fiction post.
title: deleterious
fandom: the prestige
genre: general/ angst
pairing: robert/ alfred
rating: pg-13
word-count:2,300
summary: alfred remembers digits and diaries.
notes: so. this is quite unexpected. i originally wrote this immediately after my first viewing of what is now one of my favourite films, for immaculate; i've completely re-vamped it (much cringing at my teenage writing was had). i apologize if it is impossible to read; i wanted to practise tense switching, my achilles' heel. therefore, the fiction is written in first-person present tense (alfred's writing in the diary), and first-person past tense (alfred's narration).
ltgmars recently saw the film for the first time, so that was my motivation to tackle this monster.
that, and i really wanted to write an inception fic, but i absolutely cannot, for some bizarre reason. so this nolan film will do. at least i didn't roll the wayne/ crane out, eh? D:
. . . well. okay. no, that is not completely true. let's be honest. so, apparently the prestige is joseph gordon-levitt's favourite nolan film. that's the real motivation behind this project.
to: actual friends - fuck you, i am not some kind of goddamn fan-fiction generator.
to: pretentious mildly homosexual actor i do not know - i hope you like it ♥
Deleterious
Of course he is dead. One of us had to die. And yet, as I remember digits and diaries and days before death, a singular incident clings, content and contemptible, in my mind.
I remember him, after the Bullet Catch incident - he was still so weak and afraid. He was just barely dirtying his hands. Then, he was still doing it for his wife. Vindication - how unfulfilling that was.
I was so fulfilled. I was so full of rage and hatred - when I saw him, it took all of my will not to lunge at him on the spot, leech the breath out of his body with my bare hands. I could have, even with my shattered bones.
When I received the invitation, it was pride borne of that hatred which led me to accept. I brought a gun along with me, because only a fool would not.
He looked at my green and maroon fingers with morbid, keen interest.
We were never friends, but there was always a wary sort of respect between us - he respected me professionally, and I respected him personally - although perhaps my feelings were more of a jealousy, an awe at his bliss. Mutual respect - before all the theft, the treachery, the descent into obsessive madness.
Later he would mock my injury, but for that one moment in time, when his eyes were soft from the pints of lager he'd consumed, he was sorry. No - it was pity; that night I reveled in such pity. A relief, a refuge from acrimony, smoldering and suffocating; like lying beneath burning remnants, waiting to asphyxiate. Yes, a momentary relief.
He was sorry for me, I know - always sorry for me, perhaps, for the vestiges of my talent he destroyed. That he thought he had destroyed. His pity and arrogance were always inextricable.
I, too, was sorry. I never wanted to hurt him, his wife, their relationship. I may have wanted, from the beginning, to destroy his chances of ever becoming renowned unless it was with me. With me, never against me. With me, like Fallon - scrapping greater happiness for togetherness. What else is there?
He was, undoubtedly, a great performer. I often inquired his interest in becoming a duo act, the two of us - well, three with Julia - but he always thought me too brash, too selfish. He could never grasp just how unselfish I was, could he?
"They bloody fucking hurt, Robert," I said in a harsh whisper, not a growl - not quite. I could never muster that kind of bravado on the spot; I was never a great performer. His question was polite in the most awful way - 'Do they hurt?' - masking indolent curiosity with false sympathy, as if he could even begin to pretend to understand.
I was melancholy. A dark bar will do that to you. A double life will do that to you. A mutilated hand, a guilty conscience.
He looked at me, his brown eyes appearing not unlike my lovely Sarah's when she was feeling particularly pleased with me. When she was with me.
"Yes." He sighed and closed his eyes, his left hand reaching to press on his temple. He didn't have a headache. He was thinking, maybe. Maybe tired. Maybe feigning inarticulate emotions. I cleared my throat. He looked at me. "You're angry?" Another statement masquerading as a question. It did not deserve an answer, but my will was rapidly waning. "Of course I'm angry," my voice was soft, loaded. "So are you." As if he shouldn't have been? Then, anger seeped into the shallow of my conscience, "You could have fucking ruined my entire career. If it weren't for my ingenuity, ay?" His thick black hair, usually immaculately slicked back, hung over his forehead, limpid, defeated - on that night everything about the man was defeated. "I'm not sorry, Alfred. Julia was my life. You've - you have put me in purgatory. You have no idea." He stammered, stopped, gathered his mumbling voice into a steady cadence. "I still want to, I want to punish you. I can't stand to look at you." His speech halted, unfinished thoughts lingering in the space between us. But I could hear those thoughts in my mind.
You have no idea.
