted to do was live a normal life hacking into government databases. But if the flesh-hungry zombies are any indication, the universe has different plans.
-------------------
Previous Chapter
---------------------
December 31, 2014: One Year Later
“-Doct-crrxx-octor Yusuf to exam room three. Your authorization is needed to release patient Rhimes. Repeat, Doctor Yu-”
“-suf, fuck, Yusuf how much of that fucking vaccine do we have? Fuck, fuck, fuck,” Eames-
-sighed.
Overhead, the fluorescent lights buzzed and dimmed, then heroically strived for full brightness, only to repeat the cycle. One of the bulbs a little way down the hall finally gave up the ghost and burned out, its light disappearing with one quiet pop-
-of gunfire down the hall. They can barely hear it over the shrieks of the zombies, over Arthur’s hoarse screams. The infected’s frantic pounding on the door grows more rapid as the hinges begin to give. The door groans once, twice, and Phillipa and James start to cry harder, clutching to their grandmother’s pant legs even as Marie backs up into a corner and cocks her shotgun.
This is it. They all know that-
“-the vaccine has been distributed as far east as Russia. Russia, can you believe it?”
Eames glanced up, gaze fixing on a passing doctor as she talked to her colleague.
“Dominic Cobb and his wife are out there setting up refugee camps and leading the relief efforts. I hear they’ve created over seventy of the-”
-infected, streaming in and trampling over those who fall to the shower of bullets that greet them. They come in an endless tide, relentlessly pushing forward through the narrow doorway toward the survivors. In a closet on the back wall, Phillipa and James hide with their mother and Arthur, who has fallen silent and still.
Eames doesn’t have time to worry about that.
Instead, he worries about Ariadne and Fischer, backs against the wall. He worries about Mark, who has just run out of bullets. About Yusuf, hands shaking. About Marie and Miles, holding hands, guns aimed at the ever increasing horrors. He worries about Cobb and Saito, who he can’t see.
About anything but Arthur, who has stopped moving. Anything but Arthur, who has stopped breathing.
So he plants his feet at takes aim and knows that this is it. This is-
“-great news. They’re an inspiration to us all. But I really can’t imagine leaving my kids, even with their grandparents, to go gallivanting around the world,” the other doctor said.
“They’re hardly gallivanting, Paul. They’re saving the world.”
“I know, they’re heroes. I just can’t imagine doing it, is all. But I guess that’s what heroes are for, right? Doing things you can’t? Now, about those charts…”
Eames looked down at the mug of tea in his hands, long cold, and took another sip. The mug’s bright blue paint was chipped and cracked, a too-cheerful counterpoint of color against the stark white of his hospital pajamas. He shook his head and closed his eye before looking back up at the people passing by.
“Body count’s rising higher and higher every day,” a man muttered to himself as he skirted around a group of other doctors. “I see it, and I see them. I’ll go insane, soon. If I see one more woman with pale skin and blonde hair or another guy with dark hair and dark, dead eyes I may just put a gun to my head and-”
-pulls the trigger as fast as he can, again and again, trying to take down anything that’s still moving. Eames feels the teeth sink into his wrist, into his shoulder, and as he goes down all he can see is Arthur; head tipped back, eyes open. Arthur, Arthur.
Not moving.
And then Eames closes-
-his eyes stung.
Eames’s fingers tightened spasmodically around his mug, and he set it down on the bench beside him to keep it from slipping out of his shaking hands. He wondered if he should go back to his room, but sitting out in the hallway was the only way he learned anything anymore. No one told him any news for fear it might aggravate his…condition.
He supposed that they would come looking for him soon.
After a moment of deliberation, Eames slipped his hand into the pocket of his robe and curled his fingers around the cold, metal case of a lighter, pulling it out to examine it for the millionth time since it’d been returned in the bag of personal possessions. He had every detail memorized, but he liked to hold it all the same. To convince himself that it, at least, was real. Sometimes he just needed a reminder.
Above, the speakers crackled to life again and their harsh metallic words ricocheted around the drab grey walls of the hospital corridor and embedded themselves in the air by Eames’s head.
“Ariadne and Robert Fischer please repor-crxxx-cafeteria 6, Saito is waiting with the supplies shipment. Pi-crxx-ot Mark H-crxxx-to the landing bay, please.”
Eames toyed with the lighter’s flint, its clicks comforting now in the low rumble of the conversations passing by him. He tried not look too much like he didn’t belong, or someone would call and they-
-are here, suddenly. The room is filled with the roar of gunfire, and distantly Eames thinks he can hear a lawnmower. Survivors-what seems like millions of them-are pouring into the room. He wonders if his fever is causing delusions.
His head is pounding, and he’s sweating and trying to ignore the teeth ripping into his stomach. Eames half-hopes that this kills him soon, because even though rescue has come, he can’t see Ari and Fischer through the infected. Their screams have long stopped. Marie and Miles are somewhere-were somewhere-to his left. Mark and Yusuf were swept off in the confusion, leaving a wake of twitching zombies fighting the salvation that will damn them.
