Title: To Realize, or Not To Realize
Type: Oneshot
Medium: Films
Fandom: Inception
Characters/Pairings: Arthur-centric, Arthur/Eames, Arthur/Ariadne, a tiny bit of Arthur/Cobb/shade!Mal
For: A prompt at the inception_kink meme on Livejournal, "Five times Arthur realized he was dreaming and one time he didn't."
Note: Eh, I really suck at titles at the moment.
Beta: I have none, but if you'd like to, message me. It'd be much appreciated.
Disclaimer: Inception belongs to Chris Nolan and all other rightful owners. Sadly, I own nothing. (Oh, how much I wish I did, though.)
i.
Clutching his chest, Arthur awakes in the middle of the night, panting. With his free hand, he clumsily reaches out for the nightstand where his die is laying.
"Darling?" a voice asks from the place next to him on the bed, concern evident in their voice.
"Sorry," Arthur murmurs after he'd felt the die's true weight, it's sole purpose to confirm that this was reality.
"Are you alright?"
Arthur nods. "I am now." He turns his head to look at Eames and smiles the smallest of smiles before lying back down.
Eames' arm automatically retreats back to its place across Arthur's waist.
Taking a few deep breaths, Arthur tells himself it was merely just a bad dream, and nothing more. Placing his hand over Eames' he shuts his eyes and falls back into slumber.
ii.
"Ariadne?"
She turns to look at him and smile. He thinks it's the most heartbroken smile he's ever seen. "Arthur."
"Ar-"
The sound of a gunshot pierced the air and suddenly, Ariadne collapsed, Arthur catching her before she could hit the ground. "Oh God, oh God, oh God." He's on the verge of tears. He doesn't cry, though, because he would not lose control. He refused to lose composure.
"Arthur," she says.
"Yes?" His eyes meet hers.
"This is all your fault."
"What?"
"All your fault, Arthur. It's all your fault."
"Ari, I don't understand."
And then she was gone. "Ari?" he calls out. "Ariadne?" His voice is frantic now. He's panicking.
"She's not here, darling."
Arthur turns and sees Eames standing there. "Eames-"
Another gunshot. "Eames!"
The other man collapses and Arthur rushes to his side. "No, no, no. Don't die. Please, don't die." The tears he was holding back are falling freely now.
"All your fault, darling."
Arthur shakes his head, as more tears fall. "What? I don't understand. Eames-" Before he can finish, Eames vanishes into thin air, just as Ariadne had.
He stands up, legs trembling, body shaking. His co-workers - his teammates - are suddenly there, surrounding him in a circle. Each are soaked in their own blood, eyes downcast towards the floor.
"It's all your fault, Arthur. All your fault." They're all chanting accusations, making Arthur feel sick to the stomach.
No. It couldn't be. Was he the reason they were dead? Impossible. It just couldn't be. Could it?
Arthur jerks awake in his seat, heaving.
"Arthur?" Ariadne asks, kneeling before the pointman. They make eye contact, and he finally breaks. Not caring about being seen as vulnerable or broken, he lets the tears fall.
She hugs him, soothingly rubbing his back and murmuring, "It's okay; it was just a dream," every now and then.
Ariadne reaches into his pocket, the pocket she knows he keeps his totem in, and retrieves the red die. Taking his hand, she places the die in it. "It was just a dream," she tells him once more.
And with a flick, and a roll, and a weigh, he believes her. It was just a dream.
iii.
He ripped the IV out of his arm, abruptly getting up from the lawn chair, and retrieved the red die in his pocket, feeling it's weight, which assured him that he was back in reality. "Just a dream," he tells himself. "Just a dream."
"Arthur."
Arthur looks back to Cobb and shakes his head. "Why is it that your projection of Mal likes to torture me, Dom?"
"Arthur," Cobb begins to explain.
"You know what? Forget I even asked. I'd rather not know."
With a few easy strides, he walks away, fidgeting with his totem as he remembered the painful events that'd occured in the dream. They'd seemed so real. Each cut. Each strike.
"Just a dream," he tells himself, once more. "Just a dream."
iv.
They were in the middle of the job. Things got messy. Guns were fired, grenades thrown, and somewhere along the line, Arthur found himself in a car, in the river. Water had begun to seep through the cracks, and he had no other option but to break the window. He tried to make his way out of the car, to swim back up to the surface, but couldn't. His body was suddenly paralyzed. Arthur had no knowledge as to how or why, but it just was.
He soon began to drown, having given up on holding his breath a few moments ago (because, really, one can only hold their breath for so long), and now he awaited for the darkness to take over.
Arthur's eyes flew open. He coughed and panted a bit, before his breathing returned to normal. Out of habit, he reaches in his pocket for his die.
He can remember the water clearly. He can remember suffocating, drowning - everything.
Why did dreams have to seem so real?
"Exactly," he tells himself. "Dreams. It was just a dream."
And Arthur nods his head, acknowledging that he was back to reality.
v.
Arthur's lost count of how many times he's been shot, stabbed, wounded, tortured - all in all, died - in the dream world. Each time, though, no matter how used to it he is, feels so realistic.
He tosses the die up into the air, catching it swiftly.
In the dream, amidst all of the gunfire, two bullets managed to lodge into Arthur's waist and leg. He requested to be put out of his misery, the agony having started to get to him, and with a slight nod and grim look on his face, Eames shot Arthur in the head.
He's waiting for his fellow team members to finish the job, and acquire the information they were after.
The aches and pain he had felt where he had been shot, were slowly starting to dissapear, and feeling the weight of his die in his right hand, he reassures himself that it had been nothing but just another dream.
I.
Content. That's how Arthur felt at this very moment. He was sitting on the beach, the breeze feeling nice and cool against his skin, watching the waves crash into each other and onto the rocky shores.
He feels no stress; he's enjoying the warmth, the view, himself. He's relishing in the serenity and calm.
He doesn't realize this is just a dream, though. And quite frankly, he'd rather not. Because reality was harsh. Reality was cruel. But here...here was the exact opposite.
Arthur thinks he could stay here forever.
End note: Love it? Hate it? Let me know what you think. Constructive criticism is always welcomed.