Inception/Mysterious Skin - Every Me and Every You (28/30)
Title: Every Me and Every You (28/30)
Author: osaki_nana_707
Fandom: Inception/Mysterious Skin fusion
Word count: 3,555
Pairing: Neil/Eames
Rating: R
Warnings: language, allusions to rape,child molestation, and prostitution
Summary: Neil McCormick is fraying at the seams. Then he meets Eames, professional dreamer.
Neil didn't move for several seconds. He couldn't help but be frozen in awe at the state of the world around him. It was nothing like the city he'd managed to build what seemed like so long ago when he'd first went under. Everything was dilapidated and falling apart. The burn marks in the sky (which were the only thing Neil could think to refer to them as) were connected by a web of string thin cracks. A piece actually fell when he took a step forward, slicing into the ground like a shard of gray glass.
This was bad, he knew. He was pretty sure that Eames wasn't doing this, that no architect in their right mind would. He was also sure that this wasn't what Eames had planned in his layouts and mazes. Neil feared that his subconscious had taken on a power and a life all its own. That was definitely worrisome.
He reached out and touched the rusty swing set only to watch it cave in on itself in a cloud of dust. He looked around again and saw no sign of life anywhere, so he started to walk.
As he made his way down the street he discovered that there were burn marks in the street or on the sides of walls as well, the inside of them black and endless. It made the entire world feel as though it had been made of paper, fake and so fragile that he felt that he needed to be cautious where he stepped. The ground hadn't given way under his feet yet though, so he could only hope it was just paranoia.
Neil walked for what felt like miles along stretches of highway littered with trash and abandoned toys. There were crops of cities in the distance, all of them falling apart, and houses that Neil remembered from his childhood in the same condition. He still hadn't seen any projections.
The further he walked the more unstable his subconscious seemed to appear. Buildings started poking their way out of the holes in the skies upside down, and the cracks grew wider and more ominous. The ground stopped becoming littered with trash to be replaced with mutilated bodies, facedown and yet still familiar and none of them were wearing clothes. It was as though his projections had been waging war against each other and had ripped each other apart.
Neil stepped forward and suddenly the ground crumbled beneath him. He didn't even manage to scream before he landed rather gracelessly on the floor of Coach's house.
He looked up where he'd fallen and found that he couldn't see the light.
He got up, grunting at the twinge of pain in his back, kicked a game cartridge out of the way. The house wasn't suffering from the blemishes the world up above was. In fact it looked nearly identical to Neil's memory of the place except for the mess. It appeared as if someone had ransacked the place in search of something. Neil was just wondering what they could possibly looking for when he heard a rustling of fabric as someone moved into the room.
Neil flung himself around, momentarily panicking as he thought that he would come face to face with Coach, but instead he found himself looking at a rather jumpy Eames. "Oh, oh, God… It's just you," Eames said with relief. "Did you fall through the ground?"
Neil just nodded. "Yeah, I… I don't know what happened. Are you all right?"
"Fine," Eames assured him. "I've never seen a subconscious in this state though. The fact that you're fully aware I'm invading your dreams and projections haven't come to rip my skin off is bizarre, and I've never actually gotten to a second dream level without a PASIV device before. The layers of your subconscious are razor thin, I guess. I don't quite know how to explain it."
"Well, everything seems more stable down here," Neil said, looking around.
"For now," Eames said. "What's up there will eventually bleed down to this level, but the destruction will be slower. Right now I'm just sort of wondering how we're going to ride the kick back up."
Neil looked back at the hole he'd fallen through, watched what looked to be a few sprinkles of ash descend from it. "Let's try and focus on repairing all of this, and then maybe the kick won't be a problem," he said softly, though he was sure Eames was pretty lost when it came to solving this as well.
"Well, there's nothing in this house I can use," Eames said, noticeably more uncomfortable than he had been. Neil looked him up and down momentarily and then observed the room again. The photo albums were scattered, one book opened to the pages of Neil's pictures. The tape had been ripped out of the tape deck, brown ribbon folding and tangling amongst the photographs. A quick glance at the kitchen revealed a mess of crunched up cereal on the floor and a few drops of come.
