Time Enough
Title: Time Enough
Author: puckkit
Rating: PG
Pairing/Character: Mal/Cobb, mostly just Mal though
Disclaimer: I do not own these characters or the movie Inception, therefore all of this is false and made up from my charmingly eccentric imagination.
Author's Notes: If I could think of my own plots, I would probably write more stories. As is, once a blue moon a plot appears on its own! I am so very rusty, but trying very hard to get back into it.
Mal grows up on novels and imagination.
When she’s young, she reads all non-fiction books. She reads about lions and tigers, hawks and dolphins. She reads about ancient architecture and exotic forests full of trees that twist and embrace the sky the way nothing in her little town does. She looks at the pictures and closes her eyes, pictures them in her mind and lets them grow, places herself inside of them. There are worlds out there that she wants to explore
She tarries long in the silent lounges of libraries, watches the sun set through large windows, casting rays of scarlet light onto books old and new, paperback and hardcover.
A few years pass and her interests fade from non-fiction as she finds herself craving those sights that she can never see. She reads about worlds that don’t exist, that have never existed. She feels a longing for a world that she’s never been to, that she can never explore.
And if her grasp on reality is a little skewed, if she day dreams with her eyes closed, well, children will do what children will do.
-
Her love of books doesn’t diminish as she ages, but the pleasure they once gave her does. She finds herself longing for more, looking out the window on her third floor apartment and imagining that the insurance office across the street is a great glass palace, that the corner store is completely covered in strands of ivy so thick it’s impossible to tell whether the building is made of anything but, and that the University her father teaches at (that she attends) is a cave below ground, with torches lining the walls and golden plates adorning the floors.
There’s a certain lack of curiosity regarding her father’s teachings. In the way of children everywhere, she doesn’t particularly care until she finds out it’s something that has haunted her dreams both night and day.
“You’re going after a major in architecture and a minor in the art of stubborn persistence,” her father is fond of telling her, back turned and writing on his giant chalkboard that she doesn’t bother to tell him is completely unnecessary due to the projection screen, rolled up and out of view, with no evidence it even exists besides the small panel filled with buttons beside his desk.
He always was a bit old-fashioned, a bit oblivious.
Armed with only the passionate thrill of finding that her dreams hang so very close to her reaching fingertips, she follows her father around relentlessly. She attempts to keep her dignity, asks only questions befitting a woman of her level of pride, but eventually she finds herself begging, pleading, promising to do whatever it takes.
She is sure that this is exactly what she’s meant for, and she tells him this. He looks at her, searching her intentions through her eyes, and she feels no fear that he’ll turn her away.
There is nothing in her but this.
He looks off into the distance with a low sigh and her heart rejoices at her victory.
-
The dreams fill her with fulfillment in the way nothing else does.
“It’s perfect,” She murmurs, eyes wide with wonder and possibility.
Her father can’t make himself frown, but she can tell he’s both pleased and not. At once he is caught between the pleasure of knowing she holds an enthusiasm equal to his own and the discomfort of knowing that this is not the realm he had wanted her to fall in love with.
“The first rule...” but in the way of creative thinkers everywhere, she is already two steps ahead of him. Bridges are rising up and streets are falling down, elevators becoming spiral staircases made of sliding glass, tables turning into trees, the possibilities...
She feels more than hears him sigh as the people, previously just part of the background, start to multiply and come out from places where she didn’t even know there were openings. “What’s going on?” She asks cautiously, slowly backing towards him.
“Yes, well, perhaps we should’ve started with the lecture before diving right in,” he remarks dryly, attempting to push what appears to be her uncle out of Mal’s way.
With an annoyed huff as she’s pushed backwards into him by an angry woman who has her father’s eyes, she mimics, “Yes, well, your regret is duly noted.” She’s growing more agitated as her personal space becomes considerably less personal.
“I’ll be sure to mark down this day as the first time you actually made a mistake and admitted to it.”
He’s reaching for her now and against her will, she finds the spark of fear in her chest has caught fire and she flails for him, feeling irrationally terrified of these spectres.
