A/N: This idea came from a conversation I had with a friend about how she felt after her mum's death... If that makes me evil, then so be it!
Written from Eames' POV. Yes, I've been experimenting with the second person again... I'm sorry! x.X
Disclaimer: Christopher Nolan is God; I just come to play in his world on the weekends.
one.
The first time it happens, it's easy. Thanks to your wonderful forging skills the job goes off without a hitch, and it's wrapped up with half an hour to spare before the kick. You'll be the best in the business one day.
You shoot Cobb first, before turning your gun on the kid. Arthur.
You barely know the bloke – Hell, you barely know Cobb at this point – and you think nothing of it. You're blinking awake before his body even hits the floor.
two.
The second time is pretty similar to the first – a simple bullet to the brain. You're all in this time – Mal, Cobb, Arthur and, of course, you – while you learn Cobb's new layout for the latest job. Mal is the extractor for this one, so Cobb is playing the mark.
When you've had enough, with ten minutes still on the clock, you make a unanimous decision to get out the clean way.
Mal goes first – Cobb is the only one allowed to kill her in the dreams – followed by Cobb himself, at his own hand. Arthur reaches for his Glock, but you laugh at him until he hesitates.
"Allow me, dearest," you tell him cheerfully, the pet name slipping from your tongue with ease. You raise Arthur's gun to his head – you picked his pocket earlier – and, just as a protest begins to form on his lips, pull the trigger.
You pause with the Glock pressed to your own temple when your skin begins to crawl under the invisible pressure of what feels like a hundred eyes. Slowly, you turn around.
The projections – your own projections – are watching you, staring at you like you're a foreigner in your own dream.
You shiver, and wake up with their wounded expressions imprinted on the inside of your eyelids.
three.
It happens again two days after your first kiss. It's just you and Arthur this time, and it's Arthur's dream. It always is, actually, because he doesn't want to expose himself to the horrors – perversions, he mutters under his breath when he thinks you can't hear – that must be lurking in the depths of your mind. You don't point out that making you the subject means that the projections are yours, and that they're just as bad as anything you could consciously dream up. Whatever.
You're actually here to teach Arthur to forge. He asked you himself, looking as if it was causing him physical pain as he did so, on the basis of having a safety net for the big jobs you aren't available for. "I'll always be available for you, darling," you told him with a wink, before gesturing to the case in his hand. You suspect Cobb put him up to it; there's no way Arthur would take a genuine interest in your 'crude' profession.
You look over his attempt at Cobb with a critical eye - it isn't bad, apart from the fact that he still has Arthur's nose, mouth and left eye and, for a reason only God and Arthur know, Miles' hands. He could be very good at it, you think, if only he'd loosen up a bit and stop thinking so damn hard.
You tell him as much, and if your voice is a little sharper than usual, well, it is the fifth time you've said it.
"Use your imagination, Arthur," you drawl, dry as the Sahara. "It won't kill you. Really."
He turns his back on you, and his exasperated sigh just fuels your irritation. "Whatever. I'm done. Can we just get out of here?"
Perhaps it's because you're tired, or because you know full well that he could do it if he would just do it, or because you're frustrated and horny and this is the first time he's spoken to you since he shoved you up against the wall outside his apartment two days ago and stuck his tongue down your throat before squeaking like a fucking girl and running inside, slamming the door in your face – or maybe you just lose your mind for a few minutes.
Whatever the reason, the next thing you know you're pressed up against him, moulding your chest to his back, with one arm around his waist, the other hand in your back pocket, and your lips at his neck.
"Anything you say, darling," you breathe into his skin, and then you slit his throat. Ear to ear. In all honesty, you nearly cut his fucking head off.
You stagger back, your mind whirling even as Arthur's body slumps onto the fittingly red carpet, and you barely have time to think what the fuck did I do that for? before the door to the hotel room Arthur dreamt up for you bursts open and what must be a hundred people come rushing in.
You are torn apart by your own projections.
four.
You manage to avoid a repeat performance for almost three years, but that's possibly because you spent the last two of them on hiatus – you were not hiding – in Mombasa. Cobb managed to catch up with you though, and dangled the only carrot in the world that would make you come back. It wasn't even the prospect of achieving the impossible – inception may be bloody difficult, but it's not impossible. No, it was why Cobb thought it was impossible.
"Are you still working with that stick-in-the-mud?"
You were on board the moment Cobb said 'yes'.
You are aware that you're a hypocrite.
So here you are, in Paris, sprawled in a lawn chair beside the man who was your reason for running – because you did run – and for returning. You flash him a tight smile as Yusuf slides the needle into your wrist.
Like last time, the dream is Arthur's, but this time you're in the middle of a city centre rather than a hotel room. You are unsurprised by the setting's lack of intimacy, and you aren't stupid enough to think it's insignificant. You wander off in search of him.
When you find him, he's standing at the base of a ridiculously high skyscraper, staring up. You make your presence known with a cheery, "Nice place, love," which makes him jump. He's glaring when he turns to face you, and you feel your own expression turn serious. "Listen, pet, about-"
"Save it," he interrupts curtly. "We're here to work, Mr. Eames."
Ah yes, so you are. You're acting as Yusuf's guinea pigs while he tries out the stability of his compound with a series of tests.
"Very well," you acquiesce, rocking back on your heels as if you're bored and staring up at the skyscraper. You can't see the top.
Neither of you speak again and when about five minutes have passed the effects of the first test make themselves known.
In reality, Yusuf flicks water on your face.