"These are just memories," Neil said, turning away and going towards the front door. He picked up a baseball bat from inside the umbrella stand. "Don't let it bother you too much."
He opened the front door and stepped right out into the streets of New York City-well, technically. The buildings were endlessly taller than Neil remembered, the streets muddled and mazelike. Perhaps this was the city Eames had planned to build on the first level. Projections were moving about, heading off to miscellaneous destinations, and Neil would have found them completely unremarkable were it not for the fact that every last one of them was a middle-aged male. Neil visibly gulped and then pushed forward. "I know what we have to find," he said, even though every part of him wanted to stay as far away from it as possible. "We have to go to the prison, the one with the scratching on the walls."
"Do you think it's here?" Eames asked, squinting into the distance.
"I don't know," Neil admitted. "After the last time… I was so freaked out. The walls I was building just fell apart against my hands, and then I couldn't deal with it and Wendy's death or I probably would have shot myself. I buried it. I think."
The words seemed to come out of Neil against his control, like someone else was saying them. Maybe at this point someone else was.
"Well, let's go see what we can find," Eames said, shrugging.
Neil led the way for a bit, but they both quickly discovered that the sprawling city had no rhyme or reason to it. As time wore on, Neil could see the cracks making their way across the sky above him and could feel Eames growing steadily more concerned. They hadn't found a damned thing.
There was nothing else to do, Neil thought, except ask one of the projections. They seemed to know their way about better than they did.
Neil approached one of the men, even though he felt Eames tense behind him because of it. "Excuse me," Neil said, "do you know how to get to the prison?"
The man turned his eyes on Neil and then grabbed him, expression turning desirous and hungry. "Get the fuck off of me!" Neil shouted, trying to pull away as the bat he had been carrying clattered to the ground. Eames was quick though, scooping up the weapon and smacking it into the skull of the projection, sending him crashing to the ground.
As the body hit the sidewalk, Neil watched a spider web of cracks appear across it as though it was made of thin ice rather than concrete.
"Um, Eames?" Neil managed to say before the ground crumbled beneath him, slowly widening into a massive hole that took the projection's body, Neil, and Eames with it. Neil landed much harder this time, crying out as his front collided with concrete.
For a split second everything was quiet, but then there was a hand in Neil's hair. He thought it must have been Eames at first, but then a different voice asked, "Are you all right, Neil?"
Neil opened his eyes to find he was looking up at Wendy, her make-up done up just like Brian had said it had been. She looked like an angel.
"Wendy?" Neil croaked, pushing himself off of the ground to reach out and touch her face. He discovered then that his arm was caked in blood, and when he looked down he found that he was wearing the same clothes from the night in Brighton Beach, every red stain in the exact place he remembered. A quick survey of his surroundings revealed the neighborhood from the first time he'd dreamed, the tall prison walls looming just behind him.
He looked back at Wendy. "Where's Eames?" he asked, unable to help but lean his cheek into her hand when she reached out and tucked a strand of hair behind his ear. He marveled over just how real she seemed, right down to the subtle grooves in her palm.
"Who's Eames?" Wendy snorted. "It's just you and me, remember? Neil McCormick and Wendy Peterson, the ultimate partners in crime."
It felt so good to hear her voice, to smell her familiar perfume. He wanted to lean into her and not be let go of.
"Where are we?" Neil asked her as she helped him to his feet. He could feel the blood drying on his face.
"Who cares?" she said lightly. "All that matters is where we're going."
"And that is?"
"Wherever we want, of course," she laughed, taking his hand and starting down the street. He could do nothing but follow, entranced by her presence. It was as though she had never left. Her fingernails were painted the same shade they had been the night before in that hotel room. "We can stay like this forever," she said, "just you and me against the world and nothing can stop us."
"But," Neil said awkwardly. "This isn't real. I know it isn't."
"Isn't that up for you to decide?" Wendy asked, gazing at him with her perfect eyes. "So what if this isn't 'reality'? This can be our world. We can live by our own rules down here. We can be together down here. All that bad stuff that happened up there can be the nightmare."
Neil jerked his hand away from her. "You're not Wendy," he said sternly, jaw clenched. "You could never be Wendy. She would never want this… this fantasy world."
