Misericordia
Title: Misericordia
Fandom: Inception
Rating: NC-17. Actually, I think PG-13 should cover it, but I'm rating for death descriptions. I'm not too graphic, but hey, let me be paranoid.
Characters: Arthur, Eames, Cobb, Yusuf, Nash, Mal, Ariadne, Saito
Summary: Done for an inception_kink prompt. Misericorde: A narrow dagger used in medieval times to deliver the death stroke to a seriously wounded knight. Because death gives with one hand and takes with the other; what is a mercy is also harm. Possible Arthur/Cobb hints, Arthur/Eames hints, Ariadne/Yusuf hints.
Note: Yes, I'm not a medical student, so wiki was my friend when it came to most of the things. I might have pushed the prompt limits a little with the ending, so I'm sorry. I wanted a twist ending, sort of. Also, for those who wonder what Saito was thinking: Kyutaro's death haiku. The translation is there.
-
Arthur
"I'm hoping you have something more elegant in mind than shooting me in the head."
“You look like hell,” He says. Far easier to say that than, ‘Mal did a number on you, didn’t she?’ and far easier to say than - just about any other conversation option that comes to mind, all of which involve the word ‘Mal’, and saying that here might just have Cobb pop her back up.
Wouldn’t that be lovely.
Cobb laughs, or tries to anyway. He winces; blood bubbles from his mouth, and what comes out is a coughing, gurgling sound that sounds so fucking bad Arthur doesn’t even think twice to know what Mal must have done to him. That, and the spreading stain of red on his chest. She’s getting psychotic, definitely, but this isn’t the time for such talk - if at all. He doesn’t need to give Cobb that idea, maybe make things worse. And they need to talk about Cobb protecting him from Mal, and causing his own projections to attack him. Later.
“I’m taking you out,” He continues, because Cobb can’t say anything. He crouches next to where Cobb struggles slowly to sit up. “Switch. I’ll take Henderson. You keep him under. You’re in no shape to continue.”
“Damn straight,” Cobb says, with the ghost of a smirk on his blood-splattered lips. There’s a breathlessness to his voice, a glaze to his eyes that Arthur doesn’t like. Shallow, painful breaths - maybe he’ll choke on his own blood or something. His breath hisses out, sharp with pain. His lips shape the words, unspoken; they die on his lips.
Cobb doesn’t flinch when Arthur reaches unhesitating for the bloodied knife left behind, next to the dead projection. With the other hand, he slides his arm around Cobb’s shoulders, cradling him to prepare for the mercy-stroke.
He knows too well where Cobb’s labouring heart lies. Right ventricle, not the left, and it will be swift and humane.
It is over in a few seconds, but Arthur doesn’t let Cobb’s limp body slide to the ground, until a few seconds after. He discards the knife, wishes he could dream up a gun, but he’s only just evaded the projections, and he doesn’t quite want to cause any kind of alarm right now.
Now, he needs to go find the safe. And lead a group of projections on a merry chase, and hope that Cobb can buy him enough time.
He stands up, and walks away.
-
Eames
“He’s in agony. I’m waking him up.”
“Shut up, Arthur, no one asked for your opinion.” Eames said, tersely. Arthur opened his mouth to say something else; Eames pressed down, lightly but firmly.
“Shit,” Arthur hissed, and settled for glaring at Eames.
“Definitely fractured.” Eames informed Cobb, who was hovering over the two of them, torn between worry and impatience. “Look - that rib segment moves differently when he breathes, so I’d say possibly fractured or broken in several areas.” He regarded Arthur with a glance both amused and irritated at the same time. “And bloody well hurts, I’d imagine.”
“How did this happen again?” Cobb demanded. His eyes raked from Arthur to Eames.
“Projection,” Arthur wheezed, “Got the jump on us.”
“Shot him,” Eames added, darkly. He eyed the ragged, disjointed rise and fall of Arthur’s chest and reached over to where his H&K lay, on the asphalt.
“I’m the dreamer,” Arthur whispered. He wasn’t arguing; it was more of a tired statement than a last, feeble protest.
