Author's Note: Here I go again. I'm obsessed beyond words with Inception and that happened. I like to think Arthur and Mal were really close friends, even though the movie doesn't really look into that. I hope this isn't too OOC - Arthur is kind of hard to portrait realistically, or at least it was for me.
Thanks to my one and only Spencer for the support and the late nights Inception talks we always try to avoid but end up doing anyway. This is for you. Hope ya'll like it!
What was she like?
She was lovely.
They're looking straight in each other's eyes when she asks him and he doesn't break contact.
He doesn't answer right away, though. Keeps his gaze fixed on her slightly light brown eyes and thinks. He thinks about it because — how do you condense everything that was Mal in a sentence? He thinks about her: sparkling eyes, french accent, perfect hair. He thinks about the way she used to wake up after a dream, the lazy snap of her eyes opening, the unconscious twitch in her breathing. Her mon-cherys to Dom, the curve of her smile, they way she could look both fierce and soft at the same time. He remembers how she was witty one second and thoughtful the other, how she could be stubborn but never careless. He thinks about that one time they talked about music and art, and ended up staying in a café until closure time, just Mal and him. Talking about frames and breathing in the city as they laughed together. He remembers how passionate she was about everything she did, and out of nowhere all he can think about is Francis Bacon and that portrait of his he couldn't stand at first but ended up loving, thanks to her. Study for Head of George Dyer. As he pictures it in his head, he goes back to the Cobol Engineering's fiasco with Dom - Cobb, now, Cobb. And thinks about how ironic it is, that she became as distorted in Dom's subconscious as Francis Bacon's subjects were in his paintings. At the shade she is in his friend's subconscious. At how if he pretended, for just a second, he could make himself think it was her, the real Mal. He should have shot her right when he saw her on the terrace in his dream, but she had appeared out of nowhere and for a second — less then one — he had let himself think it was Mal. His eyes had followed her, then went quickly back to Cobb's before focusing on her again and he had been sure, then, that it wasn't her. He had left her with Dom because the truth was, he wasn't sure he could have killed her right there and then. But then he had found himself in yet another room of his own dream, two projections holding him steady no matter how hard he struggled, Dom pointing a gun at his — dead — wife, eyes sliding towards his own. He had looked at Mal again, pretending not to see the gun pointed right at him, and he almost hadn't recognized her features, a stoney dark mask glued to the face of one of the loveliest people alive. There was no fight left in him, as he had teared his eyes away, shocked (and almost disgusted) at how different Dom's shade of Mal was to his real wife. He had given his friend the slightest shake of his head and Cobb had let go of his gun. Arthur had thought he was going to wake up but of course he should have known Dom's version of Mal would have been smarter than that. He had almost felt the knowing smile on her lips as she had said: "But pain? Pain is in the mind." He had kept his expression neutral, eyes never leaving Dom's as he had remember another time, another place, another Mal telling him the exact same thing, eyes caring and expression all soft. She had been worried about him, back then, but now — The pain came out of nowhere and he was screaming against his best intention, muffling the gunshot sound with his own shouting, falling down on the red carpet he himself had designed. "And, judging by the decor, we're in your mind, aren't we, Arthur?"
He shook himself out of his stupor, feeling Ariadne's eyes still prying on his. There was something about Mal's shade in Dom's subconscious that was completely wrong, so not-Mal like that it was almost impossible for him to believe Dom would fall for it. She seemed off, like the strangled note of a broken guitar, emotionless, only an empty shell of a well-rounded memory.
He batted his eyelids, as he had just awoken from a dream. Ariadne's soft eyes where still studying him, their eyes still locked. Quietly, he said: "She was lovely."