"You made me this way," the projection Wendy said, expression turning solemn. "Am I not good enough?"
"I could never make you as good as the real thing," Neil said quietly.
Immediately his beautiful projection of Wendy started to bleed from the chest, right where the real Wendy had been shot in the heart. "Neil?" she said and then dropped to the ground. It brought back such a wave of déjà vu that Neil was momentarily tempted to slam his head into the wall until it went away.
He turned back towards the prison. The guards in the towers had their guns pointed towards the distance and didn't seem to even notice him standing down below. Around him he could see Eric's Gremlin parked halfway up on the sidewalk and missing a tire, could see his own house, could see the outline of the city in the distance. There were a few projections milling about, but none of them close by.
Then, by the wall of the prison he spotted Brian with his bloody nose. He wasn't carrying the baseball bat and didn't seem to mean any harm, but he was still staring Neil down intensely. For a second Neil thought Eames might have forged him, but there was no reason for Eames to disguise himself in Neil's mind where he'd already made a home.
"Where's Eames?" he asked Brian.
"You're standing before every nightmare you've ever experienced hidden behind a weak brick wall, and you just watched your best friend die again," Brian said, "and you're asking where Eames is?"
"Yeah," Neil said, not appreciating the mockery even though he knew it had manifested from himself. "I want to know where he is."
Brian looked up at the prison, tapped it with his knuckle. A piece of the wall crumbled. "He's in there."
"So," Neil said as he crossed the street to the hole in the wall, pausing before ducking inside. "You're not going to bludgeon me this time?"
"You've forgiven yourself when it comes to me," Brian replied, looked over at Wendy, "and you've accepted that she's gone. Now you've just got to face the demons you made on your own."
Neil felt a bit ill over that, but he thanked Brian anyway and wormed his way through the hole into the yard of Coach's house once more.
There was Eames, right about to go inside. Neil called out to him, and Eames approached, looking horrified. Neil wondered what it was Eames had seen until he remembered he was covered in blood. "I'd say I can explain, but I can't," Neil told him, feeling the burn of bile in his throat at the memory itself. It was dark inside the prison, the sky twinkling with stars. He was suddenly very sure he wanted to turn back and leave.
"We don't have to do this, Eames," Neil said. "Just forget it. Let's just go wait for the kick and go home."
"Neil, I don't even know how deep into your subconscious we are. Let's just get this over with. You told me that whatever is causing this destruction to continue is in that house, so let's go."
Neil wanted to throw a tantrum, stomp his feet, cry, run, but there was nothing to do but follow Eames to the doorstep. As they approached, both of them could hear the sound of scratching and whimpering, followed by a feeble, "let me out!"
"It's Brian," Neil mumbled. "It has to be."
The door was unlocked, so they stepped inside, and Neil felt like his blood instantly turned to ice.
They weren't standing in Coach's foyer.
They were standing in Brighton Beach's apartment. There were elements of Coach's house (the television, the beanbag chairs, the shelf of photo albums, the mess of cereal crunching beneath their feet), but the layout was definitely that of the other man's. Neil's coat was even hanging on the stand by the door.
"Never seen this before," Eames said, but he immediately fell silent when he saw the look on Neil's face.
"We need to leave," Neil stammered. "We can't be here. It's not safe. We have to get out of here now."
The scratching and crying continued, this time more loudly from behind the wall of what Neil knew was the bedroom. The word SLUT had been spray-painted across the wall in blue. It hadn't been there a moment ago, but it was there now, bright and ugly and so terrifying in its size.
"Jesus," Eames hissed at the sight of it. "What the bloody hell?"
Small fists pounded on the door, cries for help growing more desperate, and Neil was suddenly struck with the realization that the voice definitely sounded familiar but wasn't Brian's. He couldn't recall ever really hearing Brian's voice when he was young, but that definitely wasn't him.
Eames approached the door and grabbed the handle, pushing it open with little effort. It apparently wasn't locked from their side… and even though by the time the door was open Neil had come to the realization of who was really behind that wall, he still couldn't help but stare in shock as an eight-year-old version of himself threw himself into Eames's arms.
