Memories of Odysseus: An Inception Oneshot
A.N.: Recommended Song- Love Theme from Blade Runner by Vangelis .com/watch?v=BZ2UVHejX2w
A single shot rang through the air.
The first thing he felt was soft hands touching him. They were pressing a wet cloth to his forehead, cleaning it of salt and brine. He relaxed automatically at their ministrations, perhaps recognizing the owner of those hands before he saw her. The muted roar of the ocean filled his ears, and the wetness of the waves washed over his legs. His lips parted as he smelled a familiar scent, wafting to him as the hand applied the cloth to his mouth.
He opened his eyes, blinking.
She was there, of course. He'd known it was her, had felt it in her touch. Though she had never touched him like that, like a sweet healer. Her coffee-colored hair made a halo around her face in the bright afternoon sun, shadowing her full lips and her intense eyes. As he looked harder, he could see what she was wearing: a loose red dress made of some fine material that blew in the breeze.
That was when he knew it was all a lie, because she never wore red in real life. She thought it was unattractive on her. As if anything could make her ugly. With that red dress on, she was as perfect as she could be, and that was exquisite. He reached out a hand and caught a piece of the dress between his fingers, feeling the texture. He didn't know if he could create such a feminine dress. But this had to be his world, or else that world of infinite subconscious...
Limbo.
"Is that where I am?"
"Is what where you are?" she asked, her voice low and melodic.
"Limbo. Is that where we are?"
She smiled and took the cloth from his face. "This is where you can be free."
That wasn't the answer he wanted, he thought, frowning. It held no specifics, all vagaries. But he was distracted by her figure as she rose from the sand, pulling him with her. He followed her, his hand resting in hers. "Mal?"
"Yes?"
"Where are you going?" He stumbled as his shoes sank into the sand, waterlogged as they were.
Laughing, she turned and put her hands on her hips. "You'll have to take those off. You don't need them here."
"But I like these shoes," he protested.
Her enigmatic smile was as potent as it had been in the real world, and she lifted one shoulder in an elegant shrug. "They're only going to slow you down. Do whatever you like, but I expect you to keep up with me." And she sauntered away, down the beach, in her implausible red dress.
He stood for a moment, deliberating. Then he bent and untied his dress shoes. The black leather shone in the sun as he dropped them to the sand and ran after her. She didn't turn to see if he had caught up, but she stopped walking after a minute. Casually, she held out her hand to him, her slender fingers spaced apart and ready to receive his own.
He hesitated, drawing his hand back. "I don't think I should, Mal. It doesn't feel right."
She let her fingers fall listlessly to her side. "If you want to wait, I understand."
He nodded. "I think that would be best."
"You're always so cautious," she said, raising her face to the warmth from the light, soaking up the sun.
"You were once, too."
"You don't have to be so afraid here. I'm not going to hurt you. There's nothing here to hurt you."
"Yes, there is. This isn't a real world. That in itself is dangerous."
"This world is real, mon cher," Mal told him. "Just because it's in your mind-why does that make it false?"
"Oh, no," he said, his mouth forming into a smirk, "we're not getting into metaphysics, here. Too unpredictable."
Mal laughed. "I read that book you gave me, you know. The one all about alternative worlds. It was quite inspiring."
Internally, he winced; guilt over what had happened to her had never left him. Deep in his most honest interior, he tortured himself over what he might have done to save her. What he could have done differently. Tilting his face down, he shuffled his feet in the hot granules, feeling the heat on the back of his head.
"Hey," Mal said, touching his chin, "why are you sad? We're here together, now. Whatever happened before, we can forget."
I can't. That's what he thought, but he smiled for her benefit. His memory of what was true-what he knew was real-would be his trip out of Limbo. He knew Mal was dead. He knew James and Philippa were really without a mother. He knew he had been on a job, but he couldn't place what job it was. And he definitely knew he had been killed in that job while under a heavy sedative.
That was what mattered: he was dreaming.