In the dream, it starts to rain. Hard.
You're both soaked to the skin in under a minute. Arthur makes an indistinct noise beside you, probably fretting about his precious suit getting ruined, but you ignore him.
The second test, a slap to Arthur's face, manifests itself as an earthquake.
The walls of the massive skyscraper in front of you groan under the strain of staying upright and eventually start to crack. All around you, your projections are screaming and running for cover.
You turn around, ready to run with them, but the ground chooses that exact moment to lurch sickeningly and you land on your arse. All around you the city is falling to pieces. Just as you're trying to stand back up, a big chunk of godknowswhat hits you on the back of the head and the world goes black.
When you come to the earthquake is over, and Arthur is lying half-buried under a pile of rubble a few feet away. You're too dizzy to stand so you crawl over to him, praying that he's dead, that you won't have to do it again.
His chest is moving.
"Fuck!"
"Ea-mes?"
"Yes darling, I'm right here," you babble, rushing to help him. "It'll just take a tick for me to shift this, bear with me."
You manage to move some of it but then the rest of it slips, and Arthur honest-to-God screams. You scramble backwards, startled by the sound, and that's when you notice the blood, soaking outwards through his shirt and pooling around him. You drop the brick in your hand and whisper brokenly, "Arthur."
"Eames," he gasps, and you see a trickle of blood escape the corner of his mouth. "Little help here? Fuck- hurts."
You reach out a shaking hand to touch his face and you know you have to do something, anything; Arthur's in pain and he needs you but your brain's too frazzled to dream up a gun and you can't do anything and then Arthur swallows, grits out a strangled, "please," and your eyes are drawn to the slender column of his throat and you know what you have to do.
You choke the life out of him, your hands slippery with his blood or your sweat or a mixture of both, and you've done this before, to other people, in reality and in dreams, but has it ever taken so fucking long?
When he finally goes still beneath you, you look up, expecting to hear the thundering footfalls of a thousand angry projections. Instead, you find them already surrounding you, their tear-filled eyes fixed upon Arthur's limp form.
You watch as your projections cry, and the dreamscape dissolves in rain that has nothing to do with Yusuf's tests.
five.
The next time is two weeks later. You're doing a run-through of the final level, so everyone besides Yusuf is down here. Even though on the day it will be your dream, Ariadne hasn't actually taught you the layout yet, so she's the dreamer while you're the subject. Arthur is here as a stand-in for Fischer.
It's quite a good design, you think approvingly as you look around the foyer of the very convincing hospital the young architect has dreamt up. At least, you think this until Mal steps out of the elevator across from you and starts shooting. Then you make a mental note to help Ariadne cook up a new design. Maybe something with snow.
Ariadne's the first to go; a bullet to the chest kills her pretty much instantly. Then Mal kneecaps Arthur, again, and it's all you can do to catch him as he screams and reels into you. You pull him tight against your side with one arm and use your other hand to pick his pocket and put a bullet between Cobb's eyes because his fucking lack of control just got Arthur shot but he'd kill you in real life if you shot his precious psycho-Mal and shooting him solves the problem and is the next best thing anyway.
With Ariadne dead the dream is collapsing, but not fast enough. Arthur's breathing is laboured against your neck and you have to act now because as much as you hate killing him, you hate seeing him in pain more.
You prop him up against a wall so that you can frame his face with both of your hands and press your mouth against his. You kiss him until you see stars, until his knees are weak and his breathing is hard and fast for a completely different reason. Then you step away and snap his neck.
You don't need to look to know that they're here; you're ready for it, and this time you cradle Arthur in your arms and cry with the projections.
one.
When it happens, you're not there. You're back in Mombasa, gambling away the money from the inception job because Arthur said in the fight you had before you left that you're so fucking predictable and you think he's probably right.
The phone rings at three in the morning and it's Cobb, and your first thought is that you have no idea what time it is in the States because you're shit at Maths. Then Cobb says, "Eames... Arthur's dead," and you can't think at all anymore.
Afterwards you vaguely remember something about a car accident and died on impact and felt very little pain and Eames? Eames, are you still there? ...Are you okay? You hung up at that point because what sort of fucking stupid question is that?
You get a text about an hour later, telling you that the funeral is next Tuesday.
The flight you take deposits you at Newark International Airport at ten o'clock in the morning. The service is at eleven. You're five minutes late but you push your way through the crowd of mourners to stand beside the grave anyway. Even though you don't see Cobb, you feel his eyes on you the whole time. It is the only thing you can feel.
When people – Arthur's family, you realise; people you'll never, can never, meet – start throwing flowers down, you reach into your pocket and flick your poker chip into the dirt. Then you turn and walk away.
You get into your car – the one you bought, not rented, when you left the airport – and just drive. After maybe an hour, you park up at the mouth of a side road that opens onto a high street. You don't cry, as some people might expect; you've cried enough. Instead, you watch the people of New Jersey go about their lives, and that's the problem, isn't it? Everywhere you look you can see men, women and children smiling, laughing, living. None of them see you; none of them feel your grief.
You want to leap out of the car and grab the nearest person and shake them, scare them, scream at them, "Why are you doing this? How can you act like the world isn't falling apart when Arthur's gone, when Arthur's dead?"
And that's when it hits you. These people don't know you or Arthur, and they don't care, because it's your world, not theirs, that's falling apart; their world can't stop turning just because the sun in yours has gone out.
People die every day.
Life goes on.
But, you think as you reach for the gun at your hip, you don't have to.