#protagoneil is alive and well

[iwanttostayanonymous]

[iamtheprotagoneil]

i hate myself for this, but movie is all abt palindromes... obviously, the relationship between Neil & The Protagonist is a palindrome in that they both meet each other knowing everything at opposite ends. but what if THE PROTAGONIST takes a bullet for NEIL in the future, and that’s how he goes out? it creates even more symmetry, because they’ll both have to live without each other for a time, and they both technically sacrifice themselves knowing that the other already did it for them. crying

#oh the possibilities are just all heartbreaking dude#ngl my first thought about protagoneil was#that protag probably sacrificed his life for neil#because neil did it for him#but neil did it for him because protag died for neil#yknow very circular#this version of protag dying before telling neil the mission is so tragic#because neil is such a WRECK in his grief and pain#no matter which version of events conspire#ughhh#and then neil feeling to wretched but also euphoric at seeing his love alive#only he isnt his love yet#is just so TRAGIC#i know i use tragic so much but oh god these two really are @cutekitten6 (via)

great minds do think alike, it seems.

the protagonist and neil’s first encounter (no matter at which point in the time line) would always have one of them knowing too much about the other. their middle would be something of a jumbled mess where they tried to learn and relearn things about each other. and in the end, the protagonist would sacrifice himself for neil just as neil would for him, later, in the past.

it would make so much sense if that was how their story went, as tragically poetic as it was.

and yes, the knowledge that your lover would die for you is such a heavy thing to carry, especially all on your own. imagine what neil must have felt like after he left the opera, knowing that he just saved his love’s life just so he could later go on and take a bullet for neil in the future. we keep thinking that neil was a mess in the yacht club scene because he was seeing the love of his life again, knowing that the end was near for himself. but imagine, it was also because he had to face a dead man walking; someone who neil’d been only getting used to speaking about in past tense now sitting right in front of him, looking alive and entirely unaware of his own fate.

then in the future, the protagonist would have to face the same problem. i could already imagine the sad looks he couldn’t help but send neil sometimes; the things he wouldn’t, couldn’t, say because ignorance was their ammunition. it was the policy they both repeated to themselves like mantra, to keep their tongue from slipping because there were bigger things at stake.

i’d like to think they both would be so willing to run straight into the burning building, knowing full well the heat it exuded, for more selfish reasons than they would ever like to admit. after all, saying that i’d die for you the same way you’d died for me just sounded juvenile somehow, insignificant against the better good.

[iwanttostayanonymous]

[iamtheprotagoneil]

Speaking about playlists, there are two songs that in a way scream Protagoneil to me: "Saturn" and "Bad Blood" both by Sleeping at Last. Heartbreaking!

hi, friend. thank you for the recommendations. these songs really do exude protagoneil vibes. “saturn” especially. just...

You taught me the courage of stars before you left How light carries on endlessly even after death With shortness of breath you explained the infinite How rare and beautiful it is to even exist

isn’t that so them? isn’t that neil putting on a brave face, smiling and keeping his nerves in check so he could give the protagonist a proper goodbye, some words of comfort, of encourage and a promise of the future before he had to turn away and walk towards his very last task for the mission?

I couldn't help but ask For you to say it all again I tried to write it down But I could never find a pen

isn’t this the protagonist calling for neil time after time, to hold him back just a little longer, to figure out a way out of this, a way for them both to be alive and well (and together). isn’t this neil telling him that it has to be like this; that what’s happened, happened, and there’s no way around it.

(the last two lines make me think of the protagonist being alone in his nondescript hotel room, with a piece of paper and a pen, writing down all the events that’s happened during the movie, trying to make sense of it all. it makes me think of the protagonist trying to look for a loophole, something he can use to save neil AND the world at the same time, but there’s nothing he can write down, nothing solid forming in his head, and he can’t carry out something like that without a plan. so even WITH a pen, he’s helpless; he’s unable to save neil in the way he most wanted to.)