He let Mal pull him further down the beach, his thoughts on the team he knew must be waiting for him in some forgotten dream level. Above; somewhere, above the sky now tinged with pink and pearly-white, there was a group of real people waiting for him. Friends, maybe.
Why was it so hard to bring up a memory of their faces? He shook his head and put his feet firmly into the sand. There was a sharp tug on his hand as Mal stopped, too. "I...I have to go back," he said. "Someone is waiting for me, up there."
"What are you talking about?" said Mal. "Up where?"
"You know where, in the upper dream levels. I only got here because I died, or..."
"Forget about it," Mal said, her hand gripping his arm lightly. "Just for a while, let yourself dream." She moved closer to him, her red dress impossible to ignore.
No. He couldn't let her entice him. But his eyes caught the smolder in hers, and he couldn't look away. Mal took his hand again, and her fingers slid through his, hooking themselves onto his knuckles with an unbreakable adherence. His feet picked themselves off the sand and his legs moved forward.
As she faced the horizon, Mal smiled, but it wasn't her smile from Above. She looked almost...triumphant.
He was lying down on a blanket spread over a large, flat rock. Plying his tongue to remove the taste of sleep, he sat up, running a hand through his hair. He wasn't surprised when she appeared by his improvised bed, a flask of wine in her hand. "No, thank you," he said, as she held the flask out to him.
"It will make you feel a little more refreshed," Mal offered. "Besides," she bent and poured the wine into a silver goblet, "I went all through your mind to get this. It's your favorite." She held the glass to his lips. When he still didn't drink, she sighed. "Please. For me."
Against his better judgment, he let the cool wine swill into his mouth. The liquid could never have been so smooth in reality, but here, where nothing but the imagination mattered, it ran down his throat like satin. He took the cup from Mal and took a second sip, rolling the wine around his teeth. It didn't taste the same as it did in the real world. Even though it tasted better, he couldn't enjoy it, knowing it wasn't real.
"How long have I been here?" he asked her.
"I don't keep track," Mal said, sitting down on a rock shaped like an ottoman. She was wearing a light green dress, now, its foamy hem draping itself over the rock. "I've been here so long," she continued, her eyes distant, "time has ceased to matter, to me."
He stood, stretching, and walked to the entrance of the cave. He didn't recall entering this enclave on the beach, sheltered from the sea winds and the water. The wine lingered as an aftertaste in his mouth, serving to remind him of what he had to do. "I've got to get out of here, Mal." Once he made it to the end of the cave, he could feel the gusts of air as they nipped past him.
"Why?" Her breath was by his ear, her sea foam dress drifting against his legs. "I'm so lonely, here. There is no one in this wasteland but me."
"That doesn't matter." He tried to concentrate on the waves at the shore rather than on her. "You're not real. You're a projection, like everyone else."
"But I'm not. I mean something to you, and that's why I'm here at all."
He closed his eyes, his hand flying to the object shoved deep in his pocket. "Of course you do."
"Yes, I do," Mal whispered. "You've held me in your heart this long. And now, inevitably, I've finally reached your mind, haven't I?"
He didn't say anything; she would leap at the chance to turn his words and twist them into something he didn't mean for them to be.
"You'll always love me," Mal said.
"That's not the point," he answered, clenching the totem in his pocket. "You're dead, Mal."
"This is the point." He felt her hands on his shoulders, then they fell down to his wrists. Her fingers ran over his hand gently, wrapping it in surreal warmth.
For a moment, he let himself believe.
Then he stiffened as he felt the tips of her fingers graze his pocket. "No," he said sharply, catching her fingers, "that's my only assurance in Limbo. It's staying right where it is."
"What use is a totem to you here?" Mal said, pouting. "It's a distraction from what's important. You can't relax if you keep gripping that thing."
"I didn't come here to relax. I didn't mean to come here at all. Being here-" he gestured to the wet cave roof, "means I failed at whatever job I was supposed to execute."
