"Atalantë" is Quenya for "Downfallen".
Just something I wrote when I wasn't really feeling the fluffy love clouds.
~LS
He was twenty years old, fresh out of a prestigious liberal arts college with a bachelor's degree in cognitive science, when he agreed to be a test subject for a new piece of military technology. His sponsor had shown him the machine, a great, bulky thing with thick plastic lines running out of it and a heart that hummed and pulsed against its fingertips. He had touched the heart of the machine and felt it reach into him, and he in turn reached into it. The bottom of reality dropped out and he felt himself being poured into an empty space; there was a breathtaking moment of stillness, like the beginning and the end of the world, before colors and lines and people began bleeding in. This was the first PASIV.
Creation was something new to him. He had never been an architect, nor had he ever concerned himself with admiring the Romanic arches of Italian cathedrals, the prickliness of Middle Age flying buttresses in England, the Moroccan influence on homes in Spain. Subsequently, his first dream was blocky, solid as the mind from whence it had sprung. His sponsor was a man who Arthur knew only as Dom, who chose to accompany him on his third collapse into dream-space. Arthur built him a city of steel and glass; Dom declared his admiration for the unyielding nature of the dream and Arthur's inherent sensitivity to change in short order. He walked Arthur out of the building with the PASIV in hand, nodding at the MP's guarding the front door who saw nothing but two men and a briefcase. They let them pass.
Two days later Arthur received a call from an unidentified service member, who screamed over and over into the phone that he was a thief, that he would be chased down and locked away in a prison cell so small it was probably unconstitutional. It was then that he realized that Dom was not his sponsor... was not, in fact, affiliated with the government at all. He quietly packed his things and MapQuested the last address Dom had given him. You're going to need this, his sponsor had said as they'd driven off-base. At the time Arthur had wondered if he'd made a friend in his sponsor, if he would be kicked up in the program.
Dom's home was located in southern France, in a township caught in the hills several miles outside of Paris. It had been a long, stressful flight for Arthur, who had hurried to buy a ticket before he was placed on Interpol's alert list. From some of the looks he had received from airport security, he assumed his name and most recent picture had already been floated through the various enforcement bureaus. But he had kept his head down and slipped out of the Parisian airport relatively unnoticed. Now he stood at Dom's door and tried to come up with something to say. He settles for punching the other man in the nose...only to take several steps back when a beautiful woman stepped out onto the front porch.
She smiled uncertainly, delicate hands lingering on her swollen stomach, and inquired gently as to what it was he wanted. In French, naturally. Arthur was blessed with an aptitude for languages, and he politely asked if Dom was home. MAL! Who is it?
What's your name, my dear? she had asked again in French.
It's Arthur. His name at the time had not been Arthur, had not even been close...but when he looks back on these moments later, he can only think of himself as Arthur. He cannot allow himself to think of what he was before, of who he was before.
Dom appears behind the woman named Mal, dressed quite differently than he had been when Arthur had met him. He's carrying a mug and there's a bright spot at his wrist where an IV might have fit. Arthur lunges past the pregnant woman (who he can only assume is Dom's wife) and drives the thief into the ground, shattering the man's nose. You've ruined my life! How the fuck could you DO that to someone? In the end it is the woman, Mal, who peels Arthur off of her husband and asks them both what is going on, and is this about the machine he brought home from America? The one the doctors said he could have?
What are you using it for, bastard?
The other man pinches his nose, swollen and bloodied, and tells him rather nasally about an accident Mal was in when she was sixteen. She sustained traumatic head injuries that had never properly healed, and had in fact developed scar tissue over the part of the brain that controlled REM sleep. She hasn't dreamed in eight years. Arthur subsides. Mal looks between them and retreats into a further recess of the home; when she re-emerges, it is with the PASIV.
Is this what you came here for? she asks, and he doesn't have the heart to tell her yes.
x-x-x-x-x
Arthur shares a dream with Dominic Cobb shortly after Mal gives birth to their first child, a healthy little girl named Phillipa. In it is a beach covered in sand-castles and rainbow umbrellas, and the air is swift and sweet over the water. A projection of Mal and their baby, Mal with white at the temples and the child in a red pullover and capris, play at the water's edge. Once they turn and call to Dom and Arthur, their voices blending; up close, it will be a mishmash of consonants and phonetics, barely intelligible to anyone who isn't the dreamer. Arthur unclasps the first button of his dress shirt and thinks that what Dominic wants really isn't so bad. The anger he had felt after the theft of the PASIV and his unwilling assistance has long since faded. It is little more than a half-remembered dream.
x-x-x-x-x
He is leafing through blueprints in the hopes that he can find a place to squeeze in a set of Penrose stairs when Mal walks in with her two small children. Their faces and fingers are smeared with ice cream, and their cheeks are wind-slapped and cold. He touches their foreheads once in greeting (they know better than to grab his nice clothes when they're dirty) and asks Mal what she's doing here.
