Title: I Am the Hero of This Story (Don't Need to Be Saved)
Fandom: Inception
Pairing: gen, Cobb/Mal
Categories: Angst, Drama, Character Study, Mal-was-right
Length: Medium (4,101 words)
Warnings: Spoilers for Inception, Author warning for sadness (though it is hopeful)

Author on LJ: electrumqueen
Author Website: electrumqueen

Summary:
It's all right-- no one's got it all.
Mal wakes up; Dom doesn't.

Review:
This is THE Mal-was-right story; one of the (if not THE) first ones written in the fandom, and it stands the test of time. From the title, to the lyrical prose, and above all, to the characterizations (Mal!!), this story is powerful and intense. You're dragged into Mal's experiences, and what she would have had to deal with were she to awake: her grief and frustration, a husband trapped in a coma, her children's confusion, their friends, and the possibility of saving Dom. electrumqueen breathes life into Mal, fleshing her out into a complex being, and interweaves her story into the film. As the title says, Mal is the hero of this story, and she'll do the saving, and I want to cheer her at by the end.

She is thirty-two years old. Her husband is in a hospital bed, dreaming. They call him comatose and stumble around you can kill him if you like.

She tells them no. He is her husband, her partner, her friend; she knows him like she knows herself and she can do nothing else but hope that one day he will realize where she is and come to join her. He is not what he was; he is a creature of wires now, not flesh.

She swallows, looking at him. Her mouth is dry. She presses her totem into his palm and closes his fingers around it.

She wonders if he can hear the click of her shoes across the floor, if he thinks she has abandoned him. (She wonders if he would be right to think so.)

She shuts the door behind her and does not look back.

I Am the Hero of This Story (Don't Need to Be Saved) (AO3), (LJ), or the original inception_kink post
Also available as a podfic, read by quintenttsy here.