Brick/Inception: Après Moi, le Deluge

[osaki_nana_707]

Title: Après Moi, le Deluge (9/24)
Author: osaki_nana_707
Fandom: Brick/Inception fusion
Word count: 3,560
Pairing: later Brendan(Arthur)xEames, mentions of BrendanxEmily and BrendanxLaura
Rating: R
Warnings: currently violence, language, mentions of character death
Summary: Brendan should have known better than to tug on loose threads. He should have known that one loose thread was all it took to make everything unravel, but he’d been tired and just wanted things to be done. He should have known well enough that things were never done.

Special thanks to wadebramwilson for betaing! <3



NINE

Brendan drifted off around four in the morning, curled up on one side of Brain's bed after having a few lessons on researching. Brain had insisted Brendan learn how to do it on his own so next time he wouldn't have to get involved, and it wasn't like he could really be blamed for feeling that way. Still, it was slow and complicated and boring, and there were long stretches where Brain would just stop to study the information he was gathering in the meantime in case he'd found something to report back to Brendan. He didn't even notice he'd fallen asleep until a hand was gently shoving his shoulder.

"Hey, Brendan," Brain whispered. "Come on, it's morning. They probably want to work some more."

Brendan grunted to let him know he was awake, scrubbing his hands over his face. Someone, probably Brain, had removed his glasses for him and pulled the covers over him during the night.

"Did you find anything?" Brendan slurred, voice still laced with sleep. He yawned and sniffed and blinked a few times to try and get his wits about him.

"Nothing useful. Cobb's clean. He's just your typical University student. The worst thing he has on his record is a ticket for reckless driving back in high school. He gets all A's and B's. Just average."

"And Eames?"

"Fake name. Can I interest you in a lounge chair or an ottoman?"

Brendan threw the covers back, rolling his eyes. "Keep your specs on."

"Don't I always?"

Brendan slipped downstairs to find that breakfast had already commenced. He wasn't particularly hungry anyway (and Brain apparently hadn't been either), so he just poured himself a cup of coffee and watched Mal and Cobb dream together in the living room while Miles oversaw them, taking notes.

"What's going on?" Brendan asked when Eames approached, trying to feign only mild interest as he sipped at his java.

"Testing a different mixture of Somnacin," Eames informed. "They're hoping this one will help make it easier to train your subconscious. They just tweaked it slightly, so nothing to be overly concerned about."

Brendan hummed, shrugging one shoulder. "Not concerned. Sam already put me wise."

"Ah, yes. The brains of your outfit," Eames nodded, leaning against the counter. "You shared his bed last night, yeah? I noticed you coming out of his room."

"Shared isn't exactly how I would put it," Brendan said. "I fell asleep in his bed, but he didn't. He wouldn't really care if his room didn't even have a bed."

"Ah, of course, of course," Eames said, mock serious. Brendan could tell from the pitch of his voice that he wasn't at all convinced.

"Well, what did you think we were doing?" Brendan asked suspiciously, gripping the handle of his coffee cup a little tighter. His brain was spinning with theories about Eames listening in on their conversations. He wondered if Eames was spying on the two of them the night before, escaping into the bathroom when he found out Brendan was leaving the room. He just knew he had reason to be suspicious of Eames-

Eames's face cracked into a devious smile, and Brendan was almost positive his suspicions were confirmed until Eames said, "Well, when me and another bloke are alone in a bed together I know what I'm doing, and it certainly isn't sleeping. You know, no one is going to hold it against you if you're shagging. Cobb and Mal have shagged a few times, though I do think their relationship is a little more serious than they're letting on."

Brendan's brow furrowed, and then he managed to stammer, "I… wait-w-what?"

Eames tousled Brendan's hair. "Don't be so coy."

"I-no, I'm not, I… no. We don't do that, we-Brain's just my friend. That's all, that's it. That's-no!"

"You really need to learn to take a joke, mate," Eames snorted. "Though I suppose you did just prove you don't know Sam's real name. He just goes by Brain, huh? That's a little lofty of a nickname, don't you think?"

Brendan's cheeks were ruddy with embarrassment, his face twisted into a scowl. "He lives up to it."

"I imagine he does."

Brendan was thankful the conversation was interrupted by Cobb and Mal waking. Brendan could see them moving out of the corner of his eye.