He really couldn't conceive of anything unselfish, could he? Pragmatically - he lacked empathy. He smoothed his character flaws over, a veneer, but they were obvious to anybody searching. Tesla, for one. He - then, that night - he was so angry, but his rage reflected off his polished surfaces and imbued and intensified my weaker, matte emotional palate.
"I don't care right now." When he finally spoke up again, he was already finished. He stood, abruptly.
"Come with me, Borden." He was suddenly cooly formal again, as if we were meeting at high noon, in anywhere except a damp, decaying public house. I have to admit to a fascination with, envy of, his overwhelming presence, his absolute control over the mood in any situation. When I was at my weakest I wished to obtain, or perhaps covet, his strength; to forfeit my life's task for a charmed existence. What for? I never wanted to be an actual wizard, I simply wanted to live as one.
"No." I didn’t want to play his games, and I did not. I could still wrestle against my weakened will; my tenacity sprung from the memory that I did, at one time, play his games. I was always so temperamental, but when Julia was still alive - she was so blissfully, bloody ignorant, brave, beautiful - I would sometimes let myself slip, humour his whims, tricks. Provide for my own satiety.
When I met Robert, I had never been with another man that way - I barely had time for women before Sarah came along, and eventually my desire to expend time on her collapsed as well. My brother - myself - we were not ever really interested in very much at all.
It isn't one of your magic tricks, Alfred, our life isn't --
Somehow, Robert understood that. He didn't care as much, and he would listen to me talk, seemingly horrified, yet galvanized by the audacity of my ideas.
"Alfred," he tried again, standing stalk still, eyes on me. He always refused to take 'no' and leave it. I shook my head and he smiled what was perhaps the saddest smile I'd ever seen up to that point in my life. Oh, I've seen more sorrowful smiles since then, but still that image lingers.
I considered, staring directly back at him.
Maybe he would just fall asleep.
Maybe I owed it too him.
Maybe he was right.
A cryptic thought spoken aloud, "My fingers are not your wife." I grimaced after I said it, and the inadvertent double entendre was not lost on him. He sighed.
"No. No, they aren't." My memory cuts off a little here - as I sit here and think back, try and remember everything. It's what I most often do now; I spend my nights remembering, and my days watching Jess grow up. One day I'll remember that, too. If I make it to old age, I'll have so many selectively curated memories. Yes, I will, unless I am struck with that aged forgetfulness. I will be cursed with them.
I still hate him as strongly as I hated him that night. I hate him for what he did to my brother, and tried to do to my daughter, and what he succeeded in doing to me. But sometimes, maybe as I too grow, I re-examine my memories of him.
I am not sure if the person I followed home that night was the same person I worked all those second-rate stage shows with. Or if that person was the same person who would return from Colorado Springs a sorcerer. That night, that man I would eventually murder - I am not sure if he was the same man who could make me laugh and enrage me and prod my imagination like no other.
I do remember the details of our trek to his flat. In the snow, the city still and filthy There was not any goodwill in my decision - I was hopelessly shot through with ennui, and I am sure that he pretended I was somebody else. In fact, after Julia, I don't think he ever loved anyone or felt genuine affection for another human being. Olivia, she was his crude pawn, and Tesla's assistant in Colorado Springs - he was a brash New Yorker who slyly asked favours in exchange for appointments. It seems those favours no longer required permission, after a time - but those relationships were empty in the most terrifying, profound way.
I know they were. He wrote of them.
In the filmy light - perhaps my memory recreates the scene more dimly than it actually was - everything seemed to progress with the muted struggle of a beetle walking through honey. His white shirt glowed and cast light instead of absorbing shadows; his garments mirroring the nature of his being. I remember thinking about it, the effect, wondering if it was the product used to launder the shirt, or the properties of the candlelight, moonlight. As he kissed my neck and shoulders and shucked my own shirt off, I thought of magic.
His words were slurred - words that I do not recall, gibberish even as they were spoken - and his actions were tenuous. I do remember that he repeatedly asked me if I was okay. And he told me that I was going to be okay, answering himself. I hid my rotten, bandaged fingers behind my back, lying on that hand when he was above me.
Fallon would never have allowed him to - to do that. He would have spat at the thought, pulsing with disgust and anger at the very idea of what we did - what I let him, begged for him to do to me. So I didn't tell my brother. He was my mirror image, his experiences were mine - except that one. That desire for bodily consummation with a man, with that particular man; even I cannot explain it. Excuse it.
I often shouted at my brother - I could not understand how he did not love Sarah. He refused to let go, acquiesce - I never did. I still do not understand why he spurned submission. And I hated that I wanted to submit, that I would, so easily.
