001 - video (plus spam for Arthur)

[cauchemal]

[Anyone on either side of Mal's room (7.05) will hear a voice calling "Dom?" After a moment, Mal knocks over her communicator, switching it on, and the Barge video feed is treated to a dining-table's-eye-view of a pretty woman looking worriedly around what appears to be the living room of a creatively- and eclectically-decorated Southern California

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Arthur Spam Thread

[paradoxlol]

Most days, Arthur makes a habit of keeping his communicator close by, the volume up. It provides him with a sort of streaming update on the Barge and the daily drama. Today, however, he has it silenced as he's working on some designs for Hayley's dream, choosing instead to fill his room with the music of Madeleine Peyroux. It's frustrating work; Arthur was never particularly skilled at actually designing the dream levels. That's what they have Architects for, after all. Cobb, Ariadne, even a sloppy idiot like Nash or, God forbid, Eames. Their minds were better suited to this sort of thing. As it is, Arthur manages several pages of sketches, possible designs to draw out the girl's repressed memories, before he decides that he could do with some fresh air-- or at least what passes for it on the Barge.

He looks at his communicator, then pockets it without going through the recent entries. He'd rather not be distracted by the Barge's dramatics today, but it doesn't hurt to keep the device on hand in case he runs into trouble. With that done, he locks his door and heads up to the deck.

He recognizes her the instant he sees her. How can he forget? All the dreams they shared, even after her death... Arthur stares, disbelieving, a sick feeling rising up inside of him. She can't be here. She's a projection, Cobb's memory, a violent shadow of the woman he knew. How many times had she hurt him, just to hurt Cobb?

He casts a look behind him, then around, as if expecting to see Cobb. He slides his hands into his pockets, feeling for his die, trying to discern whether this is reality or not. He doesn't have time to pull it out and check, however, but just feeling its weight against his fingers is a small reassurance.

"What're you doing, Mal?" he asks, his voice hard, cautious, as he comes closer to the woman.

Arthur Spam Thread

[cauchemal]

She's got her knee up awkwardly on the railing and is trying to get some kind of purchase to get her other leg up when she hears the familiar voice. And freezes, in that graceless pose, and stares wide-eyed at Arthur.

There are two possibilities. One: this is a projection of the dreamer whose dream she now inhabits. Or two: this really is Arthur; darling Arthur, doing what he does best, keeping things moving smoothly, looking out for Cobb-

She slides back down from the railing, smoothing out her skirt, and edges back half a step.

"Arthur," she says, her tone colourless. "I might ask the same of you."

Arthur Spam Thread

[paradoxlol]

Arthur doesn't want to get too close to her yet. He still remembers how it felt, when the bullet shattered his kneecap. That was the last time. The first time he saw her, she was different. Less sadistic than her later appearances-- at least, up until she pulled the knife out and stabbed him in the stomach, leaving him to bleed out slowly as she searched for Cobb. He was lucky that hadn't happened in the middle of a job; just a test run.

"A job," he says tersely. He looks at Mal, then the railing behind her. "Do you know why you're here?"

Re: Arthur Spam Thread

[cauchemal]

"Where's Dom?" she asks. It's the obvious question and, in a perverse way, it contains an answer of sorts to Arthur's own. Arthur is here, either as himself or as a projection (exact identity undetermined as yet), therefore her husband must be as well. And her presence in this dream-space must have something to do with both of them. QED.

Arthur Spam Thread

[paradoxlol]

Limbo. That's the answer, but Arthur's not sure he wants to say it. He doesn't know everything that happened between Cobb and Mal, but he knows about Limbo, and how badly that worked out for her. After she died, Arthur never wanted to go too deep again. Two levels was his usual limit.

"He's not here," is all Arthur can say for now. "I know what it looks like, but this isn't a dream, Mal," he offers, after a beat. However, he doesn't sound entirely sure of himself. He tries to keep that small seed of doubt out of his voice, but Mal knows him; she's known him for a long enough time that she might be able to catch on to the uncertainty when most others wouldn't.

Arthur Spam Thread

[cauchemal]

This isn't a dream, Mal.

Oh, how many times had she heard that sentence in the last year? And to hear it from Arthur, and to hear it with that uncertainty he was so clearly trying to hide-and suddenly she's sure now that this must be the real Arthur, because no one else, not even Dom, could have reproduced that pitch of his voice in a projection-well, this is hilarious. She starts to laugh.