The young Neil's hands were bruised and bloody from his attempts at escape, his fingernails broken off. He was still wearing his Panthers uniform and the black sun block under his eyes. It was hard to fathom that he had ever been so tiny, that Eames could lift that small child so easily.
"This… this is the boy from the pictures," Eames said, staring at Neil, the adult Neil. The child Neil looked starved and close to death, trembling a little, eyes unfocused. Neil wondered how much longer he would have survived had they not come down into his dream. If the boy had died, Neil was sure he would have followed suit. It was just something he understood.
"That's me," Neil whispered, but he was looking into the bedroom rather than at the child. It was Brighton Beach's room, but it was Coach's bed. The word SLUT had been written over the entire surface of the walls.
"What is all this?" Eames asked, and even he couldn't hide his horror now, as smooth as he was with his emotions. "Neil, explain this to me because Wendy didn't tell me about this."
"Wendy didn't know about this," Neil replied, feeling as though he was pulled into the room rather than summoning the strength to step inside on his own. He padded across the floor towards the bathroom, and he said to the little boy, "Did I keep you in here?"
It made sense, Neil thought.
He'd connected the night in Brighton Beach with the summer at Coach's house, this confirmation only becoming that much stronger when he and Brian met face to face. He had blamed Brian for tainting his memory even though it had taken place on its own, and he'd felt guilty about that. His guilt had manifested into the Brian who was out for blood after Neil had seen how much that night had damaged him. The small Neil had been locked down in this room since that night in Brighton Beach. All of the uncomfortable feelings, the confusion that he'd felt the first time he'd been touched by Coach-the loss of the majority of his innocence that summer and the rest of it in that bathroom-he'd locked it away so that he didn't have to face it. The child that Neil felt like he had never been had suffered because Neil never wanted to remember he had been even close to that.
Neil didn't want to believe he had been tainted. He didn't want to accept the fact that he'd never had control over himself from the start. The illusion of it on the outside had only caused the spiral inside. When Wendy had been killed, and he couldn't stop it, he really shouldn't have been surprised that his mind rebelled against itself. It was tired of being trapped behind walls.
When Wendy died, Neil lost the strength to hold the walls up. He hadn't protected himself.
The child Neil shrieked and then went limp in Eames's arms as the front door banged open, and Neil turned to see Brighton Beach john barreling his way inside. The man took no notice of Eames, shouting as he rapidly approached Neil, "Slut's going to get fucked whether he likes it or not!"
Neil had faced down Brian (and Coach's memory in the process). He'd come to accept Wendy's death, and while he wasn't sure he could ever tell himself that he wasn't at least partly to blame, he had been sure that she wouldn't want him to dwell on it.
This was the only demon he hadn't yet faced, and Neil still wasn't sure if he could.
Neil had never been so afraid in his life, and he turned towards Eames to find that the bedroom door had been slammed shut on him. Neil was now trapped inside.
"Eames!" he cried out towards the door. He could see the knob giggling, the door jolting as Eames surely slammed his shoulder against it, but then Neil felt the dull throb of the butter knife connecting with his skull, and he was falling into the bathtub, his clothing gone.
The man grabbed for Neil's ankles, but Neil kicked and struggled in an attempt to avoid it, reaching up and grabbing hold of the faucet and then further still. The water rained down on them, freezing cold.
Neil started to cry as one ankle was captured. "Don't, please-there's some things I don't do!" he shouted at the man, but he knew he didn't care.
He wished Wendy was there. He wished that he'd told Eames about this.
Mostly he just wished that he was the Arthur he'd made up in his stories. Arthur would never have gotten caught up in this mess.
Arthur is as real as you make him, Neil. You can be him if you want to be.
Music swelled in the air-it sounded like one of Eric's favorite tapes.
You can be him.
He turned his head towards the beast of a man holding onto his ankles, stared at his mustache and eyes and raging expression, and he kicked him right in the center of his chest.
A moment later, there was a gun in his hand. He cocked it, aimed, and fired into his head, his chest, and his dick.
Pop. Pop. Pop.
The world jolted, there was the feeling of falling, and then he was opening his eyes to stare up at the ceiling, his hand clutched by the man lying next to him.