“No need to be-,“ His voice is cut off by her scream as she falls to the ground beneath the weight of a hundred people.
When she wakes up, gasping and clutching the arm rests of her chair fiercely, she turns immediately to glare at her slowly awakening father. “Thanks for the warning. We were in your mind, I’m your daughter. I don’t understand.”
He rubs at his temple. “Apparently my subconscious has something against that outfit. Are you sure that’s the current style? It makes you look rather... daft.”
She doesn’t roll her eyes, but it’s a near thing.
-
It is through no fault of her father’s that she meets Dominic Cobb, but nevertheless he doesn’t let her live down the fact that they met in his class.
It’s a pretty unremarkable beginning, all things considered. Her mind is fixated on when she can next enter someone’s dream and make it flourish, when she can go inside her own mind and develop it in the ways she so craves. She’s doodling on her page, her father droning on, and by the time he finishes speaking and class is over she knows she’s in trouble.
Her father gives her a look and an eyebrow and she obediently makes her way towards his desk. He’s just beginning to ask if she listens with her fingers in some bizarre science-fiction way when Dom steps up to the other side of the desk. They both turn towards him with identical expressions of surprise and impatience.
To Dom’s credit, or credit to his stupidity, he doesn’t acknowledge either look.
“Say that you can train minds to defend against you attacking them, why could you not win over those subconscious entities in the same way you win over the person whose mind you’re entering? If you were familiar enough with that person, would that protect you from their mind in some way? If you could sneak in, due to your familiarity, disguise yourself.”
Dom gives her a look as he speaks, but mostly the fire in his eyes is turned to her father, focused on his thoughts, but she recognizes her own kind immediately.
Her father, unable to resist Dom as surely as he was unable to resist her, sets off on a tangent of epic proportions. She doesn’t take her eyes off of this boy who has her fire but a smile that is all his own.
She would have that smile for herself, she thinks.
-
She loves Dom, but she loves the purity of creation in a way that can’t compare. She has lived and breathed the very essence of architecture, of worlds, for years before she met him. The dream world is a drug that she could never be as happy without.
For all that he is, he is only human.
But as time passes, she finds her love for the worlds increases with him in them. He makes them real, just as he makes their apartment real when he moves in with her, just as he makes her future seem more solid when it comes up in their conversations. There is something about it, about him, that makes her want more for herself than the whimsical fantasies that she has always accepted as her life.
They work together and the thrill, the skill both of them have, makes everything chime with utter clarity. She creates the worlds in fantastical detail, gorgeously outlaid with the memories of so many descriptions from books littered throughout her mind, and he adds to it, he brings it to life.
It all happens in a whirl; the marriage, the pregnancy, and then the other pregnancy. She is busier than she can ever remember being, her children healthy and her husband happy and she is...
Well. Everyone is happy.
So she stays home for a while and settles, in a way. Not for long, just for a couple years after James is born, and then she joins Dom because while she herself wants to explore, she also doesn’t appreciate the idea of Dom out on his own, without her. What if he didn’t find his way back? What if she couldn’t find her way to him, couldn’t reach far enough into his mind to bring him back.
She ponders these questions as she changes diapers, as she feeds hungry mouths and does load upon load of laundry, load upon load of dishes.
She holds a profound love for her children, it resides in her core, but it shares the space with things that aren’t used to sharing.
When she grabs up her coat, kisses her father on the cheek, and looks behind her to see Philipa’s quiet eyes watch her go, there is a feeling of guilt that she’s unaccustomed to. She finds herself looking away swiftly, saying goodbye with eyes averted.
Time enough for her later, for them both later, she tells herself firmly. Time enough.
--
Limbo... there is nothing but time there. And, really, there’s no time at all. They’re beyond time. It’s remarkable.
They live their life and it’s beautiful, truly, though she misses her father and those friends that she managed not to alienate with her passions. She creates her friends, but she doesn’t know them well enough to have them interact with her honestly. She creates her father and he speaks to her as she thinks he would and it’s almost enough, because she knows him so well. But no one knows anyone that well.
There is nothing but time, creation, and her family. It’s all she’s ever wanted.