"I think that's a good combination," Mal said with a nod as she floated into the kitchen. Her hair was down today, and she was dressed in deep blues. It made her appear absolutely striking, making it easy to see why Cobb was so enamored with her. For a moment Brendan could only think of how easy it could be to fall in love with her if it weren't for his previous history with women and his current situation. He couldn't afford affection right now, straddling a very thin line between victory and defeat.

"Dom," Mal said over her shoulder as he followed in after her like the love-struck puppy he was, "give Juliet my regards. She's a very promising chemist."

"Well, it's what she's at school for," Cobb shrugged, a goofy smile spreading across his face as if Mal's compliment had been directed at him. "She's the best in the department which is why I asked her. She always has been really aware of how sensitive these chemicals can be when reacting to each other."

"You'll be learning about that too," Eames announced, turning his eyes back on Brendan. Brendan wasn't sure why he realized Eames's eyes were the same color as Mal's. "Today you may want to take some notes, actually."

"What? Why?"

"We're going to teach you the complete ins and outs of dreamshare," Mal informed him, beaming with pride. "You may not be properly militarized yet, but that doesn't mean you're incapable of learning to build or learning how to judge a good batch of Somnacin from a bad one. You'll likely be better at some things than others, but-"

"It's good to know the basics of how to do everything in case of an emergency situation," Brendan finished for her.

"Precisely," she said, smiling.

"I'll be teaching you how to build a little later," Cobb said. "Don't worry. I'll take good care of everything, and we'll be filling the world with my subconscious, so we don't have to worry about yours for the moment."

Brendan would have been skeptical that someone as bright-eyed as Cobb could really teach him anything if it weren't for the fact that he'd already seen the sprawling mazes he could build. Miles seemed confident that Cobb was the best architect he'd come across, as well as the most enthusiastic. Brendan didn't quite understand how no one could see the danger hiding behind that much raw talent. Thankfully, by the time Cobb inevitably caused things to crumble, Brendan would most likely be out of their lives. At least he hoped he would be.

"We're going to start with the chemistry of it all for this morning, and then we'll break for lunch. After that, we'll go into architecture and the basics of extraction. After all, if they're going to attempt to steal information from you, it's best to be prepared to take something back," Mal said, eyes glittering.

With that look, Brendan was sure Mal and Cobb would bring the world to its knees. He didn't know if that was a positive thing or not.

"Fine. Sounds good," Brendan said coolly, dragging his gaze back over to Eames. "So, what about you? Are you going to teach me to forge?"

"If you can figure out the basics," Eames replied. "Forging is a delicate thing, a very complicated process. I'll fill you in on the details if you get that far."

A challenge.

Brendan could work with that.

Brain came downstairs for the chemistry lesson, though he kept his laptop with him to continue research for Brendan, thoughtfully sitting in the corner of the room where no one could peer over his shoulder at the screen. Brendan considered himself a fairly smart guy, but even he had to admit that the whole lecture teetered just a bit over his head. Science wasn't necessarily his strongest subject, but he did get the basic idea of how it worked.

The mixtures had to be handled extremely carefully. Anything more dramatic might cause dangerous side effects, side effects Brendan was glad to know about though he sort of wished he hadn't asked. Apparently if the drug was too potent, there was a threat of dying in the dream and not waking up in reality, instead being sent down to an unconstructed dream space that was only referred to as Limbo. They didn't know much about it, but it was apparent that the very few people who had gone to Limbo never came out. Even if they were to awaken, so much time had passed in their minds that they were in vegetative states. It was horrifying to think about.

There were also the soldiers who had been convinced they were still dreaming even when they had woken up. Mal had of course come up with the idea of totems to help combat this feeling, but it wasn't a foolproof method. Many could convince themselves that their totems had been tainted, and a few had abandoned them all together. Some had been coaxed into believing they were in the real world… but the majority had committed suicide.

That bit of information caused a wave of grim silence to wash over the room. Cobb stared at the floor. Brain watched them all, pale-faced from the corner. Mal kept her head held high though her expression was heartbreakingly sad. Eames just fiddled with the toothpick in his mouth, remaining as distant as possible though the slump of his shoulders suggested it meant more to him than he was revealing. Miles just looked sadly accepting of the fact, so used to the information that all it seemed to do was wear him down and age him.