I'd give anything to hear You say it one more time That the universe was made Just to be seen by my eyes

look it’s just... 😭😭🤧🤧 also the last two lines of the song, repeating the last lines of the first verse but in a different pov? 😭😭🤧🤧 makes me think about the protagonist dying in the future, in neil’s arms, promising him that it’s all for a reason, that it’s meant to be, and that he’s glad that they’re meant to be as well 😭🤧

[iamtheprotagoneil]

when i was writing my answer for the second part of this ask from alicia, i actually came up with a fic idea but since my schedule is pretty packed for a while to come, i probably won’t be able to turn this idea into an actual fic. so to keep this from fading away into the oblivion that is my awful memory, i’mma just do what ive made this blog for, which is rambling away:

there’s this hongkong tv show i watched ages ago, but one of the subplot really stuck with me. it follows one of the main characters on his journey to his eventual greatness. in this subplot, he’s stuck in an ice cage and, every night, he’d meet a girl (circumstances are a bit icky, but let’s digress). the ice cage is so dark and freezing that, to both of them, it feels more dreamlike than reality. they even prefer to each other as ‘mộng lang’ and ‘mộng cô’ which loosely translates to ‘dream man’ and ‘dream lady’.

later on, the girl (who turns out to be a princess) hosts an event to search for a consort (although, in honesty, she’s hoping to meet her dream man again). in the event, she hides behind some thick drapes that hide her identity, and asks her suitors questions that only her dream man would be able to answer – or answer correctly, anyway. the guy only comes to the event out of obligation, rather than any actual wish to be the prince consort. however, his intention changes as his turn to go ‘meet’ the princess comes, and then the questions, and then the realization that his dream lady is just behind those drapes.

i just find it so poetic that they only meet each other through bizarre circumstances, that they don’t even know of each other’s true identity, only falling in love with each other’s voice and wits. then, after a while apart, they find each other again, through sheer coincidence, and are able to reconcile on what they’d thought was only a lost connection.

which, ahh, makes me think of an AU, of sorts, for protagoneil. perhaps, they wouldn’t meet in an ice cage, but in a prison (idk, that’s just what my mind decided on), maybe in some place where they’re held captive in rooms next to each other, a place with rules so reclusive that they never get to see each other, only a voice as proof of the other’s existence. their situation – being locked up in a room with only a small window as indication that the outside world does exist, although distant – would make their interaction with each other so surreal, as if the other is nothing more than a figment of their imagination, another sign that they’ve gone mad in this captivity.

hell, we can make this even more tragic by setting in the tenet ‘verse, post-canon. perhaps a mission went awry, and the protagonist finds himself captured by some antagonists with greedy, self-serving purposes for tenet’s inversion technology. perhaps, the protagonist thinks neil’s voice – or whoever it is that sounds so much like the neil he once met – coming through the wall is just his mind coping to the loneliness and isolation. he’s never had problems with either before, but the circumstances are different now. now he’s got a ghost living up in his head, that he’s been missing and thinking about more than he’d ever admit to another soul.

i imagine their conversations can only be held in the night, spoken so quietly – barely above a whisper – so as to not alert the guards. the secrecy drown in complete darkness truly adds another layer of surrealism to it all. they never exchange names – the protagonist bc he doesn’t want to compromise himself, and neil bc well, if the protagonist doesn’t bother to offer name then why should he?

the things they talk about are simple, although unclear on whether what is true and what is warped into something not quite a lie, but close. they talk mostly to keep themselves sane (ironic, isn’t it?), to have a little distraction from the horrid things await them when morning comes.

i imagine the protagonist would wake up one day, call for neil, but get no answer in return. he tries more times, through many nights but still, no answer. neil’s just gone, so suddenly, and the protagonist can’t decide which sense of the word is worst. eventually, after a few more days of torture, of wondering and dreading, the protagonist finds his freedom.

it’s a joined effort, from himself and the tenet team sent to rescue him. i imagine the protagonist checking the room besides, finding it vacant of any furniture and living soul. he decides there that, yeah, perhaps the time in and out of inversion, paired with the isolation and torture he was put through, has really done a number on his mental state.

