Inception/Mysterious Skin - Every Me and Every You (26/30)
Title: Every Me and Every You (26/30)
Author: osaki_nana_707
Fandom: Inception/Mysterious Skin fusion
Word count: 3,152
Pairing: Neil/Eames
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: language, allusions to rape,child molestation, and prostitution
Summary: Neil McCormick is fraying at the seams. Then he meets Eames, professional dreamer.
Hutchinson was warmer but otherwise exactly the same as last time. Neil's feelings towards it had only soured though, leaving him a bundle of nauseous nerves. Even standing on the ground of the place made him feel woozy and unsteady, a disproportionate weight of things he had to say hanging over him.
The last time he'd come here, Wendy had been waiting for him back in New York. Now Wendy was waiting for him here, and Neil could only wish she wasn't. He steadied himself somehow, and focused on putting one foot in front of the other. He still thought it was a miracle that he didn't vomit in the cab.
Eames was surprisingly silent through the whole thing, clearly deep in thought over what the next few days were going to bring. Neil couldn't help but wonder if Eames was afraid. There was a very, very real possibility that he would screw this up and Neil would be changed or gone forever. If Eames cared about him as much as he said he did, Neil imagined that would be pretty terrifying. He certainly wouldn't have wanted to be in Eames's shoes by any means.
As the taxi pulled onto Monroe Street, Neil could see his mother's house. Eric's car was parked outside of it. The left taillight was smashed and paint peeled off around it. He'd been in an accident since the last time Neil had been there.
"I don't want to do this," Neil said, not realizing he was shaking until Eames took his hand. "Don't make me do this, Eames. There's no point. They're going to be mad at me. They're not going to want to see me now."
"Neil," Eames said gravely. "You need to do this."
Neil appreciated that Eames didn't try to reassure him over what would happen because the truth was that neither of them were sure. This could all be a hideous disaster, but Eames was right about the fact that it needed to happen. Whether it went well or not, Neil knew this might just be his last chance to see his mother or Eric. It was odd how that fact put things in perspective.
The cab pulled to a stop at the curb and Neil got out. He brushed his fingers through his scraggly hair, pushing it off of his forehead in an attempt to at least look somewhat presentable, and then he looked at Eames. "How do I look?" he asked flatly.
"Like you're about to puke."
"Oh, great, that's what I was going for," Neil joked, but even his smirk lacked the energy it needed to be effective.
"Hey," Eames said, squeezing Neil's shoulder. "You're not alone in this, all right? I'm not going to throw you to the wolves and leave."
"I'm just glad you didn't take me to Wendy first," Neil mumbled gloomily and made his way to the door. "I just… I don't know if I can…" he trailed off and shook himself out before knocking.
There was a moment or two of silence and Neil started to think that they'd taken the Impala and gone somewhere, but then the doorknob was twisting and he and Eames were soon staring directly into the face of-
Brian Lackey.
Neil thought that he floated out of his body for a second, thought that he surely must have been dreaming. He wanted to look around and make sure that he hadn't blacked out and woken up on the doorstep in Little River, but he couldn't take his eyes off of the boy who had been haunting his dreams, the boy who had quite literally bludgeoned him to death with an aluminum bat. Brian looked equally shocked to see him, lips slightly parted, eyes like saucers. He looked better than he had the last time Neil had seen him, his hair freshly buzzed and his glasses updated to some slightly smaller frames. He'd put on a little bit of weight, but he still seemed tired and worn. He looked better than Neil at least.
"What are you doing here?" Neil asked, voice hoarse. He had the urge to reach out and touch the boy to see if he was real, but he refrained.
"I feel like I should be asking you that," Brian said softly. "Where the hell have you been?"
"It's a long story," Neil said. "Let me in?" If he hadn't been so weary and so hesitant about this trip in the first place, Neil probably would have been raging over the fact that he had to ask to be let into his own mother's house.
Brian left the door open as he turned and walked away, his movements slow and measured like he'd been hypnotized. "Eric?" Brian called out. "Mrs. McCormick? You might-just-hello?"
Neil stepped inside, shivering a little even though it wasn't nearly so bitingly cold. The house looked the same, save for the trash. Neil noticed a few empty bottles of alcohol strewn about. He wondered if his mother had fallen off the wagon again, if his disappearance had been the cause. He was tempted to lean back against Eames, but instead he just focused on the warmth that radiated off of his body behind him.