His companion was silent behind him, her intruding fingers tangled with his, brushing the gray lining of his slacks. He pulled himself out of her grasp and started out of the cave, onto the dreary beach. Today it was overcast and gloomy, reflecting his unease with his surroundings. Determinedly, he strode into the slate waves, pleased with the bone-piercing cold. Now he had a plan, a simple but effective one: he would sink into the water and...breathe in.
He'd heard drowning was a fairly painless way to die, despite the fact that his lungs would fill with water and his brain would suffocate. It couldn't be worse than whatever had landed him here, in the Netherworld of dreams. He'd probably been shot in the stomach, or had fallen off of a building, or had been stabbed by an angry projection. Strange, that he couldn't remember how he had died. Or perhap not so strange; he'd died on the job so many times it was pretty much routine.
One thing did bother him, as he stood in the ocean. He thought he could see, in the corner of his mind, the face of a girl with brown hair and brown eyes. He didn't know who she was, and that bothered him, as well. It seemed like he should know. She must be Above, in real life or in another dream level.
Oh, well. He took a deep breath and then plunged into the water up to his waist. He had to be far enough out so that, should his self-preservation kick in, it wouldn't make any difference. With three more masterful strokes, he was up to his chest. He had taken the next step into the deeper current when he heard her scream.
Instinct overruled his rationality, and he turned, his heart jumping into his throat. "Mal?"
She was crashing through the surf toward him, her dress soaked up to her ribs. She was crying, but no mascara ran down her face-another proof of unreality. "Don't leave me, please!"
"Mal, go back! You'll really drown in this world!" She was so much shorter than him; she'd go under much sooner.
"No!" she shouted back, her voice desperate. "If you aren't going to stay, neither will I!"
She disappeared in a wave once. He tried to tell himself that she wasn't there, that it wasn't Mal. But it did no good. As she slipped and went under the water level, he fought against the body of the ocean to reach her. "Mal! No!"
It was weakness, but he couldn't see her die. How could he watch her drown? He had stood by in the real world and let her fall. It would be the ultimate betrayal to kill her in his dreams, to let her fall into the waves and never resurface. And even if she wasn't real, he would remember how she had died trying to follow him back. He knew that thought would drive him insane.
"Mal!"
Wave after wave crested between them as he barreled toward her, praying not to lose sight of her glinting hair and green dress. He dipped into the surf and seized her around the waist, wrenching her to the surface. While she gasped for air, he picked her up and carried her through the waist-deep water. "It's all right, Mal, I've got you. It's okay, you're all right."
Clutching at the white shirt now plastered to his skin, she leaned her head against him and took gulping breaths. "You-were going to-leave," she said, her chest rising in swells. "I-couldn't-"
"Shhh, I'm sorry," he said, setting her gently on the beach. "I didn't mean to scare you. It's all right, now, it's going to be all right-"
"But you're going to leave, aren't you?" Her eyes were liquid with tears. "I'm going to stay here, imprisoned, alone-"
"No," he said, "no, you're not. I'll stay, Mal, if-" he swallowed, an odd lump forming in his throat. "If that's what you need."
As if she had waited for him to say this, Mal dropped to the sand in exhaustion, her relief plain on her face. "Thank you," she whispered. "Thank you."
Lying down beside her, he spread his arm onto the grainy sand and wondered why he had made himself a prisoner, just like her.
Just like Mal...
"You know I've got to go," he said, sitting cross-legged at her feet. "I've spent too much time here, already. They'll be missing me up there."
Sighing, Mal uncrossed her ankles and stretched languidly, her shimmering white dress rippling sluggishly over her figure. In the starlight, she resembled his mental image of Artemis, the huntress. "This is the fifth time you've said you must leave," Mal said, "but forgive me if I don't believe you will actually go."
With a shrug, he tried to explain. "I feel an...urgency that wasn't there before. I think something must be happening Above. Maybe an important event in the job, or maybe my body has been moved in reality."
"And there you go with reality, again," scoffed Mal. "When will you realize that this is your reality, now?"