Robert was the only person that would make me blush, or avert my eyes, demure, embarrassed - fucking ashamed, truly, insignificant, too different. I longed to see Sarah's lashes lower and the tips of her ears tinge with colour. I knew she was deeply, wholly happy when she reacted to me this way; I knew, because I felt that same way. I hadn't known Robert cordially for long, but in those few short months, he made me blush and look away more times than I can begin to recall. Then, the last time, on this night.
Well - perhaps that was not the last time. I still have my thoughts. Those thoughts, as of late, have been paranoid - 'What if he is still alive? What if that was a clone I murdered? How many remain?- and lewd - 'I should have liked to possess one of those duplicates.' But they are always about him. He was, after all, a major part of my life. I suppose even more so than Sarah. Did I obsess every bloody night for years over Sarah? Did I study Sarah's character, body, with uncontrolled compulsion?
I believe that it is normal to have these invasive thoughts as I slide uneasily into comfortable middle age.
Even now, as I recollect, I feel a slight flush in my cheeks. I was always tight lipped with him - unsure of what I was supposed to do and unsure of if I actually liked what I was doing. I would turn my head away when he attempted to kiss me or purse my lips when he did manage to catch them. I would allow his lips to be in less offending, somehow less personal places, of course - I urged him to bite at my collarbone and trail his lips down my chest. And he would always, eventually, smile wantonly and kiss and lick and suck me where Sarah never even touched with her hands.
Even now, as I recollect, I regret every moment. How far back does my regret reach? I cannot know - I think that, perhaps, I will not know. Jess is the reason I fought so very hard, but would I have scarified my sanity for the child? To have had her with Sarah? And Sarah - I am a monster, but I would give her up, if I had to go into the past and make a choice. She would have found happiness elsewhere, somewhere less malefic. I would choose to revisit the last moment of clarity - a kiss to the ankle, smiling Julia, trust and excitement in her eyes - and loosen the knot.
No - I wouldn't. No -
that is where I'd like the memories to stop. All of them. Everything.
And yet I foolishly relive all those memories that came after, here, in you. In this journal. How many journals have I filled with memories, the same memories - have I never written about Jess' progress in school? My current life - it isn't worth the ink.
Perhaps Robert has succeeded, after all.
I say that, eventually, in every entry, don't I? I shouldn't write at all, should I? And here I remain, with regret and recollection.
As ever,
Alfred.
fandom: the prestige
genre: general/ angst
pairing: robert/ alfred
rating: pg-13
word-count:2,300
summary: alfred remembers digits and diaries.
notes: so. this is quite unexpected. i originally wrote this immediately after my first viewing of what is now one of my favourite films, for immaculate; i've completely re-vamped it (much cringing at my teenage writing was had). i apologize if it is impossible to read; i wanted to practise tense switching, my achilles' heel. therefore, the fiction is written in first-person present tense (alfred's writing in the diary), and first-person past tense (alfred's narration).
ltgmars recently saw the film for the first time, so that was my motivation to tackle this monster.
that, and i really wanted to write an inception fic, but i absolutely cannot, for some bizarre reason. so this nolan film will do. at least i didn't roll the wayne/ crane out, eh? D:
. . . well. okay. no, that is not completely true. let's be honest. so, apparently the prestige is joseph gordon-levitt's favourite nolan film. that's the real motivation behind this project.
to: actual friends - fuck you, i am not some kind of goddamn fan-fiction generator.
to: pretentious mildly homosexual actor i do not know - i hope you like it ♥
Deleterious
Of course he is dead. One of us had to die. And yet, as I remember digits and diaries and days before death, a singular incident clings, content and contemptible, in my mind.
I remember him, after the Bullet Catch incident - he was still so weak and afraid. He was just barely dirtying his hands. Then, he was still doing it for his wife. Vindication - how unfulfilling that was.
I was so fulfilled. I was so full of rage and hatred - when I saw him, it took all of my will not to lunge at him on the spot, leech the breath out of his body with my bare hands. I could have, even with my shattered bones.
When I received the invitation, it was pride borne of that hatred which led me to accept. I brought a gun along with me, because only a fool would not.
He looked at my green and maroon fingers with morbid, keen interest.
We were never friends, but there was always a wary sort of respect between us - he respected me professionally, and I respected him personally - although perhaps my feelings were more of a jealousy, an awe at his bliss. Mutual respect - before all the theft, the treachery, the descent into obsessive madness.
Later he would mock my injury, but for that one moment in time, when his eyes were soft from the pints of lager he'd consumed, he was sorry. No - it was pity; that night I reveled in such pity. A relief, a refuge from acrimony, smoldering and suffocating; like lying beneath burning remnants, waiting to asphyxiate. Yes, a momentary relief.
