All the Little Pieces
Title: All The Little Pieces
Fandom: Inception
Pairing: mostly gen, Arthur/Eames, Ariadne/Yusuf, past!Cobb/Mal undertones
Summary: We study the possessions of people who lived long ago to get a glimpse into their world, but we study the things kept by the people of today to get a glimpse into their hearts.
Author's Note: Fill for this Round 13 kink meme prompt: community.livejournal.com/inception_kink/17044.html
If you enter the warehouse in the early hours of the morning, before any of the usual inhabitants get there, you might be surprised to find that it looks very like a regular office, with desks and a whiteboard, a drafting table off to one side. The chemistry set-up on the far side of the room spoils the effect somewhat, but overall, despite the setting, the place really does have the feel of a normal work environment.
That's even right down to the desks with their personal touches. The first one you come to is neat but not overly so, belonging to someone who obviously likes to be organized but isn't fussed by a bit of disorder. The most eye-catching thing on the desk is a brightly colored picture frame. It's one of the souvenir frames from Disney World, and the picture it holds is of a fair-haired man with two children, an arm around each of them. They're young, the boy no older than five and the girl about seven, with wide, brilliant smiles. The man's smile is more subdued, but no less real for all that. Both of the children are wearing Mickey Mouse ears, and the man - their father, you assume - has a pair dangling from one hand.
There's not much else on the desk, save a blown-glass model of a Venetian mask. It's strange, because the desk is obviously that of a man, and it's hard to guess why he would have such a thing. He would be able to tell you why, because he asked his late wife to marry him when they were at Carnivale in Venice, and he keeps the model that is an exact replica of the mask she wore as a reminder of what she was really like. The man has another memento of his wife, but that one, a brass top, has been tarnished by sorrow. This is not, this is all good memories, and he likes to have it to look at.
Over at the drafting table, there is a corkboard hanging on the wall next to it. This is covered by postcards from various cities around the world. There's also a pennant from an American high school and an extra postcard with the name of a Paris university. The feel is that of someone young, who still gets excited at the prospect of travel, enjoys it for the sheer thrill of seeing new places. The postcards say places like Sydney and London, Tokyo and Hong Kong, but also Delhi, Istanbul, Vienna, and there's a photograph with a neat label in black marker that says 'Mombasa'.
The table itself is covered with blueprints and sketches, a compass lying forgotten on top of an elaborate design for a castle. For a paperweight there is a figurine of the Egyptian goddess Bastet, and if you could ask the young woman who works here, she would say she got it when she went to see the Cleopatra exhibit at the Franklin Institute in Philadelphia. Here again is a picture frame, this time one of the electronic ones that flicks through pictures. Many of them are the typical shots of family and friends, again suggesting that the woman who works here is young, with many of the pictures taken on high school and college campuses. But the last batch of pictures are different, the people are different. Men, almost exclusively, save for one photo that includes the same children from the Disney World picture. The final picture is of a man with warm brown skin and curly, somewhat messy black hair. He's sprawled asleep on a couch with an orange and white cat curled on his chest. There is an odd intimacy to the picture, something that suggests just what this man is to the woman who works here, but it's quiet, which they could tell you suits them just fine.
Nearby is another desk, this one covered with photographs and notes written in a spiky, bold hand that is surprisingly neat compared to the general disorder of the desk. The photographs are all of one person, taken from every angle, and they don't seem to have special meaning. There is a mirror on this desk, an unusual feature. There's also a mug that clearly holds the last dregs of tea, not coffee, a souvenir mug bought in Baltimore, Maryland. The man who sits at this desk likes to flash a sly grin at people and explain that it's not the city that made him buy that mug, it's what happened there. He also has a St. Dismas medal hanging off the side of the mirror. If you could ask, he'd laugh and say that even a lapsed Catholic is still a Catholic, and he's a thief, so he may as well have the patron saint of thieves keeping an eye on him.
Under the photographs and notes are drawings, and you recognize the people from the changing photo frame, recreated from various angles and perspectives in neat pencil lines. The artist seems to have a favored subject, a man who is all sleek lines and angles and slightly slanted dark eyes. You know it implies something, but you can't quite tell what, just like you wouldn't know what it means for this man to have a set of dog tags in a box hidden away in one of the desk drawers. Especially since the man who uses this desk is British (as evidenced by the small Union Jack sticker on the mirror frame; though he wasn't the one who put it there, it amuses him), and the dog tags belong to a U.S. Marine.