"Don't say that." That was his knee-jerk response anytime she mentioned that possibility. He didn't want to entertain the idea that he had substituted the truth for this fabricated world. "I know this isn't real. That in itself proves I believe in the upper levels."
"How long have you been here, then?" challenged Mal, rolling her shoulders and standing.
He concentrated, counting back from the memories of Limbo he could remember. "Three months, give or take a week."
"So you think," Mal said. "But what if I told you it had been seven years?"
"I would say, nice try, but my mathematical skills aren't that deficient."
"Do you think it's about mathematics in this reality?" Sashaying to the stone ledge of the terrace, Mal peered out at the heights below them, her dress blowing back in solid lines from her hips and shoulders. "Our world does not run on facts and mechanics, my dear. Numbers only hold weight in a world without imagination."
"Some people argue that mathematicians are the most creative artists around," he said, watching her in the light of the moon.
"Do they? Are you one of those people?"
"No," he admitted. "But that doesn't change the fact that I need to leave. It doesn't matter how long I've been here."
"So, leave." She turned around and folded her arms coolly. "Jump. It will take you to your beloved reality."
This time, he resolved, he was going to rise to her challenge.
He stood and walked past her, to the very edge of the apartment complex. There was no wind in Limbo, and so there was no slipstream to buffet him as he climbed onto the granite railing. But he thought he could hear the wind whistle in his ears as he looked out over the uninhabited streets.
And, like always, he was reminded of how Mal had died. Convinced beyond a shadow of a doubt that the world she lived in was not real. Possessed by the single thought: I must get back to my world, where my family is. He couldn't help but draw the comparison between them. He, too, was so certain that, should he jump, he would wake up in an old warehouse, alive and well. If he sponged out every other thought, he could see, in his mind, the picture of a girl with brown hair and eyes to match. He had to go back to that world, to that girl.
Slowly, he took hold of the stone and climbed back down.
The problem was, he didn't know who was more real: the girl with the wide brown eyes or Mal in her white dress. Until he did, he was trapped.
"Come back to sleep," Mal said.
He didn't answer, his back to her as he faced the wide glass window of his apartment. The view of the sea had awoken him fully from grogginess. Every time he looked out at the ocean, he knew he had to remember. So, for almost five nights in a row, he had stared out the window and painted a picture of what was on his mind. He had taken to drawing it out with Mal's easel and pencils, shading and sketching out the dream world.
It was a hotel, he had decided. There were gaps in the sketch where he must have forgotten the layout, but the structure's long, sleek interior couldn't be mistaken for a house. In his sketch there were no projections, but they must have been present in the real thing.
She was very good, the girl who had designed the hotel. He had made the connection in his mind at last; the girl with the brown hair had built the dream levels. She had been the Architect on the job, he thought, and that's why he could find her image when the other team members came up as blank faces.
Above the hotel he had drawn a rainy street with cars speeding down its center. That was the first level, he knew. There had also been a freight train in the middle of the intersection, but he had erased it because it made no sense.
"There were at least three levels to the dream job," he said into the silence that had fallen on the room. "I'm working on the third one, but it's a little vague in my head."
Mal took the pencil out of his hand. "Sweetheart, it's too early for this. Go back to sleep."
I can't. He patted her hand. "If you're tired, you can go back to bed. I'm going to see if I can work out the next level."
"Why do you do this to yourself?" she asked, shaking her head. "Overworking your mind trying to measure out a reality that has ceased to mean anything to you?"
Pulling out the second pencil in the case, a B-grade shading pencil, he filled in another line on the third level. So far, it looked like a collection of sharp angles protruding out from each other. He figured it was an industrial building, or maybe a military bunker. "If the reality doesn't mean anything, then why do you still call it a reality?"
"What?"
"Mal," he said, smiling, "I'm not stupid. I was never as smart as you, but I'm competent enough to realize when you're in your persuasive mood."
"You're tired," Mal said. She was leaning over his shoulder as he drew, the tips of her wrap dropping onto his shirt. "Darling, why don't you wait till morning to finish this?"
"Because by then I'll forget," he said, plucking the first pencil from her hand.