Author: osaki_nana_707
Fandom: Inception/Mysterious Skin fusion
Word count: 3,555
Pairing: Neil/Eames
Rating: R
Warnings: language, allusions to rape,child molestation, and prostitution
Summary: Neil McCormick is fraying at the seams. Then he meets Eames, professional dreamer.
Neil didn't move for several seconds. He couldn't help but be frozen in awe at the state of the world around him. It was nothing like the city he'd managed to build what seemed like so long ago when he'd first went under. Everything was dilapidated and falling apart. The burn marks in the sky (which were the only thing Neil could think to refer to them as) were connected by a web of string thin cracks. A piece actually fell when he took a step forward, slicing into the ground like a shard of gray glass.
This was bad, he knew. He was pretty sure that Eames wasn't doing this, that no architect in their right mind would. He was also sure that this wasn't what Eames had planned in his layouts and mazes. Neil feared that his subconscious had taken on a power and a life all its own. That was definitely worrisome.
He reached out and touched the rusty swing set only to watch it cave in on itself in a cloud of dust. He looked around again and saw no sign of life anywhere, so he started to walk.
As he made his way down the street he discovered that there were burn marks in the street or on the sides of walls as well, the inside of them black and endless. It made the entire world feel as though it had been made of paper, fake and so fragile that he felt that he needed to be cautious where he stepped. The ground hadn't given way under his feet yet though, so he could only hope it was just paranoia.
Neil walked for what felt like miles along stretches of highway littered with trash and abandoned toys. There were crops of cities in the distance, all of them falling apart, and houses that Neil remembered from his childhood in the same condition. He still hadn't seen any projections.
The further he walked the more unstable his subconscious seemed to appear. Buildings started poking their way out of the holes in the skies upside down, and the cracks grew wider and more ominous. The ground stopped becoming littered with trash to be replaced with mutilated bodies, facedown and yet still familiar and none of them were wearing clothes. It was as though his projections had been waging war against each other and had ripped each other apart.
Neil stepped forward and suddenly the ground crumbled beneath him. He didn't even manage to scream before he landed rather gracelessly on the floor of Coach's house.
He looked up where he'd fallen and found that he couldn't see the light.
He got up, grunting at the twinge of pain in his back, kicked a game cartridge out of the way. The house wasn't suffering from the blemishes the world up above was. In fact it looked nearly identical to Neil's memory of the place except for the mess. It appeared as if someone had ransacked the place in search of something. Neil was just wondering what they could possibly looking for when he heard a rustling of fabric as someone moved into the room.
Neil flung himself around, momentarily panicking as he thought that he would come face to face with Coach, but instead he found himself looking at a rather jumpy Eames. "Oh, oh, God… It's just you," Eames said with relief. "Did you fall through the ground?"
Neil just nodded. "Yeah, I… I don't know what happened. Are you all right?"
"Fine," Eames assured him. "I've never seen a subconscious in this state though. The fact that you're fully aware I'm invading your dreams and projections haven't come to rip my skin off is bizarre, and I've never actually gotten to a second dream level without a PASIV device before. The layers of your subconscious are razor thin, I guess. I don't quite know how to explain it."
"Well, everything seems more stable down here," Neil said, looking around.
"For now," Eames said. "What's up there will eventually bleed down to this level, but the destruction will be slower. Right now I'm just sort of wondering how we're going to ride the kick back up."
Neil looked back at the hole he'd fallen through, watched what looked to be a few sprinkles of ash descend from it. "Let's try and focus on repairing all of this, and then maybe the kick won't be a problem," he said softly, though he was sure Eames was pretty lost when it came to solving this as well.
"Well, there's nothing in this house I can use," Eames said, noticeably more uncomfortable than he had been. Neil looked him up and down momentarily and then observed the room again. The photo albums were scattered, one book opened to the pages of Neil's pictures. The tape had been ripped out of the tape deck, brown ribbon folding and tangling amongst the photographs. A quick glance at the kitchen revealed a mess of crunched up cereal on the floor and a few drops of come.