The chemistry set takes up a good bit of the long table it's set on, but one end is clearly meant to serve as a desk to the person who works with the chemicals, at least based on the notebooks with their pages covered in chemical notations. It's gibberish to you or anyone not trained to understand it, so you move on, careful not to knock over the reading glasses that sit on top of one of them. There's a pair of cat figurines sitting on the table, waving lucky cats that say 'Made In Tokyo' on the bottom if you lift one to look. One of them, the smaller one, has a tiny cloth scarf wound around its neck, clearly an addition either by the chemist or someone else. It's probably some kind of inside joke, as is the little British flag that is glued to the other one's hand. That one was a return favor for a matching sticker, but it makes the chemist laugh when he sees it, and so it stays. Besides, he started it.
In one of the drawers is a set of Islamic prayer beads. Their owner is not particularly devout, but his father was, and the beads were his. The man who owns them now keeps them to remember how the smooth wood slipped between his father's dark fingers as he prayed in a quiet voice. Sometimes, when he is upset, the chemist will take them out and run them through his own fingers, just remembering. Sometimes he does use them to pray, but only when the situation really needs prayer. They are too important to him to waste on everyday matters.
The last desk is the neatest of them all, papers stored carefully in color-coded folders. It's not that the person who has this for a workspace is obsessively neat, simply that it is easier for him to work if he can find things quickly, thus the careful organization. A suit jacket hangs forgotten on the desk chair, the previous day warming up to the point that the owner didn't even bother to put it back on when leaving for the day. The desk is surprisingly bare of personal effects, save for a clean coffee mug with the Marine Corps symbol on it. There's a cup of pens on the desk, some of them generic, but others are the sort you buy in souvenir shops. They're from London and Rome and Shanghai, from New York, Los Angeles and oddly enough one from Baltimore. He has a paperweight with an etched glass design of the Philadelphia skyline, which is his home city. He hasn't been back in a long time, but he likes being able to look at the famliar image when he is feeling just a bit homesick, recreated in thin white lines.
There is a small photo on his desk, a group shot of everyone on their team. It's there because he's the one who covers all the bases to keep them all out of trouble, a reminder of why he does it. But there's another reminder too; a box in the back of his desk drawer. This one holds dog tags belonging to someone from Her Majesty's Service, not something you would expect an East Coast native to have. It sits atop a small stack of postcards that you turn over to find covered in bold, spiky handwriting.
If you could really do this, explore this inner sanctum, you would find so many things. They would not all make sense, but they don't have to. They're not for you. They make sense to those who need to understand them, and while you can infer and you might even be right, you will never get the full depth of meaning. But you would feel their importance, and that's enough.
Fandom: Inception
Pairing: mostly gen, Arthur/Eames, Ariadne/Yusuf, past!Cobb/Mal undertones
Summary: We study the possessions of people who lived long ago to get a glimpse into their world, but we study the things kept by the people of today to get a glimpse into their hearts.
Author's Note: Fill for this Round 13 kink meme prompt: community.livejournal.com/inception_kink/17044.html
If you enter the warehouse in the early hours of the morning, before any of the usual inhabitants get there, you might be surprised to find that it looks very like a regular office, with desks and a whiteboard, a drafting table off to one side. The chemistry set-up on the far side of the room spoils the effect somewhat, but overall, despite the setting, the place really does have the feel of a normal work environment.
That's even right down to the desks with their personal touches. The first one you come to is neat but not overly so, belonging to someone who obviously likes to be organized but isn't fussed by a bit of disorder. The most eye-catching thing on the desk is a brightly colored picture frame. It's one of the souvenir frames from Disney World, and the picture it holds is of a fair-haired man with two children, an arm around each of them. They're young, the boy no older than five and the girl about seven, with wide, brilliant smiles. The man's smile is more subdued, but no less real for all that. Both of the children are wearing Mickey Mouse ears, and the man - their father, you assume - has a pair dangling from one hand.
There's not much else on the desk, save a blown-glass model of a Venetian mask. It's strange, because the desk is obviously that of a man, and it's hard to guess why he would have such a thing. He would be able to tell you why, because he asked his late wife to marry him when they were at Carnivale in Venice, and he keeps the model that is an exact replica of the mask she wore as a reminder of what she was really like. The man has another memento of his wife, but that one, a brass top, has been tarnished by sorrow. This is not, this is all good memories, and he likes to have it to look at.
Over at the drafting table, there is a corkboard hanging on the wall next to it. This is covered by postcards from various cities around the world. There's also a pennant from an American high school and an extra postcard with the name of a Paris university. The feel is that of someone young, who still gets excited at the prospect of travel, enjoys it for the sheer thrill of seeing new places. The postcards say places like Sydney and London, Tokyo and Hong Kong, but also Delhi, Istanbul, Vienna, and there's a photograph with a neat label in black marker that says 'Mombasa'.