"It's a sensitive thing, Somnacin," Miles concluded with a small sigh. "We have to be as careful as we can, even as we try to explore its limits so that we can move forward with our research. There are problems we can't address in the first level of a dream, so we have to go further down, but that requires depth. We're walking a razor's edge. There are rookies out in the mind crime business that don't realize the risks. I don't care if they're going against my intentions or even that they're doing some rather despicable things. Every life lost to this device is a life I will wear on my conscience forever. I don't want any of your names to be there."

Brendan shifted uncomfortably in his seat, adjusting his glasses. He didn't know what to say, so he figured it was best not to say anything.

"So," Miles said, "Just keep in mind that you'll want a chemist with good references should you ever need one. Let's move on."

They were supposed to break for lunch at that point, but it didn't seem like anybody had much of an appetite, so Cobb offered to go over some architectural basics. Brendan flipped to a fresh page in the notebook Brain had given to him and started writing again.

Cobb brought out a lot of drawings, large swaths of paper with intricately detailed mazes sketched over just about every had created not just rooms or houses but entire cities all straight from his imagination. He'd sketched out the patterns that would be built into the bricks, the amount of cracks in the sidewalks, even where each car would sit in the street. It was hard to be anything but impressed by the amount of detail as Brendan let his fingertips linger over the ivy-lined fence that surrounded the park. Cobb looked a bit proud of it himself.

"You don't have to make it as complicated as all of this, especially if it's your first time building. If you try to keep track of every detail when you're still adjusting then things are going to fall apart," he explained. "It's good to draw from what you know, but always remember not to make anything identical to what it's like in the real world. It's easy to lose track of reality that way."

"I've built before," Brendan said softly, causing the whole room to turn and look at him. He swallowed and said, "I… once or twice, by myself, before I came here. I figured it out on my own. It wasn't like this though… I didn't make a city this sprawling."

"You made a city?" Cobb asked, eyes wide, excitement bubbling underneath his surface. "You built a maze though, right?"

"I don't… I don't know, I don't remember."

Cobb nodded, pursing his lips as he studied the drawings splayed out on the table. He removed a few of them to set on the floor, revealing an aerial drawing of the same city. Brendan immediately saw an elaborate maze formed out of the streets and alleyways. "It's always important to make a maze, even if you're just occupying the dreamscape with a single building. If the projections get wise to their intruders, it's harder for them to find us if they have to search through something this complicated. The maze is always the first step, and then you can start filling in the details, but still it's not bad for a rookie. Most people don't even realize how limitless their imaginations can be down there. You can build things that not only don't exist but can't exist in reality. That's the true beauty of it, really. It's pure creation."

"Fascinating," Brain said, and it was obvious that he meant it.

Brendan wrote down the bullet points. "So, the maze buys you time in a sense," Brendan clarified.

"Yeah, exactly," Cobb continued. "Still, a maze won't do you any good if the subject whose subconscious you're intruding on realizes they're dreaming immediately. Projections aren't friendly when they find out someone doesn't belong, as you are no doubt well aware of by this point. I'd like to think there's a way to get the subconscious on your side, but I haven't figured it out yet."

Oh, yes, Cobb was terrifyingly dangerous.

"Anyway," Cobb went on, "you have to make a good maze." He dug in the bag of supplies he'd brought with him until he produced a pad of graph paper and a pen, handing it to Brendan. "Draw a maze in one minute that takes at least two minutes to solve."

Brendan looked at the paper and then up at Cobb. Cobb just nodded his head, signaling him to attempt it.

His attempts were fruitless. Within ten minutes he'd failed ten times. Within twenty, it was twenty times. At first Brendan was convinced that it was because Cobb was so used to constructing complicated mazes, but when he made the argument, Cobb assured him, "That's sort of the point."

Brendan sighed and looked back down at the paper, chewing on his bottom lip. He tossed it down on the table and shuffled off to the kitchen, brewing another pot of coffee and finishing off a cup of it before returning. "Okay," Brendan said.

Cobb looked at his watch and said, "Go."

Brendan picked up his notebook instead and drew an oval-shaped swirl, adding in as many walls as he could manage before Cobb called time and took it. He studied it for a moment, humming. He found the exit at exactly two minutes and one second.

"Now we're talking," Cobb said, grinning boyishly. "You might just be teachable yet, Arthur."

"If only he wasn't so bloody stubborn, yeah?" Eames piped up from behind, startling Brendan.