"These are just memories," Neil said, turning away and going towards the front door. He picked up a baseball bat from inside the umbrella stand. "Don't let it bother you too much."
He opened the front door and stepped right out into the streets of New York City-well, technically. The buildings were endlessly taller than Neil remembered, the streets muddled and mazelike. Perhaps this was the city Eames had planned to build on the first level. Projections were moving about, heading off to miscellaneous destinations, and Neil would have found them completely unremarkable were it not for the fact that every last one of them was a middle-aged male. Neil visibly gulped and then pushed forward. "I know what we have to find," he said, even though every part of him wanted to stay as far away from it as possible. "We have to go to the prison, the one with the scratching on the walls."
"Do you think it's here?" Eames asked, squinting into the distance.
"I don't know," Neil admitted. "After the last time… I was so freaked out. The walls I was building just fell apart against my hands, and then I couldn't deal with it and Wendy's death or I probably would have shot myself. I buried it. I think."
The words seemed to come out of Neil against his control, like someone else was saying them. Maybe at this point someone else was.
"Well, let's go see what we can find," Eames said, shrugging.
Neil led the way for a bit, but they both quickly discovered that the sprawling city had no rhyme or reason to it. As time wore on, Neil could see the cracks making their way across the sky above him and could feel Eames growing steadily more concerned. They hadn't found a damned thing.
There was nothing else to do, Neil thought, except ask one of the projections. They seemed to know their way about better than they did.
Neil approached one of the men, even though he felt Eames tense behind him because of it. "Excuse me," Neil said, "do you know how to get to the prison?"
The man turned his eyes on Neil and then grabbed him, expression turning desirous and hungry. "Get the fuck off of me!" Neil shouted, trying to pull away as the bat he had been carrying clattered to the ground. Eames was quick though, scooping up the weapon and smacking it into the skull of the projection, sending him crashing to the ground.
As the body hit the sidewalk, Neil watched a spider web of cracks appear across it as though it was made of thin ice rather than concrete.
"Um, Eames?" Neil managed to say before the ground crumbled beneath him, slowly widening into a massive hole that took the projection's body, Neil, and Eames with it. Neil landed much harder this time, crying out as his front collided with concrete.
For a split second everything was quiet, but then there was a hand in Neil's hair. He thought it must have been Eames at first, but then a different voice asked, "Are you all right, Neil?"
Neil opened his eyes to find he was looking up at Wendy, her make-up done up just like Brian had said it had been. She looked like an angel.
"Wendy?" Neil croaked, pushing himself off of the ground to reach out and touch her face. He discovered then that his arm was caked in blood, and when he looked down he found that he was wearing the same clothes from the night in Brighton Beach, every red stain in the exact place he remembered. A quick survey of his surroundings revealed the neighborhood from the first time he'd dreamed, the tall prison walls looming just behind him.
He looked back at Wendy. "Where's Eames?" he asked, unable to help but lean his cheek into her hand when she reached out and tucked a strand of hair behind his ear. He marveled over just how real she seemed, right down to the subtle grooves in her palm.
"Who's Eames?" Wendy snorted. "It's just you and me, remember? Neil McCormick and Wendy Peterson, the ultimate partners in crime."
It felt so good to hear her voice, to smell her familiar perfume. He wanted to lean into her and not be let go of.
"Where are we?" Neil asked her as she helped him to his feet. He could feel the blood drying on his face.
"Who cares?" she said lightly. "All that matters is where we're going."
"And that is?"
"Wherever we want, of course," she laughed, taking his hand and starting down the street. He could do nothing but follow, entranced by her presence. It was as though she had never left. Her fingernails were painted the same shade they had been the night before in that hotel room. "We can stay like this forever," she said, "just you and me against the world and nothing can stop us."
"But," Neil said awkwardly. "This isn't real. I know it isn't."
"Isn't that up for you to decide?" Wendy asked, gazing at him with her perfect eyes. "So what if this isn't 'reality'? This can be our world. We can live by our own rules down here. We can be together down here. All that bad stuff that happened up there can be the nightmare."
Neil jerked his hand away from her. "You're not Wendy," he said sternly, jaw clenched. "You could never be Wendy. She would never want this… this fantasy world."