“You know the rules,” Cobb said, firmly, briefly pressing his hand to Arthur’s shoulder. Whatever silent communication passed between them in that instant, Eames had yet to figure out; Arthur sighed and nodded. Cobb stood up. “We’ll just have to clear this as fast as possible before the dream collapses. Eames, will you wake him up?”
“Go,” Eames told him, by way of answer. Cobb made a run for it, reaching into his jacket for his Beretta.
“Give him…five minutes,” Arthur gasped. He coughed, and Eames hated the way his chest jerked when he did. Ribs broken in at least two places,he thought clinically. Bloody painful. He could trace the lines of pain that each breath was etching onto Arthur’s features with his fingers. He did none of that.
“Shut up, Arthur,” Eames repeated, patiently. “Cobb’s going to have to make do.”
They locked glances. “Please, damnit,” Arthur hissed, half-rising, and then slumping back down again, letting out a cry of pain. Eames let out a sigh of frustration. He glanced away first.
“Fine,” He said, aloud. Arthur was too set in his ways for his own good, with a fixation on the rules that evaporated when push came to shove. “Mind, next time, I still expect you to put me out of my misery immediately.”
“Yeah, I know.”
“Great. Just so we’re clear,” Eames said, and sat back to wait with Arthur, careful not to pay too close attention to the harsh quality of Arthur’s breathing, or the breathless way he took quick, shallow breaths, and then the rapid inhale of pain. He said nothing. Arthur said nothing; it was probably taking him all he had and just a little more to focus not on the constant pain but on holding the dream together.
Finally, Eames could stand it no more. Maybe it was five minutes. Maybe he’d miscalculated a little. It didn’t matter.
“Go to sleep, Arthur,” He said. Arthur gave a short, tight nod of understanding, mixed with a strangely vulnerable sort of relief. Eames never remarked on it. He never had, and never would.
The corners of Arthur's mouth quirked into a slight smile.“See you on the other side.”
Eames picked up his H&K. He fired.
He didn’t miss.
-
Cobb
“That death was a necessary escape.”
“Do I even want to know?” Arthur asked, as soon as he saw the two of them. Cobb grunted a response, while Eames gasped and half-slid, half-disentangled himself from Cobb’s hold and grabbed the rough, rounded edges of the brick wall.
Cobb and Eames exchanged glances. “No, you really don’t.” Eames concluded. “Bloody hell,” He murmured. He carefully reached away from his abdomen, his hand slick with blood. Cobb made sure he wasn’t resting his weight on his injured leg.
“Can you - “
“No,” Arthur said immediately, dark eyes flicking a worried glance at Eames, despite his words. “You know he’s the only forger around.”
“So nice to see you care,” Eames managed.
Cobb sighed. “Change of plan?”
“Yeah, looks like it.” Arthur frowned. “You changed the design?”
He thought a moment. “No,” Cobb confirmed. “It’s the same level.”
“I’ll go work a distraction. You - “
“I know,” Cobb said. They’d been though enough backup plans, that they knew what each other was talking about. “I’ll handle Eames,”
“Thankfully,” Eames quipped. “I’ve never really held up with Stoicism. Pain relief, before I die, please.” Cobb rolled his eyes and produced his Beretta.
Arthur hesitated, only for a moment. “See you outside,” He settled for saying to Eames, before he gave Cobb a sharp nod and stepped out around the corner. He did not glance back.
“I hate chamberpots,” Eames grumbled.
“I broke one over his head,” Cobb pointed out. “That saved you.”
“And got me injured,” Eames carefully did not look at the abdominal wound. Spleen, Cobb figured. At the very least.
“Sorry,”
“You’re making it up to me,” Eames warned.
Cobb accepted that with a gracious nod of his head. “Any more than that, and Arthur knows about the chamberpot and how you got yourself shot in the spleen because of him.”
“You play dirty, don’t you?” Eames retorted, but before Cobb could say anything else, he continued, “Stop talking to me and put me out of my misery already.”
Before he could finish, Cobb shot him.
-
Saito
“In my dream, we play by my rules.”
Saito does not avert his eyes.
He prides himself on his ability to remain calm, or at least to appear to be calm. Part of the way to remain in control of a situation is to make everyone else think you can’t be perturbed by anything.
