GUYS. THIS IS A STORY. WITH CHAPTERS. Or, well, it WILL have chapters in a bit.

AMARANTHINE means eternal or immortal, a connection to AMARANTH, or 'the flower that never fades', or 'love-lies-bleeding'. It's a plant, by the way.

This is the movie AU that no one ever wanted, because I clearly have too much time to think about this stuff. On the upside, it's mildly better than the always-a-girl!Eames fic that I can't stop thinking about. Sad, but true.

I feel guilty that STATIC, the third installment in electricity-verse, isn't up yet. I'm hoping for tomorrow! It needs little work first, but I needed to get this bitsy thing OUT OF MY BRAIN first.

Word count: ~1000 this part, WIP

Rating: T

Warnings: non-canonical character death, swearing, slash, angst, extreme use of page dividers (I don't apologise for that though).

Pairings: E/A, M/C, some others.

Disclaimer: It's not mine.

AMARANTHINE

BadActs

PROLOGUE

These are the things that Mallorie Cobb remembers from the last anniversary of her wedding:

Dom's voice, as soothing as ever, easy and gentle in her ears even as he holds a gun to the underside of her jaw, tipped back.

He says, "We have to go back, Mal. Our children are waiting for us up above, and we can't stay down here any longer."

And Mal says, "But we're awake. Dominic, we're awake, don't do this, please don't do this, mon Dieu-"

And she's gasping, desperate, her hands clawed into the fabric of his fine suit. He'd looked so beautiful, when he'd walked in. For a moment, she had thought that this would be one of the days where he pretended to believe her just to make her happy, as though she could be happy when she knows that he is pretending.

Then he'd pulled the gun.

Arthur's stern face over her husband's shoulder, his eyes the only window onto the torture they've both been experiencing over the last few days. He is an avenging angel, her Arthur. He is magnificent, and Mal doesn't at all expect him to be able to save her.

He doesn't say anything. Words have never been Arthur's forte, not like Dom's, so all the things he means to say aloud – for God's sake, don't do this, let her go – are captured in the lines of his body as he yanks Dom away by the collar and disarms him in one smooth movement.

The lamp falls, the bulb smashing into diamond specks in the carpet. Mal watches the arc of it, the shatter, and her mind is too slow to really make sense of it. Shock has made her deaf, her vision narrowing down.

Dom, however, is stronger than Arthur – he strikes out and his fist clips the shorter man on the temple, swinging him around until Dom can back him up to the wall. And Dom takes Arthur's own gun from where he wears it at the back of his belt and puts it to Arthur's chest, steady.

"It's amazing what the human mind can do, you know. You look so real, Arthur. So fucking real," Dom murmurs. It's like a parody of a dream, because Dom, in real life, wavers with a gun in his hand where people like Arthur and Eames don't shake. But Dom thinks that he's dreaming, thinks that killing Arthur is just killing a projection of Mal's. The only kind of blood that feels warm on your skin and melts off without even washing

"I am real, Dom," Arthur gasps back, blinking away spots in his vision.

"No. No, you aren't. You're Mal's, and we need to wake up to the real you," Dom replies, and his finger moves to the trigger.

Mal has known Arthur since he was twenty years old, when he wore BDUs and his hair was buzzed down to his scalp. She has seen him swear and bleed and weep and grow into the bold, stunning man he is now. She's seen him broken, and in love. And she can't bear to see him dead.

Killing her is one thing. Killing Arthur – the muzzle of the gun rising to his forehead, the point man struggling against the forearm over his throat, the dawning realisation in his eyes (I might die, right now) – is another entirely.

The gun in her hand, the weight of it. The ease of firing into someone's back from a distance of only ten feet.

Arthur, taking the gun and wiping it carefully clean of prints, only to weigh it in his hand. He puts it down out of her reach and then kneels in front of her where she crouches against the wall. She doesn't remember getting here – she might be dreaming, but she's too afraid of being wrong to go for the weapon.

"Call the police," Arthur is saying, and he looks like a rough, wild thing. "Call them and tell them that it was me. Tell them that I did it, okay?"

Mal nods, because Arthur seems to be waiting for that. He touches her, briefly, once: a clasp to her wrist, a little too hard.

He says, "Don't follow him there. You can't go where he's gone."

Mal knows that. She knows.

"Call Eames. Tell him the same over the phone, don't tell him the truth, in case they try to get the phone records. Can you do that?" Arthur is asking, and he's knocking things over, opening the window. The curtains billow wide with the cold night air. "Eames will stay with you. He'll stay."

He sounds as though he's hoping for that, hoping against hope. Mal can understand just enough of Arthur's plan to know that it's going to save her – of course it is, Arthur will always save her – but that it's going to cost Arthur. It's going to cost him in ways that no one of them can help him with.

"Do that for me," Arthur says, "and don't you dare die."

The soothing voice of the emergency operator, over the phone – what's your name, ma'am? Are you hurt?

And Mal saying, "No, no, but my husband – I think he's dead." And her voice breaking, quivering under the strain of those words.

Eames' steady hands, long fingers and palms callused from the hilts of the knives he loves. He holds her together, leads her away from the blood that she put there, and Mal feels like Lady Macbeth, like nothing she will ever do can wash these stains out.

Eames sitting with his head in his hands, absurdly quiet and still as a statue. The police who want to take her for questioning. Mal's children, crying. But Mal is with them, all because of Arthur's sacrifice. And that is something that she will never, ever be able to fix, either.

Mal saying into Phillipa's ear, "I'll be back. I'll be back." Her hand in James's hair, the sun-blonde of it bright around her fingers. And knowing that she's telling the truth, because of Arthur.

These are the things that Mallorie Cobb remembers from the last anniversary of her wedding.

Because after that it becomes the anniversary of the day that her husband died.

This is, like, my fifth fic in not very long. Heh. Sorry to the people who have me on their alerts list, it much be like being spammed.

STATIC tomorrow, guys, I nearly promise!

BadActs