(no subject)
Title: Narrative Structure
Fandom: Inception
Characters/Pairings: Ariadne, Arthur, Eames, cameos by Yusuf and various OCs
Ratings/Warnings: PG-13; swearing, discussions of child abuse (not actually depicted, and not involving any canon characters), gratuitous literary references.
Written for: N/A
Wordcount: 8000 (Yes, I know.)
A/N: This was intended to be both a lot shorter, and focused entirely on Ariadne, but it quickly became about how she relates to the rest of the team, which meant Arthur and Eames drifted in a lot as well. (Yusuf is an uncommunicative bastard who complicates everything by not doing field work.) Nonetheless, it's still really about Ariadne getting her feet under her as a dreamer.
I.
“Ah, Eames, thank you for joining us,” Arthur says dryly as the hotel room door shuts behind the forger. Ariadne smiles at him; Yusuf waves.
“Not my fault this time, darling. My flight was delayed.”
“I see. Anyway, sit.” Arthur gestures to a chair and pulls out his briefcase. “It’s good to work with you three again. The job is simple extraction - Eames, I was hoping you’d be the extractor for this, since I can’t find anyone free whom I’ve worked with personally, and I don’t want to risk this one with an unknown factor.”
“Fine by me, especially since I wouldn’t work with Cobb again if my life depended on it,” Eames drawls. “But if it’s simple extraction, why don’t you want to work with a stranger? Just anxious?”
“No. But it’s a delicate job.” He sighs and leans forward slightly. “The mark is six.”
For a moment there is absolute silence except for the hum of the air conditioner. Then Eames practically explodes out of his chair.
“What the actual fuck, Arthur?” he snarls.
“Calm down!” Arthur doesn’t look at all intimidated. “It’s for her sake, not anyone else’s. Our client is the father. The mother abused him. He’s in the process of divorce. He’s worried the mother is abusing the girl as well, but if he raises the issue and it turns out to be false then he’ll definitely lose custody. He wants evidence beforehand.” He stands. “We’ll be helping the kid, Eames. Come on.”
Ariadne bites her lip, glancing from one man to the other in the thickening tension. She doesn’t understand what’s going on here, what’s up with this sudden attack of warped morals, but Arthur looks as close to pleading as she’s ever seen him, hands spread out and eyes entreating. Eames’s white-knuckled fists are preternaturally still and his eyes are flickering frantically between Arthur and the door and the pictures - typical school pictures of a gap-toothed redhead in yellow - spilling out of the briefcase.
“The father is desperate, Eames,” Arthur says, stepping closer, and then his voice drops and Ariadne can’t catch what he says next, but it must matter because Eames collapses back into his chair and buries his face in his hands.
“Fine, I’ll do it,” he says, muffled but intelligible. “But you owe me for this one, dammit.”
“I understand,” Arthur says, adjusting his sleeves, and Ariadne wants to scream. But then he looks over at her and says “Ariadne, can you construct an environment where the girl will feel safe?” and she shakes it off.
“Yeah,” she says, “definitely. What kind of things does she like?”
----
The day of the heist finds them waking, as expected, into a field of peonies and hand-sized roses. Ariadne shakes out her velvet skirts and glances around; Eames, she finds, is kneeling beside her.
“I’m not sure any real flowers have ever been so soft,” he comments, rubbing a petal between his fingers. “Not, however, that I’m complaining.”
“Vastly preferable to realistic flora,” Arthur agrees, seemingly materializing out of the ferns. “In character, please, Mr. Eames.”
“Certainly.” Ariadne blinks and then Eames is replaced by a man several inches taller and a good ten years younger, fair-haired and dressed in armor far brighter than any real knight’s could possibly have been. “Let’s get this show on the road, shall we?” He glances around. “Where exactly have you brought us in?”
“It looks like south-southeast of the castle.” Ariadne is the dreamer, but Arthur answers anyway, pointing to the gleaming towers and snapping pennants just visible beyond the gentle hill. “So that means the woods are -”
“That way,” Ariadne interrupts, gesturing. “And that’s where she’ll put anything she considers bad.”
“Evil lives in the woods, yes, dearie, we remember,” Eames sighs; it sounds extraordinarily strange coming from the storybook prince’s mouth. “God, Arthur, it’s like having another you.”
“I don’t act like him!” she protests, folding her arms.
“You didn’t know him when he was your age,” Eames chuckles, and Arthur ducks his head. Ariadne nods noncommittally and turns on one heel, crushing a glossy daffodil as she does.
“Hey, wait!” Arthur calls, jogging a few feet to catch up. “I take point, it’s my job. You do yours.”
She nods, wincing, and steps aside. Her job is to stay safe and out of the way, so that if Arthur gets killed then Eames will still have time to work. That’s all.
The woods are uncomfortably far away, although something about the fairy-tale influence of the dream seems to preclude blisters. The landscape shifts quickly from Disney through Perrault straight to Grimm: briar-covered trees, thick and dark enough that the shade is murky. Eames has to cut them a path before long; that summons bristling wolves with distended teeth, slinking through the bushes. Arthur dreams himself a sword and goes back-to-back with Eames, all flickering steel and silent blows amid the snarls. Ariadne is fairly sure that swordplay doesn’t work like that, but she says nothing, just stands by the tree like a good heroine.
They find the cottage a little bit later; it’s an architectural nightmare of crumbling stone and moldy thatch. Arthur sticks his head around the doorframe, empty except for a decades-old encrustation of cobwebs, and then nods to Eames.
“Wish me luck,” the forger says, sighing, and then unsheathes his sword and steps forward, gleaming. Ariadne peeks through the window, ignoring Arthur’s disapproving stare. There isn’t much to see; Eames glances around and then heads straight for the dust-covered trunk in the corner. She can’t make out what he finds there, but when Eames comes back out the door his hands are shaking.
“If that woman gets custody of her daughter I am personally going to have her shot,” he bites out, and drops back into his own skin faster than Ariadne can follow. His shirt is rumpled and his eyes are bloodshot, which they weren’t coming into the dream; Arthur holds out a pistol to him without comment.
----
Back in the hotel room, Eames doesn’t look any better. “It seems psychosomatic reactions continue after leaving the dream, my friends,” he says, half-snatching the PASIV line out of his wrist. He glances at the little girl on the other bed, curled in on herself, and half-runs for the bathroom before Ariadne even has her own line out. She recognizes the choked splatters and looks to Arthur for an explanation.
“I hadn’t thought this would bother him so much,” she says tentatively. Arthur sighs.
“He’s fond of children. Got quite a few nieces and nephews, actually.” He glances at the bathroom door. “And a daughter in Kent.”
“What?” she yelps. “He’s got - are you - Eames? Really?”
“Yes,” Eames says from the bathroom doorway, and she nearly jumps out of her skin yet again. “Kylie. She turns five in a month.”
She’s still too far thrown to be embarrassed. “But - you with a kid, of all people -”
“Unexpected, I know. Her mother is one of my oldest friends. Kylie was the result of too much alcohol, desperation, and some very deep denial about our respective sexualities.” She thinks that’s supposed to be a lopsided smile, but it just looks pained.
“But you don’t - I mean, you never mentioned, or - don’t you, I don’t know, I mean, why aren’t you -”
“I see her whenever I can. Her mother got her shit together and married her girlfriend several months into the pregnancy, for which I am forever grateful, but the situation was awkward enough that I decided it would be better not to be around too often. I visit when I can - birthdays, holidays, the odd weekend.”
“And he talks about her at great length whenever he gets drunk in private,” Yusuf adds, packing up the PASIV in the corner. “And buys her things every time he has money to spare.”
Eames shrugs, not nearly as nonchalantly as he usually would. “What can I say? I make an excellent doting uncle, and I’d be a horrible father.”
“I doubt that,” Arthur says; Yusuf just snorts, one eyebrow raised pointedly. Ariadne glances between the three of them and wishes she knew what to say.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------II.
A month later, Arthur gathers them again for a new mark: an Oxford literature professor suspected of carrying organized crime secrets. Yusuf sets them up for the first practice run and offers to tuck them in; Arthur comments that clearly Eames is a bad influence.
Ariadne finds herself just a few steps from her clearing; shoving through the snow-covered branches reveals Eames grinning up at her flickering lamp-post.
“Ariadne, you didn’t,” he says, gleeful, and raises his voice. “If anyone sees a strange woman in a sleigh, don’t eat anything she gives you!”
“Narnia?” Arthur asks behind her, sounding amused; she jumps. He pushes past her and glances around. “Did you make a wardrobe?”
“Yes, actually,” she admits, hiding a smile badly. She hadn’t been quite sure how they’d respond. “The house has woods outside it, and they loop you back to here.”
“And how far does the dream go in this level of reality?”
“To the Stone Table. You can see Cair Paravel from there, but if you try to reach it then the woods loop back either to the house or here, depending on which way you go around a certain boulder. I’ll show you.”
“We ought to poke around here for a bit first,” Eames says, still glancing around in transparent delight. “I’m going to very disappointed in my subconscious if there isn’t a faun in a scarf wandering about somewhere, and we ought to try dreaming up a few uniquely Narnian things. The gifts, perhaps, since this seems to be that era.”
“I’m not sure I want to know what Susan’s horn would do,” Arthur comments, running a finger along the bark of a nearby pine. “Although it would be informative, I’ve no doubt.”
“I was thinking of the cordial, anyway,” Eames says.
“Really?” Ariadne frowns. “I hadn’t thought it would be the most useful thing.”
“Don’t be ridiculous, there are all kinds of uses for a cure-all. Besides, the youngest child’s gift is always the most powerful. Haven’t you read your fairy tales?” Eames laughs.
“What’s with the giddy child act, Mr. Eames?” Ariadne asks, doing her best to imitate Arthur’s look of disapproval.
“Well, it’s Narnia. You’ve just plunged me into the essential embodiment of my childhood, Ariadne, you must expect some repercussions.”
“I suppose it makes sense,” Arthur remarks, now turning a lump of snow over and over in his hands as if he isn’t sure it’s real. “Isn’t C.S. Lewis the one with that quote about how putting away childish things includes the fear of being thought childish?” And then the snowball flies out of his hand and smacks Eames on the shoulder. Ariadne gapes.
“Dear God, Arthur!” Eames almost doubles over laughing. “Just when I was almost convinced you couldn’t have fun.” Arthur shrugs, backing up.
“A good point man knows when to let his teammates blow off some steam,” he replies, unperturbed. “We may as well get it out of our systems now.” Ariadne doesn’t realize why he has one hand behind his back until he lets go of the tree branch and a glob of snow catapults into her chest. She shrieks and crouches to pack a missile of her own.
The resultant fight sends them zigzagging all over the woods, filling them with laughter; they don’t run into that many projections and the few they do find are surprisingly peaceful. Eventually they lose track of each other, and Ariadne makes her way back to the clearing, shivering, to find Arthur already there. He holds up his hands in surrender, and she’s willing to grant peace.