The table itself is covered with blueprints and sketches, a compass lying forgotten on top of an elaborate design for a castle. For a paperweight there is a figurine of the Egyptian goddess Bastet, and if you could ask the young woman who works here, she would say she got it when she went to see the Cleopatra exhibit at the Franklin Institute in Philadelphia. Here again is a picture frame, this time one of the electronic ones that flicks through pictures. Many of them are the typical shots of family and friends, again suggesting that the woman who works here is young, with many of the pictures taken on high school and college campuses. But the last batch of pictures are different, the people are different. Men, almost exclusively, save for one photo that includes the same children from the Disney World picture. The final picture is of a man with warm brown skin and curly, somewhat messy black hair. He's sprawled asleep on a couch with an orange and white cat curled on his chest. There is an odd intimacy to the picture, something that suggests just what this man is to the woman who works here, but it's quiet, which they could tell you suits them just fine.
Nearby is another desk, this one covered with photographs and notes written in a spiky, bold hand that is surprisingly neat compared to the general disorder of the desk. The photographs are all of one person, taken from every angle, and they don't seem to have special meaning. There is a mirror on this desk, an unusual feature. There's also a mug that clearly holds the last dregs of tea, not coffee, a souvenir mug bought in Baltimore, Maryland. The man who sits at this desk likes to flash a sly grin at people and explain that it's not the city that made him buy that mug, it's what happened there. He also has a St. Dismas medal hanging off the side of the mirror. If you could ask, he'd laugh and say that even a lapsed Catholic is still a Catholic, and he's a thief, so he may as well have the patron saint of thieves keeping an eye on him.
Under the photographs and notes are drawings, and you recognize the people from the changing photo frame, recreated from various angles and perspectives in neat pencil lines. The artist seems to have a favored subject, a man who is all sleek lines and angles and slightly slanted dark eyes. You know it implies something, but you can't quite tell what, just like you wouldn't know what it means for this man to have a set of dog tags in a box hidden away in one of the desk drawers. Especially since the man who uses this desk is British (as evidenced by the small Union Jack sticker on the mirror frame; though he wasn't the one who put it there, it amuses him), and the dog tags belong to a U.S. Marine.
The chemistry set takes up a good bit of the long table it's set on, but one end is clearly meant to serve as a desk to the person who works with the chemicals, at least based on the notebooks with their pages covered in chemical notations. It's gibberish to you or anyone not trained to understand it, so you move on, careful not to knock over the reading glasses that sit on top of one of them. There's a pair of cat figurines sitting on the table, waving lucky cats that say 'Made In Tokyo' on the bottom if you lift one to look. One of them, the smaller one, has a tiny cloth scarf wound around its neck, clearly an addition either by the chemist or someone else. It's probably some kind of inside joke, as is the little British flag that is glued to the other one's hand. That one was a return favor for a matching sticker, but it makes the chemist laugh when he sees it, and so it stays. Besides, he started it.
In one of the drawers is a set of Islamic prayer beads. Their owner is not particularly devout, but his father was, and the beads were his. The man who owns them now keeps them to remember how the smooth wood slipped between his father's dark fingers as he prayed in a quiet voice. Sometimes, when he is upset, the chemist will take them out and run them through his own fingers, just remembering. Sometimes he does use them to pray, but only when the situation really needs prayer. They are too important to him to waste on everyday matters.
The last desk is the neatest of them all, papers stored carefully in color-coded folders. It's not that the person who has this for a workspace is obsessively neat, simply that it is easier for him to work if he can find things quickly, thus the careful organization. A suit jacket hangs forgotten on the desk chair, the previous day warming up to the point that the owner didn't even bother to put it back on when leaving for the day. The desk is surprisingly bare of personal effects, save for a clean coffee mug with the Marine Corps symbol on it. There's a cup of pens on the desk, some of them generic, but others are the sort you buy in souvenir shops. They're from London and Rome and Shanghai, from New York, Los Angeles and oddly enough one from Baltimore. He has a paperweight with an etched glass design of the Philadelphia skyline, which is his home city. He hasn't been back in a long time, but he likes being able to look at the famliar image when he is feeling just a bit homesick, recreated in thin white lines.
There is a small photo on his desk, a group shot of everyone on their team. It's there because he's the one who covers all the bases to keep them all out of trouble, a reminder of why he does it. But there's another reminder too; a box in the back of his desk drawer. This one holds dog tags belonging to someone from Her Majesty's Service, not something you would expect an East Coast native to have. It sits atop a small stack of postcards that you turn over to find covered in bold, spiky handwriting.
If you could really do this, explore this inner sanctum, you would find so many things. They would not all make sense, but they don't have to. They're not for you. They make sense to those who need to understand them, and while you can infer and you might even be right, you will never get the full depth of meaning. But you would feel their importance, and that's enough.