--
They wake up though, hugging and crying and free, and time resumes. He is ecstatic and it’s beautiful to watch, so she does. She lies there on the hard floor and watches him as he goes through all the different emotions, as he runs outside just to see strangers, just to see people who act truly unpredictable. He wants to see their children, his eyes glowing and happy and ... he’s a beautiful man.
She feels so heavy, though. And as Dom drags her off of the floor and into his arms, she feels as though her soul is still laying there, heavy and weak, while her body gets dragged towards her family.
She forces herself to trust in love, because that’s what she’s been doing for a while now, and when that doesn’t work... well, that’s what University degrees are for. Nobody’s minor has ever been as useful as her minor in stubborn persistence.
Not even her father suspects.
--
Dom speaks time and again about how lucky they are to be back, about how much he loves her. She is obsessed, he says, she needs to let it go. He begs with his eyes, his mouth, his hands. She follows the script that he lays out for her and if the words are a little bland, if the look in her eye doesn’t quite sell it, well, their children are so young. She’s tired.
He doesn’t leave her alone at first, constantly keeping tabs as she cooks supper, checks on James, combs Philipa’s hair. She would find it stifling if her mind wasn’t constantly whirling so fast in her skull that it threatens to send her to the floor. It’s that itching, nagging feeling of unrest, of unreality.
She starts to look at her children differently. At once beautiful, hers, and also... not. The more she thinks about it, the more foreign they feel. She starts to ask fewer questions about how their day went and instead begins stare at them as they eat supper, as if their tiny hands and their careless coordination could give her answers.
Nothing gives her answers and it starts to grind her down. She feels restless, uncertain, and deeply apathetic. Dom has started to resume his normal life, has left her to start looking into other work options. She knows he’s scared, but she doesn’t have the energy to put into wondering about his thoughts. She has enough trouble with her own.
She falls back on routine, day after day. She chops up the carrots and places them in the pot, turns up the dial so the chili simmers. If she looks at the knife a little longer than normal, if she weighs the instrument in her palm and stares at her mangled reflection until her eyes blur, well.
She’s just tired.
--
Author: puckkit
Rating: PG
Pairing/Character: Mal/Cobb, mostly just Mal though
Disclaimer: I do not own these characters or the movie Inception, therefore all of this is false and made up from my charmingly eccentric imagination.
Author's Notes: If I could think of my own plots, I would probably write more stories. As is, once a blue moon a plot appears on its own! I am so very rusty, but trying very hard to get back into it.
Mal grows up on novels and imagination.
When she’s young, she reads all non-fiction books. She reads about lions and tigers, hawks and dolphins. She reads about ancient architecture and exotic forests full of trees that twist and embrace the sky the way nothing in her little town does. She looks at the pictures and closes her eyes, pictures them in her mind and lets them grow, places herself inside of them. There are worlds out there that she wants to explore
She tarries long in the silent lounges of libraries, watches the sun set through large windows, casting rays of scarlet light onto books old and new, paperback and hardcover.
A few years pass and her interests fade from non-fiction as she finds herself craving those sights that she can never see. She reads about worlds that don’t exist, that have never existed. She feels a longing for a world that she’s never been to, that she can never explore.
And if her grasp on reality is a little skewed, if she day dreams with her eyes closed, well, children will do what children will do.
-
Her love of books doesn’t diminish as she ages, but the pleasure they once gave her does. She finds herself longing for more, looking out the window on her third floor apartment and imagining that the insurance office across the street is a great glass palace, that the corner store is completely covered in strands of ivy so thick it’s impossible to tell whether the building is made of anything but, and that the University her father teaches at (that she attends) is a cave below ground, with torches lining the walls and golden plates adorning the floors.
There’s a certain lack of curiosity regarding her father’s teachings. In the way of children everywhere, she doesn’t particularly care until she finds out it’s something that has haunted her dreams both night and day.
“You’re going after a major in architecture and a minor in the art of stubborn persistence,” her father is fond of telling her, back turned and writing on his giant chalkboard that she doesn’t bother to tell him is completely unnecessary due to the projection screen, rolled up and out of view, with no evidence it even exists besides the small panel filled with buttons beside his desk.