Ellen McCormick and Eric both came sauntering out of the kitchen, looking confused. They saw Brian first, but then they saw Neil, and for a long moment the air stilled.
Then, Ellen screamed, instantly bursting into tears, and the next thing Neil knew he was in her arms. He had never heard his mother cry quite like this, never felt her tremble in his arms. She'd always seemed like such a presence, so confident and powerful and fun, but at that moment she felt small. Her hair was grayer than he'd remembered, but whether that had happened while he was gone or if he hadn't noticed was up to debate. He ran his fingers through it anyway, his expression blank. He really wasn't sure how to respond.
After a moment, she released him from her tight, squeezing hold, but she didn't back away. Her hands found their way to his chest and one fist weakly punched him there. It was almost like she knew she was supposed to be angry, but she just couldn't find the rage in her bones. "Oh, Neil… it's Neil, it's my baby," she babbled and finally stepped back so that she could look at his face, cupping it in both hands.
She had aged, or perhaps Neil was just now noticing it. Her eyelashes were clumped together with tears, face ruddy and nose running a bit. It didn't matter. She was so beautiful.
"I'm sorry, Mom," he managed to croak, and then he was in her arms again, feeling her hands stroke through his hair and down his back. "I can explain, I really can."
"It doesn't matter right now," she said. "You're here. That's the important part. God, honey, you're so thin. Are you hungry? Eric and I were making an early dinner. I-oh, it's still in the oven. Come on, come on into the kitchen and sit down. You feel like you're about to drop. Come on."
Neil was all but carried into the kitchen, Eames falling in behind them but keeping his distance. Neil chanced a glance over his shoulder to see Eric look at Eames for some sort of explanation, but the man wasn't talking. This was Neil's job now.
Neil sank into the familiar chair, a little relieved to find the kitchen was a mess too but didn't sport the alcohol bottles the living room did. Ellen didn't smell of booze either, so he hoped that maybe that meant everything was okay and he hadn't destroyed her life as well. He watched as she pulled out what looked to be a Mexican lasagna, one of her favorite recipes that she'd picked up after the twelve-stepping. She had never been a chef, but it smelled so good that Neil wanted to cry.
…but perhaps that was because it was his mother's food.
A plate was set before him within seconds with a crookedly-carved piece of the meal as well as a handful of tortilla chips. She also brought him a fork and a knife and a tall glass of pink lemonade. "Oh, my sweet darling, Neil," she said, eyes wet again as she stroked her fingers through his hair and kissed his forehead. "My baby is home. He's okay. God, I was so worried. I thought' I'd never see you again. Oh, eat, Neil, honey. You need to eat. I can see your cheekbones."
Neil did start to eat, feeling his mother pressed up against his side, hand continuously moving through his hair, down to his shoulder, across the back of his neck. She couldn't stop touching him and couldn't stop saying his name when she spoke. Neil was starting to wish he'd come back sooner.
He watched Eric move about the room, awkwardly putting pieces of the lasagna onto paper plates and handing one to Brian and one to Eames and then getting one for himself. It should have been funny, watching Eric still attempt to be a good host despite the insane circumstances, but it wasn't. Brian was still watching Neil, had been since he'd come inside pretty much, and Neil wondered what was going on inside the boy's head.
He'd punched him the last time they'd seen each other, and Brian had said he'd never wanted to see Neil again… and yet, here he was at his mother's house. It was confusing.
Soon enough the entire table was crowded with people, Eames and Eric having to grab chairs from the patio to sit on. All eyes were on Neil as though he was supposed to jump up on the table and perform. He just kept staring at his half-eaten meal, pushing it around with his fork.
"Neil," Eric finally piped up after too long. "Where have you been?"
Neil looked up at Eric momentarily and then back down at the table. "Drinking myself to death in New York," he mumbled.
Eric scoffed. "Don't joke about that kind of shit, Neil."
"I'm not," Neil replied bluntly, and once again the table fell into silence.
"Honey," Ellen said after his statement sank in.
"Don't worry about it. I'm fine," Neil said, waving it off before any of them could say anything about it. "Eames found me and basically told me to get my shit together."