"This?" She points out to the swirling void beyond the railing. "This isn't a dream? Oh, Arthur, you never were good at jokes. Tell me, who is the architect? Have you gone to fantasy novelists now?"

Arthur Spam Thread

[paradoxlol]

Arthur turns his head to the side, taking his eyes off of Mal for just a moment, just long enough to grimace slightly at her laugh. She almost sounds like herself, the Mal he knew and not the projection. But he's still not certain, and he doesn't want to get too close until he is. It wouldn't make sense for her to be a projection, of course-- not if the Barge is reality, which he sometimes is sure of and sometimes doubts-- but there's still the nagging feeling that she could be.

"There's no architect, just..." He looks up, like he's searching for the man. "The Admiral. Nobody's seen him." He pulls his eyes down to level them at Mal again. "If you jump, you won't wake up, and you won't go deeper. Every time you die, you'll wake up here, again, and you'll hurt. Think of it as the ultimate closed loop."

Arthur Spam Thread

[cauchemal]

She shakes her head. Why must everyone speak in riddles here? A dream environment is no excuse for incomprehensibility and outright stupidity, and now she's beginning to doubt the sanity of whoever designed this. "The Admiral," she repeats, with the peculiarly Gallic contempt that only a Frenchwoman can properly manage. "Was it rushed, this environment? Did Dom put it together in a hurry, perhaps, thinking it would somehow help to 'cure' me? So many wilful absurdities ... You know we never deliberately tried to introduce surreality; I can't believe he'd ..." She throws her hands up in a gesture of exasperation and turns on her heel, away from Arthur. "Where are you, Dom?" she asks the listening air. "I know you must be here somewhere."

Arthur Spam Thread

[paradoxlol]

When Mal turns her back to call for her husband, Arthur decides it's time to approach her. He takes several purposeful strides forward and reaches out to grab her arm-- not roughly, but firmly, as though in doing so, he can ground the both of them in reality.

"Mal, listen to me. He's not here," he repeats evenly. "And this isn't a dream." Still uncertain, but less so than before. "You passed by people, didn't you? Did they seem hostile, suspicious?"

...okay, considering the people on the Barge, this is probably not the best route to take.

"You build an environment like this, and the projections are going to notice. They're going to look for the dreamer. Whose subconscious would even accept this reality?"

Arthur Spam Thread - "hostile, suspicious". I LOLed.

[cauchemal]

She spins back to face him, pulling her arm free. There's an angry spark in her blue eyes, but she keeps her mouth shut and listens to him. Frowns a little; the truth is, none of the people she saw in the flesh struck her one way or another, but she was too intent on her purpose to notice.

"You'd be surprised what patients can accept when they've been prepared for it," she replies shortly, and there's a you-ought-to-know-that tone there. Not that Arthur had worked with the clinical cases as much as she had. "Just tell me the truth, Arthur. Where is my husband? What has he talked you into now?"

Arthur Spam Thread - The Barge inhabitants really are like angry projections :CCC

[paradoxlol]

"So, who's the patient, Mal?" he challenges, then takes a short step back. He doesn't want to get too close to the railing, himself, as a part of him still suspects she might push him off. He's more convinced that this is the real Mal now-- she's not acting like the projection, but this is the Barge, where nothing makes sense and there are homicidal aliens, vampires and twelve-year-olds running around.

He keeps his mouth closed for a moment, then answers reluctantly. "Inception." He's never had to lie to Mal before, and trying to almost feels like he'd be lying to Cobb. "He talked me into performing an inception with him. Or trying to, anyway."

If he'd known what Cobb had done to Mal, his answer would probably be different. As it is, he still believes that inception is largely impossible. Sure, most of them planted the idea and made the kick, but he won't believe it's truly possible until he sees the results in Fischer, himself.

"It didn't go well. He's..." Arthur stops, glances away again. "Lost. I made a deal to get him back. That's why I'm here."

Arthur Spam Thread - and this is why it will be a long time before anyone gets thru to her. >.<

[cauchemal]

She doesn't have an answer for him, and she knows it, but she also knows, with an absolute certainty, that the only explanation for this must have something to do with dream-sharing. Some trick in the process she's never known before. Some new subtlety or drug or-She puts her hands to her head and slowly runs her fingers through her tangled hair, then looks up sharply when Arthur says the magic word.