Brendan snorted. "I don't think you have room to talk, Mr. Eames."

"I never said that I did, Mr. Frye."

"So, shall we go under and see what you can come up with?" Cobb asked.

Brendan sighed, taking his notebook back from Cobb and tossing it to Brain who was still settled in his corner. He caught it without even looking up from the screen.

"Eames," Cobb said as he and Brendan settled in their chairs. "Keep your eye on the timer for us, would you? I want to see what he can get up to in ten minutes."

Eames just nodded, smirking a little when Brendan hastily jerked his arm away and slipped the needle in himself.

"Such a stubborn boy," Eames remarked again.

"I don't need your help," Brendan reminded, sitting back and closing his eyes.

"Sweet dreams," Eames said and pushed the button.

"Shit-" Brendan stammered as he stepped backwards onto the sidewalk, a car zooming by right where he was standing, blaring its horn. He shook his head, shoving his hands into his pockets and leaning back against the lamp post. Once his heart calmed down a bit, he took in his surroundings.

He wasn't familiar with this city, but at the same time there were so man eerily familiar things about it. The architecture was mostly Spanish Colonial, just like back at home, but he had traveled through every inch of San Clemente, and this wasn't a part of it. There were things about it that just weren't right, though Brendan couldn't pinpoint exactly what that was. Maybe it was just a tad too cold, or maybe the buildings were a little too tall. It felt almost as if some other city had packed up and rebuilt itself on the west coast.

"This is pretty good."

Brendan looked over his shoulder to find Cobb slouched against a nearby wall, hands in the pockets of his jeans, and then it all registered.

This was a city Brendan built in his imagination.

"Not too shabby, I guess," Brendan said, looking down at his shoes. "Doesn't really feel quite right."

"Don't worry about that," Cobb said, pushing himself off of the wall and nodding at Brendan to walk alongside him. "It's a feeling that never quite dissipates, but it's usually stronger in new builders, especially if they don't have time to draw out their maze beforehand. It's that feeling of being lost, you know?"

"I guess… Lost, huh…" Brendan mumbled, falling into step behind Cobb. "So, can you tell if my maze is any good just from what you've seen?"

"I can sort of feel it out by taking stock of my surroundings. Even without experience, your brain will fill in gaps with things that just make sense. I know what to look for. With a little bit of practice, you could be an adequate architect, which is more than I can say about a lot of people."

Brendan wondered if he should point out how pompous Cobb was at the moment, but he figured it was probably better not to.

"Everything fits together well enough, though you'll need to remember that the details should make sense. An architect needs the worlds they create to blend into the background so that the dreamer doesn't recognize that something is strange. That doesn't mean you can't get creative, of course, but you see how these lamp posts are Parisian?"

Brendan hadn't noticed until now. He did have to admit that they looked pretty out of place.

"Something as small as this can alert the dreamer and let them know that this world isn't real which in turn makes their projections, in this case my projections, suspicious. See?"

Cobb's projections hadn't stopped moving, but they were giving Brendan rather nasty looks.

"Okay, so I'll just change the lamp posts."

"You might not want to. They're suspicious now, but if you start changing things, it'll only get more obvious. This is just a practice run, so don't worry about it too much. Might be refreshing to see my projections rip you apart for once." Cobb grinned at him over his shoulder, obviously teasing.

"You're not Eames, are you?"

"God, no," Cobb laughed brightly. "I take that as an insult."

"He seems more the type to joke about limbs getting torn off."

"Yeah, well, don't ask me to understand how Eames's mind works. He's fucking wily as hell. I don't know anything about him and I've known him for a year. He's really good at saying a lot without telling anything. I don't know if you've noticed that or not."

Brendan hadn't but mostly because Eames had told him something. He'd told him about his friend, the one he'd been in the military with… Maybe that information was insignificant though.

"You've got great organization in your builds," Cobb continued on as if they weren't just talking about something else. "A lot of pristine lines. I wouldn't have expected that from you from the way you dress, but I guess it's a good thing. It throws people off. You're way more organized inside your head than you appear. Mal says clothes say a lot about a person."

"So what do my clothes say about me?" Brendan huffed.

"You'd have to ask Eames. I can't read people that well, not like he can. That's why I can't forge. I'm trying to get better though."

"Why?"

Cobb grinned over his shoulder again. "I want to be the best in the business."

They were all terrifyingly dangerous.

also available on AO3