He always was a bit old-fashioned, a bit oblivious.
Armed with only the passionate thrill of finding that her dreams hang so very close to her reaching fingertips, she follows her father around relentlessly. She attempts to keep her dignity, asks only questions befitting a woman of her level of pride, but eventually she finds herself begging, pleading, promising to do whatever it takes.
She is sure that this is exactly what she’s meant for, and she tells him this. He looks at her, searching her intentions through her eyes, and she feels no fear that he’ll turn her away.
There is nothing in her but this.
He looks off into the distance with a low sigh and her heart rejoices at her victory.
-
The dreams fill her with fulfillment in the way nothing else does.
“It’s perfect,” She murmurs, eyes wide with wonder and possibility.
Her father can’t make himself frown, but she can tell he’s both pleased and not. At once he is caught between the pleasure of knowing she holds an enthusiasm equal to his own and the discomfort of knowing that this is not the realm he had wanted her to fall in love with.
“The first rule...” but in the way of creative thinkers everywhere, she is already two steps ahead of him. Bridges are rising up and streets are falling down, elevators becoming spiral staircases made of sliding glass, tables turning into trees, the possibilities...
She feels more than hears him sigh as the people, previously just part of the background, start to multiply and come out from places where she didn’t even know there were openings. “What’s going on?” She asks cautiously, slowly backing towards him.
“Yes, well, perhaps we should’ve started with the lecture before diving right in,” he remarks dryly, attempting to push what appears to be her uncle out of Mal’s way.
With an annoyed huff as she’s pushed backwards into him by an angry woman who has her father’s eyes, she mimics, “Yes, well, your regret is duly noted.” She’s growing more agitated as her personal space becomes considerably less personal.
“I’ll be sure to mark down this day as the first time you actually made a mistake and admitted to it.”
He’s reaching for her now and against her will, she finds the spark of fear in her chest has caught fire and she flails for him, feeling irrationally terrified of these spectres.
“No need to be-,“ His voice is cut off by her scream as she falls to the ground beneath the weight of a hundred people.
When she wakes up, gasping and clutching the arm rests of her chair fiercely, she turns immediately to glare at her slowly awakening father. “Thanks for the warning. We were in your mind, I’m your daughter. I don’t understand.”
He rubs at his temple. “Apparently my subconscious has something against that outfit. Are you sure that’s the current style? It makes you look rather... daft.”
She doesn’t roll her eyes, but it’s a near thing.
-
It is through no fault of her father’s that she meets Dominic Cobb, but nevertheless he doesn’t let her live down the fact that they met in his class.
It’s a pretty unremarkable beginning, all things considered. Her mind is fixated on when she can next enter someone’s dream and make it flourish, when she can go inside her own mind and develop it in the ways she so craves. She’s doodling on her page, her father droning on, and by the time he finishes speaking and class is over she knows she’s in trouble.
Her father gives her a look and an eyebrow and she obediently makes her way towards his desk. He’s just beginning to ask if she listens with her fingers in some bizarre science-fiction way when Dom steps up to the other side of the desk. They both turn towards him with identical expressions of surprise and impatience.
To Dom’s credit, or credit to his stupidity, he doesn’t acknowledge either look.
“Say that you can train minds to defend against you attacking them, why could you not win over those subconscious entities in the same way you win over the person whose mind you’re entering? If you were familiar enough with that person, would that protect you from their mind in some way? If you could sneak in, due to your familiarity, disguise yourself.”
Dom gives her a look as he speaks, but mostly the fire in his eyes is turned to her father, focused on his thoughts, but she recognizes her own kind immediately.
Her father, unable to resist Dom as surely as he was unable to resist her, sets off on a tangent of epic proportions. She doesn’t take her eyes off of this boy who has her fire but a smile that is all his own.
She would have that smile for herself, she thinks.
-
She loves Dom, but she loves the purity of creation in a way that can’t compare. She has lived and breathed the very essence of architecture, of worlds, for years before she met him. The dream world is a drug that she could never be as happy without.
For all that he is, he is only human.