"And so what? You won't leave me. I know you too well."
He paused. She could be right. "Those other times weren't like this. I've been kept up for almost a week with these sketches. I can't forget them."
"I can make you forget." She slid her hands around his neck and planted her face against the back of his neck. "For years, you've held yourself away from me. Why?"
"Mal," he closed his eyes as she ran a hand through his hair, "I can't."
"But I want you to," she said.
"I have to remember!" Driving the point of the pencil into the paper, he pressed until it broke. If he had been in the real world, he never would have wasted good lead like that. He smoothed the ruptured dot of the paper where the point had broken with his finger.
Mal gently took the pencil from him and laid it aside, letting it roll off the table. Then she pulled out the other chair at the table and sat across from him, filling his vision with her dark purple robe. "I am all that matters to you now," she said, her eyes compassionate. "I am your last connection to your heart. And I want you to leave the sketch until tomorrow. Will you do that for me?" When she sensed his hesitation, she laid her hand on his. "For me?"
He couldn't understand why he let her control his actions, he thought, as he closed the over-sized sketchbook. Unless it was really himself controlling his actions through Mal. But he still doubted his ability to create her or her wardrobe.
"Thank you," said Mal.
"I'll be back at this tomorrow," he promised her, with a creditable show of confidence.
With a quick gasp of air, he awoke. The wind was blasting through the apartment at top speed, sending leaves from the potted plant and a deck of cards swirling through the open space. He jumped up from the couch and ran to the table with all his sketches, catching several as they were torn from their clips on the easel. The most important one, the drawing with all three levels, rested safely in the sketchbook's spiral-bound pages.
The wind hadn't been the reason he'd woken up. Whatever had woken him up had also started the wind. Something was missing from his security. In a near panic, he patted his clothes roughly, slapping himself to find the small object he needed for stability.
It was gone.
"Mal!" he shouted over the wind, but she couldn't hear him. "Mal, where's my totem?" He tied on his shoes and dashed from the front room, his heart racing. What had she done? "Mal! Where are you?"
He ran through the hallway that led to the rest of the apartment, and suddenly it was a long hallway that never ended. He stopped running, hearing his breath in the stuffy silence. No wind penetrated this new addition to his apartment; the tall walls extended into infinity before him, no sound bouncing off their sides.
"Mal?" he called, his voice echoing all the way down the hall. "Where are you?"
A noise from behind him made him turn. The second he took his eyes off the hallway, it disappeared and reappeared in front of him, back the way he'd come. A paradox. He turned back to the rest of the apartment, and there it was again, moving when he moved, always in front of him.
But this was too simple, he thought, suspicious. All he would have to do was back out of the hallway, and the paradox would be duped. And yet he didn't want to back up-he wanted to find Mal. Smiling grimly, he reversed his steps, traveling backward into the front room. He backed up until he felt the wind drag at his clothes. The never-ending hallway remained steadfast, unmoving.
"I get it," he said loudly, folding his arms. "You want me to stay."
"You don't understand," her voice said, out of the dark hallway.
She came forward, her body encased in an obsidian-black gown whose hem touched the floor. Leaning against the doorframe, she stared at him with impenetrable eyes. "You can never understand," Mal said. "Not until you fade away to nothing more than an image in your lover's mind. Until you're trapped in a prison of memories, with nothing but the promise 'I'll come back soon' to sustain you."
"But you don't exist unless one of us brings you back into our mind," he argued, a sliver of anxiety crawling up his spine. Mal was dead, he told himself. Mal had died, and this was only her shadow. This wasn't Mal.
"I'm still alive in your world," Mal said, smiling without mirth. "When you awake, your subconscious dreams of me. And, when you're dreaming-" she pushed off from the doorframe and held out her arms, posing. "Here I am."
"No, that's not true."
"Lie to yourself, then," Mal sighed. "Isn't that what you've been doing all this time?"