He was sorry for me, I know - always sorry for me, perhaps, for the vestiges of my talent he destroyed. That he thought he had destroyed. His pity and arrogance were always inextricable.
I, too, was sorry. I never wanted to hurt him, his wife, their relationship. I may have wanted, from the beginning, to destroy his chances of ever becoming renowned unless it was with me. With me, never against me. With me, like Fallon - scrapping greater happiness for togetherness. What else is there?
He was, undoubtedly, a great performer. I often inquired his interest in becoming a duo act, the two of us - well, three with Julia - but he always thought me too brash, too selfish. He could never grasp just how unselfish I was, could he?
"They bloody fucking hurt, Robert," I said in a harsh whisper, not a growl - not quite. I could never muster that kind of bravado on the spot; I was never a great performer. His question was polite in the most awful way - 'Do they hurt?' - masking indolent curiosity with false sympathy, as if he could even begin to pretend to understand.
I was melancholy. A dark bar will do that to you. A double life will do that to you. A mutilated hand, a guilty conscience.
He looked at me, his brown eyes appearing not unlike my lovely Sarah's when she was feeling particularly pleased with me. When she was with me.
"Yes." He sighed and closed his eyes, his left hand reaching to press on his temple. He didn't have a headache. He was thinking, maybe. Maybe tired. Maybe feigning inarticulate emotions. I cleared my throat. He looked at me. "You're angry?" Another statement masquerading as a question. It did not deserve an answer, but my will was rapidly waning. "Of course I'm angry," my voice was soft, loaded. "So are you." As if he shouldn't have been? Then, anger seeped into the shallow of my conscience, "You could have fucking ruined my entire career. If it weren't for my ingenuity, ay?" His thick black hair, usually immaculately slicked back, hung over his forehead, limpid, defeated - on that night everything about the man was defeated. "I'm not sorry, Alfred. Julia was my life. You've - you have put me in purgatory. You have no idea." He stammered, stopped, gathered his mumbling voice into a steady cadence. "I still want to, I want to punish you. I can't stand to look at you." His speech halted, unfinished thoughts lingering in the space between us. But I could hear those thoughts in my mind.
You have no idea.
He really couldn't conceive of anything unselfish, could he? Pragmatically - he lacked empathy. He smoothed his character flaws over, a veneer, but they were obvious to anybody searching. Tesla, for one. He - then, that night - he was so angry, but his rage reflected off his polished surfaces and imbued and intensified my weaker, matte emotional palate.
"I don't care right now." When he finally spoke up again, he was already finished. He stood, abruptly.
"Come with me, Borden." He was suddenly cooly formal again, as if we were meeting at high noon, in anywhere except a damp, decaying public house. I have to admit to a fascination with, envy of, his overwhelming presence, his absolute control over the mood in any situation. When I was at my weakest I wished to obtain, or perhaps covet, his strength; to forfeit my life's task for a charmed existence. What for? I never wanted to be an actual wizard, I simply wanted to live as one.
"No." I didn’t want to play his games, and I did not. I could still wrestle against my weakened will; my tenacity sprung from the memory that I did, at one time, play his games. I was always so temperamental, but when Julia was still alive - she was so blissfully, bloody ignorant, brave, beautiful - I would sometimes let myself slip, humour his whims, tricks. Provide for my own satiety.
When I met Robert, I had never been with another man that way - I barely had time for women before Sarah came along, and eventually my desire to expend time on her collapsed as well. My brother - myself - we were not ever really interested in very much at all.
It isn't one of your magic tricks, Alfred, our life isn't --
Somehow, Robert understood that. He didn't care as much, and he would listen to me talk, seemingly horrified, yet galvanized by the audacity of my ideas.
"Alfred," he tried again, standing stalk still, eyes on me. He always refused to take 'no' and leave it. I shook my head and he smiled what was perhaps the saddest smile I'd ever seen up to that point in my life. Oh, I've seen more sorrowful smiles since then, but still that image lingers.
I considered, staring directly back at him.
Maybe he would just fall asleep.
Maybe I owed it too him.
Maybe he was right.
A cryptic thought spoken aloud, "My fingers are not your wife." I grimaced after I said it, and the inadvertent double entendre was not lost on him. He sighed.
"No. No, they aren't." My memory cuts off a little here - as I sit here and think back, try and remember everything. It's what I most often do now; I spend my nights remembering, and my days watching Jess grow up. One day I'll remember that, too. If I make it to old age, I'll have so many selectively curated memories. Yes, I will, unless I am struck with that aged forgetfulness. I will be cursed with them.
