Prompt Post No. 6
* * * Round 6 is now closed to new prompts. * * *
Welcome to Round 6 of the Inception Kink Meme. This post will be closed to new prompts once it reaches three thousand comments. Also, please check our updated rules.
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Welcome to Round 6 of the Inception Kink Meme. This post will be closed to new prompts once it reaches three thousand comments. Also, please check our updated rules.
( Rules... )
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Prompt: Mal makes them do it.
(The advantage that Inception has over most other fandoms is that we can read fics with Time playing in the background! So if you read this mediocre fic while you are listening to that song, it feels like... you are reading a mediocre fic while listening to a good song... Wait.)
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This is a small story.
Not all of it is true.
But it isn't only in dreams that you startle yourself awake, unsure of how you came to the ground under your feet. There are gaps in every painstaking recollection. What we remember is only a sliver of what we know, and even the truth becomes a story in the telling of it.
Eames doesn't mind. Details aren't what's important. The trick to knowing, to living, to forging, is to paint with broad strokes. Anything worth remembering won't let you ever forget it; and anything you forget, you can always invent again. He doesn't remember how he met Arthur, because that's not the important part ( ... )
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Maybe this is how it begins.
He's a lieutenant in the SAS and their dreamshare program is a piece of shit. Its American counterpart, Project Somnacin, is already sending people into each other's subconscious worlds for hours at a time. But the SAS has no idea how to make dreams stable enough for multiple people to inhabit, and so Eames is tasked with industrial espionage.
Out of the handful of people who know the sedative compound used in Project Somnacin, Eames picks Arthur to be his mark. It's a logical choice; Arthur seems to live alone, and it's much easier to break into a bachelor's flat than to tiptoe around an entire family.
Eames climbs into Arthur's window like a lover, and the glow of streetlights spills across them both as he slips the needles in. The sleep turns into dreaming, and in the no-nonsense barracks of his own design, Eames soon locates the storage cabinet marked Classified. He's about to pick the lock when he hears the click of a safety at his temple ( ... )
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"Isn't she beautiful?" asks Arthur.
"She was," says Eames.
"That's Mr. and Mrs. Miles," says Arthur, nodding in the direction of an old couple by the door. "Stephen and Marie. Mal's parents."
"Where are the children?" asks Eames.
"Sleeping in the back room," says Arthur. "They're tired."
"How are you holding up?" asks Eames.
"I'm," says Arthur, and pauses. "I don't think that's the right question, Eames. I'll go tell Dom that you're here."
Eames watches him slide into the crowd, inscrutable in black. He doesn't need to ask about Cobb because he knows how Cobb is holding up, which is to say, not at all. His wife just killed herself, for heaven's sake. But Arthur's eyes are clear as he steers Cobb out of the huddle of mourners, and anytime that Arthur looks that focused, that determined, it worries Eames; it means that somewhere beneath the calm, Arthur is thinking of doing something colossally stupid ( ... )
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"Don't call 911," says Arthur, and sits on the bed. "I didn't take any."
"Then why--" starts Eames, bewildered. All the nervous energy drains out of him, his legs give out, and he has to sit down next to Arthur. "Excuse me, love, but what the fuck are you doing? Is this some sort of joke ( ... )
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It's so determinedly cavalier, Arthur's insistence that they fuck right then and there, like pretending nothing had happened would somehow rewind their lives back to years and years ago, gliding backward through time, when Mal asked for crateloads of blood oranges to feel the tang in her mouth, and carded her fingers through Arthur's hair, when she told him to go to sleep, and the bottle of wine sat half full on the tabletop in the Cobbs' living room, and Eames remembers that Mal's hand was warm and dry when it shook his own, and she pursed her lips as she smiled, like she was happier than she could let on. Eames feels his throat close up.
"Arthur," he says, lying back, "it's going to be all right."
"How can it be all right?" asks Arthur. "How can it ever be all right ( ... )
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Arthur is gone when he wakes up, but that's only because it's half past two in the afternoon. There's a note on the bedside table that reads, Sorry I had to go. Urgent call from Cobb. Eames reads that name out loud, and thinks, He's calling him Cobb. Like in Arthur's mind, Dominic Cobb has subsumed Mallorie, and if Arthur can keep Cobb together, then he can keep Mal somehow safe as well. It's a valiant, desperate thing.
Thank you, it says on the other side of the paper.
It's a week, or a month, or a year later that Eames visits Mal's grave with a red rose in his hand. He places it next to her tombstone and crouches down on his heels.
"Hey, Mal," he says. "Been all right?"
We all miss you, he thinks. Of course Cobb does. Your children and your parents. And Arthur-- Arthur misses you. I miss you. I'm sorry I never made it, after I heard you were pregnant again. I shouldn't have put that off. Wish I could have seen you ( ... )
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"I didn't expect to see you here," says Arthur.
"You're putting my offering to shame," says Eames. "How many roses have you got, anyway? Did you raid all the florists in this city?"
"More or less," says Arthur. "Thanks for coming."
"Cobb still can't make it, huh?" asks Eames.
"Not yet," says Arthur. "There's another appeal scheduled soon, but he needs to stay out of the country."
"Are you two doing okay?" asks Eames.
"Actually, Eames, there's something--" says Arthur. "It's about Cobb. He's been-- the thing is, when he dreams, these... projections of Mal keep appearing. She's everywhere. He can't suppress her. And-- the Mal that he keeps imagining, she's-- well, she's-- she's not right. For one thing, she's killed me about a dozen times now. Bullets, falling, knives, the whole deal ( ... )
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This is a small story.
Not all of it is true.
What isn't remembered has been invented, but that's probably all right, really. All the important parts are true, because no one is able to forget them. And even the invented parts are built on what they know.
They visit the children and leave before dinner, ducking out of Marie's way before she casts off her civility. They buy sandwiches together, Italian or chicken sub or meatball, even, it could be anything, but the important part is that they buy sandwiches together.
They eat their sandwiches as they wander, strolling aimlessly across Los Angeles. Back in Arthur's hotel room, they tumble into the bed and jack each other off, and Eames thanks Mal afterward, as he gazes up at the ceiling. That was fantastic, Mal, he says, and Arthur says, I hope you're happy, Mal. They kiss like it's the most important thing they've ever done, and maybe it is. Maybe it is ( ... )
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I love that the entirety of fandom has sort of started writing love letters to Mal, despite (because of?) what we saw of her in the movie. Maybe it's what we didn't see ("She was lovely," said quietly) that was more important.
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In short; I love this.
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The kleenex, where is it?
Oh, what am I talking about? How is kleenex supposed to fix my broken heart? This fic is wonderful. ♥
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