I wanted to try something a little different, and I decided that since it's so difficult for me to write anything longer than 300 words, an Inception 100 theme challenge would be fun. As for this first piece in particular, it's... not finished. I don't think. But I let it sit for a while and figured that since we all know what happens at the end, there isn't really any point in writing it out. Or I was just lazy and didn't want to, I dunno.
Inception isn't mine, it belongs to Chris Nolan. I wish I could get my hands on some shared dreaming tech, though, that'd be sweet.
P.S. Thanks to everyone who's reviewed my other fics so far, the feedback means a lot to me :)
Abandoned
He comes across it by accident one day, while Mal is cooking dinner. Pork chops, it smells like, before he wanders away down the boardwalk that run past all their childhood homes.
Absorbed in his own thoughts, remembering, remembering their children, their families, reality, Dom almost doesn't notice that he has stopped moving. He is still, frozen in front of the small cottage that Mal grew up in. He's passed this place by a hundred times before without giving it a second thought, but this time something is different. He gets the distinct feeling of being somewhere he shouldn't, so this time, he goes in.
He wanders through the front door, down the narrow hallway lined with quaint rugs and placid photographs of nature. A mirror here, a side table here, and then he's there. Where he's really not supposed to be.
He opens the last door at the end of the hallway, expecting something different or new. But all he finds is a room, filthy with dust, yellow sunlight streaming through the slats of blinds that have last been pulled ages ago. He can make out some bare-er places on the floor where furniture must have sat at some point, but for the most part, it is just what it seems to be. Empty.
Empty save for a dreary old dollhouse that's pushed back in the corner, hiding. Dom failed to notice it until now, and he doesn't understand at first. He just feels … strange. Unsettled.
But then he realizes. In this empty room is a truth. He can feel it, yearning and struggling to be let out. To be free.
Then he senses another, more real, presence behind him.
"Mal," Dom questions carefully, not wanting to startle her. She's been startled so much since they arrived here, since they created and conquered and stayed. "What is this?"
"It's abandoned," is all she says, keeping her eyes trained on the only window in the room. "Now come to dinner." He can tell she doesn't want to talk about it.
But that doesn't mean he doesn't want to know.