I still hate him as strongly as I hated him that night. I hate him for what he did to my brother, and tried to do to my daughter, and what he succeeded in doing to me. But sometimes, maybe as I too grow, I re-examine my memories of him.
I am not sure if the person I followed home that night was the same person I worked all those second-rate stage shows with. Or if that person was the same person who would return from Colorado Springs a sorcerer. That night, that man I would eventually murder - I am not sure if he was the same man who could make me laugh and enrage me and prod my imagination like no other.
I do remember the details of our trek to his flat. In the snow, the city still and filthy There was not any goodwill in my decision - I was hopelessly shot through with ennui, and I am sure that he pretended I was somebody else. In fact, after Julia, I don't think he ever loved anyone or felt genuine affection for another human being. Olivia, she was his crude pawn, and Tesla's assistant in Colorado Springs - he was a brash New Yorker who slyly asked favours in exchange for appointments. It seems those favours no longer required permission, after a time - but those relationships were empty in the most terrifying, profound way.
I know they were. He wrote of them.
In the filmy light - perhaps my memory recreates the scene more dimly than it actually was - everything seemed to progress with the muted struggle of a beetle walking through honey. His white shirt glowed and cast light instead of absorbing shadows; his garments mirroring the nature of his being. I remember thinking about it, the effect, wondering if it was the product used to launder the shirt, or the properties of the candlelight, moonlight. As he kissed my neck and shoulders and shucked my own shirt off, I thought of magic.
His words were slurred - words that I do not recall, gibberish even as they were spoken - and his actions were tenuous. I do remember that he repeatedly asked me if I was okay. And he told me that I was going to be okay, answering himself. I hid my rotten, bandaged fingers behind my back, lying on that hand when he was above me.
Fallon would never have allowed him to - to do that. He would have spat at the thought, pulsing with disgust and anger at the very idea of what we did - what I let him, begged for him to do to me. So I didn't tell my brother. He was my mirror image, his experiences were mine - except that one. That desire for bodily consummation with a man, with that particular man; even I cannot explain it. Excuse it.
I often shouted at my brother - I could not understand how he did not love Sarah. He refused to let go, acquiesce - I never did. I still do not understand why he spurned submission. And I hated that I wanted to submit, that I would, so easily.
Robert was the only person that would make me blush, or avert my eyes, demure, embarrassed - fucking ashamed, truly, insignificant, too different. I longed to see Sarah's lashes lower and the tips of her ears tinge with colour. I knew she was deeply, wholly happy when she reacted to me this way; I knew, because I felt that same way. I hadn't known Robert cordially for long, but in those few short months, he made me blush and look away more times than I can begin to recall. Then, the last time, on this night.
Well - perhaps that was not the last time. I still have my thoughts. Those thoughts, as of late, have been paranoid - 'What if he is still alive? What if that was a clone I murdered? How many remain?- and lewd - 'I should have liked to possess one of those duplicates.' But they are always about him. He was, after all, a major part of my life. I suppose even more so than Sarah. Did I obsess every bloody night for years over Sarah? Did I study Sarah's character, body, with uncontrolled compulsion?
I believe that it is normal to have these invasive thoughts as I slide uneasily into comfortable middle age.
Even now, as I recollect, I feel a slight flush in my cheeks. I was always tight lipped with him - unsure of what I was supposed to do and unsure of if I actually liked what I was doing. I would turn my head away when he attempted to kiss me or purse my lips when he did manage to catch them. I would allow his lips to be in less offending, somehow less personal places, of course - I urged him to bite at my collarbone and trail his lips down my chest. And he would always, eventually, smile wantonly and kiss and lick and suck me where Sarah never even touched with her hands.
Even now, as I recollect, I regret every moment. How far back does my regret reach? I cannot know - I think that, perhaps, I will not know. Jess is the reason I fought so very hard, but would I have scarified my sanity for the child? To have had her with Sarah? And Sarah - I am a monster, but I would give her up, if I had to go into the past and make a choice. She would have found happiness elsewhere, somewhere less malefic. I would choose to revisit the last moment of clarity - a kiss to the ankle, smiling Julia, trust and excitement in her eyes - and loosen the knot.
No - I wouldn't. No -
that is where I'd like the memories to stop. All of them. Everything.
And yet I foolishly relive all those memories that came after, here, in you. In this journal. How many journals have I filled with memories, the same memories - have I never written about Jess' progress in school? My current life - it isn't worth the ink.
Perhaps Robert has succeeded, after all.
I say that, eventually, in every entry, don't I? I shouldn't write at all, should I? And here I remain, with regret and recollection.
As ever,
Alfred.