“It didn’t go too well,” Yusuf manages, with surprisingly good cheer for a man half-crushed and half-pinned by the wreckage of a white van, next to the twisted metal of the bridge rail where the van hadn’t gone fast enough to hurl itself off.
“I can see that.” Saito states. Yusuf makes a sound of agreement, and he grunted and in the next moment, the van rolled off him and tumbled away as the environment shifted.
“Very neat,” He says approvingly. He reaches for his gun and realises he had not brought it in with him; no matter, a slight frown and the thought of one takes care of it. There are a considerable number of ways to kill a person, and Saito is aware of a reasonable number of them, but this is still one of the neater and less painful ways - if done right.
Yusuf shifts slightly, and a cry of pain escapes his lips. There is the mangled flesh of his torso and maybe a glimmer of white that Saito doesn’t quite want to consider.
He glanced up at Saito, and said nothing more than, “Now would be a good time.” A little gentle humour. Saito can appreciate that, and the open trust implicit in the statement.
Saito dispatches the man, quickly and as painlessly as he can. The body sags, limp, and Saito turns and regards the edge of the bridge, and the twisted torn metal where the van failed to breach the barricade. Without the dreamer, the edges of the dream are already slowly beginning to unravel.
For some reason, the words are running through his head:
Moromoro no
nayami mo kiyuru
yuki no kaze.
With that, he steps out over the edge of the bridge and lets himself fall, back down towards life.
-
Yusuf
“Depends on the dream.”
“Clavicle,” He said, with just a little too much cheer. Ariadne tried not to give him a disconcerted look. “Have you fractured your clavicle before?”
“No,” Ariadne said. She gritted her teeth as he prodded with perhaps just a little too much interest. “It hurts like blazes.”
“Sorry,” Yusuf said immediately, without sounding particularly sorry. “It seems straightforward. You fell, and then broke your left clavicle, and I think your femur is broken. Also, possibly a pelvic fracture, but that remains to be seen.”
“Did you do medicine or something?” She wanted to know.
“Yes,” He replied. “And this is why when you set up a kick, you must do it from a sufficient height. One storey isn’t enough to establish the feeling of falling.”
“Could have fooled me,” Ariadne breathed. If she was aware enough to retort, so much the better, Yusuf thought, and he tried not to think about the way her hair fell, along her shoulders, or the angle from which he was glimpsing...things. Other than her broken collarbone.
“Three storeys, at least,” Yusuf continued. “The higher the better. You don’t want to be awake when you hit the ground.”'
“And why didn’t you become a doctor?” She wanted to know.
Yusuf shrugged. “It didn’t interest me,” He informed her. “Now, I’m going to wake you up. It may hurt for a moment, but - “
“I’ll wake up, I know.”
“Yes.”
“Okay,” She shrugged, and winced at the pain the movement brought. “Do it.”
His thumb brushed the line of her cheekbone as he moved into position, and he felt, as well as saw the curve of her back relax; she rested against him, trusting and he paused for a moment when she spoke up again.
“Yusuf?”
“Hmm?”
“Don’t tell Arthur,” She said, in a small voice.
He chuckled briefly. “I won’t.” He agreed, cheerfully. “We all make stupid mistakes on our first time.”
She half-twisted to stare indignantly at him, and yelped in pain. “Yusuf!”
“Relax.” He said, and then he snapped her neck in one quick motion.
-
Ariadne
“Improvising.”
Saito was, surprisingly, aware, although he blinked dazedly up at her. “What happened?” He asked, his voice soft.
“The…I mean, Cobb’s projections…”
He raised a hand briefly. “Say no more.” He closed his eyes for a moment. “I understand.” He tried to sit up, and she held him down.
“She attacked you.” She told him, quietly. “It’s going to hurt if you try.”
“Ah,” He breathed. He relaxed again. “Yes.” Dark eyes glanced down at the large slash where the blood was slowly pouring out of the wound, and then back up again. “Almost harakiri, then? She has…interesting ideas.”
