Beta reader: Plumerri
Fandom: Inception
Genre: Angst
Rating: PG-13
Disclaimer: Inception and its characters belongs to Christopher Nolan. I use them just for fun, not for profit.
Summary: Mal is dead, that's what everyone always reminded him of, as if he didn't know that it would never change.
GUILT
Arashi Kaminari
Nobody would understand even if he tried to explain in the simplest way possible. One day, Dom felt stifled by the secrecy and he was going to tell Arthur about the demons he's facing, but when he saw the inquiring look and the inquisitive posture from his point man, he hesitated. He wasn't prepared to be shunned away by his own friend and Arthur would certainly do it. And with good reason.
Cobb didn't dream anymore and could hardly sleep without being induced to it. A small price for all the damage he had done. James didn't understand that his mother was never coming back and each time James asked his father about her whereabouts, Cobb felt that the guilt on his back weighed heavier and heavier and that one day someone would find everything out and it would be too late. Again. Then he would lose the only people who were left to him and he would totally deserve it.
He had broken Mal like a snake crushes its victim; without warning, slowly and under his watchful eye. Maybe Dom's coolness to await the catastrophe came from the hope that Mal realized the atrocity that him had made to her. Because, despite not being able to calculate the proportions, he knew there would be one, but he has preferred to observe his private guinea pig without interfering.
Mal lost some of her liveliness each page she turned when she started to base her theory on the belief that, only sleeping, people were living for real. And if at the beginning Cobb laughed and made fun of his wife for being illogical, later he started to get cranky over the topic as she insisted over time. The paranoia that he had planted on his wife eventually bear fruit on him and he caught himself several times researching everything he could to dissuade her from believing that absurd argument.
She cried - for the first time since their wedding - when she woke up after putting their own heads on the rails of a train. She said the brutality of that end had made her sick. An obvious lie that Dom chose to ignore simply because it was the easiest thing to do.
The days that followed it were odd. Mal was dedicated to her children and there were no discussions on any subject whose views were divergent under Cobb's roof. There was a sea of melancholy in her eyes, but she tried to disguise it as she could. What Dom thought to be an effort was, actually, pure cynicism. If he weren't sure that Mal loved him and that he was the cause of such sadness, Dom could mistake her for an unfaithful woman only interested in the inheritance which she would receive after killing her husband.
And their anniversary came. The children helped to choose their mother's present before heading to their grandma's house. A wonderful day that started with fun and laughter and ended with the woman that Cobb loved rejecting her own children, her own reality and herself by jumping out the window, even after he begged her to not do it.
Sometimes, Dom wanted to jump down with Mal. Other times, he should have told the truth when there was still time. However, most of the time, he was sure he was the most cowardly man in the world for not jumping just after her. He knew that the blame for her madness had been only his.
How could he tell his family about the monstrosity he committed? How could his children believe him every time he said that he loves them if they learned about what he had done? Mal is dead, that's what everyone always reminded him of, as if he didn't know that it would never change.
Therefore, as a fugitive from the truth, he drowned himself in memories - the only place where he could continue to live beside her, looking at their children playing without feeling remorse and pretend the head he put on the pillow was the head of a man of unquestionable character. The man who had ceased to live when his wife organs burst onto the roof of a car.