“I have to admit, I didn’t expect this of you,” she says. “Starting a snowball fight, I mean.”
He fidgets a bit, to her amusement. “Well, we all have to relax once in a while. Normally I wouldn’t do it on the job, but we weren’t going to get Eames to do anything useful for a while anyway, and we did learn our way around the woods for a bit.” The half-smile makes her suspect that’s only a justification, but she bites her lip anyway. It hadn’t been her plan to render today useless.
“I didn’t realize he’d like it so much,” she admits.
“Oh, he’s always loved Narnia, as long as I’ve known him.” Arthur is playing with a pine branch again, she notices, although now he’s just fiddling. He doesn’t look nearly as professional (or as old) with his hair all mussed and his fine wool sweater dusted with half-melted snow.
“You seem pretty fond of it too.”
“Well, yes.” Suddenly he smiles, although not at her. “You know, I haven’t seen fresh snow since I was a teenager.”
“Why not?” she asks, stepping closer to lean against a sleeping oak.
“I grew up in a tiny excuse for a town in Vermont. I enlisted right out of high school, youthful fervor, and I’ve been a city boy ever since.”
“And you didn’t go home, even for a visit? Or, I don’t know, holidays?” she asks, frowning.
“Well -” He grimaces. “They don’t know - I mean, they think I’m dead. MIA, rather. I didn’t exactly leave the military honorably.”
“And you didn’t tell them what happened to you?” She can’t quite stop herself from sounding scandalized. He sighs.
“My mother would probably rather have a dead son than a deserter. She’d never say so, of course, but she believes in honor, in sticking to things. And she’d feel she ought to disown me over all of this.” He waves his hand, vaguely encompassing the woods, the dreamscape, their profession. “I may as well spare her the more complicated anguish. Besides, it keeps her and my sisters safe if nobody knows we’re connected.”
“Sisters?”
“Two. Younger than me. Kathy is in the Air Force, Suzanne just graduated from MIT. They’re smart kids.” He studies the snow, and for a moment he looks bizarrely like Eames; she can’t figure out how, and then she remembers the forger leaning against a doorframe and saying he’s a better uncle than a father.
She hasn’t told her parents the whole truth about her life since Cobb asked her to draw a labyrinth, but she called them just last night. She has no idea what it would be like to go months, years, without even saying hello.
“A lot of you guys have families I don’t know about, it seems like,” she says, for lack of anything else. Arthur shrugs, looking up at her, and straightens his tie.
“Well, yes. We usually try to keep our families as separate from this as possible. Our personal lives as well, those of us who have them outside the profession.”
“I didn’t realize everyone involved was so - focused.”
“Most people socialize, but generally with other dreamers or people who work in similar circles. It’s safer.”
“I see.”
“It’s possible to spend time with people who aren’t criminals, Ariadne,” he says, combing his fingers through his hair. “It’s just trickier, unless you’re willing to get them involved. And most don’t appreciate being dragged into high-level crime.” He smiles sideways, almost teasing. “Not everyone’s as crazy as us.”
“I’ve noticed,” she says, smiling back. “I just didn’t really think about the, you know, the ramifications before.” The nonchalance winds down halfway through the sentence, leaving her perilously close to the tone she uses right before erasing large sections of a schematic.
“You can still leave, you know,” Arthur offers quietly. “Teach us this map and then we’ll be out of your life. Just say the word.”
“What?” She shakes her head, clutching for her totem, less for a check on reality than because it’s become a habit in moments of discomfort. “I’m not giving this up, no way.”
“Well, then. It’s a pleasure to have you.” He smiles slightly, then looks away. “But you should realize - that option isn’t open indefinitely. We’ve been keeping you as quiet as possible, but you’re going to get a reputation eventually. And the rumors about the Fischer job are intensifying, and everyone knows that Dom can’t build.”
She swallows. “So… I’d better do something about my family, then.” It’s possible, clearly.
“Eames and I can help you make your original life look like an alias,” he offers gently. “And come up with a story for them. If that’s what you want.”
I can do it myself, she wants to say, but she knows that’s ridiculous. “I’d appreciate that.”
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
III.
The Oxford job wears them all out; Yusuf, in particular, hands them a steady supply of sedatives and goes back to Mombasa, saying this isn't worth the money. The next task, which lands them in Boston, is another personal affair: a solar tycoon wants them to find out if his son is gay.
“Couldn’t he just ask him?” Eames asks, frowning at the dossier. “I mean, what are we, his personal paparazzi?”
Arthur sighs. “I agree, it’s ridiculous. But the man just made a fortune, he’s trying to spend it however he can, and this will get us an excellent payoff with almost no chance of getting shot. In the real world, at least, and probably not in dream-time either.”
“How do we extract that one?” Ariadne asks, tapping a pen against her moleskin. “It’s kind of an odd thing to keep in a safe.”
“Well, we’ve got several options. Most likely, we bring him into the dream and try to get him to pick someone up, and we infer from there. If that fails, his father said he used to hide things under the bed and at the back of the closet, which is remarkably fitting in other ways, and he might have similar information on his phone. We can also see what the subconscious does. It won’t be completely reliable unless he flat-out tells one of us or we overhear him coming out to a projection, but we’re getting paid in advance.”
“Okay. So, does a city sound about right? I’m thinking kind of, you know, romantic-looking, all old-fashioned Hollywood -”
“Lonely might be better,” Eames suggests. “More versatile. It’ll fit anything from the start of an epic love story to a quickie behind the bar, depending on what he’s looking for.”
She shrugs; she hasn’t been looking for either since she was nineteen. “Okay, a lonely city. Huge, then. So, once we get there…”
----
The city she builds is all towering glass and rusted steel and grime-coated concrete. It’s late December, with slush on the streets and miniscule flecks of snow swirling through the bitter wind.
“You couldn’t dream me up in a hat?” Eames asks from behind her, pulling a fleece-lined aviator out of his pocket. Arthur is behind him, glancing around the abandoned little park.
“Weren’t we supposed to start in the intersection?” he asks, frowning. Ariadne winces.
“I’m sorry. I was worrying about whether the park had the right proportions to the rest of the city, since it’s meant to be sort of pseudo-Central Park. I guess that got us here by accident instead.”
“I see,” Arthur says, pursing his lips. “Well, it’s all right, he needs time to settle in to the apartment anyway. It’s that way, correct?”
“Yes.”
“Just as a matter of interest, why does he get a hat?” Eames asked, tying on his own.
“Because I think he’d remember to wear hats, I guess.”
“So does Eames, actually,” Arthur says over his shoulder. Ariadne scowls - she hates misjudging people - and runs to catch up, skidding slightly in the slush, while Eames saunters along behind them.
They’re halfway to the hotel, crossing a little footbridge, when Arthur stops.
“Ariadne, what are those?”
“What?” She peeks over the edge to find a cluster of scraggly brown birds staring reproachfully up at her. “Oh. Ducks. I always did wonder where the literal ones went.”
“Er, what?” Arthur sounds strangely suspicious.
“Ducks. I mean, Holden kept talking about where they went in the winter, and I know it was symbolic and all, but I always thought it was a good question. I’m pretty sure they migrate in real life, but I guess I stuck them in here by mistake.”
Eames cackled. “Holden? Ducks? Oh God, Ariadne, did you base this off of Catcher in the Rye?”
She blinks at him. “Uh, yeah? I mean, it’s kind of the ultimate lonely city, and it’s worked really well when I’ve built from books before. I didn’t lift anything specific except for the one bar, but I read it a lot when I was looking for ideas and to get a sense of the general aesthetic.” Eames is still snickering. “I thought I mentioned it,” she lies.
“Dear God,” Arthur sighs, leaning against the rail.
“Is something a problem? I didn’t actually build any sections of New York, I’m not that stupid.”
“Arthur hates that book,” Eames explains gleefully. “Absolutely hates it.”
“I do,” Arthur admits.
“It reminds him too much of the drunken escapades in his youth,” Eames says, smirking.
“You had drunken escapades?”
Eames bursts out laughing again; Arthur grimaces. “Sadly, yes, although I didn’t actually get drunk that often. There’s something off-putting about waking up hung over in the backseat of a tiny Jetta. But I did run away for a month or so when I was seventeen.”
Araidne frowns at him. “Weird. I mean, I didn’t take you for a delinquent.”
He shrugs. “I wasn’t, really. Besides, it was a long time ago. I’ve grown up a bit since.”
“How old are you, anyway?”
“Thirty-one.”
“Practically an old man,” Eames interjects.
“And yet you’re older than me, and you still manage to act younger than Ariadne,” Arthur points out, sounding more amused than annoyed.
“You wound me, darling,” Eames drawls, pressing a hand to his chest.
“At long last,” Arthur says with a smile, which makes Eames break character long enough to snort. Arthur pushes himself off the bridge’s handrail. “Ariadne, does the worthlessness of this particular world extend to the coffee, or is there some decent stuff to be found?”
“There’s a pretty good café two blocks out of the park,” Ariadne says, blinking. “You couldn’t have had any at the hotel?”
“I’m not entirely sure what they were serving, but it was certainly not coffee.” He sets off again, but Ariadne lingers for a moment next to Eames.
“Arthur’s seemed a lot more… relaxed lately,” she says, lowering her voice for no easily justifiable reason. She’s astonished when Eames stops in his tracks.
“You know, sometimes I forget we met you less than a year ago.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” she demands, forcing her fingers out of the fist they’ve spontaneously formed.
“Just that of course, you’re comparing him to how he was on the Fischer job. He’s much more bearable when he isn’t trying to redefine possibility and constantly wondering if he’s going to have to pull Dom Cobb off a window ledge again.”
“Again?”
“Eleven times,” he murmurs. “Mostly in the first year after Mal, but…”
“Jesus,” she whispers, wanting to shoot her past self in the face.
“Yeah. There are reasons he’s so impossible.” The wryness of the words doesn’t quite match the bitterness-edged fondness of the smile he sends after the point man. To her surprise, Eames doesn’t slip a mask back on when Arthur turns around.
“Are you two coming?” he asks mildly, one eyebrow raised. Ariadne forces herself to grin and run to catch up again. At least this time Eames hurries too.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
IV.
They’re flying back to Paris when Arthur’s phone rings. He grimaces apologetically at Eames and Ariadne and rummages through his bag.
“Hello. Dom? Is everything - oh, thank God. I didn’t give them your number - wait. Well, we’re just getting back from a job - okay. No, I haven’t yet, it’s just not the right time. Dom, she’s right next to me. Because you didn’t ask! All right, here she is.” He holds the phone out to Ariadne. “It’s Dom, for you.”
