what stays and fades away
inception; arthur/mal; ~1,700 words; it's time to go.

for the prompt Arthur falls into limbo and his own projection of Mal pulls him out, originally posted here for the awesome nostalgiafest 2011.  reposted it because I wanted to tweak it a bit, fix a few of the errors.









Arthur is killed on the first level on Sunday, sixteen hours left on the clock.  Arthur watches Ariadne take a bullet to the shoulder before he shoves her through the door, only enough time to break the handle before Fischer's projections find him slumped against the steel frame, the wound in his leg gushing blood.

The projection standing above Arthur looks at him blankly, no emotion cresting on his face as the bullet slams into the bone of Arthur's skull.





Below, Arthur wakes in the surf, half-drowning in his heavy pants and leather jacket.  He opens his eyes and sees nothing but water, his head three feet under the swells as he struggles to break the surface.  The sand under his feet is sudden, like he summons it himself.  It's only when he's coughing the sea water out of his lungs on the beach that he realizes he did, that in limbo, he doesn't need to be the dreamer to craft the foundation of the world.  Cobb had explained it once, a little drunk and morose, how building was even more reflexive in limbo, how unconscious thoughts manifested themselves into reality with an ease not found on other layers of dreaming.

For the most part, Cobb had never spoken much about limbo after Mal had died, never really talked about their stay, about what they built together in the depths of their shared subconscious.  Seeing it now, Arthur can feel Mal in the structures, in their elegant precision, the order of their lines stretching into the distance, even in their advanced state of decay, chipping and falling into the water.

Arthur's vision is still sore and blurry from the salt water as he notices movement out of the corner of his eye.  As it grows closer, Mal walks out of the blur.

Cobb is down here somewhere, probably still tortured by his projection of Mal.  The vicious, vengeful creature that had shot Arthur, stabbed him, burned him in dreams, tried to torture the memories of the real Mal out of him slowly, poisoning her beauty with ugliness.

He flinches away, stumbling back until he's upright, searching her for whatever weapon she's about to pull, to use against him.

Instead, she takes his wet face in her palms, and says, Arthur, letting her head tip into his, her nose brushing his cheek, and Arthur knows instantly that this Mal belongs to him.





They build Paris.

(He builds Paris, Arthur tries to remind himself.  She is only a reflection of him, an extension of his mind, but it's filtered through his memories of Mal, and it's so easy to believe that this is her, that when she died, a part of her slipped down to this place, safe from the madness that consumed her above.)

They build her old apartment, the place they had dreamed together in before they met Dom Cobb, before Arthur lost her to him, then to her own mind.  She wears the same old Parisian fashions she wore when they were both younger, takes her coffee black instead of two creams and sugar (a habit she picked up when she and Cobb moved to Los Angeles), still smells like sage and the cheap perfume she'd pick up at Le Bon March, but she smiles with the full richness of their history together, the same familiarity.

There's no deception here: they both know this is limbo, that what they are building isn't real, that she isn't real (and of course, of course his projection of her is cognizant of her own forgery - perhaps that is what makes her most authentic; Mal had always been the best of them, the most lucid of them in the dreams).

All the same, he still fucks her on the small bed in that apartment, the same bed she had sat on in the real world and told him that she was pregnant, that Dom had proposed.




Tell me about them, she asks him one night.  The light sheet draped over her does little to cover her naked body, the entire spread of her back bare against the evening air.  The curve of her breast rests against the back of his fingers, his arm spread to her.

James is getting so big, Arthur says.  Pippa looks so much like you it's scary.  She has your lovely temper, too.

Her laugh is soft and joyful, and the sound makes Arthur want to crawl out of his own skin.  He's missed this, missed her more than he let himself feel, crammed it down with job after job and a life with no center, no real home.  Letting it loose feels like ripping out stitches on a festering wound.  He needs this, forgotten how different it had been with her in the world beside him.

Are they happy?

Arthur's hand leaves the warmth of her skin, reaching up to run through his hair, to rub over his eyes.  He pauses before he answers.  They miss you, he says.  Then: They miss Dom.