I came for my husband, she says, and her voice is hollow and brittle. Arthur knows what she is here for, but he cannot give it to her. Dom has been trying to wean her off the somnacin for months now; he still believes it is the reason for her miscarriage, the loss of their third child. Arthur isn't sure what he believes, but he knows that if Mal were to go into the dreamspace now, she would have to face what lay in her deepest of hearts. And he cannot consign her to that.
He's out.
I know. Her hands shake when Phillipa passes her a daisy, plucked from the fringe of grass growing stubbornly from cracks in the warehouse's cement. James blows a raspberry into Arthur's face, spattering him with baby-spit. May I...? She lifts his blueprints before he can protest, and he sees the hunger when the pale mask of her face is momentarily thrust aside. She wants something that he cannot give her, and his heart breaks for this woman who is his sister in every way. He stands and pries the papers out of her fingers.
Take them home, Mal. Don't come back here. He kisses her cheek, dry as sandpaper. Whatever had happened to the blushing bride, all peaches and cream in her lover's arms? Whatever had happened to the proud mother, taping Phillipa's finger-paintings to the refrigerator with a smile and a song? Please.
She leaves.
x-x-x-x-x
He doesn't hear from her until the night of her anniversary, busy attempting to get in touch with a Forger he'd heard about through the grapevine when his phone buzzes. Once. Arthur rolls his totem across the desk and answers the call, a slight smile on his face when the die lands on the proper number. Yes?
I need to see you! Something's happened to Dom.
x-x-x-x-x
The Grand is split into two parts, and it is the second that Arthur finds himself rushing into, colliding with Mal in the middle of the lobby. Miles must have had the children. He doesn't quite remember if they ever asked him to watch them; all he knows is that they were not there.
She is beautiful in her terror, face beautifully made-up in an attempt to recreate other nights spent here in the early days of her marriage. Her fingers are cold in Arthur's, colder than ice and champagne as she leads him up the endless flights of stairs. It registers once they've reached the door to her room that this is not where she usually stays. And when the door opens, he can see that out the window lies another window, and behind it a destroyed room. Mal, what's the meaning of this?
There is no meaning, Artie. The Frenchwoman touches his face with the back of her hand, soothing. It's all a dream.
I don't understand.
Her smile was sad. Of course you don't...not yet.
What's going on?
Il n'a rien de personnel, mon cher. Vous me remercierez dans la matinée.
She shoots him between the eyes, spreading the back of his head across the lush white carpet. For a moment he lingers in a breathless hush, his death like the beginning of a dream.
There is no one there.
Not even Arthur is there.
...and then he wakes up.
x-x-x-x-x
A beautiful young woman Cobb introduces as Ariadne shakes his hand, fingers soft and smooth and Arthur thinks of Mal, equally beautiful. Something in his chest clenches like a fist and Cobb's eyes fixate on him, unreadable. Pleased to meet you, Ariadne. Would you like me to show you what you can do?
Mal has killed him 86 times since her death, always with something like a homecoming in her face as Arthur slides into the silence before the beginning of a dream and opens his eyes with the man he once knew only as Dom. It comes as no surprise, then, when she materializes behind Arthur and Ariadne on the Penrose stairs, placing a hollow hand on the smalls of their backs and thrusting them over the edge. Ariadne screams, shrilly.
...and then he wakes up.
x-x-x-x-x
The man introduces himself as Eames, a Forger, and his name tickles at the back of Arthur's head for a moment before it collapses away. He remembers Eames' face, but only so much as he might remember a dream he had before the PASIV. Arthur takes his hand, feels the warmth and the history of it, and his skin buzzes. How long has it been since he's been touched? How long has it been since he's felt someone kiss his mouth, run their fingers through his hair...a terrible hunger pulls out the bottom of his stomach, and he jerks his hand away from Eames.
The Forger blinks at him.
"Is he always like this, your Arthur?" he asks, his voice smooth and cultured. Ariadne shrugs.
"As long as I've known him."
The men Cobb introduces as Saito and Yusuf don't bother to shake Arthur's hand.
He bows gracefully out when they start discussing plans, pressing his Glock 17 against his temple. He understands that he cannot know all of the details.
...and then he wakes up.
x-x-x-x-x
Eames' back is nearly flush with Arthur's chest and Ariadne's fingers dig into his forearm; the former smells faintly of Anthracite and sweat, while the latter wears cherry-blossom perfume. He wonders what he smells like to them.