“Um.” Weird. She takes the slim silver rectangle with unnecessary care. “Hello, Dom, it’s Ariadne.”
“Hey, Ariadne. Listen, a couple of active dreamers contacted me looking for an architect for a job in Germany. I told them I’m not in the business anymore and they asked me if they had any recommendations. I was hoping for your permission to send them on to you.”
She swallows. “That would be fine, thanks. Are they trustworthy?”
“Ask Arthur to check them out for you. I’ll send you their info, but I need your number.”
“1-478-555-2647.”
“All right, thanks. Good-bye.”
“Good-bye.” She closed the phone and handed it back to Arthur before digging for her own. “He’s offering to set me up with another team.”
“Abandoning us so casually, Ariadne?” Eames asks. The lightness sounds a touch strained, and she frowns at him.
“It’s only a one-off thing, or that’s what it sounded like. We don’t have anything lined up for a while, and I should take the opportunity, right? Besides, I haven’t even talked to them yet.” She turns to Arthur. “I’m going to need a background check on the two of them - what are your rates for that kind of thing?”
He blinks once, twice. “Rates? Well, ah, I haven’t done that kind of search independently in some time, actually, but I’m sure we can work something out. Forward me whatever I’d assume he’s sending you.”
----
Two weeks later, she lets herself into a suite in a small hotel outside Berlin. “Hello?” she calls.
“Ah, Ariadne!” A blond man extracts himself from a squat beige armchair; with some effort, she pulls her eyes away from the bristling moustache consuming his face. “A pleasure to meet you,” he continues. “I’m Greg Arynsky, of course. This is my wife, Georgiana.” He holds out a hand to help her out of the other chair; she is a lovely Mediterranean woman several inches taller than him. “And the finest point woman I’ve ever had the pleasure of working with,” he continues, still holding her hand.
“Don’t get her hopes up, Greg,” she admonishes, gazing at him; her accent is straight off the BBC. “I’ve nothing on her Arthur.”
“He isn’t my Arthur,” Ariadne demurs. “And he said you were quite good.”
“Well, that’s flattering!” Georgiana chuckles, turning directly to Ariadne for the first time. The younger woman’s eyes widen before she can stop herself, and Georgiana lifts a finger to trace the livid scar tissue running from the edge of her hairline straight through one perfectly arched eyebrow and across her cheek. “Yes, it’s quite nasty-looking, I know. No, don’t apologize, I was prepared for some surprise. You haven’t developed a reputation for tact.” She smiles.
Ariadne hasn’t felt this young since the Fischer job, but she straightens and looks the point woman dead on. “Well, then, what happened?”
“We had some trouble in Beijing a few years ago. Now.” She turns and picks up a briefcase. “Normally we wouldn’t take you on without certain tests, but if you can work with that crowd for the better part of a year then you’re more than good enough for us, especially on relatively short notice. Sit, for God’s sake, the both of you.” They comply, Ariadne blinking slightly at the rapid transition. “Now, you got the basics of the case, right?”
“Yes, on the way here, but what you asked of me wasn’t very specific. I mean, how do you want the mark to feel? Comfortable, starstruck, proud, what are you going for here?”
The Arynskys conduct a rapid dialogue in cocked eyebrows and tilted heads; Ariadne doesn’t catch half of what’s going on there, but Greg is smiling when he turns to her.
“You’re right, we should have addressed that. As it happens, this is going to work a lot better if the mark is uncomfortable, but not suspicious or paranoid. Can you do that, or something close to it?”
“Sure, yeah,” she says, mind churning. “I can do it easy. And we’re still going with the grandiose party thing, right?
----
Back in her own hotel room, Ariadne sprawls back in her desk chair and stares at the ceiling, tapping a pencil against her lips. Glamorous yet sickening, decadent and distasteful… hm. Well, the second part is probably a matter of twisting proportions, setting the angles two degrees off perfect and the colors three shades too bright. The problem is, she hasn’t really been to any parties with that kind of excessive scale. She could probably ask Saito - they’ve kept up, in what she imagines to be the mind-crime equivalent of a Christmas-card relationship - but she would really prefer not to ask for help.
She tugs open her suitcase and starts flicking through the books she brought. She barely glances at the covers, discarding battered red and creased green and a leather copy of Wuthering Heights that three successive roommates have mistaken for a King James Bible, and she stops at a cover that’s all faded blue and distant gold and ancient-looking eyes.
Perfect.
----
On the night of the heist, as planned, they enter the dream at the end of the manor’s driveway. Greg and Georgiana begin the dream hand in hand again. Ariadne is a few feet away, closer to the gaping iron gates. Every tree and window in the house is lit up with a fantastically garish glow; the party’s perfectly constructed cacophony is quite audible even half a mile down the drive, all mad beats and drunken shrieks.
“Everybody ready?” Georgiana asks briskly, still clinging to her husband’s hand. “Good,” and they make their way up the streamer-strewn gravel drive with no further review or discussion.
The projections are staggering vaguely across the lawn, clinging to each other and laughing; between jewelry and eyeshadow, ornate dresses and sequined suits, every last one of them glitters. Ariadne thinks, with some satisfaction, that it looks like an unholy cross between the Oscars and a prom after-party. A giggling blonde in green nearly stumbles into her as they push into the crowd, sloshing champagne onto the architect’s feet; Ariadne wrinkles her nose and continues on.
“Time to split, you guys,” Greg says, feeding himself and Georgiana through the throngs. Ariadne nods unnecessarily; they all know the plan.
“All got our phones?” she asks. They make her twitch, but after all, this dream isn’t actually a representation of the twenties. It’s fine.
“Of course,” Georgiana chuckles over her shoulder. “Diversions planned?”
“Yeah.”
Georgiana folds herself and her husband together and into the dance effortlessly; Ariadne wanders vaguely towards the thoroughly-mobbed buffet table, less out of hunger than because it’s on the far side of this carnival. She isn’t halfway there before she’s attracted the attention of a projection, but he doesn’t seem to be looking for a dreamer. Flirting should not ever be conducted at that volume, she thinks, ducking irritably away from him.
At this point, all she has to do for the evening is stay away from the Arynskys. If they run into trouble with projections, it’s on her to start breaking physics until she has the full attention of every fragment of subconscious, and then keep herself alive for as long as possible; however, it’s more than likely that her job is essentially done. And, she thinks with some satisfaction, done well.
She spends more than an hour exploring her handiwork, making sure it is indeed standing up to the job, but she’s built this place to make skin crawl. By the time she gives in and ducks down to the beach behind the house, a migraine is pulsing in time with every flash of light.
The noise reaches right to the edge of the dream, but by the water it’s a bit muffled, and the simple presence of darkness and fresh salty air is like an anesthetic. Down here is more soothing; the light is far prettier reflected off the waves, and she can actually see the stars, which do in fact bear a slight resemblance to a summer sky in Long Island.
She’s a little amused and a little bit disappointed in herself when she realizes she’s subconsciously added a green light across the water, too. It’s enough of a surprise to make her stop walking for a moment - there’s nothing like working with Dom Cobb to make you very careful about accidental manifestations - and the pause makes her realize that even in dreams, she absolutely hates stiletto heels. She drops into the sand, enjoying the feel of the damp grit settling over the theoretically expensive silk of her skirt, and wonders idly if Greg and Georgiana have noticed the connections to The Great Gatsby.
She wonders if either Arthur or Eames has ever read it. Arthur would probably hate it; Gatsby’s obsession with his past, his desperation to regain Daisy Buchanan, all of it would drive Arthur to a complete rage. As for Eames... Ariadne runs the characters over in her mind again, thinking about the construction of Jay Gatsby from James Gatz, the varied façades of Jordan Baker, the artificial personas of, in fact, almost everyone. Eames, she thinks, would probably find it interesting, but she doubts he’d exactly enjoy it.
She stays by the shore, planning out the genius loci of palaces, until the projections show up. Then she starts bringing in the storms.
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V.
“Hello, Ariadne,” Arthur says, folding a newspaper and standing, and she immediately reaches for her totem.
“Arthur?” She hadn’t expected anyone to meet her at the airport, but here he is, sitting right by the baggage carousel.
“Welcome back to Paris,” he says, smiling. “How was the job?”
“Awful,” she admits before she can think about it. “Not that I’m not glad to see you, but why are you here?”
He shrugs expansively; she smiles, watching his shoulders roll under the familiar black suit. “I figured I might as well save you a cab fare. I’m parked just outside that exit.” He gestures.
“I never actually told you what flight I’d be on,” she says, although she’s grateful for the thought.
“Well, you texted us just as you were leaving, and mentioned it; it wasn’t hard to extrapolate from there.” He frowns. “Should I not have?”
“No, it’s fine,” she says, because Arthur is an extrapolator and always will be. “I just didn’t expect it.”
“Well, I hope it was a pleasant surprise,” he says, following as she heads for the indicated parking lot. “What were the problems with the job?”
“They kicked out of the job with almost twelve minutes left on the surface clock,” she says, rolling her eyes. “And failed to mention it to me - we separated in the dreamscape.”
“Oh, God. Did they have a way to contact you at all?”
“Cell phones on all of us. Apparently they got cornered near the safe with the papers in their hands, panicked, and shot themselves out before they remembered me.” Lips twitching, she adds, “I don’t think they work with people other than the two of them much.”
“They do have a reputation for that,” he grants.
“They weren’t particularly organized even before that,” she adds. “I don’t think Georgiana is the best point man.”
“Not to sound egotistical, but if you judge all point men by me, you’ll be fairly regularly disappointed,” he says; they’ve reached his car by this time, and she slings her bags in the back and collapses into the passenger seat with a sigh of relief for her aching arms.
“Perhaps I’d better just not work with anyone else, then,” she jokes, and immediately freezes.
“That might be an excellent idea,” Arthur agrees gravely. “It’s a horrible way to bring it up, but I’ve actually been wanting to suggest that the three of us just work as a unit; it’s a fairly common arrangement. Just as something to think about.”
“That sounds pretty good,” she says, because she’s tired, and she’s very glad to be home, and she didn’t realize until right now exactly how fed up she’s been with watching the Arynskys communicate in intertwined fingers and sideways glances and smiles with entire rhapsodizing speeches in the corners. Arthur is smiling at her and wearing a suit she’s seen him wear at least a hundred times, inside dreams and out, and his car is almost as familiar to her as her own, and she knows that by ‘the three of us’ he means her and him and Eames, and that’s actually pretty perfect because they’re an excellent combination.
“It’s just something to consider,” Arthur says. “Now, do you want to head straight back to your apartment, or are you up for dinner? Eames will want to say hello, of course.”
“Dinner sounds great,” she says. “That little diner on the corner, Bernadette’s?”
“That was the plan,” he agrees, turning off in the relevant direction and reaching for his headset.