But as time passes, she finds her love for the worlds increases with him in them. He makes them real, just as he makes their apartment real when he moves in with her, just as he makes her future seem more solid when it comes up in their conversations. There is something about it, about him, that makes her want more for herself than the whimsical fantasies that she has always accepted as her life.
They work together and the thrill, the skill both of them have, makes everything chime with utter clarity. She creates the worlds in fantastical detail, gorgeously outlaid with the memories of so many descriptions from books littered throughout her mind, and he adds to it, he brings it to life.
It all happens in a whirl; the marriage, the pregnancy, and then the other pregnancy. She is busier than she can ever remember being, her children healthy and her husband happy and she is...
Well. Everyone is happy.
So she stays home for a while and settles, in a way. Not for long, just for a couple years after James is born, and then she joins Dom because while she herself wants to explore, she also doesn’t appreciate the idea of Dom out on his own, without her. What if he didn’t find his way back? What if she couldn’t find her way to him, couldn’t reach far enough into his mind to bring him back.
She ponders these questions as she changes diapers, as she feeds hungry mouths and does load upon load of laundry, load upon load of dishes.
She holds a profound love for her children, it resides in her core, but it shares the space with things that aren’t used to sharing.
When she grabs up her coat, kisses her father on the cheek, and looks behind her to see Philipa’s quiet eyes watch her go, there is a feeling of guilt that she’s unaccustomed to. She finds herself looking away swiftly, saying goodbye with eyes averted.
Time enough for her later, for them both later, she tells herself firmly. Time enough.
--
Limbo... there is nothing but time there. And, really, there’s no time at all. They’re beyond time. It’s remarkable.
They live their life and it’s beautiful, truly, though she misses her father and those friends that she managed not to alienate with her passions. She creates her friends, but she doesn’t know them well enough to have them interact with her honestly. She creates her father and he speaks to her as she thinks he would and it’s almost enough, because she knows him so well. But no one knows anyone that well.
There is nothing but time, creation, and her family. It’s all she’s ever wanted.
--
They wake up though, hugging and crying and free, and time resumes. He is ecstatic and it’s beautiful to watch, so she does. She lies there on the hard floor and watches him as he goes through all the different emotions, as he runs outside just to see strangers, just to see people who act truly unpredictable. He wants to see their children, his eyes glowing and happy and ... he’s a beautiful man.
She feels so heavy, though. And as Dom drags her off of the floor and into his arms, she feels as though her soul is still laying there, heavy and weak, while her body gets dragged towards her family.
She forces herself to trust in love, because that’s what she’s been doing for a while now, and when that doesn’t work... well, that’s what University degrees are for. Nobody’s minor has ever been as useful as her minor in stubborn persistence.
Not even her father suspects.
--
Dom speaks time and again about how lucky they are to be back, about how much he loves her. She is obsessed, he says, she needs to let it go. He begs with his eyes, his mouth, his hands. She follows the script that he lays out for her and if the words are a little bland, if the look in her eye doesn’t quite sell it, well, their children are so young. She’s tired.
He doesn’t leave her alone at first, constantly keeping tabs as she cooks supper, checks on James, combs Philipa’s hair. She would find it stifling if her mind wasn’t constantly whirling so fast in her skull that it threatens to send her to the floor. It’s that itching, nagging feeling of unrest, of unreality.
She starts to look at her children differently. At once beautiful, hers, and also... not. The more she thinks about it, the more foreign they feel. She starts to ask fewer questions about how their day went and instead begins stare at them as they eat supper, as if their tiny hands and their careless coordination could give her answers.
Nothing gives her answers and it starts to grind her down. She feels restless, uncertain, and deeply apathetic. Dom has started to resume his normal life, has left her to start looking into other work options. She knows he’s scared, but she doesn’t have the energy to put into wondering about his thoughts. She has enough trouble with her own.
She falls back on routine, day after day. She chops up the carrots and places them in the pot, turns up the dial so the chili simmers. If she looks at the knife a little longer than normal, if she weighs the instrument in her palm and stares at her mangled reflection until her eyes blur, well.
She’s just tired.
--