For the first time since they'd arrived Ellen seemed to acknowledge Eames was even there. The man didn't seem offended by the blindness, considering she'd just gotten her son back. "Oh…" she said.
Another awkward pause filled the room as someone tried to think up something to say. Neil could feel everyone avoiding the elephant in the room, and that was more unbearable than the fact itself, so he just came out with it. "So, how was the funeral?" he asked glibly.
Neil saw rage tighten Eric's frame at the carelessness of the comment, but he'd always had a better handle on his anger than people gave him credit for. "If you had been there, you would've known," Eric said.
Neil stared back at him, positive that the tension between them could have been sliced and served on toast.
"You should have been there," Eric said, face screwing up into an expression somewhere between a sneer and a sob. "She was your best friend and out of all the people that were there you should have been in the front goddamned row, you know that?"
"Yeah," Neil replied without hesitance. "I do. I do know that. I couldn't come."
"What, Mr. Fancy New Job couldn't afford to get his ass on a plane and make the trip?"
"No," Neil replied softly. "I couldn't come because it's my fault that she's dead, and I didn't feel like I deserved that spot anymore. I elected instead to wallow in my own misery."
Eric jumped to his feet then, fingers clenching and unclenching on the tabletop. "It's your fault?" he shouted, horrified and angry and hurt all at the same time.
Neil didn't feel like there was a point in lying now, so he just nodded weakly. "Yeah," he mumbled. "I brought her with me to Paris because that was where me and Eames were working… she wouldn't have been there if it weren't for me, and she'd still be alive."
Some of the fight drained out of Eric, but not all of it. "What kind of fucking work are you doing where innocent bystanders get shot, huh? Why didn't you prevent it?"
"Do you think if I could have I wouldn't have tried?" Neil asked, surprised by the vulnerability in his own voice. "Do you really think I would have just let Wendy die? Really?"
The rest of the angers slid off of Eric's shoulders. "No," he said weakly.
Neil looked over at Eames who had been watching the exchange uncomfortably. "You can explain it better than me," Neil said. "Could you?"
Eames sighed, offering a small nod before saying, "What we do isn't, strictly speaking, legal. We're criminals. We steal information."
"So… what, you're like some kind of spy?" Eric asked, slowly sinking back into his own chair.
"Not exactly," Eames said. "Very powerful people hire groups of us to infiltrate the minds of their enemies or whoever they need us to and extract their secrets. We use a machine called the PASIV device to go into their subconscious and dig up the dirt we need on them. It's all very complicated, but that's the basic gist. We refer to it as mind crime. We share dreams together, quite literally."
"Wendy wasn't working with us," Neil murmured. "She just wanted to see Paris. I never thought that she'd get caught up in it… but my subconscious ruined the job, and the guy we were stealing thoughts from found us… It was a stray bullet. I didn't even have time to react, I… I never meant for it to happen. I can't stop thinking about how it should have been me and not her. It isn't fair that it happened to her."
Neil looked up at everyone at the table: his mother still by his side and stroking his back, Eric looking more brokenhearted than anything, Eames seeming to feel the odd man out, and Brian who had been strangely silent throughout the whole thing.
"I'm sorry," Neil said softly. "For everything."
Neil couldn't remember apologizing for anything in his life, or at least couldn't remember meaning it. The regret he felt in that moment for all of them at the table and the one person who couldn't be was so strong he was nearly smothered by it. He could only hope that they could understand the sheer weight of that apology, that he knew those four words didn't suffice but were the only ones he could think of to even come close.
The only other time Neil had felt this apologetic was that night in Coach's house with Brian crying in his lap, but he hadn't been able to speak then.
No one said anything, and Neil wasn't sure if that was because they didn't understand the gravity of his apology or because they didn't know what to say.
Neil swallowed around the lump in his throat and decided to move forward on his own. "My subconscious isn't in a good place… Eames says I have the talent for the job, but… I'm out of control. It's just gotten worse and worse. I can't sleep anymore unless I wear myself out to the point of collapse. I wake up screaming or I get up and go places without my knowledge. Eames is going to try to go down into my subconscious and fix it, but…"
"But what?" Eric asked, seeming to be the only one brave enough to do so.
"It might not work," Neil replied. "I might wake up different, or… I might not wake up at all. I might wake up in worse shape than now and have to be thrown into the loony bin, I don't know."