----
“Ariadne!” Eames calls the instant they set foot in the dimly-lit little restaurant, waving expansively from a table by the front window. He shoves his chair back, digging in his pocket. “At last, the genuine article, and in excellent health.”
“Um, what?” she asks, dropping into one of the other chairs.
“Eames - ” Arthur starts, but Eames is already talking.
“I haven’t been able to set foot in Arthur’s mind for the past six months without running into a projection of you limping about, usually shot or stabbed or otherwise looking dreadful. It’s been more than a bit unsettling.”
She takes a second to digest. “You mean he was, what, worried about me?”
“On an intellectual level, not at all,” Arthur says, looking distinctly put out. “You were working with at least moderately competent people, and you’re more than capable of taking care of yourself. Emotionally speaking, however…”
“Worried sick,” the forger supplies.
“I’d argue that it’s at least an improvement on moping all over the warehouse,” Arthur grumbles, picking up his menu, “as some people did.”
“Excuse me, I may meet very few of your absurd standards for professionalism, but I am not maudlin enough to mope.”
“Is sulking preferable?”
“So you missed me, is that what I’m supposed to be getting here?” Ariadne interrupts, not bothering to hide her smile.
“I suppose you could say that,” Eames says, scrutinizing his water glass. “Arthur, how long before your bloody sensibilities will let us raise the question?”
“I brought it up on the way over, actually,” he says.
Eames snorts. “Well, so much for not being blatantly manipulative, then.”
“Eames, if you’ve seriously become ethically opposed to manipulation while I was gone, then I’m going to have to conclude you’ve been brainwashed.”
“Perhaps I’ve just gotten better at it,” he says, smiling, and at that point they’re interrupted by the waitress. This derails them into a discussion about when, exactly, Ariadne decided to start eating pork chops, which segues rapidly into an exchange of slightly more practical notes on the time apart, and from there the conversation wanders.
It isn’t until they’re scraping their dessert plates clean that the architect folds her hands over the table and says, “In all seriousness, you guys, the working-together thing? I’d like it.”
“What, did he bloody tell you to answer tonight?” Eames asks, frowning.
“No, but refusing just doesn’t make any sense. I mean, if I were a real-world architect and I got offered a job as one of the main members of a top-tier firm right off the bat, I wouldn’t go signing up with desperate amateurs just in case, right? And I already know that I like you guys, and we work well together.”
She is rather amused to note that Arthur and Eames blink in almost perfect synchronization. Then Eames chuckles.
“Well, it looks like we’ll need to acquire some champagne tonight, then,” he says, smiling.
“I don’t think they serve it here,” Ariadne points out, “but I definitely like the idea.”
“I know a place,” Arthur says, signaling for the check. “I assume you’re not too tired?”
“Not to celebrate,” she says; between the calories and the company, she feels much better than she did when she got off the plane. “Where do you have in mind?”
He smiles. “There’s a couple of options, actually -”
“One of which is your kitchen cabinet, correct?” Eames inquires.
“There is a bar that I think might serve decent stuff, but that was the backup option, yes,” he says, long-suffering. “But since you bring it up, we may as well skip straight to that. I don’t feel like driving halfway across Paris just to find out my information is out of date.” He shoves his chair back. “Fine by you two?”
“Sounds good,” Ariadne says, standing herself and grabbing for her coat.
They pay for the food (Ariadne doesn’t have quite enough cash on her; Eames covers, whispering that she can pay him back tomorrow if she wants) and head on out again. Ariadne grabs shotgun; Eames leans out of the backseat, craning his neck, to negotiate music with Arthur.
Ariadne relaxes back against the leather, glances between the two of them as they argue, and suggests classic rock when Arthur asks her to arbitrate. It’s good, she thinks, to be home.
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VI.
“You guys?” Ariadne says one morning as they assemble in the warehouse. “I’ve been working on something I want to show you. I’m not sure exactly when we’d use it, but I’m sure there’s something, and it’s demonstrating some principles that I think will be really great for tricky projections.”
“Can you elaborate?” Arthur asks, eyebrows raised to the ceiling.
“It’ll be easier just to show you.” She hands him a PASIV line; he glances first at her, then at Eames, who shrugs. “I think you’ll like it.”
She settles into her chair and closes her eyes, then opens them.
They’re standing inside a massive wheel of crystal, suspended in space, wind blasting at their backs. Above and below and all around them stretch out expanses of intricately twisting shapes, zigzags and loops and curves, like a glass amusement park bent back on itself and hung at forty-five degrees. Jets and streams of water spill and thunder through the air in every conceivable direction, throwing up spray that’s already beading in Ariadne’s bound-back hair. There’s no sky or ground or edge to be seen; everything vanishes into the dim blue mist.
Ariadne glances over at the other two; Eames is craning his neck, rubbing at the back of his head. Arthur is openly gaping.
“What is this?” he says at last. She hides a grin. Well, she’s definitely onto something new here, at least.
“Walk back and forth a little bit,” she says, gesturing. Arthur is still trying to look in every direction at once, but Eames tries it.
“Oh bloody fuck, it’s all turning,” he says, dropping to a seat on the crystal.
“No, it isn’t,” Ariadne says as Eames glances up and Arthur glances back at him, and both men curse at the same time.
“How are you -”
“What the flying - ”
“The gravity isn’t consistent here,” Ariadne explains, beaming and gesturing at her perfectly illustrative example: Eames tilted at a thirty-degree angle to Arthur. That’s what’s special about this place.
“Oh my God,” Arthur breathes.
“Yeah. The gravity is mostly ninety degrees to the nearest surface, but of course once you get out into the space between leges that’s a little more complicated. Just here, you can walk all around the edge of this loop we’re on - actually, it’s a Mobius strip - and the gravity just shifts with you.”
“Is that what was going on, then?” Eames says, looking slightly pale. “One moment, I’m coming back there. I can’t keep looking at you two at this angle.”
“In between things, in space, is there no gravity then?” Arthur asks, still staring around.
“No, it retains the gravity of wherever it started until it enters something else’s field,” she says. “Although usually the underside of something has its own gravity, so if you just step off the edge you’ll land on the other side. Here.” She fumbles in her pocket and hands him a freshly dreamed-up quarter. “Drop this off the edge and you’ll see what I mean.”
He does, kneeling to observe as it tumbles in a perfect parabola away, then seemingly flies back towards them to hit the far side of their crystal walkway with a stunningly loud chime. Arthur, by this point, is beaming almost as widely as Ariadne.
“How do we get off of anything, then, if we keep coming back?”
“Throw it clear of the gravity field. Here, try it with something bigger -” He’s already shrugging off his jacket. Barely a foot from the edge, the wind catches it; it flutters outward like a pinstriped bird and then tumbles gradually ‘up’, landing spread out on an angled panel nearly twenty feet above them.
“Oh my God,” he repeats, staring up. “And it shifts with us, as we move? Excuse me -” He turns on one heel and sets off recklessly fast; he only makes it three steps before he has to fling an arm out for balance.
Eames inches up behind her. “Well, you’ve certainly made his day,” he remarks, sounding strained under the amusement. “Possibly his year.”
“It does seem like that,” she agrees, then twists around to look at the forger. “You don’t like this very much, do you?”
He shakes his head. “No, no, I don’t dislike it. This is fascinating. It’s just -” He sighs. “I’m slightly less adaptable then our favorite point man. I can handle the height, but the motion is making me a bit seasick.”
“Sorry,” she says, wincing. “I probably should have warned you.”
“It’s fine,” he says, shrugging. “I’ll adjust. Also, for the record, only slightly less adaptable.”
She snickers. “Of course.” Glancing after Arthur, she adds, “We should probably catch up to him.” She moves forward, then turns; Eames is picking his way along the crystal with the care of an Everest climber.
“Need a hand?” she asks, managing heroically not to laugh at him. She’d been a bit disoriented the first time she tested this too, and she built the place.
“That may perhaps be a good idea, at least for another few minutes,” he admits, looking pained. She bows slightly and offers him her arm, which earns her a grin. “How gallant,” he drawls, taking it; the dainty grace of the movement is more than a bit incongruous with his scruffily bearded self, but logical given the number of times he’s been escorted in the skin of a lovely woman.
He moves much more easily with her to help him balance, but they still only catch up with Arthur - now around the twist of the Mobius - because he’s stopped to investigate the water spilling past them at a sixty-degree upward angle. Well, upward from where they’re currently standing.
“Ariadne, where’s this coming from?” he asks, whirling to look at her again. He’s gotten quite windblown and damp already; they all have, she realizes.
“The source is a few hundred meters that way,” she says, gesturing. “It’s this installation, sort of like a giant light for a sports field, because I couldn’t get a standard waterfall to work, it always doubled back onto the underside of the source. It’s just here to make it easier to orient ourselves, because it’s incredibly easy to get lost in here. Same with the wind.”
“Makes sense,” he murmurs, craning his neck to stare at the splashing water. “Tell me more.”
“Well, the world is spherical, and this here is right at the center of it, pretty much. I had to repeat some of the structures in order to fill it all, but they’re staggered irregularly so it actually makes it all more disorienting, not less. I’ve been down here for hours without running into a single projection, sometimes,” she slips in, not bothering to pretend she isn’t boasting. “And once you hit the edge, things get darker, and from there it’s all based on fractals, so it goes out quite a bit without being specifically structured.”
“Exactly how big is this?” he asks.
“The fractals? I haven’t tested it fully. The base sphere has about a five-kilometer radius.”
“And it’s all like this?” he asks incredulously, staring at her.
“Pretty much, yes,” she says, beaming. “Not bad, huh?”
He laughs, brighter and more delighted than she’s ever heard him. “Not bad! Ariadne, I am - more than impressed. Awed. I am awed.”
“Thank you,” she manages, smile ratcheting up to the point where her cheeks hurt. She realizes that at some point she’s stopped feeling the cold. Eames is chuckling, still hanging on her arm.
“How do we get off of this to get a look at the rest of it?” Arthur asks, glancing back and forth. Ariadne twists around to indicate the array of discs at their backs, almost straight ‘above’ them.
“We jump,” she says, “and by the time the gravity from there catches us it isn’t a very long fall. You’re meant to be jumping from the inside of the Mobius, so it’s the same direction all the way down, but we can do it from here.”
“I suggest that,” Arthur says, “I don’t want to go around again.” Which means, she knows, that Eames would probably prefer not; Arthur catches her eye and she realizes that he never intended to deceive her on that point. Eames probably knows exactly what’s going on here too, she realizes, and, well, good. He might as well know that they’re willing to spare his pride.
“We should hang on to each other, then,” she warns, “because it does get a little strange when the gravity flips.”
“This’ll be fun,” Eames snorts, dropping her arm to clutch at her hand. Arthur stretches out his own, lacing their callused fingers together, and glances out.
“One, two -”
“Three,” they whisper in concert, and she drags the other two out into her whirling air.
