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Reality Bleed
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Summary: While testing a new drug for Yusuf that is supposed to enhance senses in a dream, Arthur starts to panic and ends up getting far more than he bargained for.
Disclaimer: These characters are not mine. They belong, or should completely belong, to Christopher Nolan. I can also imagine that the start of my story, namely someone testing a drug and problems ensuing, is not a particularly original concept. I do, however, think where I'm taking it will make up for this.
Rating: PG-13, for violence and possibly some swearing.
Chapter Count: There will be three chapters to this story.
PLEASE NOTE: I am, as near as I can tell, tweaking things a little. If projections don't mind if the dreamer (as opposed to the person in the dream with the dreamer) is changing the dream, then I apologize. Artistic license and all that. If you're someone who cannot bear to read a story unless it's perfectly in line with the rules of canon, then be warned that this might not be for you. Hopefully, however, everyone can suspend disbelief long enough to enjoy this!
Reviews are Love!
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Chapter One: To Feel Greatly
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Ever since Dom had given him his task, namely to make a new drug that would enhance senses in a dream beyond anything that had come before it, Yusuf had been running around his lab like a mad scientist. He refused to divulge what Dom had told him any more than the barest sense of the assignment, saying that if he couldn't make the drug (which he could, thank you very much), then there was no point in even going forward with the job.
Ariadne and Eames had been having fun all week, trying to come up with what Dom's new maybe-job was that they needed a whole new variant on Yusuf's already top-notch sedatives. If Eames made one more 'sex that is literally mind-blowing' joke, Arthur was going to shoot him. He, no matter how much Ariadne, Eames and even Saito tried to make him, would not speculate about a job that hadn't even begun. It would cloud up his judgment, and that was dangerous for a Point Man. He had been working with Dom the longest and he had learned his lesson the hard way. Sure, maybe Eames had been doing dream-work longer than him but he, Dom and Mal had been a team long before others had come into the picture. He knew how these things went.
After their Inception job Arthur had been surprised that they'd all ended up staying around. They had worked with Eames and Yusuf before and never once had it been suggested that they all stay on together. He hadn't expected Saito to want to stay in the business, but he had proved to have a certain knack for it and the financial backing that had proved to make the job easier. The only person he'd been sure would work with them a while longer was Ariadne, who was quickly becoming one of the most brilliant Architects ever. She was too eager to learn and too good at what she did to for Dom to let her go or for her to want to stop.
Still, when Dom had gotten back into the routine with his children and the itch to go back into dreams had resurfaced, he'd called all of them to him and they had all come. There wasn't any specific moment that they all looked at each other and said yeah, we're a team, but the effect was the same. One year and fourteen jobs later and it was pretty cemented. For both safety and a certain sense of not wanting to work with anyone but the best while acknowledging that they were the best, they'd united.
It was comfortable, it was safe… Arthur could even be pressed to admit that it was nice.
What he wouldn't admit to anyone but possibly Dom, was that he was interested in this new job. He wanted to know what made a new drug necessary and why it had to enhance feeling. His brain whirled with the possibilities, but he wouldn't really let it grasp on to any too tightly.
And so, when Yusuf declared himself in the human testing phase and asked for volunteers, Arthur raised his hand along with everyone else.
"Shouldn't I go," Ariadne asked, grinning, "Since I need to know if I have to change my building style to suit this?"
"We'll let you give it a try before the job, Ariadne, but Arthur's going first." Dom replied firmly.
Ariadne opened her mouth to protest, but Eames beat her to it, "Give it up, darling. Dom won't trust anyone's word on this but that of his little Point Man."
Saito and Yusuf laughed and Arthur glowered half-heartedly. Dom just nodded, "He's not my little Point Man," Dom started, just for Arthur's benefit, "But he's tested these things before, he'll know what I'm looking for."
"You haven't told anyone what you're looking for." Ariadne pointed out.
Arthur and Dom just looked at her. Eames laughed again.
Still, Dom was the unofficially official leader and his word stuck. In no time at all, Arthur was sitting and ready to go.
"Okay, Arthur," Yusuf said, injecting him with the drug, "This should make what you feel in the dream even more than what you feel out here. Not like feelings," He hastened to add, putting a sing-song girly voice on for it, "Like you'll suddenly feel like a teenage girl, but your senses. Smells will be stronger, you'll feel touch more intensely, stuff like that."
Arthur nodded and closed his eyes.
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Arthur walked carefully down the street. He knew why he was there and he knew what he was supposed to be looking for, but what he'd expected wasn't even close to what he felt now. He'd never seen anything like this, not even in his (or Dom's, or Ariadne's…) most fantastical dreams.
Color had never been so bright, so intense, so unspeakable brilliant. Arthur walked down the street in a daze, taking it all in. His sight, crisper and clearer than it had never been, showed the gravely texture of the street, the brush strokes of the paint on the fire hydrant even the pores and lines of his own hand and was all that his sleeping brain could even process at that moment.
Slowly, other things trickled in. The smells were so intense. He wasn't just smelling a hot dog from the vendor, he was smelling the mustard and ketchup, the plastic from the bottles containing them, the way the water boiled, the salt, the grease, the yeast in the roll… everything. The smell wasn't enticing or beautiful the way the colors were, it made him nauseous. Sort of like when he'd been in high school and he'd had too much to drink – everything he'd eaten that night had become blacklisted, never to be eaten again because the smell alone could make him vomit in remembrance.