"You made me this way," the projection Wendy said, expression turning solemn. "Am I not good enough?"
"I could never make you as good as the real thing," Neil said quietly.
Immediately his beautiful projection of Wendy started to bleed from the chest, right where the real Wendy had been shot in the heart. "Neil?" she said and then dropped to the ground. It brought back such a wave of déjà vu that Neil was momentarily tempted to slam his head into the wall until it went away.
He turned back towards the prison. The guards in the towers had their guns pointed towards the distance and didn't seem to even notice him standing down below. Around him he could see Eric's Gremlin parked halfway up on the sidewalk and missing a tire, could see his own house, could see the outline of the city in the distance. There were a few projections milling about, but none of them close by.
Then, by the wall of the prison he spotted Brian with his bloody nose. He wasn't carrying the baseball bat and didn't seem to mean any harm, but he was still staring Neil down intensely. For a second Neil thought Eames might have forged him, but there was no reason for Eames to disguise himself in Neil's mind where he'd already made a home.
"Where's Eames?" he asked Brian.
"You're standing before every nightmare you've ever experienced hidden behind a weak brick wall, and you just watched your best friend die again," Brian said, "and you're asking where Eames is?"
"Yeah," Neil said, not appreciating the mockery even though he knew it had manifested from himself. "I want to know where he is."
Brian looked up at the prison, tapped it with his knuckle. A piece of the wall crumbled. "He's in there."
"So," Neil said as he crossed the street to the hole in the wall, pausing before ducking inside. "You're not going to bludgeon me this time?"
"You've forgiven yourself when it comes to me," Brian replied, looked over at Wendy, "and you've accepted that she's gone. Now you've just got to face the demons you made on your own."
Neil felt a bit ill over that, but he thanked Brian anyway and wormed his way through the hole into the yard of Coach's house once more.
There was Eames, right about to go inside. Neil called out to him, and Eames approached, looking horrified. Neil wondered what it was Eames had seen until he remembered he was covered in blood. "I'd say I can explain, but I can't," Neil told him, feeling the burn of bile in his throat at the memory itself. It was dark inside the prison, the sky twinkling with stars. He was suddenly very sure he wanted to turn back and leave.
"We don't have to do this, Eames," Neil said. "Just forget it. Let's just go wait for the kick and go home."
"Neil, I don't even know how deep into your subconscious we are. Let's just get this over with. You told me that whatever is causing this destruction to continue is in that house, so let's go."
Neil wanted to throw a tantrum, stomp his feet, cry, run, but there was nothing to do but follow Eames to the doorstep. As they approached, both of them could hear the sound of scratching and whimpering, followed by a feeble, "let me out!"
"It's Brian," Neil mumbled. "It has to be."
The door was unlocked, so they stepped inside, and Neil felt like his blood instantly turned to ice.
They weren't standing in Coach's foyer.
They were standing in Brighton Beach's apartment. There were elements of Coach's house (the television, the beanbag chairs, the shelf of photo albums, the mess of cereal crunching beneath their feet), but the layout was definitely that of the other man's. Neil's coat was even hanging on the stand by the door.
"Never seen this before," Eames said, but he immediately fell silent when he saw the look on Neil's face.
"We need to leave," Neil stammered. "We can't be here. It's not safe. We have to get out of here now."
The scratching and crying continued, this time more loudly from behind the wall of what Neil knew was the bedroom. The word SLUT had been spray-painted across the wall in blue. It hadn't been there a moment ago, but it was there now, bright and ugly and so terrifying in its size.
"Jesus," Eames hissed at the sight of it. "What the bloody hell?"
Small fists pounded on the door, cries for help growing more desperate, and Neil was suddenly struck with the realization that the voice definitely sounded familiar but wasn't Brian's. He couldn't recall ever really hearing Brian's voice when he was young, but that definitely wasn't him.
Eames approached the door and grabbed the handle, pushing it open with little effort. It apparently wasn't locked from their side… and even though by the time the door was open Neil had come to the realization of who was really behind that wall, he still couldn't help but stare in shock as an eight-year-old version of himself threw himself into Eames's arms.