Neil could see his mother tense out of the corner of his eye, could sense that she was attempting not to cry again.
"I… I just got you back though," she said shakily. "Now you're telling me I might lose you again? This time forever?"
"I'm sorry," Neil said, not able to look her in the eyes. "If I don't do this though, it's guaranteed. I can't live this way anymore."
"This… this is all my fault, isn't it?" she said suddenly, and Neil looked at her with shock.
"What? No!"
"It is," she said, nodding. "I wasn't there to take care of you when you were little. Maybe if I'd been around more nothing bad would have happened. Something bad happened to you, didn't it, Neil?"
He didn't answer, instead letting her fall back into his arms and cry. He looked at everyone sitting around the table and started to suspect that everyone knew what had taken place that summer at Coach's house. They had all come to the answer one way or another.
"It'll be okay, Mom," Neil whispered reassuringly even though he didn't know if that was true. He wanted to believe it at least, and he knew he'd already made her suffer far more than enough. "Everything will be all right. Eames is really good at this stuff. He's going to do everything he can to help me."
"I don't want to lose you," she whimpered, and he kissed the top of her head.
He wished he could tell her that she wouldn't, but he didn't want to lie anymore.
"I have to go see Wendy," he told her instead. "I'll go see Wendy, and we'll spend the rest of the night hanging out, okay? We'll rent a movie or just watch crappy T.V. shows or whatever. We'll buy tubs of ice cream and eat until we throw up."
She sniffed and nodded, no longer able to speak.
"I just have to go see Wendy first," he told her again and slowly but surely managed to pry himself free from her grip. "I'll be back, okay? I promise that I'll be back."
"I'll drive him," Eric volunteered. "That way there's no chance he'll get away."
"I'm coming too," Brian suddenly piped up, and all eyes turned towards him.
Neil just nodded.
"I'll stay," Eames said softly, and Neil could hear just in those two little words that Eames didn't want Neil's mother to be left alone like this.
Eames really was a better guy than Neil deserved, but he hoped one day he could live up to that standard.
"We'll be back soon," Neil said, kissed his mother again and started for the door.
As an afterthought, he turned and kissed Eames too.
Author: osaki_nana_707
Fandom: Inception/Mysterious Skin fusion
Word count: 3,152
Pairing: Neil/Eames
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: language, allusions to rape,child molestation, and prostitution
Summary: Neil McCormick is fraying at the seams. Then he meets Eames, professional dreamer.
Hutchinson was warmer but otherwise exactly the same as last time. Neil's feelings towards it had only soured though, leaving him a bundle of nauseous nerves. Even standing on the ground of the place made him feel woozy and unsteady, a disproportionate weight of things he had to say hanging over him.
The last time he'd come here, Wendy had been waiting for him back in New York. Now Wendy was waiting for him here, and Neil could only wish she wasn't. He steadied himself somehow, and focused on putting one foot in front of the other. He still thought it was a miracle that he didn't vomit in the cab.
Eames was surprisingly silent through the whole thing, clearly deep in thought over what the next few days were going to bring. Neil couldn't help but wonder if Eames was afraid. There was a very, very real possibility that he would screw this up and Neil would be changed or gone forever. If Eames cared about him as much as he said he did, Neil imagined that would be pretty terrifying. He certainly wouldn't have wanted to be in Eames's shoes by any means.
As the taxi pulled onto Monroe Street, Neil could see his mother's house. Eric's car was parked outside of it. The left taillight was smashed and paint peeled off around it. He'd been in an accident since the last time Neil had been there.
"I don't want to do this," Neil said, not realizing he was shaking until Eames took his hand. "Don't make me do this, Eames. There's no point. They're going to be mad at me. They're not going to want to see me now."
"Neil," Eames said gravely. "You need to do this."
Neil appreciated that Eames didn't try to reassure him over what would happen because the truth was that neither of them were sure. This could all be a hideous disaster, but Eames was right about the fact that it needed to happen. Whether it went well or not, Neil knew this might just be his last chance to see his mother or Eric. It was odd how that fact put things in perspective.
The cab pulled to a stop at the curb and Neil got out. He brushed his fingers through his scraggly hair, pushing it off of his forehead in an attempt to at least look somewhat presentable, and then he looked at Eames. "How do I look?" he asked flatly.