Mal's face is tense suddenly.  It's the same face she used to make when he'd reappear after weeks overseas, when he wouldn't call, unwilling to subject himself to the quiet torture of listening to her blossoming life without him through the receiver.  He needs to get back to them, Arthur.  You need to get him back to them.

Arthur had never been tempted to believe Cobb's version of Mal because she had been the antithesis of everything that Mal had been in the real world.  But this Mal, this Mal is everything he remembers, everything that he had been in love with, resurrected and in his bed.  Free of betrayal and obligation.

He slides over her.  I know.





(It's years.  Years together in limbo.  They grow old together, live the life he had always imagined might have been.  She shares his bed, wakes in the morning beside him.  He brews her coffee (always black) and cooks her toast and eggs, sunny side up.  She knots his ties and argues with him relentlessly over the historical legacy of Aldof Loos.  He builds her Mus�e d'Orsay and Cit� de l'Architecture et du Patrimoine, all the places he remembers her loving back when they lived in the city together. 

Every night he tells himself it isn't real.  He won't become Cobb, lost between the reality and the dream; it isn't real and he knows it.  He only finds himself not caring.

What scares him is that it isn't not knowing how long he'll be trapped in limbo before the sedation will wear off above that he truly fears, but rather not knowing if each day is the last one he will have with her.)





He wakes up one morning in their bed, the sheets beside him cold, no trace of body heat left. 

Arthur finds her down in the small park near their apartment.  She's wearing the same dress she wore the night she died in the real world, the purple fabric that had gone black with blood in the street by the time he had arrived, only the edge of it visible under the sheet the police had draped over her body.

There's blood on this one as well, though it doesn't seem to be hers; there's blood streaked on her arms and across her collarbones, too.  Mal looks like she did on that night, like she did when he woke on the shore of limbo, no hint of the time they have spent together in this place on her skin.

For a flickering moment, Arthur wonders if this is his Mal at all, if Cobb's projection has finally found him.  She takes a step forward and he squares his shoulders, says, Mal, in a tone that sounds like a warning.

She smiles fondly, totally incongruous with the state of her, the blood on her skin drying into a pasty crimson.  Shhh, Mal says, touching his cheek with a warm palm.  Just come.





Cobb's body is on the floor of the house he had shared with Mal in Los Angeles, this one built into the ninety-third story of one of the buildings downtown.  There are pictures of his children hung on the walls, shots of them older - Philippa graduating high school and James in a JV soccer uniform.  Cobb's eyes are open, a pool of blood resting under his body; the knife she had used on him is resting on the dining room table.  Arthur looks at Mal, panic coursing through him.

Saito's gone too, she says calmly from across the room.  Dark clouds start to roll through the sky, the distant threat of thunder.  It's time to go, Arthur.

His blood goes completely cold.  The sedation has finally worn off.  He isn't sure how she knows, but he believes that she does, that it has.  Mal.  Wait.

She takes a step back toward the edge of the balcony, a soft, sympathetic smile on her lips.  I won't let you stay here with me, Arthur.  I know you will, and I won't let you.

Arthur holds out his palms, trying to stop her, trying to reason with her.  Mal, he says.  Don't do this.

She shakes her head, determination spilling across her face.  You need to go home.  You need to take Dom home to my children, she explains.

Arthur shifts his hand, twisting it out for her to take.  The look on her face is now remorseful, and he imagines his looks the same.

No! he yells as she steps off the balcony, her body disappearing from view.  He reaches the edge just in time to watch her body hit the ground, the sound of it eaten by the distance, nothing save for the wind audible from this height.  He lets out a ragged sob, gripping a small support pillar beside him.  She's not much more than a small dot on the pavement from this height, and he wills himself to close his eyes, to not let this be the last memory he has of her.

Instead he remembers the real Mal, the one he had loved for years, the one that he had lost, but that had always belonged to him in a way that was his alone.

Arthur steps off the balcony.










Arthur wakes, drowning in the stale air of the plane.