The young Neil's hands were bruised and bloody from his attempts at escape, his fingernails broken off. He was still wearing his Panthers uniform and the black sun block under his eyes. It was hard to fathom that he had ever been so tiny, that Eames could lift that small child so easily.
"This… this is the boy from the pictures," Eames said, staring at Neil, the adult Neil. The child Neil looked starved and close to death, trembling a little, eyes unfocused. Neil wondered how much longer he would have survived had they not come down into his dream. If the boy had died, Neil was sure he would have followed suit. It was just something he understood.
"That's me," Neil whispered, but he was looking into the bedroom rather than at the child. It was Brighton Beach's room, but it was Coach's bed. The word SLUT had been written over the entire surface of the walls.
"What is all this?" Eames asked, and even he couldn't hide his horror now, as smooth as he was with his emotions. "Neil, explain this to me because Wendy didn't tell me about this."
"Wendy didn't know about this," Neil replied, feeling as though he was pulled into the room rather than summoning the strength to step inside on his own. He padded across the floor towards the bathroom, and he said to the little boy, "Did I keep you in here?"
It made sense, Neil thought.
He'd connected the night in Brighton Beach with the summer at Coach's house, this confirmation only becoming that much stronger when he and Brian met face to face. He had blamed Brian for tainting his memory even though it had taken place on its own, and he'd felt guilty about that. His guilt had manifested into the Brian who was out for blood after Neil had seen how much that night had damaged him. The small Neil had been locked down in this room since that night in Brighton Beach. All of the uncomfortable feelings, the confusion that he'd felt the first time he'd been touched by Coach-the loss of the majority of his innocence that summer and the rest of it in that bathroom-he'd locked it away so that he didn't have to face it. The child that Neil felt like he had never been had suffered because Neil never wanted to remember he had been even close to that.
Neil didn't want to believe he had been tainted. He didn't want to accept the fact that he'd never had control over himself from the start. The illusion of it on the outside had only caused the spiral inside. When Wendy had been killed, and he couldn't stop it, he really shouldn't have been surprised that his mind rebelled against itself. It was tired of being trapped behind walls.
When Wendy died, Neil lost the strength to hold the walls up. He hadn't protected himself.
The child Neil shrieked and then went limp in Eames's arms as the front door banged open, and Neil turned to see Brighton Beach john barreling his way inside. The man took no notice of Eames, shouting as he rapidly approached Neil, "Slut's going to get fucked whether he likes it or not!"
Neil had faced down Brian (and Coach's memory in the process). He'd come to accept Wendy's death, and while he wasn't sure he could ever tell himself that he wasn't at least partly to blame, he had been sure that she wouldn't want him to dwell on it.
This was the only demon he hadn't yet faced, and Neil still wasn't sure if he could.
Neil had never been so afraid in his life, and he turned towards Eames to find that the bedroom door had been slammed shut on him. Neil was now trapped inside.
"Eames!" he cried out towards the door. He could see the knob giggling, the door jolting as Eames surely slammed his shoulder against it, but then Neil felt the dull throb of the butter knife connecting with his skull, and he was falling into the bathtub, his clothing gone.
The man grabbed for Neil's ankles, but Neil kicked and struggled in an attempt to avoid it, reaching up and grabbing hold of the faucet and then further still. The water rained down on them, freezing cold.
Neil started to cry as one ankle was captured. "Don't, please-there's some things I don't do!" he shouted at the man, but he knew he didn't care.
He wished Wendy was there. He wished that he'd told Eames about this.
Mostly he just wished that he was the Arthur he'd made up in his stories. Arthur would never have gotten caught up in this mess.
Arthur is as real as you make him, Neil. You can be him if you want to be.
Music swelled in the air-it sounded like one of Eric's favorite tapes.
You can be him.
He turned his head towards the beast of a man holding onto his ankles, stared at his mustache and eyes and raging expression, and he kicked him right in the center of his chest.
A moment later, there was a gun in his hand. He cocked it, aimed, and fired into his head, his chest, and his dick.
Pop. Pop. Pop.
The world jolted, there was the feeling of falling, and then he was opening his eyes to stare up at the ceiling, his hand clutched by the man lying next to him.