Fandom: Inception
Characters/Pairings: Ariadne, Arthur, Eames, cameos by Yusuf and various OCs
Ratings/Warnings: PG-13; swearing, discussions of child abuse (not actually depicted, and not involving any canon characters), gratuitous literary references.
Written for: N/A
Wordcount: 8000 (Yes, I know.)
A/N: This was intended to be both a lot shorter, and focused entirely on Ariadne, but it quickly became about how she relates to the rest of the team, which meant Arthur and Eames drifted in a lot as well. (Yusuf is an uncommunicative bastard who complicates everything by not doing field work.) Nonetheless, it's still really about Ariadne getting her feet under her as a dreamer.
I.
“Ah, Eames, thank you for joining us,” Arthur says dryly as the hotel room door shuts behind the forger. Ariadne smiles at him; Yusuf waves.
“Not my fault this time, darling. My flight was delayed.”
“I see. Anyway, sit.” Arthur gestures to a chair and pulls out his briefcase. “It’s good to work with you three again. The job is simple extraction - Eames, I was hoping you’d be the extractor for this, since I can’t find anyone free whom I’ve worked with personally, and I don’t want to risk this one with an unknown factor.”
“Fine by me, especially since I wouldn’t work with Cobb again if my life depended on it,” Eames drawls. “But if it’s simple extraction, why don’t you want to work with a stranger? Just anxious?”
“No. But it’s a delicate job.” He sighs and leans forward slightly. “The mark is six.”
For a moment there is absolute silence except for the hum of the air conditioner. Then Eames practically explodes out of his chair.
“What the actual fuck, Arthur?” he snarls.
“Calm down!” Arthur doesn’t look at all intimidated. “It’s for her sake, not anyone else’s. Our client is the father. The mother abused him. He’s in the process of divorce. He’s worried the mother is abusing the girl as well, but if he raises the issue and it turns out to be false then he’ll definitely lose custody. He wants evidence beforehand.” He stands. “We’ll be helping the kid, Eames. Come on.”
Ariadne bites her lip, glancing from one man to the other in the thickening tension. She doesn’t understand what’s going on here, what’s up with this sudden attack of warped morals, but Arthur looks as close to pleading as she’s ever seen him, hands spread out and eyes entreating. Eames’s white-knuckled fists are preternaturally still and his eyes are flickering frantically between Arthur and the door and the pictures - typical school pictures of a gap-toothed redhead in yellow - spilling out of the briefcase.
“The father is desperate, Eames,” Arthur says, stepping closer, and then his voice drops and Ariadne can’t catch what he says next, but it must matter because Eames collapses back into his chair and buries his face in his hands.
“Fine, I’ll do it,” he says, muffled but intelligible. “But you owe me for this one, dammit.”
“I understand,” Arthur says, adjusting his sleeves, and Ariadne wants to scream. But then he looks over at her and says “Ariadne, can you construct an environment where the girl will feel safe?” and she shakes it off.
“Yeah,” she says, “definitely. What kind of things does she like?”
----
The day of the heist finds them waking, as expected, into a field of peonies and hand-sized roses. Ariadne shakes out her velvet skirts and glances around; Eames, she finds, is kneeling beside her.
“I’m not sure any real flowers have ever been so soft,” he comments, rubbing a petal between his fingers. “Not, however, that I’m complaining.”
“Vastly preferable to realistic flora,” Arthur agrees, seemingly materializing out of the ferns. “In character, please, Mr. Eames.”
“Certainly.” Ariadne blinks and then Eames is replaced by a man several inches taller and a good ten years younger, fair-haired and dressed in armor far brighter than any real knight’s could possibly have been. “Let’s get this show on the road, shall we?” He glances around. “Where exactly have you brought us in?”
“It looks like south-southeast of the castle.” Ariadne is the dreamer, but Arthur answers anyway, pointing to the gleaming towers and snapping pennants just visible beyond the gentle hill. “So that means the woods are -”
“That way,” Ariadne interrupts, gesturing. “And that’s where she’ll put anything she considers bad.”
“Evil lives in the woods, yes, dearie, we remember,” Eames sighs; it sounds extraordinarily strange coming from the storybook prince’s mouth. “God, Arthur, it’s like having another you.”
“I don’t act like him!” she protests, folding her arms.
“You didn’t know him when he was your age,” Eames chuckles, and Arthur ducks his head. Ariadne nods noncommittally and turns on one heel, crushing a glossy daffodil as she does.
“Hey, wait!” Arthur calls, jogging a few feet to catch up. “I take point, it’s my job. You do yours.”
She nods, wincing, and steps aside. Her job is to stay safe and out of the way, so that if Arthur gets killed then Eames will still have time to work. That’s all.
The woods are uncomfortably far away, although something about the fairy-tale influence of the dream seems to preclude blisters. The landscape shifts quickly from Disney through Perrault straight to Grimm: briar-covered trees, thick and dark enough that the shade is murky. Eames has to cut them a path before long; that summons bristling wolves with distended teeth, slinking through the bushes. Arthur dreams himself a sword and goes back-to-back with Eames, all flickering steel and silent blows amid the snarls. Ariadne is fairly sure that swordplay doesn’t work like that, but she says nothing, just stands by the tree like a good heroine.
They find the cottage a little bit later; it’s an architectural nightmare of crumbling stone and moldy thatch. Arthur sticks his head around the doorframe, empty except for a decades-old encrustation of cobwebs, and then nods to Eames.
“Wish me luck,” the forger says, sighing, and then unsheathes his sword and steps forward, gleaming. Ariadne peeks through the window, ignoring Arthur’s disapproving stare. There isn’t much to see; Eames glances around and then heads straight for the dust-covered trunk in the corner. She can’t make out what he finds there, but when Eames comes back out the door his hands are shaking.
“If that woman gets custody of her daughter I am personally going to have her shot,” he bites out, and drops back into his own skin faster than Ariadne can follow. His shirt is rumpled and his eyes are bloodshot, which they weren’t coming into the dream; Arthur holds out a pistol to him without comment.
----
Back in the hotel room, Eames doesn’t look any better. “It seems psychosomatic reactions continue after leaving the dream, my friends,” he says, half-snatching the PASIV line out of his wrist. He glances at the little girl on the other bed, curled in on herself, and half-runs for the bathroom before Ariadne even has her own line out. She recognizes the choked splatters and looks to Arthur for an explanation.
“I hadn’t thought this would bother him so much,” she says tentatively. Arthur sighs.
“He’s fond of children. Got quite a few nieces and nephews, actually.” He glances at the bathroom door. “And a daughter in Kent.”
“What?” she yelps. “He’s got - are you - Eames? Really?”
“Yes,” Eames says from the bathroom doorway, and she nearly jumps out of her skin yet again. “Kylie. She turns five in a month.”
She’s still too far thrown to be embarrassed. “But - you with a kid, of all people -”
“Unexpected, I know. Her mother is one of my oldest friends. Kylie was the result of too much alcohol, desperation, and some very deep denial about our respective sexualities.” She thinks that’s supposed to be a lopsided smile, but it just looks pained.
“But you don’t - I mean, you never mentioned, or - don’t you, I don’t know, I mean, why aren’t you -”
“I see her whenever I can. Her mother got her shit together and married her girlfriend several months into the pregnancy, for which I am forever grateful, but the situation was awkward enough that I decided it would be better not to be around too often. I visit when I can - birthdays, holidays, the odd weekend.”
“And he talks about her at great length whenever he gets drunk in private,” Yusuf adds, packing up the PASIV in the corner. “And buys her things every time he has money to spare.”
Eames shrugs, not nearly as nonchalantly as he usually would. “What can I say? I make an excellent doting uncle, and I’d be a horrible father.”
“I doubt that,” Arthur says; Yusuf just snorts, one eyebrow raised pointedly. Ariadne glances between the three of them and wishes she knew what to say.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------II.
A month later, Arthur gathers them again for a new mark: an Oxford literature professor suspected of carrying organized crime secrets. Yusuf sets them up for the first practice run and offers to tuck them in; Arthur comments that clearly Eames is a bad influence.
Ariadne finds herself just a few steps from her clearing; shoving through the snow-covered branches reveals Eames grinning up at her flickering lamp-post.
“Ariadne, you didn’t,” he says, gleeful, and raises his voice. “If anyone sees a strange woman in a sleigh, don’t eat anything she gives you!”
“Narnia?” Arthur asks behind her, sounding amused; she jumps. He pushes past her and glances around. “Did you make a wardrobe?”
“Yes, actually,” she admits, hiding a smile badly. She hadn’t been quite sure how they’d respond. “The house has woods outside it, and they loop you back to here.”
“And how far does the dream go in this level of reality?”
“To the Stone Table. You can see Cair Paravel from there, but if you try to reach it then the woods loop back either to the house or here, depending on which way you go around a certain boulder. I’ll show you.”
“We ought to poke around here for a bit first,” Eames says, still glancing around in transparent delight. “I’m going to very disappointed in my subconscious if there isn’t a faun in a scarf wandering about somewhere, and we ought to try dreaming up a few uniquely Narnian things. The gifts, perhaps, since this seems to be that era.”
“I’m not sure I want to know what Susan’s horn would do,” Arthur comments, running a finger along the bark of a nearby pine. “Although it would be informative, I’ve no doubt.”
“I was thinking of the cordial, anyway,” Eames says.
“Really?” Ariadne frowns. “I hadn’t thought it would be the most useful thing.”
“Don’t be ridiculous, there are all kinds of uses for a cure-all. Besides, the youngest child’s gift is always the most powerful. Haven’t you read your fairy tales?” Eames laughs.
“What’s with the giddy child act, Mr. Eames?” Ariadne asks, doing her best to imitate Arthur’s look of disapproval.
“Well, it’s Narnia. You’ve just plunged me into the essential embodiment of my childhood, Ariadne, you must expect some repercussions.”
“I suppose it makes sense,” Arthur remarks, now turning a lump of snow over and over in his hands as if he isn’t sure it’s real. “Isn’t C.S. Lewis the one with that quote about how putting away childish things includes the fear of being thought childish?” And then the snowball flies out of his hand and smacks Eames on the shoulder. Ariadne gapes.
“Dear God, Arthur!” Eames almost doubles over laughing. “Just when I was almost convinced you couldn’t have fun.” Arthur shrugs, backing up.
“A good point man knows when to let his teammates blow off some steam,” he replies, unperturbed. “We may as well get it out of our systems now.” Ariadne doesn’t realize why he has one hand behind his back until he lets go of the tree branch and a glob of snow catapults into her chest. She shrieks and crouches to pack a missile of her own.
The resultant fight sends them zigzagging all over the woods, filling them with laughter; they don’t run into that many projections and the few they do find are surprisingly peaceful. Eventually they lose track of each other, and Ariadne makes her way back to the clearing, shivering, to find Arthur already there. He holds up his hands in surrender, and she’s willing to grant peace.