He had to focus. Putting his back to her elegant figure, he went to the table and flipped open the sketchbook, thumbing through the pages until he found the dream levels. They were there, all three of them. "Did you take my totem?" he asked, breathing a little more easily.
When he looked back up at her, she was lying on the couch, her feet propped up on the arm. And she was rolling it between her fingers like a toy, watching him. "You were too close to getting back," Mal whispered, her face abruptly vulnerable.
He looked away, unwilling to be beguiled by her eyes. "You shouldn't have taken it from me."
"No, I guess not. Would you like it back?" She held it out to him.
"There's no point, now, since you've touched it. It's useless, now." He sat down, suddenly feeling a hundred years old. "Why are you doing this to me, Mal?"
"Because you can't leave me," she said, her fragile fingers engulfing the totem. "And you were so close. I knew, if I let you touch this thing again, you wouldn't listen to anything I said."
"Don't you want me to go home, to be real again?"
Tears slowly formed under Mal's eyes, their agonizingly slow trails falling over her cheekbones. His anger drained away at the sight. "I'm just not that generous, my love," she said, looking away. "I can't be alone again. I need you."
She had needed him for so long, he thought. Years and years and years, in this time and in the last, when she was real. There was an odd twisting sensation in his chest, like someone had driven a screwdriver there. In a second he realized what it was and turned away from Mal, mortified. Bowing his head, he put hand over his eyes, ashamed of the tears he felt under his own fingertips.
He wondered if this guilt would ever go away, and if Mal would go with it.
Desperation, not necessity, was the mother of invention.
For hours he had sat on the sand, marking the passage of the surf over the pale gold. The hours had turned into days, and still he'd sat there, hoping that he could see some sign in the current. He needed a way out; he had to get back. Why he thought the ocean could give it to him, he didn't know. It made as much sense as his own subconscious holding him down in Limbo for twelve years.
Although time never felt the same in the Netherworld, he had sensed the change in his heart, in his soul. He had wandered through the empty streets below his apartment for another three days before finally settling on the beach. His body didn't feel twelve years older, but his being did. And every day he spent of his twelfth year in Limbo was a day when he fought to hold on to his sanity.
Sanity was remembering the people Above who would expect him to come home; insanity was choosing to forget. He had considered both attitudes to the most minute detail, some days screaming to find his ride back to the surface, and others deciding to drink the wine and pretend it was the same. But he had never been a gray-area person. It was all or nothing, reality or Elysium.
If it was ever going to be reality, he had to get away from Mal.
And that's what brought him to the beach. She hadn't looked here, yet. Though it was a matter of time before she did, brilliant woman that she was. He hoped-prayed-that he would have his solution by then, because if he didn't have a faultless escape plan, she would lead him back to insanity without raising her voice.
"It would be so easy," he whispered to himself, aware of the longing in his words. So easy to give in, to just look into her eyes...after all, what did the world Above have that this world didn't?
Everything. Friends. Family. Purpose. Imagination. Beauty. Dreams. A girl with brown hair and brown eyes. A man whose face he couldn't unscramble. And, most important of all, reality. These things, these people, were real. He knew that in his core. Nothing in Limbo could replace that, including the woman searching for him throughout the deserted city.
He slumped to the sand in helplessness, the gritty texture rubbing against the grain of his shirt. What he needed was a gun, or a knife. Something that would end his life here, no if's, and's, or but's, and jolt him back to reality with brutal efficiency. Something that would afford no hesitancy. It didn't seem right, though, killing himself with violence. After living in Limbo for over a decade, leaving a bloody stain on its beach would be poor gratitude for housing his mind all those years.
But Limbo was driving him crazy, he told himself sternly. If he didn't make certain he couldn't continue on here, he'd drift away from his body Above completely and never come back.
He had no gun, however, so it was a pointless wish. The waves churned serenely toward him, and he made them dance with his mind, increasing their speed. Soon he let them die down again, bored with their monotony. Limbo was monotony, pure and mindless redundancy. He couldn't count how many times he had said the same thing or repeated the same action. That was another reason to leave forever.
