Fic: Alliance [Inception, PG]
Title: Alliance
Fandom: Inception
Characters/Pairings: Eames, Mal, briefly Arthur and Cobb.
Disclaimer: All belongs to Chris Nolan, no profit made.
Rating: PG
Prompt: Mal and Eames created an unholy alliance in boarding school. After graduation, she followed her father to academia and he chose the army over prison at inception_kink.
Summary: Mal and Eames run into each other at school, where they're both getting into trouble and neither of them really fits in. After school they stay friends, despite their different career choices, until the dream-sharing technology brings them together again.
~~
He first met her outside the headmistress' office. She was sitting opposite him with a look of defiance in her eyes and her hands twisting nervously in her lap.
“What'd you do, then?” he said.
“None of your business,” she retorted in a soft french accent.
“How about we start from the beginning? Introduce ourselves properly. I'll go first... the name's Eames. Jeremy Eames, actually, but no-one calls me Jeremy. What about you?”
She gave him a long, steady look, but finally said, “Malory Graham. You can call me Mal.”
“Lovely to meet you, Mal. So what did you do?”
She sighed. “I believe the headmistress wanted to discuss the unauthorised use of the school chemistry labs outside of class. There was an incident that I... may have been involved in.”
He raised an eyebrow. “Is that right... and here's me with my almost pedestrian tendency to skip classes. You're making me feel inadequate already and I only just met you.”
“Really? That can't be very hard, then...”
~~
They found each other again in detention.
Or rather, on the way to detention, because when they saw each other, they both decided that detention was really just a waste of time, and instead of walking into the assigned classroom they kept on down the corridor, moving as fast as possible without arousing suspicion.
Mal had a secret, a hideaway she'd constructed for herself in a storeroom no-one really used any more. She knew the layout of the school better than anyone, Mal did.
They hung out until detention was over before sneaking out again and heading down to the dining room. After dinner they went back to their separate dorms. Eames' dorm-mates asked him what he'd been doing that afternoon, where he'd been. He didn't tell them anything. The girls in Mal's dorm didn't ask her anything, because they were used to her and they knew that she did what she wanted. They called her a freak behind her back, and avoided talking to her face-to-face.
~~
“...Malory...”
She looked up from the book she was reading. “Hmm?”
He flushed. “Oh, I... I was just wondering about your name. It's not... uh, it's very unusual.”
“I know,” she sighed.
“Is there a story behind it?”
She looked at him, “Jeremy, there's a story behind everything, you know that. To answer your question... my mother is an academic, like my father, but her field is English Literature. Her speciality is Arthurian legend, and one of the most famous books is by a man named Thomas Malory. She says she named me after him. I suppose I'm lucky not to be Thomasina Graham,” she said with a shudder.
Eames didn't think it would be that bad, but he didn't say anything.
~~
They got through school, somehow, despite many trips to the headmistress' office and numerous detentions. It helped, Eames decided, that Mal was pretty much a genius, and that she let him copy her notes a lot. (Mal said that he didn't really need to, that he had the brains to succeed all by himself, but he knew he didn't have the discipline for that.)
One afternoon, he asked her what she was going to do when school was finished. She had smiled and said that she already knew, she was going to be an academic like her father. She had all kinds of ideas and theories, things she wanted to research. A lot of those ideas involved the dream-sharing technology that her father had invented. She was fascinated by the idea of shared dreaming, and was dying to try it for herself - but her father had explicitly forbidden her from trying it until she was in college.
She asked him about his own plans, and he had to admit he didn't really know. He wasn't planning on going to college, no matter what his parents wanted. “Maybe I'll join the army,” he said.
~~
Mal got into Oxford, studying psychology, and went on to a master's after that. She was working on a PhD when she met Dominic Cobb, one of her father's graduate students.
Eames didn't apply to any colleges. Instead he ignored his parents, joined the army, and surprised himself by turning out to be very good at it. He ended up in the Marines, and that was how he got selected as part of a group of soldiers taking part in a trial for some new training simulation technology.