"Like you're about to puke."
"Oh, great, that's what I was going for," Neil joked, but even his smirk lacked the energy it needed to be effective.
"Hey," Eames said, squeezing Neil's shoulder. "You're not alone in this, all right? I'm not going to throw you to the wolves and leave."
"I'm just glad you didn't take me to Wendy first," Neil mumbled gloomily and made his way to the door. "I just… I don't know if I can…" he trailed off and shook himself out before knocking.
There was a moment or two of silence and Neil started to think that they'd taken the Impala and gone somewhere, but then the doorknob was twisting and he and Eames were soon staring directly into the face of-
Brian Lackey.
Neil thought that he floated out of his body for a second, thought that he surely must have been dreaming. He wanted to look around and make sure that he hadn't blacked out and woken up on the doorstep in Little River, but he couldn't take his eyes off of the boy who had been haunting his dreams, the boy who had quite literally bludgeoned him to death with an aluminum bat. Brian looked equally shocked to see him, lips slightly parted, eyes like saucers. He looked better than he had the last time Neil had seen him, his hair freshly buzzed and his glasses updated to some slightly smaller frames. He'd put on a little bit of weight, but he still seemed tired and worn. He looked better than Neil at least.
"What are you doing here?" Neil asked, voice hoarse. He had the urge to reach out and touch the boy to see if he was real, but he refrained.
"I feel like I should be asking you that," Brian said softly. "Where the hell have you been?"
"It's a long story," Neil said. "Let me in?" If he hadn't been so weary and so hesitant about this trip in the first place, Neil probably would have been raging over the fact that he had to ask to be let into his own mother's house.
Brian left the door open as he turned and walked away, his movements slow and measured like he'd been hypnotized. "Eric?" Brian called out. "Mrs. McCormick? You might-just-hello?"
Neil stepped inside, shivering a little even though it wasn't nearly so bitingly cold. The house looked the same, save for the trash. Neil noticed a few empty bottles of alcohol strewn about. He wondered if his mother had fallen off the wagon again, if his disappearance had been the cause. He was tempted to lean back against Eames, but instead he just focused on the warmth that radiated off of his body behind him.
Ellen McCormick and Eric both came sauntering out of the kitchen, looking confused. They saw Brian first, but then they saw Neil, and for a long moment the air stilled.
Then, Ellen screamed, instantly bursting into tears, and the next thing Neil knew he was in her arms. He had never heard his mother cry quite like this, never felt her tremble in his arms. She'd always seemed like such a presence, so confident and powerful and fun, but at that moment she felt small. Her hair was grayer than he'd remembered, but whether that had happened while he was gone or if he hadn't noticed was up to debate. He ran his fingers through it anyway, his expression blank. He really wasn't sure how to respond.
After a moment, she released him from her tight, squeezing hold, but she didn't back away. Her hands found their way to his chest and one fist weakly punched him there. It was almost like she knew she was supposed to be angry, but she just couldn't find the rage in her bones. "Oh, Neil… it's Neil, it's my baby," she babbled and finally stepped back so that she could look at his face, cupping it in both hands.
She had aged, or perhaps Neil was just now noticing it. Her eyelashes were clumped together with tears, face ruddy and nose running a bit. It didn't matter. She was so beautiful.
"I'm sorry, Mom," he managed to croak, and then he was in her arms again, feeling her hands stroke through his hair and down his back. "I can explain, I really can."
"It doesn't matter right now," she said. "You're here. That's the important part. God, honey, you're so thin. Are you hungry? Eric and I were making an early dinner. I-oh, it's still in the oven. Come on, come on into the kitchen and sit down. You feel like you're about to drop. Come on."
Neil was all but carried into the kitchen, Eames falling in behind them but keeping his distance. Neil chanced a glance over his shoulder to see Eric look at Eames for some sort of explanation, but the man wasn't talking. This was Neil's job now.
Neil sank into the familiar chair, a little relieved to find the kitchen was a mess too but didn't sport the alcohol bottles the living room did. Ellen didn't smell of booze either, so he hoped that maybe that meant everything was okay and he hadn't destroyed her life as well. He watched as she pulled out what looked to be a Mexican lasagna, one of her favorite recipes that she'd picked up after the twelve-stepping. She had never been a chef, but it smelled so good that Neil wanted to cry.