Yusuf couldn't have meant it to be like this, Dom either for that matter. No one would believe this was real, no one would trust this. It had to be a mistake.
He staggered back from the hot dog vendor, almost retching. He thought that getting away from that smell would make it better, but it didn't. Now he just smelt exhaust from cars and sweat, perfume, cologne, detergent and a hundred other things from the people around him. He brought his own sleeve up to his nose to cover it, but it barely helped. His head started to ache as more tried to force him to notice it, too much input and too much more to come.
Every step he took was different. He could feel his skin rubbing against his shoes, feel his shoes hit the ground more forcefully than ever, even though he wasn't stepping more heavily than usual. He could feel the ground below him, pebbles that really didn't count as pebbles. Of course he could see them, grains that they were. He could see that each one of them was at least five different colors, different shades that he couldn't name, had maybe never seen before. He started walking strangely and without him even meaning to, his shoes turned to slippers. It didn't help, but the projections around him noticed.
Arthur ran down a side alley, determined to get away from all of those sensations. If he could be alone for a little while, he could pull himself back together. The smells got a little better, the further away he got from the cars and the people, but not by much. Never before in Arthur's life had he ever known air to smell so much. The noise, which he'd only just realized had been thunderous, lowered. Instead of other people, he heard himself. His breathing was like shouting, his heart was like a drum and the sound of his slippers against the pavement was loudest of them all. He saw a newspaper on the ground ahead of him and he could instantly read all of the words, the page in crystal clarity. He started to step over it, but what would normally be a half inch of thickness, nothing to worry about, suddenly felt like something a foot off the ground that he hadn't been prepared for. He tripped and skinned his hands on the ground.
It was agony. Arthur curled up on the ground, holding his hands to his chest and trying to breathe though the blinding pain. The smell of his own blood, even though the cuts were barely bleeding, made his stomach twist. Blood, if one got close to enough of it, usually smelled metallic, but this was so so much more…
Arthur's side ached from where it was pressed against the ground. It should have been a little cold and a little uncomfortable, but really it was like ice that was cutting into him in a million different points. Now that he was closer to it, he could see so much more of the concrete. Arthur shut his eyes tightly, head aching even worse. He had to get up, had to get off of the bed of nails he was laying on. He tried to press his injured hand against the ground to do it, but it was pain unlike anything else.
Arthur screamed and dropped back down to the ground, feeling the impact. In his pain-filled haze, he changed something again. He made the ground like a bed, even if it didn't change how it looked. It was soft, but he could still feel it keenly.
At the entrance to his alley, he could hear people murmuring. They were looking for him.
He opened his eyes again and the light was even brighter than it had been a moment before. He looked up at the sky and was sure that he could see planes flying above him, see the people inside them, but the light… the light was too much. The whites of the clouds – because God, yes, they were made up of multiple different shades of white – were so bright, he could feel his eyes burning. Sunglasses, he needed sunglasses.
They appeared in his pocket and Arthur put them on. How much had he changed? The ground, the sunglasses, his shoes – too much. He was panicking in a dream for real. He'd been nervous in dreams, certainly, but one of his greatest strengths as a Point Man was his ability to always keep his calm. He didn't know how long he had been in his dream, but it felt like an eternity too long. Was the kick coming soon?
He needed to get out of the alley. The projections had noticed another thing changed and they were getting closer. He gritted his teeth and pushed himself up, ignoring the pain as best he could. He could smell them getting closer.
Arthur ran down the alley, trying to avoid anything that could make him trip again. The air moved against him and it felt like a hurricane. Arthur pushed on and turned the corner…
Right into a group of projections, standing, staring at him.
Arthur skidded to a halt just in time, but he couldn't go backwards. He was truly trapped.
The projection stepped forward, hostile, knife in his hand. Arthur looked between him and his barely injured but deeply painful hand scrapes.
This was going to hurt…
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Eames, Ariadne and Saito were playing cards a few feet away from Arthur. The game had only started a few minutes prior, but Arthur was already deeply asleep. Yusuf had checked him over quickly, but he and Dom had wandered off a moment before to discuss the drug further. Eames wasn't really into the logistics of such thing, preferring to hash all that out in the dream itself. He'd known, even as he was raising his hand, that he wasn't going to be chosen to go in the dream because of it. Not that anyone stood a chance against Arthur anyway. He tested things for Dom all the time and there was no one whose opinion carried more weight with Dom.
It was somewhere around the time that he completed his set of fours after Ariadne forgot who she'd already asked about them that he realized something was wrong. Arthur normally slept quiet as a mouse, no hint of a fidget or a sound.
Under other circumstances Eames might have thought he was imagining the whimper, but with a new drug being tested his was hyper-vigilant. He stood up and walked to Arthur.
"What is it?" Ariadne asked.
"Thought I heard him make a noise." Eames responded.
"Arthur? Under that much sedation?" Ariadne said, dropping her cards to the table all the same.
Eames ran a careful eye over Arthur and noticed something strange almost immediately. There was a shadow around his eye, as though he'd been punched. It hadn't been there before, right? His eyes travelled lower and he noticed that there was something red and wet on Arthur's stomach, so out of place that he actually reached out and ran his finger though it instead of immediately thinking blood. He peered at the smear on his finger and knew what it was. "Yusuf!"
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I hope everyone is interested/liked the start of the story! Please, review!