The closet is open.
The infected, he thinks, must have been shot off of him by the rescuers. He doesn’t know. He supposes that he may just have stopped feeling the bites, may have stopped caring. Because he can see, just out of the corner of his eye, Arthur lying only three feet away.
Arthur has a new bite on his shoulder and his eyes are glazed over, his body battered and bruised. His skin is graying again, Eames thinks, though he can’t really tell as his vision blends the surrounding room into vague blurs of color. All around him, bodies are moving, people are running and talking but Eames isn’t listening.
He reaches out his hand and slowly, slowly curls his fingers around Arthur’s. And just for a second, Arthur’s hand is in his, cold and unmoving, before Arthur is picked up and carried away. His hand-
-touched Eames’s shoulder, warm and comforting. Eames looked up and half-smiled, accepting the proffered Styrofoam cup of soup gratefully before moving his mug of tea to rest on the floor instead of the bench. Arthur accepts the seat gracefully and bumps Eames’s shoulder with his lightly.
“Shouldn’t you be in bed?” he accuses gently, sipping at his own soup. “I’m pretty sure that you’re not supposed to be up and about for this long without a medical professional present.”
“Hypocrite,” Eames snorts. “I’ve seen your chart. You’re not supposed to even leave your examination suite.”
“It’s been a year,” Arthur protests quietly, ducking his head to avoid the gaze of another overly-curious patient and nervously smoothing down the front of his robe. “If I’m going explode or relapse into a flesh-eating monster, I think I would have done it by now. They can’t keep me in there forever. And besides,” he said, sighing, “I never get to see you. They’re worried that I’ll trigger your psychosis again or something.”
Eames is a little annoyed by how carefully Arthur is watching him.
“Darling, I’m starting to think that no one here except Yusuf is even qualified to practice medicine. I’m fine. I just need to prove it to them in a way they understand. I don’t even remember-”
-bodies on the floor, the screams, the blood, and Arthur just lying there, motionless. Hope is here, but too late. It’s too late, too late, too late-
“-anything at all from that day before I woke up in the hospital. They said I was lucky, that I was a zombie long enough for the fatal wounds I’d been inflicted to close to a manageable level. That’s all I know.” Eames took Arthur’s hand in his and squeezed lightly.
“James,” Arthur began carefully, squeezing back, “they told me that you didn’t wake up for two weeks.”
Eames shrugged. “One day, two weeks, it doesn’t matter. All that matters is that we’re both alive, right?”
“Right,” Arthur agreed. “And when they finally let us out of here, I’m going to marry you properly.”
Eames raised an eyebrow. “What was wrong with the first time?”
“You mean aside from the fact that we only got halfway through the ceremony before they took us back to our rooms or the fact that Mal isn’t actually qualified to perform a marriage?” Arthur grinned, then leaned in to kiss his almost-husband.
“Of course aside from that,” Eames said, laughing, but a bit hurriedly because he had just caught sight of their frustrated attendants weaving through the crowd towards them. “Arthur, I love you. And of course I’ll marry you properly. I promise.”
“I love you, too,” Arthur assured, giving Eames hand one last squeeze before he felt the hand of his nurse on his shoulder. “I’ll see you soon.” He kissed Eames again, then stood, allowing Jenna to lead him away, back toward the room and the cameras and the stale air that never moved. He glanced over his shoulder to watch Eric argue softly with Eames not about having to be confined to his room, but would he please stay in the common area?
He smiled.
Life doesn’t always go the way you plan it. Sometimes, instead of going to school and graduating and having a normal life, you fall in love, break up, and then get attacked by flesh-eating monsters. Sometimes you yourself turn into a zombie, then end up marrying a conman in a rushed, half-finished, completely unofficial ceremony while the men in white coats try to gently coax you back into your room. Sometimes things like that just happen.
But that’s okay.
It had been a year. One year since the end of the horrors, at least for Arthur and Eames. One year since the vaccine was perfected and administered. One year since the help came, not too late, and saved the lives of twelve people who thought they were all they had left in the world.
Arthur sat on the bed and watched the hands of the clock inch slowly around its face, the hour hand chasing the minute hand chasing the second hand for a long time, a long time, then smiled.
“One year,” he whispered, and kissed the ring Eames had given him, all those months ago. The clock chimed once, twice, three times-all the way to twelve. He smiled. “Happy New Year."
-----------------------
The end. I hope you all enjoyed reading this fic as much as I enjoyed writing it. I had such a wonderfult ime sharing it with you all, and thank you so much for your wonderful feedback and encouragement! You all make me smile. :)
Thank you, and see you soon with something COMPLETELY DIFFERENT!
--------
Final Stats:
Total word count: 59,730
Total page count (Word, 1" margins, 12 point Times New Roman): 153
Total time from start to completion: ~Mid August-May 12, so about...9 months?
Total love for readers: OVER 9000 <3