…but perhaps that was because it was his mother's food.
A plate was set before him within seconds with a crookedly-carved piece of the meal as well as a handful of tortilla chips. She also brought him a fork and a knife and a tall glass of pink lemonade. "Oh, my sweet darling, Neil," she said, eyes wet again as she stroked her fingers through his hair and kissed his forehead. "My baby is home. He's okay. God, I was so worried. I thought' I'd never see you again. Oh, eat, Neil, honey. You need to eat. I can see your cheekbones."
Neil did start to eat, feeling his mother pressed up against his side, hand continuously moving through his hair, down to his shoulder, across the back of his neck. She couldn't stop touching him and couldn't stop saying his name when she spoke. Neil was starting to wish he'd come back sooner.
He watched Eric move about the room, awkwardly putting pieces of the lasagna onto paper plates and handing one to Brian and one to Eames and then getting one for himself. It should have been funny, watching Eric still attempt to be a good host despite the insane circumstances, but it wasn't. Brian was still watching Neil, had been since he'd come inside pretty much, and Neil wondered what was going on inside the boy's head.
He'd punched him the last time they'd seen each other, and Brian had said he'd never wanted to see Neil again… and yet, here he was at his mother's house. It was confusing.
Soon enough the entire table was crowded with people, Eames and Eric having to grab chairs from the patio to sit on. All eyes were on Neil as though he was supposed to jump up on the table and perform. He just kept staring at his half-eaten meal, pushing it around with his fork.
"Neil," Eric finally piped up after too long. "Where have you been?"
Neil looked up at Eric momentarily and then back down at the table. "Drinking myself to death in New York," he mumbled.
Eric scoffed. "Don't joke about that kind of shit, Neil."
"I'm not," Neil replied bluntly, and once again the table fell into silence.
"Honey," Ellen said after his statement sank in.
"Don't worry about it. I'm fine," Neil said, waving it off before any of them could say anything about it. "Eames found me and basically told me to get my shit together."
For the first time since they'd arrived Ellen seemed to acknowledge Eames was even there. The man didn't seem offended by the blindness, considering she'd just gotten her son back. "Oh…" she said.
Another awkward pause filled the room as someone tried to think up something to say. Neil could feel everyone avoiding the elephant in the room, and that was more unbearable than the fact itself, so he just came out with it. "So, how was the funeral?" he asked glibly.
Neil saw rage tighten Eric's frame at the carelessness of the comment, but he'd always had a better handle on his anger than people gave him credit for. "If you had been there, you would've known," Eric said.
Neil stared back at him, positive that the tension between them could have been sliced and served on toast.
"You should have been there," Eric said, face screwing up into an expression somewhere between a sneer and a sob. "She was your best friend and out of all the people that were there you should have been in the front goddamned row, you know that?"
"Yeah," Neil replied without hesitance. "I do. I do know that. I couldn't come."
"What, Mr. Fancy New Job couldn't afford to get his ass on a plane and make the trip?"
"No," Neil replied softly. "I couldn't come because it's my fault that she's dead, and I didn't feel like I deserved that spot anymore. I elected instead to wallow in my own misery."
Eric jumped to his feet then, fingers clenching and unclenching on the tabletop. "It's your fault?" he shouted, horrified and angry and hurt all at the same time.
Neil didn't feel like there was a point in lying now, so he just nodded weakly. "Yeah," he mumbled. "I brought her with me to Paris because that was where me and Eames were working… she wouldn't have been there if it weren't for me, and she'd still be alive."
Some of the fight drained out of Eric, but not all of it. "What kind of fucking work are you doing where innocent bystanders get shot, huh? Why didn't you prevent it?"
"Do you think if I could have I wouldn't have tried?" Neil asked, surprised by the vulnerability in his own voice. "Do you really think I would have just let Wendy die? Really?"
The rest of the angers slid off of Eric's shoulders. "No," he said weakly.
Neil looked over at Eames who had been watching the exchange uncomfortably. "You can explain it better than me," Neil said. "Could you?"
Eames sighed, offering a small nod before saying, "What we do isn't, strictly speaking, legal. We're criminals. We steal information."
"So… what, you're like some kind of spy?" Eric asked, slowly sinking back into his own chair.