And the rest of what he says just ... oh, she understands inception, of course, and the theory behind it, and the difficulty of the process, but ... "Lost?" she says, dread in the pit of her stomach. Then: "How can you being here help him?"

She still suspects that Dom must be here, somewhere. But she's also starting to think that if she expects to get anywhere with Arthur, she probably needs to at least pretend that she's following him in the mad tales he's spinning. Let him think she's believing him.

Arthur Spam Thread - And it doesn't help that he believes the same, half the time D:

[paradoxlol]

"He missed the kick," Arthur says, some small elaboration in lieu of a complete explanation. "And we were in deep. I was approached by the... Admiral... with a deal. I come here, I help one person out, and I go home. Dom comes back. This place is..." Great, here comes the point where his whole story goes off the rails. There's no way he can tell her the truth and have her accept it as reality, especially when he doesn't always believe it, himself. "You know in Greek mythology, the ferry that takes the dead across the River Styx?" He pauses, realizing how ridiculous that sounds, but then presses on. "This is sort of it. The trip to that final destination. But it's more than that; it's a second chance to go back and fix things."

...

Yeah, this is stupid. There's no way Mal's going to buy any of this.

"I know it sounds completely insane."

Arthur Spam Thread

[cauchemal]

No, she doesn't believe him. It's absurd, and she can't believe that Arthur-Arthur, sober, reliable Arthur; she wonders briefly if perhaps he really is a projection after all-is actually spouting off this stream of nonsense as if he expects her to just say oh yes of course. But the there's something that's stopping her from just throwing her hands up again and storming off, and that's the look on his face, which suggests that even he is somewhat embarrassed by the words coming out of his own mouth.

"Yes," she says, and maybe there's just a bit of the old humour about her eyes and mouth, where there hasn't been a proper smile in far too long. "It does sound insane."

But if there's anything slightly true, or supposed to be slightly true, about this ludicrous line of merde, that raises one very significant question:

"So what am I doing here, then? According to this Admiral's plan?"

Arthur Spam Thread

[paradoxlol]

Arthur smiles a little when she confirms that it does sound insane. At least Mal's got some of her sanity left. He'd probably be more concerned if she had believed him whole heartedly. But then there's the dreaded question. Arthur doesn't want to be the one to tell her, but then, who else would? He doesn't trust anybody here to break it to Mal properly. The inmates would try to drive her further into insanity. The other wardens don't have the best track record of not coming across as confrontational or self righteous.

"You're dead. And you don't know why you're here. Statistically speaking, that makes you one of the people up for a second chance." But now the question is: why is Mal an inmate? He knows what happened, how she framed Cobb, but in a way it feels like the Admiral's condemning her as cut from the same cloth as the genocidal nutcases and killers. "You'll be assigned a warden-- like a case worker, not a jailer. They'll help you sort out... whatever it is you need. When you're finished here, you can go back home." To Cobb and James and Philippa is the conclusion he wants to make explicit, but he doesn't. He doesn't really know what happens to inmates, despite the promises made.

Arthur Spam Thread - I'd like to say I'm giving myself an even bigger headache than the movie did.

[cauchemal]

"But I was trying-" she blurts, then stops herself. I was trying to go back home. She had never told Arthur the truth, and she was fairly certain that Dom hadn't-that she was trapped in a dream that Dom had sworn up and down was real. Some prickle of intuition suggests that continuing to not tell him might be the better course of action.

She turns away from Arthur, hugging herself and looking back out over the rail into the void. She's trembling, but she doesn't seem to be aware of it; she's too lost in her own thoughts. None of this is right, none of it. That leap from the dream ... no, someone must have put her under before she could really jump, for real, then drew her down into another dream space, from which she'd leapt into this, perhaps some other dreamer's Limbo-yes, surely that must be it. She can't be dead. She can't.

She can feel sobs of frustration rising in her throat. "I just want to go home," she whispers. She turns to Arthur, her eyes starting to brim with tears. "And I must work with this ... this warden? Do I have any choice in who it is?" There's a dread now, of a stranger, one who could be a projection, or perhaps another dreamer. This is madness, she thinks for what is possibly the hundredth time since she woke up in that terrible room.