then, some months later, the protagonist would meet the voice in his head once again, but this time, with confirmation that it’s been real all along.

see, neil’s been moved to another holding facility. the antagonists have wanted him to work for them; have taken interests in the research he’s been doing on a particular field of physics and decided that he would be perfect to help them in their malicious plot for greed. neil... well, i wouldn’t say they broke through him, but he did agree eventually. the torture had been too much, and he was tired – he hated having to go back to the cell they were holding him in, facing this sickening dread as he questioned his sanity.

the voice in his cell had been a great reprieve from the undue punishments on his body, but not enough to completely elevate him from the pain of it. so he “broke”. he agreed to work with the antagonists, to save himself since it was obvious that no one ever would.

and that’s how the protagonist finds him again; when he breaks down the antagonists’ second location and discovers a compliant neil seemingly working for the people that was going to put a whole lot of lives in danger for their own greedy purposes. before they can say anything to each other, though, neil’s taken out by another agent – a sleeping dart placed carefully on his neck and pushed. the protagonist never did get the agents’ identity, having lost track of them in the midst of chaos going around him.

later, when neil is put in their medical care facility, the protagonist stands outside of his room, watching him sleep through the glass window and listening to a report about his conditions. it contains everything from the moment neil went missing from his london flat (presumed dead), to the time he’s spent under the antagonists’ captivity, to the point where they found him. then, the protagonist is shown a document, including various equations and graphs and terms that mostly went through his head.

he looks to the reporting agent, expecting a better explanation. the agent points out that the equations are wrong, but so delicately that she would’ve missed it if she hadn’t thought to take another, harder look.

“even if they’d gotten with it, their plan would’ve failed. that document you’re holding in your hand ensures that.” she turns to look at neil, regarding his sleeping figure. “he might’ve given into the idea of ever getting out of their claws, but he never gave in. he never truly gave them what they’d wanted from him.”

all of that winds down to one simple fact: neil’s passed the test, and the protagonist knows what that means. the protagonist has to wait a few hours for it, though; for neil to finally wake up and have his induction into tenet. in the meantime, he sits on the couch inside neil’s room, and waits, watching neil’s eyelids flutter in sleep, and feeling sorrow/rage/frustration grip tight to his being as he thinks about things that has and will happen to neil.

when neil wakes up, the protagonist is just right there to welcome him into the afterlife. he keeps his speech short, giving neil a brief overview of his situation, but neil isn’t really listening. the protagonist’s words blur together, not because of neil’s groggy mind, but because of a single, simple realization. it hits him so hard that he just can’t keep in the lone tear falling from his eyes. the protagonist sees this, and his heart aches – remembering how it’s felt when he was the one who was lying on the bed, getting told that his entire team had failed to make it out alive – and unlike his own recruited, the protagonist tries to comfort neil with, “listen, i know it’s hard—”

but neil just cuts him off entirely, reciting a phrase he’s said before, to the man he’s thought was just a dream his tired mind made up to keep him company at the late hours of the night. it stops the protagonist right in his tracks, staring down at neil, breathing harshly through his lips because he can’t believe it. he’s thought, also, but apparently, he’s thought wrong.

“i’m glad you’re real,” neil says, as he watches the same realization he’s experienced dawn on the protagonist’s face.

the protagonist takes a moment to respond, still a little bit stunned by neil’s words. then, he takes an easy breath, relaxing his tense shoulders, smiles down at neil - small and private, something just for the too of them - and says, “me too.”

because despite everything that had happened to them both during their time in that prison, they still had each other. they were there for each other, and the protagonist gets it now - the beautiful friendship that neil had alluded to. it is quite beautiful - poetic too, maybe - for them to have found each other in such a hopeless place, then lost that connect, then reconnecting it again because fate has willed it so.

the protagonist can’t help, even more so now that they are together again, looking forward to the things they will get up to - as promised. neil’s smile, sleepy yet sincere, tells him the very same thing.