“Mr Saito, you - “
He held up his hand again. “I know,” He breathed, and she willed herself to keep looking at him, and not at the hideous length of the wound that Mal had inflicted. She wondered why a slow smile traced the edges of his lips, and at how he could still be calm despite being so badly wounded. “Help me,” He continued. “End this.”
He guided her fingers to the gun that lay, discarded, next to him. “They have been teaching you?”
“Yes,” She said slowly. She’d never killed in a dream before, even then. She’d never had to shoot, and she’d protested when Eames had cheerfully bulled her into learning and roped Arthur and Yusuf in on the idea.
Her fingers closed around Saito’s gun. Still, she hesitated. “I’ve never done this before,” She warned.
Saito nodded, gravely. “There is always a first time.” He said, wisely. “And it will be preferable. Death from - “ He glanced down at his wound, and his lips tightened and he looked back up at her again. “It is always lingering and painful.”
She licked her dry lips, swallowed, and nodded.
Saito glanced straight at her, bold and unafraid. It steadied her nerves as she made sure the safety was off, and fired.
-
Nash
“What’re you doing? It’s too soon - “
For all that many extractors who worked with him one way or another had summarily and collectively decided that he was an asshole, Nash was, under certain conditions, a generally nice person.
He didn’t, for instance, kick cats. He made a habit of feeding the stray outside his apartment each time she came and mewed plaintively outside the door, taking advantage of him. And he was just as likely to help old ladies across roads as ignore them in a good mood. Which was, to say, that Nash was just about as nice as the average individual.
Nash resisted the urge to ask Arthur what the fuck his problem was. It wasn’t his damned fault that Cobb was bleeding out on the floor and just generally looking like shit. “It’s too soon.” He said aloud, and Arthur glowered at him as if he’d just stepped on a kitten.
“We can’t wait,” Arthur countered.
“Then we put him out,” Nash said, impatiently. He reached for his gun and glared when Arthur grabbed his arm.
“Look, have some damned mercy,” Nash snapped. “He’s in agony.”
They both glanced at Cobb, and he caught the flash of indecision on Arthur’s face. Good. What the fuck was he thinking?
“Shit,” Arthur said, aghast, looking as if he was really seeing Cobb’s injuries for the first time. “Cobb, I - “
“I’m getting him out,” Nash said, and this time, Arthur didn’t move to stop him. Cobb watched him, and waited, unflinching.
It was a mercy, really. He shot Cobb.
It was the decent thing to do. And Nash wasn’t that big an asshole.
-
Mal
“Killing him will just wake him up. But pain…pain is in the mind.”
“Shhh,” She whispered.
“Damnit,” The Arthur projection bit out, as he struggled. She forced his head under again, speaking all the while.
“You have to understand, Dom. This is not real,” She said, gently. But oh, how he had so carefully reconstructed their friend from his memory, and part of her was screaming to stop as he choked and struggled and grew weaker as she held him under.
It wasn’t the first time she’d killed him. But this was necessary.
“This…is just pain. Your memory of pain. You aren’t real. You’re just a part of Dom. And he has to realise that.”
He was growing weaker. Although he was stronger than her, she had the advantage, and he couldn’t break free from his awkward position.
“This is mercy, Dom,” She whispered, so close as he weakened and went almost-still. “I’m freeing you from pretending to be Arthur. From pretending this is real. It’s just one more layer. One more dream.”
He was limp. She released the body, and turned to walk away.
In a single movement, he jerked upwards, trailing droplets of water, coughing spasmodically. He reached against the walls to steady himself, gaze dark with a betrayed kind of anger. Dom had even remembered the quiet edge to Arthur’s anger.
“I remember the last time you killed me, in a dream,” He said, guarded. “I stepped on a landmine. You killed me. It was quick, and merciful.” He paused, watching her carefully, hurt and anger warring on his features. Neither of them won. She should have been more careful. It seemed Dom suspected.
“This...” He struggled to find words. Anger won, and thin and icy. “Cobb was right.”
She turned and walked away as he coughed and expelled water, eyes bloodshot, and then presumably called Cobb on his cell phone. She wasn’t going to get another chance. She would have to use other means.
Mercy, she thought, and then, she smiled.
She picked up the house phone to talk to the lawyer.
-