When the PASIV tech was demonstrated to the group, he recognised it immediately. The name was new, but it was the same tech that Mal had been so interested in, back when they were in school. That night he wrote to her (they'd been exchanging letters when they could ever since school), telling her about the trial and the equipment.
She wrote back saying that she knew, and that she and Dom (they were engaged now) had been experimenting with dream-sharing, and trying to refine techniques and find out what the limits were. Eames read the letter, and knew how excited she was about it.
~~
The letters stopped after a while. Eames didn't see or hear from Mal for a couple of years. He got kicked out of the army, for reasons he didn't like to go into, and fell in with the kind of people his mother would call 'a bad crowd'. It was then that he discovered a talent for thieving, and forging people's handwriting. He managed to make a living that way for a while... then he met Arthur.
It wasn't the first time he and Arthur had met, they'd encountered each other in the army's PASIV trial. Arthur had left as well, he found out, and was now running cons and apparently doing very well. Arthur also had a PASIV device and was using it in his jobs. Knowing that Eames had experience with the tech, Arthur asked him for help, and he agreed.
~~
He did a few jobs with Arthur, took a break, and was surprised to get a call from Arthur asking if he knew a Dom Cobb. He had to think for a moment, but realised that it was Mal's Dom, and said yes, he'd heard of him.
He wasn't sure how Dom and Mal ended up working on the illicit side of dream technology, but Mal greeted him with a smile and a hug, and then it was all business.
The job went well, Dom seemed competent and Mal was a genius, as usual. Arthur was as much of a stick-in-the-mud as ever, but he was getting used to that.
~~
After that job he didn't see much of any of them. He was in Tokyo when he got a call from Arthur that said, simply, “Mal's dead”.
He went to the funeral (Dom wasn't there), and after that he went to Paris, to where she had spent her childhood, and didn't speak to anyone. After that he spent some time travelling, ending up in Mombasa, where he knew a guy with some very interesting drugs.
~~
He was still in Mombasa when Dom came to find him, with not one but two different tails, saying that he needed help with a job. He could see in Dom's eyes that the man was still haunted by Mal's ghost.
Fandom: Inception
Characters/Pairings: Eames, Mal, briefly Arthur and Cobb.
Disclaimer: All belongs to Chris Nolan, no profit made.
Rating: PG
Prompt: Mal and Eames created an unholy alliance in boarding school. After graduation, she followed her father to academia and he chose the army over prison at inception_kink.
Summary: Mal and Eames run into each other at school, where they're both getting into trouble and neither of them really fits in. After school they stay friends, despite their different career choices, until the dream-sharing technology brings them together again.
~~
He first met her outside the headmistress' office. She was sitting opposite him with a look of defiance in her eyes and her hands twisting nervously in her lap.
“What'd you do, then?” he said.
“None of your business,” she retorted in a soft french accent.
“How about we start from the beginning? Introduce ourselves properly. I'll go first... the name's Eames. Jeremy Eames, actually, but no-one calls me Jeremy. What about you?”
She gave him a long, steady look, but finally said, “Malory Graham. You can call me Mal.”
“Lovely to meet you, Mal. So what did you do?”
She sighed. “I believe the headmistress wanted to discuss the unauthorised use of the school chemistry labs outside of class. There was an incident that I... may have been involved in.”
He raised an eyebrow. “Is that right... and here's me with my almost pedestrian tendency to skip classes. You're making me feel inadequate already and I only just met you.”
“Really? That can't be very hard, then...”
~~
They found each other again in detention.
Or rather, on the way to detention, because when they saw each other, they both decided that detention was really just a waste of time, and instead of walking into the assigned classroom they kept on down the corridor, moving as fast as possible without arousing suspicion.
Mal had a secret, a hideaway she'd constructed for herself in a storeroom no-one really used any more. She knew the layout of the school better than anyone, Mal did.
They hung out until detention was over before sneaking out again and heading down to the dining room. After dinner they went back to their separate dorms. Eames' dorm-mates asked him what he'd been doing that afternoon, where he'd been. He didn't tell them anything. The girls in Mal's dorm didn't ask her anything, because they were used to her and they knew that she did what she wanted. They called her a freak behind her back, and avoided talking to her face-to-face.