“I have to admit, I didn’t expect this of you,” she says. “Starting a snowball fight, I mean.”
He fidgets a bit, to her amusement. “Well, we all have to relax once in a while. Normally I wouldn’t do it on the job, but we weren’t going to get Eames to do anything useful for a while anyway, and we did learn our way around the woods for a bit.” The half-smile makes her suspect that’s only a justification, but she bites her lip anyway. It hadn’t been her plan to render today useless.
“I didn’t realize he’d like it so much,” she admits.
“Oh, he’s always loved Narnia, as long as I’ve known him.” Arthur is playing with a pine branch again, she notices, although now he’s just fiddling. He doesn’t look nearly as professional (or as old) with his hair all mussed and his fine wool sweater dusted with half-melted snow.
“You seem pretty fond of it too.”
“Well, yes.” Suddenly he smiles, although not at her. “You know, I haven’t seen fresh snow since I was a teenager.”
“Why not?” she asks, stepping closer to lean against a sleeping oak.
“I grew up in a tiny excuse for a town in Vermont. I enlisted right out of high school, youthful fervor, and I’ve been a city boy ever since.”
“And you didn’t go home, even for a visit? Or, I don’t know, holidays?” she asks, frowning.
“Well -” He grimaces. “They don’t know - I mean, they think I’m dead. MIA, rather. I didn’t exactly leave the military honorably.”
“And you didn’t tell them what happened to you?” She can’t quite stop herself from sounding scandalized. He sighs.
“My mother would probably rather have a dead son than a deserter. She’d never say so, of course, but she believes in honor, in sticking to things. And she’d feel she ought to disown me over all of this.” He waves his hand, vaguely encompassing the woods, the dreamscape, their profession. “I may as well spare her the more complicated anguish. Besides, it keeps her and my sisters safe if nobody knows we’re connected.”
“Sisters?”
“Two. Younger than me. Kathy is in the Air Force, Suzanne just graduated from MIT. They’re smart kids.” He studies the snow, and for a moment he looks bizarrely like Eames; she can’t figure out how, and then she remembers the forger leaning against a doorframe and saying he’s a better uncle than a father.
She hasn’t told her parents the whole truth about her life since Cobb asked her to draw a labyrinth, but she called them just last night. She has no idea what it would be like to go months, years, without even saying hello.
“A lot of you guys have families I don’t know about, it seems like,” she says, for lack of anything else. Arthur shrugs, looking up at her, and straightens his tie.
“Well, yes. We usually try to keep our families as separate from this as possible. Our personal lives as well, those of us who have them outside the profession.”
“I didn’t realize everyone involved was so - focused.”
“Most people socialize, but generally with other dreamers or people who work in similar circles. It’s safer.”
“I see.”
“It’s possible to spend time with people who aren’t criminals, Ariadne,” he says, combing his fingers through his hair. “It’s just trickier, unless you’re willing to get them involved. And most don’t appreciate being dragged into high-level crime.” He smiles sideways, almost teasing. “Not everyone’s as crazy as us.”
“I’ve noticed,” she says, smiling back. “I just didn’t really think about the, you know, the ramifications before.” The nonchalance winds down halfway through the sentence, leaving her perilously close to the tone she uses right before erasing large sections of a schematic.
“You can still leave, you know,” Arthur offers quietly. “Teach us this map and then we’ll be out of your life. Just say the word.”
“What?” She shakes her head, clutching for her totem, less for a check on reality than because it’s become a habit in moments of discomfort. “I’m not giving this up, no way.”
“Well, then. It’s a pleasure to have you.” He smiles slightly, then looks away. “But you should realize - that option isn’t open indefinitely. We’ve been keeping you as quiet as possible, but you’re going to get a reputation eventually. And the rumors about the Fischer job are intensifying, and everyone knows that Dom can’t build.”
She swallows. “So… I’d better do something about my family, then.” It’s possible, clearly.
“Eames and I can help you make your original life look like an alias,” he offers gently. “And come up with a story for them. If that’s what you want.”
I can do it myself, she wants to say, but she knows that’s ridiculous. “I’d appreciate that.”
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III.
The Oxford job wears them all out; Yusuf, in particular, hands them a steady supply of sedatives and goes back to Mombasa, saying this isn't worth the money. The next task, which lands them in Boston, is another personal affair: a solar tycoon wants them to find out if his son is gay.
“Couldn’t he just ask him?” Eames asks, frowning at the dossier. “I mean, what are we, his personal paparazzi?”
Arthur sighs. “I agree, it’s ridiculous. But the man just made a fortune, he’s trying to spend it however he can, and this will get us an excellent payoff with almost no chance of getting shot. In the real world, at least, and probably not in dream-time either.”
“How do we extract that one?” Ariadne asks, tapping a pen against her moleskin. “It’s kind of an odd thing to keep in a safe.”
“Well, we’ve got several options. Most likely, we bring him into the dream and try to get him to pick someone up, and we infer from there. If that fails, his father said he used to hide things under the bed and at the back of the closet, which is remarkably fitting in other ways, and he might have similar information on his phone. We can also see what the subconscious does. It won’t be completely reliable unless he flat-out tells one of us or we overhear him coming out to a projection, but we’re getting paid in advance.”
“Okay. So, does a city sound about right? I’m thinking kind of, you know, romantic-looking, all old-fashioned Hollywood -”
“Lonely might be better,” Eames suggests. “More versatile. It’ll fit anything from the start of an epic love story to a quickie behind the bar, depending on what he’s looking for.”
She shrugs; she hasn’t been looking for either since she was nineteen. “Okay, a lonely city. Huge, then. So, once we get there…”
----
The city she builds is all towering glass and rusted steel and grime-coated concrete. It’s late December, with slush on the streets and miniscule flecks of snow swirling through the bitter wind.
“You couldn’t dream me up in a hat?” Eames asks from behind her, pulling a fleece-lined aviator out of his pocket. Arthur is behind him, glancing around the abandoned little park.
“Weren’t we supposed to start in the intersection?” he asks, frowning. Ariadne winces.
“I’m sorry. I was worrying about whether the park had the right proportions to the rest of the city, since it’s meant to be sort of pseudo-Central Park. I guess that got us here by accident instead.”
“I see,” Arthur says, pursing his lips. “Well, it’s all right, he needs time to settle in to the apartment anyway. It’s that way, correct?”
“Yes.”
“Just as a matter of interest, why does he get a hat?” Eames asked, tying on his own.
“Because I think he’d remember to wear hats, I guess.”
“So does Eames, actually,” Arthur says over his shoulder. Ariadne scowls - she hates misjudging people - and runs to catch up, skidding slightly in the slush, while Eames saunters along behind them.
They’re halfway to the hotel, crossing a little footbridge, when Arthur stops.
“Ariadne, what are those?”
“What?” She peeks over the edge to find a cluster of scraggly brown birds staring reproachfully up at her. “Oh. Ducks. I always did wonder where the literal ones went.”
“Er, what?” Arthur sounds strangely suspicious.
“Ducks. I mean, Holden kept talking about where they went in the winter, and I know it was symbolic and all, but I always thought it was a good question. I’m pretty sure they migrate in real life, but I guess I stuck them in here by mistake.”
Eames cackled. “Holden? Ducks? Oh God, Ariadne, did you base this off of Catcher in the Rye?”
She blinks at him. “Uh, yeah? I mean, it’s kind of the ultimate lonely city, and it’s worked really well when I’ve built from books before. I didn’t lift anything specific except for the one bar, but I read it a lot when I was looking for ideas and to get a sense of the general aesthetic.” Eames is still snickering. “I thought I mentioned it,” she lies.
“Dear God,” Arthur sighs, leaning against the rail.
“Is something a problem? I didn’t actually build any sections of New York, I’m not that stupid.”
“Arthur hates that book,” Eames explains gleefully. “Absolutely hates it.”
“I do,” Arthur admits.
“It reminds him too much of the drunken escapades in his youth,” Eames says, smirking.
“You had drunken escapades?”
Eames bursts out laughing again; Arthur grimaces. “Sadly, yes, although I didn’t actually get drunk that often. There’s something off-putting about waking up hung over in the backseat of a tiny Jetta. But I did run away for a month or so when I was seventeen.”
Araidne frowns at him. “Weird. I mean, I didn’t take you for a delinquent.”
He shrugs. “I wasn’t, really. Besides, it was a long time ago. I’ve grown up a bit since.”
“How old are you, anyway?”
“Thirty-one.”
“Practically an old man,” Eames interjects.
“And yet you’re older than me, and you still manage to act younger than Ariadne,” Arthur points out, sounding more amused than annoyed.
“You wound me, darling,” Eames drawls, pressing a hand to his chest.
“At long last,” Arthur says with a smile, which makes Eames break character long enough to snort. Arthur pushes himself off the bridge’s handrail. “Ariadne, does the worthlessness of this particular world extend to the coffee, or is there some decent stuff to be found?”
“There’s a pretty good café two blocks out of the park,” Ariadne says, blinking. “You couldn’t have had any at the hotel?”
“I’m not entirely sure what they were serving, but it was certainly not coffee.” He sets off again, but Ariadne lingers for a moment next to Eames.
“Arthur’s seemed a lot more… relaxed lately,” she says, lowering her voice for no easily justifiable reason. She’s astonished when Eames stops in his tracks.
“You know, sometimes I forget we met you less than a year ago.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” she demands, forcing her fingers out of the fist they’ve spontaneously formed.
“Just that of course, you’re comparing him to how he was on the Fischer job. He’s much more bearable when he isn’t trying to redefine possibility and constantly wondering if he’s going to have to pull Dom Cobb off a window ledge again.”
“Again?”
“Eleven times,” he murmurs. “Mostly in the first year after Mal, but…”
“Jesus,” she whispers, wanting to shoot her past self in the face.
“Yeah. There are reasons he’s so impossible.” The wryness of the words doesn’t quite match the bitterness-edged fondness of the smile he sends after the point man. To her surprise, Eames doesn’t slip a mask back on when Arthur turns around.
“Are you two coming?” he asks mildly, one eyebrow raised. Ariadne forces herself to grin and run to catch up again. At least this time Eames hurries too.
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IV.
They’re flying back to Paris when Arthur’s phone rings. He grimaces apologetically at Eames and Ariadne and rummages through his bag.
“Hello. Dom? Is everything - oh, thank God. I didn’t give them your number - wait. Well, we’re just getting back from a job - okay. No, I haven’t yet, it’s just not the right time. Dom, she’s right next to me. Because you didn’t ask! All right, here she is.” He holds the phone out to Ariadne. “It’s Dom, for you.”
“Um.” Weird. She takes the slim silver rectangle with unnecessary care. “Hello, Dom, it’s Ariadne.”