"Ohgodohgodohgod-" Ariadne whispers. "Shitshitshit how are we going to get out of this?"
"Arthur, Cobb tells me you were in the military," Eames says.
He must have left out the part about their disgraceful retreat from the United States, or Eames wouldn't be saying it so smoothly. Although, to be fair, Arthur has picked up so much from the dreams that he might as well have been in the military. He splays his hand across Eames' shoulder-blade in reply, feels the ridge of muscle and bone shifting under his palm and the low rumble of the Forger's laughter.
"Right then."
They dream a small armory and split it as evenly as they can, fighting off the projections in waves. Blood sprays warmly across Arthur's face and he keeps his lips tightly pressed, mowing line after line of wild-eyed people down. He turns to look at Eames once, sees the Forger's hideous paisley shirt almost completely coated in scarlet that is not his own, his teeth gritted; a muscle in his jaw leaps and Arthur's heart copies it. He doesn't look at Eames again.
Ariadne's muffled cry echoes in the hall behind them, soft and distant, when the last projection crumples to the tile.
"We did it, darling." Eames swipes the back of his hand across his face, smearing the blood, a smile dancing at the corners of his full, soft mouth.
And then they're both laughing, and fitted together like puzzle pieces, and Arthur is waitingwaitingwaiting. Eames' hands slide to the small of his back, more than friendly and Arthur yields. They stay that way, tightly interlocked, their own separate unit until Yusuf arrives with the other PASIV.
...and then he wakes up.
x-x-x-x-x
They make it to the rendezvous on the third level, but only barely.
And if anyone notices that Arthur's hair looks as if someone's been running their fingers through it, or that there's a bite mark on Eames' neck, barely hidden by the collar of his shirt, no one says anything. They lie down together, soles of their feet touching the soles of everyone else's feet, smudged and relaxed and content.
...and then he wakes up.
x-x-x-x-x
Cobb pushes him back against the taxi, snarling face mere inches from Arthur's.
"What the hell are you doing?" Ariadne's shout is like nails on a chalkboard. Toomuchtoomuchtoomuch. "Cobb?"
"You should have known! This was your responsibility, we are not prepared for this!"
Arthur shoves him, hard, and Cobb reels. The heel of his shoe catches on Saito's prone form and he hits the ground with a surprised whuff, and Arthur cannot find it in him to help him back up. Something in his core throbs, broken. He thinks he might know what it is. He curls his consciousness around it, finds truth to be solid and smooth like a kitsune's star ball.
"I can't possibly have known," he says softly. "I only know what you know."
The Extractor closes his eyes, and sags like a puppet with its strings cut.
"What the fuck do you mean, you couldn't have known?" Eames asks. His voice is hard, uncomprehending. Darling.
"Oh God." Yusuf takes a step back, clutching at his chest. "Cobb, what have you done?"
Arthur reaches up to touch the place where his heart stopped beating three years ago. He remembers so clearly now, the moment Mal, lovely, disillusioned Mal, placed a bullet in his brain. The hours spent caught in the spaces between waking and dreaming, existing only in Dominic Cobb's mind. His teammates, only introduced within dreams (he wonders how Cobb managed to hide his incorporeality from them). Eames. The Forger he'd been checking in to when he'd received the call from Mal. The man who might as well be the goddamn sun in the east as far as he's concerned.
"I'm so sorry, Arthur." Cobb moves like an old man, crawling towards their injured Tourist.
"He's a projection?" Ariadne gasps. "But you told us-"
"I lied."
"Arthur?" Eames speaks softly, sliding his voice underneath Cobb's sharp defense and Ariadne's accusations. The Point Man spreads his hands wide, knowing he has nothing to offer Eames. He is hardly more substantial than the dream surrounding him. I am a trick, an illusion of the highest order, so incredible that I am actually true.
"I'm real," he says. "I'm as real as the rest of you."
"Which is to say, my love, that you're not. You're just an excellent liar," Eames whispers.
Cobb looks up at him and tells him to stay, that they still need him. That maybe Saito should dream the second level, Saito who is bleeding and hovering on the cusp of Limbo, but is still more real than Arthur will ever be again. He turns to Ariadne, to Yusuf and finds them full of pity; a tear falls down the Architect's cheek when he looks at Eames. But the Forger is not looking, because Arthur is nothing more than a projection and they never have been (and never will be). They don't know that they can still feel, can still hurt, can still love.
He doesn't wait to wake up.
He will never wake up again.
x-x-x-x-x
Eames kisses him before the kick back to reality.
Take me with you, Arthur pleads. Don't leave me.
And he feels Eames tense, hears the faint threads of the music pulling him away, and he kisses him again. Please don't forget. I'll be waiting for you.
Then he lifts up, and lets go.