~~
“...Malory...”
She looked up from the book she was reading. “Hmm?”
He flushed. “Oh, I... I was just wondering about your name. It's not... uh, it's very unusual.”
“I know,” she sighed.
“Is there a story behind it?”
She looked at him, “Jeremy, there's a story behind everything, you know that. To answer your question... my mother is an academic, like my father, but her field is English Literature. Her speciality is Arthurian legend, and one of the most famous books is by a man named Thomas Malory. She says she named me after him. I suppose I'm lucky not to be Thomasina Graham,” she said with a shudder.
Eames didn't think it would be that bad, but he didn't say anything.
~~
They got through school, somehow, despite many trips to the headmistress' office and numerous detentions. It helped, Eames decided, that Mal was pretty much a genius, and that she let him copy her notes a lot. (Mal said that he didn't really need to, that he had the brains to succeed all by himself, but he knew he didn't have the discipline for that.)
One afternoon, he asked her what she was going to do when school was finished. She had smiled and said that she already knew, she was going to be an academic like her father. She had all kinds of ideas and theories, things she wanted to research. A lot of those ideas involved the dream-sharing technology that her father had invented. She was fascinated by the idea of shared dreaming, and was dying to try it for herself - but her father had explicitly forbidden her from trying it until she was in college.
She asked him about his own plans, and he had to admit he didn't really know. He wasn't planning on going to college, no matter what his parents wanted. “Maybe I'll join the army,” he said.
~~
Mal got into Oxford, studying psychology, and went on to a master's after that. She was working on a PhD when she met Dominic Cobb, one of her father's graduate students.
Eames didn't apply to any colleges. Instead he ignored his parents, joined the army, and surprised himself by turning out to be very good at it. He ended up in the Marines, and that was how he got selected as part of a group of soldiers taking part in a trial for some new training simulation technology.
When the PASIV tech was demonstrated to the group, he recognised it immediately. The name was new, but it was the same tech that Mal had been so interested in, back when they were in school. That night he wrote to her (they'd been exchanging letters when they could ever since school), telling her about the trial and the equipment.
She wrote back saying that she knew, and that she and Dom (they were engaged now) had been experimenting with dream-sharing, and trying to refine techniques and find out what the limits were. Eames read the letter, and knew how excited she was about it.
~~
The letters stopped after a while. Eames didn't see or hear from Mal for a couple of years. He got kicked out of the army, for reasons he didn't like to go into, and fell in with the kind of people his mother would call 'a bad crowd'. It was then that he discovered a talent for thieving, and forging people's handwriting. He managed to make a living that way for a while... then he met Arthur.
It wasn't the first time he and Arthur had met, they'd encountered each other in the army's PASIV trial. Arthur had left as well, he found out, and was now running cons and apparently doing very well. Arthur also had a PASIV device and was using it in his jobs. Knowing that Eames had experience with the tech, Arthur asked him for help, and he agreed.
~~
He did a few jobs with Arthur, took a break, and was surprised to get a call from Arthur asking if he knew a Dom Cobb. He had to think for a moment, but realised that it was Mal's Dom, and said yes, he'd heard of him.
He wasn't sure how Dom and Mal ended up working on the illicit side of dream technology, but Mal greeted him with a smile and a hug, and then it was all business.
The job went well, Dom seemed competent and Mal was a genius, as usual. Arthur was as much of a stick-in-the-mud as ever, but he was getting used to that.
~~
After that job he didn't see much of any of them. He was in Tokyo when he got a call from Arthur that said, simply, “Mal's dead”.
He went to the funeral (Dom wasn't there), and after that he went to Paris, to where she had spent her childhood, and didn't speak to anyone. After that he spent some time travelling, ending up in Mombasa, where he knew a guy with some very interesting drugs.
~~
He was still in Mombasa when Dom came to find him, with not one but two different tails, saying that he needed help with a job. He could see in Dom's eyes that the man was still haunted by Mal's ghost.