As he was lying, apathetic, on the sand, she found him. She came to stand by him, the fluted edge of the knee-length skirt she was wearing drifting lightly in the breeze. Gathering the skirt, she took a seat beside him and drew her knees up, leaning against them as she stared out at the sea.
"When were you going to tell me where you'd gone?" she asked.
He didn't answer.
"Where have you been? Here, this whole time? I've been looking for a week, did you know that?"
"Yes, I know," he said.
"And you didn't think I would be worried?" She sounded offended.
He closed his eyes and sat up, taking one of her slim hands in his. "Mal, it's time."
She reflexively squeezed his hand, sending warmth up his palm. "For what?" Mal finally asked.
"You know for what. You've known since the day I got here, twelve and a half years ago."
"You didn't get here, darling," Mal said, amused. "You've always been here."
"No, I haven't, and you know that. I washed up on this beach a long time ago, and you found me. Now it's time to go back."
"No," she said.
He smiled at her weak attempt at force and laid one hand gently against her cheek. "You can't stop me this time. I've got to get out of here."
"But you promised," Mal said. Her eyes were wide. "When you pulled me out of the waves, you promised never to leave me."
"I said I'd stay because that's what you needed," he corrected her. "And that is what you needed, then. But now, Mal, I'm just keeping you alive, like resuscitation. You're dead, and you always have been in this world. You're not alive anymore."
"I was alive then?" she cried. "Then why not now?"
"In my mind, you were, yes. But I've come to terms with you. I've accepted your death."
"I'm not dead! Nothing has changed!"
"Everything has changed, sweetheart," he said, feeling his throat tighten as he looked at her. "I've changed, so you've changed. I think I can finally let go of you. I've given you my time, I've saved you...and I've loved you. I can let go, now."
"No, you can't," Mal argued, tears running down her face onto her soft wool sweater. "How could you leave me? After all our time together?"
"This time was never real," he said sadly, feeling his heart constrict along with his throat. "Mal, you never loved me the way I loved you. That's why I know this isn't reality. The Mal I knew would never have forgotten what she had for me." He stood and walked to the ocean, taking her with him. "You may have forgotten here, but I never could."
She gripped his hand for support as they hit the breakers. "Please, don't go."
The tide pushed at them, doing its best to sweep her back from him. Mal clung stubbornly to his hand and lifted her chin defiantly, anchoring herself in the water. "Don't go," she said again, holding his gaze. "I need you."
As another swell rushed in he hugged her to him, once, both arms holding her to him in an embrace. "I needed you, too, Mal," he whispered. "But reality needs me more."
He needed her to understand, to forgive him. He resolved to hold onto her until she did. And, at last, she relented. "I know," sobbed Mal, wrapping her own arms around him. "I know."
"I love you, Mal," he said, his voice a sigh of relief.
"I love you, too, Arthur."
Releasing her, he walked further into the deep, refusing to break stride. Behind him, he heard Mal's silence as she watched him go.
He didn't look back as he was pulled under by the waves.
Full Author's Note:
I know, I'm cruel.
This idea came to me when my brother and I were discussing The Odyssey. When we got to the part about Calypso, I was hit by this plotline and it wouldn't leave me alone. Mal, as Calypso, could keep Arthur, Odysseus, her unwilling prisoner in Limbo. Hence the title, "Memories of Odysseus."
Just to answer potential questions: the reason I never used the name of the main character of "Memories of Odysseus" until the end of the very last page was for the shock factor. My goal for this story was to fool the reader into thinking all along that the man, "He," was Cobb, and not Arthur. Next potential question: Why Arthur? Why Arthur and not Cobb? For one thing, Arthur would make a much better Odysseus than Cobb, in this case. And...I took that one line, "She was lovely," and ran with it! ;) I hope it wasn't too shocking.
I'm not sure how well I pulled off my goal of concealing Arthur's identity, so I'd really appreciate reviews and comments about your reaction to the story!
P.S.- Listening to the Love Theme by Vangelis really enhances the story (I say that every time I recommend a song)!