“Hey, Ariadne. Listen, a couple of active dreamers contacted me looking for an architect for a job in Germany. I told them I’m not in the business anymore and they asked me if they had any recommendations. I was hoping for your permission to send them on to you.”
She swallows. “That would be fine, thanks. Are they trustworthy?”
“Ask Arthur to check them out for you. I’ll send you their info, but I need your number.”
“1-478-555-2647.”
“All right, thanks. Good-bye.”
“Good-bye.” She closed the phone and handed it back to Arthur before digging for her own. “He’s offering to set me up with another team.”
“Abandoning us so casually, Ariadne?” Eames asks. The lightness sounds a touch strained, and she frowns at him.
“It’s only a one-off thing, or that’s what it sounded like. We don’t have anything lined up for a while, and I should take the opportunity, right? Besides, I haven’t even talked to them yet.” She turns to Arthur. “I’m going to need a background check on the two of them - what are your rates for that kind of thing?”
He blinks once, twice. “Rates? Well, ah, I haven’t done that kind of search independently in some time, actually, but I’m sure we can work something out. Forward me whatever I’d assume he’s sending you.”
----
Two weeks later, she lets herself into a suite in a small hotel outside Berlin. “Hello?” she calls.
“Ah, Ariadne!” A blond man extracts himself from a squat beige armchair; with some effort, she pulls her eyes away from the bristling moustache consuming his face. “A pleasure to meet you,” he continues. “I’m Greg Arynsky, of course. This is my wife, Georgiana.” He holds out a hand to help her out of the other chair; she is a lovely Mediterranean woman several inches taller than him. “And the finest point woman I’ve ever had the pleasure of working with,” he continues, still holding her hand.
“Don’t get her hopes up, Greg,” she admonishes, gazing at him; her accent is straight off the BBC. “I’ve nothing on her Arthur.”
“He isn’t my Arthur,” Ariadne demurs. “And he said you were quite good.”
“Well, that’s flattering!” Georgiana chuckles, turning directly to Ariadne for the first time. The younger woman’s eyes widen before she can stop herself, and Georgiana lifts a finger to trace the livid scar tissue running from the edge of her hairline straight through one perfectly arched eyebrow and across her cheek. “Yes, it’s quite nasty-looking, I know. No, don’t apologize, I was prepared for some surprise. You haven’t developed a reputation for tact.” She smiles.
Ariadne hasn’t felt this young since the Fischer job, but she straightens and looks the point woman dead on. “Well, then, what happened?”
“We had some trouble in Beijing a few years ago. Now.” She turns and picks up a briefcase. “Normally we wouldn’t take you on without certain tests, but if you can work with that crowd for the better part of a year then you’re more than good enough for us, especially on relatively short notice. Sit, for God’s sake, the both of you.” They comply, Ariadne blinking slightly at the rapid transition. “Now, you got the basics of the case, right?”
“Yes, on the way here, but what you asked of me wasn’t very specific. I mean, how do you want the mark to feel? Comfortable, starstruck, proud, what are you going for here?”
The Arynskys conduct a rapid dialogue in cocked eyebrows and tilted heads; Ariadne doesn’t catch half of what’s going on there, but Greg is smiling when he turns to her.
“You’re right, we should have addressed that. As it happens, this is going to work a lot better if the mark is uncomfortable, but not suspicious or paranoid. Can you do that, or something close to it?”
“Sure, yeah,” she says, mind churning. “I can do it easy. And we’re still going with the grandiose party thing, right?
----
Back in her own hotel room, Ariadne sprawls back in her desk chair and stares at the ceiling, tapping a pencil against her lips. Glamorous yet sickening, decadent and distasteful… hm. Well, the second part is probably a matter of twisting proportions, setting the angles two degrees off perfect and the colors three shades too bright. The problem is, she hasn’t really been to any parties with that kind of excessive scale. She could probably ask Saito - they’ve kept up, in what she imagines to be the mind-crime equivalent of a Christmas-card relationship - but she would really prefer not to ask for help.
She tugs open her suitcase and starts flicking through the books she brought. She barely glances at the covers, discarding battered red and creased green and a leather copy of Wuthering Heights that three successive roommates have mistaken for a King James Bible, and she stops at a cover that’s all faded blue and distant gold and ancient-looking eyes.
Perfect.
----
On the night of the heist, as planned, they enter the dream at the end of the manor’s driveway. Greg and Georgiana begin the dream hand in hand again. Ariadne is a few feet away, closer to the gaping iron gates. Every tree and window in the house is lit up with a fantastically garish glow; the party’s perfectly constructed cacophony is quite audible even half a mile down the drive, all mad beats and drunken shrieks.
“Everybody ready?” Georgiana asks briskly, still clinging to her husband’s hand. “Good,” and they make their way up the streamer-strewn gravel drive with no further review or discussion.
The projections are staggering vaguely across the lawn, clinging to each other and laughing; between jewelry and eyeshadow, ornate dresses and sequined suits, every last one of them glitters. Ariadne thinks, with some satisfaction, that it looks like an unholy cross between the Oscars and a prom after-party. A giggling blonde in green nearly stumbles into her as they push into the crowd, sloshing champagne onto the architect’s feet; Ariadne wrinkles her nose and continues on.
“Time to split, you guys,” Greg says, feeding himself and Georgiana through the throngs. Ariadne nods unnecessarily; they all know the plan.
“All got our phones?” she asks. They make her twitch, but after all, this dream isn’t actually a representation of the twenties. It’s fine.
“Of course,” Georgiana chuckles over her shoulder. “Diversions planned?”
“Yeah.”
Georgiana folds herself and her husband together and into the dance effortlessly; Ariadne wanders vaguely towards the thoroughly-mobbed buffet table, less out of hunger than because it’s on the far side of this carnival. She isn’t halfway there before she’s attracted the attention of a projection, but he doesn’t seem to be looking for a dreamer. Flirting should not ever be conducted at that volume, she thinks, ducking irritably away from him.
At this point, all she has to do for the evening is stay away from the Arynskys. If they run into trouble with projections, it’s on her to start breaking physics until she has the full attention of every fragment of subconscious, and then keep herself alive for as long as possible; however, it’s more than likely that her job is essentially done. And, she thinks with some satisfaction, done well.
She spends more than an hour exploring her handiwork, making sure it is indeed standing up to the job, but she’s built this place to make skin crawl. By the time she gives in and ducks down to the beach behind the house, a migraine is pulsing in time with every flash of light.
The noise reaches right to the edge of the dream, but by the water it’s a bit muffled, and the simple presence of darkness and fresh salty air is like an anesthetic. Down here is more soothing; the light is far prettier reflected off the waves, and she can actually see the stars, which do in fact bear a slight resemblance to a summer sky in Long Island.
She’s a little amused and a little bit disappointed in herself when she realizes she’s subconsciously added a green light across the water, too. It’s enough of a surprise to make her stop walking for a moment - there’s nothing like working with Dom Cobb to make you very careful about accidental manifestations - and the pause makes her realize that even in dreams, she absolutely hates stiletto heels. She drops into the sand, enjoying the feel of the damp grit settling over the theoretically expensive silk of her skirt, and wonders idly if Greg and Georgiana have noticed the connections to The Great Gatsby.
She wonders if either Arthur or Eames has ever read it. Arthur would probably hate it; Gatsby’s obsession with his past, his desperation to regain Daisy Buchanan, all of it would drive Arthur to a complete rage. As for Eames... Ariadne runs the characters over in her mind again, thinking about the construction of Jay Gatsby from James Gatz, the varied façades of Jordan Baker, the artificial personas of, in fact, almost everyone. Eames, she thinks, would probably find it interesting, but she doubts he’d exactly enjoy it.
She stays by the shore, planning out the genius loci of palaces, until the projections show up. Then she starts bringing in the storms.
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V.
“Hello, Ariadne,” Arthur says, folding a newspaper and standing, and she immediately reaches for her totem.
“Arthur?” She hadn’t expected anyone to meet her at the airport, but here he is, sitting right by the baggage carousel.
“Welcome back to Paris,” he says, smiling. “How was the job?”
“Awful,” she admits before she can think about it. “Not that I’m not glad to see you, but why are you here?”
He shrugs expansively; she smiles, watching his shoulders roll under the familiar black suit. “I figured I might as well save you a cab fare. I’m parked just outside that exit.” He gestures.
“I never actually told you what flight I’d be on,” she says, although she’s grateful for the thought.
“Well, you texted us just as you were leaving, and mentioned it; it wasn’t hard to extrapolate from there.” He frowns. “Should I not have?”
“No, it’s fine,” she says, because Arthur is an extrapolator and always will be. “I just didn’t expect it.”
“Well, I hope it was a pleasant surprise,” he says, following as she heads for the indicated parking lot. “What were the problems with the job?”
“They kicked out of the job with almost twelve minutes left on the surface clock,” she says, rolling her eyes. “And failed to mention it to me - we separated in the dreamscape.”
“Oh, God. Did they have a way to contact you at all?”
“Cell phones on all of us. Apparently they got cornered near the safe with the papers in their hands, panicked, and shot themselves out before they remembered me.” Lips twitching, she adds, “I don’t think they work with people other than the two of them much.”
“They do have a reputation for that,” he grants.
“They weren’t particularly organized even before that,” she adds. “I don’t think Georgiana is the best point man.”
“Not to sound egotistical, but if you judge all point men by me, you’ll be fairly regularly disappointed,” he says; they’ve reached his car by this time, and she slings her bags in the back and collapses into the passenger seat with a sigh of relief for her aching arms.
“Perhaps I’d better just not work with anyone else, then,” she jokes, and immediately freezes.
“That might be an excellent idea,” Arthur agrees gravely. “It’s a horrible way to bring it up, but I’ve actually been wanting to suggest that the three of us just work as a unit; it’s a fairly common arrangement. Just as something to think about.”
“That sounds pretty good,” she says, because she’s tired, and she’s very glad to be home, and she didn’t realize until right now exactly how fed up she’s been with watching the Arynskys communicate in intertwined fingers and sideways glances and smiles with entire rhapsodizing speeches in the corners. Arthur is smiling at her and wearing a suit she’s seen him wear at least a hundred times, inside dreams and out, and his car is almost as familiar to her as her own, and she knows that by ‘the three of us’ he means her and him and Eames, and that’s actually pretty perfect because they’re an excellent combination.
“It’s just something to consider,” Arthur says. “Now, do you want to head straight back to your apartment, or are you up for dinner? Eames will want to say hello, of course.”
“Dinner sounds great,” she says. “That little diner on the corner, Bernadette’s?”
“That was the plan,” he agrees, turning off in the relevant direction and reaching for his headset.