"Not exactly," Eames said. "Very powerful people hire groups of us to infiltrate the minds of their enemies or whoever they need us to and extract their secrets. We use a machine called the PASIV device to go into their subconscious and dig up the dirt we need on them. It's all very complicated, but that's the basic gist. We refer to it as mind crime. We share dreams together, quite literally."
"Wendy wasn't working with us," Neil murmured. "She just wanted to see Paris. I never thought that she'd get caught up in it… but my subconscious ruined the job, and the guy we were stealing thoughts from found us… It was a stray bullet. I didn't even have time to react, I… I never meant for it to happen. I can't stop thinking about how it should have been me and not her. It isn't fair that it happened to her."
Neil looked up at everyone at the table: his mother still by his side and stroking his back, Eric looking more brokenhearted than anything, Eames seeming to feel the odd man out, and Brian who had been strangely silent throughout the whole thing.
"I'm sorry," Neil said softly. "For everything."
Neil couldn't remember apologizing for anything in his life, or at least couldn't remember meaning it. The regret he felt in that moment for all of them at the table and the one person who couldn't be was so strong he was nearly smothered by it. He could only hope that they could understand the sheer weight of that apology, that he knew those four words didn't suffice but were the only ones he could think of to even come close.
The only other time Neil had felt this apologetic was that night in Coach's house with Brian crying in his lap, but he hadn't been able to speak then.
No one said anything, and Neil wasn't sure if that was because they didn't understand the gravity of his apology or because they didn't know what to say.
Neil swallowed around the lump in his throat and decided to move forward on his own. "My subconscious isn't in a good place… Eames says I have the talent for the job, but… I'm out of control. It's just gotten worse and worse. I can't sleep anymore unless I wear myself out to the point of collapse. I wake up screaming or I get up and go places without my knowledge. Eames is going to try to go down into my subconscious and fix it, but…"
"But what?" Eric asked, seeming to be the only one brave enough to do so.
"It might not work," Neil replied. "I might wake up different, or… I might not wake up at all. I might wake up in worse shape than now and have to be thrown into the loony bin, I don't know."
Neil could see his mother tense out of the corner of his eye, could sense that she was attempting not to cry again.
"I… I just got you back though," she said shakily. "Now you're telling me I might lose you again? This time forever?"
"I'm sorry," Neil said, not able to look her in the eyes. "If I don't do this though, it's guaranteed. I can't live this way anymore."
"This… this is all my fault, isn't it?" she said suddenly, and Neil looked at her with shock.
"What? No!"
"It is," she said, nodding. "I wasn't there to take care of you when you were little. Maybe if I'd been around more nothing bad would have happened. Something bad happened to you, didn't it, Neil?"
He didn't answer, instead letting her fall back into his arms and cry. He looked at everyone sitting around the table and started to suspect that everyone knew what had taken place that summer at Coach's house. They had all come to the answer one way or another.
"It'll be okay, Mom," Neil whispered reassuringly even though he didn't know if that was true. He wanted to believe it at least, and he knew he'd already made her suffer far more than enough. "Everything will be all right. Eames is really good at this stuff. He's going to do everything he can to help me."
"I don't want to lose you," she whimpered, and he kissed the top of her head.
He wished he could tell her that she wouldn't, but he didn't want to lie anymore.
"I have to go see Wendy," he told her instead. "I'll go see Wendy, and we'll spend the rest of the night hanging out, okay? We'll rent a movie or just watch crappy T.V. shows or whatever. We'll buy tubs of ice cream and eat until we throw up."
She sniffed and nodded, no longer able to speak.
"I just have to go see Wendy first," he told her again and slowly but surely managed to pry himself free from her grip. "I'll be back, okay? I promise that I'll be back."
"I'll drive him," Eric volunteered. "That way there's no chance he'll get away."
"I'm coming too," Brian suddenly piped up, and all eyes turned towards him.
Neil just nodded.
"I'll stay," Eames said softly, and Neil could hear just in those two little words that Eames didn't want Neil's mother to be left alone like this.
Eames really was a better guy than Neil deserved, but he hoped one day he could live up to that standard.
"We'll be back soon," Neil said, kissed his mother again and started for the door.
As an afterthought, he turned and kissed Eames too.