A/N: I've never written in the form before it just kind of happened and I ran with it. It's like what they say: "These things write themselves." So true, so true.
I apologize for any tense/ perception errors as I assume it probably switches around some. I throw caution to the wind.
"Rest your trigger on my finger" is a line from the Tool song: "Pushit".
A lot of my inspiration came from the group Fever Ray. They are brilliant, check them out.
Please review if you want more!
Give me bullet power. Give me power over angels. Even when you're standing up you look like you're lying down-Richard Siken
It was a long drive from the airport.
James and Phillipa had fallen asleep in the back.
He was fighting off waves of weariness from their long flight.
It had been a long time since he had been to Tokyo 3.
He grew so restless and bored as the months drew on after Inception.
Restless and waiting.
Could he really retire? Shelf a life that had become a part of him?
He adjusted the rearview mirror, glancing at his sleeping beauties in the back, smiling.
He knew the reasons before. But he had needs too. Needs he couldn't ignore.
He was here.
The last lights of day were winking out.
The sky was a deep bruised color. He wanted to watch the buildings slowly crawl from underground, a lost memory he wanted to rekindle.
He hadn't noticed sunsets or sunrises since he lost Mal. Things were different now. He thought he could learn to enjoy them again.
When he got the call he knew he had to take it. He was always telling himself it was one last job, one last job, one last job...When would it really be the last job?
When he was dead.
He heard rumors about what was now haunting this city, impossible things.
He was used to being in a profession bound by rumors and impossible things.
Infiltrating dreams, that's impossibleā¦
He learned a long time ago to expect the impossible.
And as far as what was haunting the city? He thought he could stand to be haunted, to feel like God was with him again.
He peered in the rearview once more.
He had his angels.
As he passed the deserted streets he certainly felt like he was in a version of hell.
He was worth it.
When NERV offered him the job he first said no.
He didn't even know how they found him.
It didn't matter.
Tokyo 3 was a place of dreams he told himself long ago. It had no right to exist.
But then he found out that he was here, somewhere.
He had no right to exist.
But he came, dragged to the place that was caught in the balance.
Leaving familiarity for chaos.
He mustn't run away.
Streetlights, stop signs, trash blowing aimlessly across the road, carried in the wind, power lines swaying, lights, sounds, streets, he hugged the tight curves of the road an odd feeling growing.
Like a shadow across his heart he swallowed it down.
Upward, ever upward he drove carefully now through the fast approaching gloom.
He wanted to see it, to remember.
The sleeping city nestled in the crevices below was getting smaller and smaller.
Keep the streets empty. Almost there.
Blood pounding behind his ears, breath hitched in his throat.
Darkness below.
He killed the engine getting out as silently as he could.
Cautious backward glances. The steady rhythm of their chests slowly rising and falling, light curls brushing their sweet faces.
The warm air enveloping him like a cocoon though he felt strangely cold, exposed.
Starting again, starting a new.
Hands on the cold railing, grounding him.
Lights blinking to life below, a city awakening.
Like millions of stars. His eyes swam to meet them, getting lost.
The buildings rose up slowly from the catacombs like lost and forgotten soldiers, buried in the frozen ground from a long ago war, summoned once again to protect the city.
He believed it may have been one of the most beautiful things he had ever seen and being in the dream business he had seen a lot of marvelous, unbelievable things.
Eyes like saucers, body like a lighthouse, a beacon to the things that were real on the opposite shore. Images burned into the delicate pieces of his pupils. They couldn't absorb it all.
Rough fingers brushed the metal top in his pants pocket, fingernails nipping the very edges of maybe reality itself.
This was real.
Wind in his hair whispering sweet promises.
Fog was rolling in blanketing things he once knew.
Where would he start looking?
Every nook and cranny, hideaway spot, between the cracks, places you only see when you squint, invisible things, lost places, ruins. He wouldn't stop looking.
His head was so heavy, full of brambles, razorblades, sharp points piercing the tender pieces in his brain though the pillow was supposed to be downy, bed warm and inviting.
The thoughts and scenarios wouldn't leave him. He couldn't draw out his gun and shoot to wake up or sleep like in a dream though his trigger finger itched for it.
Rest your trigger on my finger.
This was real, so familiarly real.
Sharp cheekbones, razorblade blue eyes, sharp angles of his suits, thorns in his side and on top of his head of soft dark curls. This is what his mind was reduced to. Heavy and saturated with him.
He hated himself.
Children fed and placated.
All rosy cheeks and chubby arms.
Faces turned the other way.
He hated goodbyes even if they were temporary, put on hold.
Things were different now. It shouldn't have to be goodbye.
His car descending down in what looked like an escalator.
With every shake of his head and flick of his eyes he was accepting it, further into the decent.
Head and soul as empty as a church.
Could one really purge everything down here?
Impossible heat, starving out fear he didn't know he had.
Shuffled here and there. Too bright, not enough noise, his eyes look for all exits, hands ghosting over a pistol that isn't there.
Past life, past time lines tangled up that got him to where he is now, some miles underground.
They could put a bullet in my brain and no one would even know where I am. I would just be another dead solider under the frozen wasteland only to rise with the buildings.
Swears, promises, oaths he must have been finger printed and photographed hundreds of times. Temporary identification and records. Those things would be burned easily if I was killed. Flames licking at them ridiculously. I'm nothing to them.
Beginnings of guilt began to bubble up.
Please. For them, for him. One last job, one last job, one last jobā¦
He's lodged in his chest, in his throat and his soul, that's his prayer. That's all he needs to remember not these endless lists, codes, passwords, protocol. How much more?
Attention span is wound tight, going to break any moment.
Head throbbing like a stampede trampled all over it.
No, wait, just one.
Dry lips purse together, release, air expelled, form words to make something, anything.
He thinks he nods a lot maybe to save his breath.
Only for him.
Short term job.
Supposed to be.
Bad feelings crawling all over like bed bugs.
You'll be infiltrating dreams. That's what you do right?
Who knows anymore.
Eyes blinking, breath inhaling only for him.
Money in the pocket, false sense of security and fading tedium for himself.
Can we melt them together like two candle wicks?
Burn and melt.
Breathe and line the pockets?
Is it enough for everyone?
Have to find him first.
Angels they said. Infiltrating the angel's dreams.
Angels dream?
Maybe he heard wrong.
Have to accept the unbelievable, the impossible.
Almost human.
All descended from one.
One descended from all.
Are they human or are they angels?
He thought he knew an angel once.
The train took her far away.
She was born and died and angel.
He's closer now to another.
Not an angel.
He remembered the thorns slicing the pale features.
He still hated himself.