----
“Ariadne!” Eames calls the instant they set foot in the dimly-lit little restaurant, waving expansively from a table by the front window. He shoves his chair back, digging in his pocket. “At last, the genuine article, and in excellent health.”
“Um, what?” she asks, dropping into one of the other chairs.
“Eames - ” Arthur starts, but Eames is already talking.
“I haven’t been able to set foot in Arthur’s mind for the past six months without running into a projection of you limping about, usually shot or stabbed or otherwise looking dreadful. It’s been more than a bit unsettling.”
She takes a second to digest. “You mean he was, what, worried about me?”
“On an intellectual level, not at all,” Arthur says, looking distinctly put out. “You were working with at least moderately competent people, and you’re more than capable of taking care of yourself. Emotionally speaking, however…”
“Worried sick,” the forger supplies.
“I’d argue that it’s at least an improvement on moping all over the warehouse,” Arthur grumbles, picking up his menu, “as some people did.”
“Excuse me, I may meet very few of your absurd standards for professionalism, but I am not maudlin enough to mope.”
“Is sulking preferable?”
“So you missed me, is that what I’m supposed to be getting here?” Ariadne interrupts, not bothering to hide her smile.
“I suppose you could say that,” Eames says, scrutinizing his water glass. “Arthur, how long before your bloody sensibilities will let us raise the question?”
“I brought it up on the way over, actually,” he says.
Eames snorts. “Well, so much for not being blatantly manipulative, then.”
“Eames, if you’ve seriously become ethically opposed to manipulation while I was gone, then I’m going to have to conclude you’ve been brainwashed.”
“Perhaps I’ve just gotten better at it,” he says, smiling, and at that point they’re interrupted by the waitress. This derails them into a discussion about when, exactly, Ariadne decided to start eating pork chops, which segues rapidly into an exchange of slightly more practical notes on the time apart, and from there the conversation wanders.
It isn’t until they’re scraping their dessert plates clean that the architect folds her hands over the table and says, “In all seriousness, you guys, the working-together thing? I’d like it.”
“What, did he bloody tell you to answer tonight?” Eames asks, frowning.
“No, but refusing just doesn’t make any sense. I mean, if I were a real-world architect and I got offered a job as one of the main members of a top-tier firm right off the bat, I wouldn’t go signing up with desperate amateurs just in case, right? And I already know that I like you guys, and we work well together.”
She is rather amused to note that Arthur and Eames blink in almost perfect synchronization. Then Eames chuckles.
“Well, it looks like we’ll need to acquire some champagne tonight, then,” he says, smiling.
“I don’t think they serve it here,” Ariadne points out, “but I definitely like the idea.”
“I know a place,” Arthur says, signaling for the check. “I assume you’re not too tired?”
“Not to celebrate,” she says; between the calories and the company, she feels much better than she did when she got off the plane. “Where do you have in mind?”
He smiles. “There’s a couple of options, actually -”
“One of which is your kitchen cabinet, correct?” Eames inquires.
“There is a bar that I think might serve decent stuff, but that was the backup option, yes,” he says, long-suffering. “But since you bring it up, we may as well skip straight to that. I don’t feel like driving halfway across Paris just to find out my information is out of date.” He shoves his chair back. “Fine by you two?”
“Sounds good,” Ariadne says, standing herself and grabbing for her coat.
They pay for the food (Ariadne doesn’t have quite enough cash on her; Eames covers, whispering that she can pay him back tomorrow if she wants) and head on out again. Ariadne grabs shotgun; Eames leans out of the backseat, craning his neck, to negotiate music with Arthur.
Ariadne relaxes back against the leather, glances between the two of them as they argue, and suggests classic rock when Arthur asks her to arbitrate. It’s good, she thinks, to be home.
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VI.
“You guys?” Ariadne says one morning as they assemble in the warehouse. “I’ve been working on something I want to show you. I’m not sure exactly when we’d use it, but I’m sure there’s something, and it’s demonstrating some principles that I think will be really great for tricky projections.”
“Can you elaborate?” Arthur asks, eyebrows raised to the ceiling.
“It’ll be easier just to show you.” She hands him a PASIV line; he glances first at her, then at Eames, who shrugs. “I think you’ll like it.”
She settles into her chair and closes her eyes, then opens them.
They’re standing inside a massive wheel of crystal, suspended in space, wind blasting at their backs. Above and below and all around them stretch out expanses of intricately twisting shapes, zigzags and loops and curves, like a glass amusement park bent back on itself and hung at forty-five degrees. Jets and streams of water spill and thunder through the air in every conceivable direction, throwing up spray that’s already beading in Ariadne’s bound-back hair. There’s no sky or ground or edge to be seen; everything vanishes into the dim blue mist.
Ariadne glances over at the other two; Eames is craning his neck, rubbing at the back of his head. Arthur is openly gaping.
“What is this?” he says at last. She hides a grin. Well, she’s definitely onto something new here, at least.
“Walk back and forth a little bit,” she says, gesturing. Arthur is still trying to look in every direction at once, but Eames tries it.
“Oh bloody fuck, it’s all turning,” he says, dropping to a seat on the crystal.
“No, it isn’t,” Ariadne says as Eames glances up and Arthur glances back at him, and both men curse at the same time.
“How are you -”
“What the flying - ”
“The gravity isn’t consistent here,” Ariadne explains, beaming and gesturing at her perfectly illustrative example: Eames tilted at a thirty-degree angle to Arthur. That’s what’s special about this place.
“Oh my God,” Arthur breathes.
“Yeah. The gravity is mostly ninety degrees to the nearest surface, but of course once you get out into the space between leges that’s a little more complicated. Just here, you can walk all around the edge of this loop we’re on - actually, it’s a Mobius strip - and the gravity just shifts with you.”
“Is that what was going on, then?” Eames says, looking slightly pale. “One moment, I’m coming back there. I can’t keep looking at you two at this angle.”
“In between things, in space, is there no gravity then?” Arthur asks, still staring around.
“No, it retains the gravity of wherever it started until it enters something else’s field,” she says. “Although usually the underside of something has its own gravity, so if you just step off the edge you’ll land on the other side. Here.” She fumbles in her pocket and hands him a freshly dreamed-up quarter. “Drop this off the edge and you’ll see what I mean.”
He does, kneeling to observe as it tumbles in a perfect parabola away, then seemingly flies back towards them to hit the far side of their crystal walkway with a stunningly loud chime. Arthur, by this point, is beaming almost as widely as Ariadne.
“How do we get off of anything, then, if we keep coming back?”
“Throw it clear of the gravity field. Here, try it with something bigger -” He’s already shrugging off his jacket. Barely a foot from the edge, the wind catches it; it flutters outward like a pinstriped bird and then tumbles gradually ‘up’, landing spread out on an angled panel nearly twenty feet above them.
“Oh my God,” he repeats, staring up. “And it shifts with us, as we move? Excuse me -” He turns on one heel and sets off recklessly fast; he only makes it three steps before he has to fling an arm out for balance.
Eames inches up behind her. “Well, you’ve certainly made his day,” he remarks, sounding strained under the amusement. “Possibly his year.”
“It does seem like that,” she agrees, then twists around to look at the forger. “You don’t like this very much, do you?”
He shakes his head. “No, no, I don’t dislike it. This is fascinating. It’s just -” He sighs. “I’m slightly less adaptable then our favorite point man. I can handle the height, but the motion is making me a bit seasick.”
“Sorry,” she says, wincing. “I probably should have warned you.”
“It’s fine,” he says, shrugging. “I’ll adjust. Also, for the record, only slightly less adaptable.”
She snickers. “Of course.” Glancing after Arthur, she adds, “We should probably catch up to him.” She moves forward, then turns; Eames is picking his way along the crystal with the care of an Everest climber.
“Need a hand?” she asks, managing heroically not to laugh at him. She’d been a bit disoriented the first time she tested this too, and she built the place.
“That may perhaps be a good idea, at least for another few minutes,” he admits, looking pained. She bows slightly and offers him her arm, which earns her a grin. “How gallant,” he drawls, taking it; the dainty grace of the movement is more than a bit incongruous with his scruffily bearded self, but logical given the number of times he’s been escorted in the skin of a lovely woman.
He moves much more easily with her to help him balance, but they still only catch up with Arthur - now around the twist of the Mobius - because he’s stopped to investigate the water spilling past them at a sixty-degree upward angle. Well, upward from where they’re currently standing.
“Ariadne, where’s this coming from?” he asks, whirling to look at her again. He’s gotten quite windblown and damp already; they all have, she realizes.
“The source is a few hundred meters that way,” she says, gesturing. “It’s this installation, sort of like a giant light for a sports field, because I couldn’t get a standard waterfall to work, it always doubled back onto the underside of the source. It’s just here to make it easier to orient ourselves, because it’s incredibly easy to get lost in here. Same with the wind.”
“Makes sense,” he murmurs, craning his neck to stare at the splashing water. “Tell me more.”
“Well, the world is spherical, and this here is right at the center of it, pretty much. I had to repeat some of the structures in order to fill it all, but they’re staggered irregularly so it actually makes it all more disorienting, not less. I’ve been down here for hours without running into a single projection, sometimes,” she slips in, not bothering to pretend she isn’t boasting. “And once you hit the edge, things get darker, and from there it’s all based on fractals, so it goes out quite a bit without being specifically structured.”
“Exactly how big is this?” he asks.
“The fractals? I haven’t tested it fully. The base sphere has about a five-kilometer radius.”
“And it’s all like this?” he asks incredulously, staring at her.
“Pretty much, yes,” she says, beaming. “Not bad, huh?”
He laughs, brighter and more delighted than she’s ever heard him. “Not bad! Ariadne, I am - more than impressed. Awed. I am awed.”
“Thank you,” she manages, smile ratcheting up to the point where her cheeks hurt. She realizes that at some point she’s stopped feeling the cold. Eames is chuckling, still hanging on her arm.
“How do we get off of this to get a look at the rest of it?” Arthur asks, glancing back and forth. Ariadne twists around to indicate the array of discs at their backs, almost straight ‘above’ them.
“We jump,” she says, “and by the time the gravity from there catches us it isn’t a very long fall. You’re meant to be jumping from the inside of the Mobius, so it’s the same direction all the way down, but we can do it from here.”
“I suggest that,” Arthur says, “I don’t want to go around again.” Which means, she knows, that Eames would probably prefer not; Arthur catches her eye and she realizes that he never intended to deceive her on that point. Eames probably knows exactly what’s going on here too, she realizes, and, well, good. He might as well know that they’re willing to spare his pride.
“We should hang on to each other, then,” she warns, “because it does get a little strange when the gravity flips.”
“This’ll be fun,” Eames snorts, dropping her arm to clutch at her hand. Arthur stretches out his own, lacing their callused fingers together, and glances out.
“One, two -”
“Three,” they whisper in concert, and she drags the other two out into her whirling air.