When I Wake Up, Do You Still Remember Me?
Title: When I Wake Up, Do You Still Remember Me?
Rating: NC-17
Beta: None. Any and all errors are mine. Please point out if you see some and I’ll get right on fixing them.
Pairing(s): Shade/Projection!Mal/Ariadne as well as faint Arthur/Eames
Word Count: 8772
Warnings: Swearing and violent themes. (Much like the movie, only with more obscenities.) Oh and a surprising turn of events that led to sex. I was rather surprised as it rarely happens with me.
Summary: Ariadne asks Arthur when they’re walking down the street and she can see Mal coming towards them. Arthur is looking in the opposite direction and hasn’t seen her yet. “Is it possible to steal a projection? Can you steal something more than information from a mark’s mind?”
Author's Note: I can’t believe it’s been over two years since I wrote anything - or finished anything. It’s… surprising. Ah, well. I’ve wanted this completed for a long time, I’ve always enjoyed it. I hope you do as well since I've been second guessing this for too long. It's being posted now.
When I Wake Up, Do You Still Remember Me?
by starsdontsleep
Ariadne’s working on architecture for a job when it first happens. It’s startling because it’s not the first time she’s dreamed since the Inception. Not the second, third or fourth even. It’s her second extraction and she’s mildly concerned she might have been there all along.
It’s as she’s crumpling a building, re-arranging the insides and wondering about adding one of Arthur’s paradox’s to keep him happy that a voice says quietly behind her, “My question was never answered.”
Ariadne spins around so fast she actually stumbles and falls onto the ground. She looks up into the beautiful - always so beautiful - and only version she’s ever (and will ever) meet of Mal. Her eyes are frosted, ice-cold but not as venomous as Ariadne’s used to; but that’s not saying much, she’s still holding a handgun. Her emerald dress falls on her like a second, perfect skin.
She knows this is a dream, but she’s still fearful of the older woman and all the ways she could (and probably would) kill her. Although, they were even so far.
It’s as she thinks it that Mal’s dress starts to grow a stain. They both look it at as the bulletwound Ariadne fired in limbo becomes a part of this Mal.
Mal looks at her, no change in her expression, still as hard as before and no pain showing, “You did not answer my question.”
Ariadne doesn’t scurry backwards when Mal raises the gun, but it doesn’t mean she doesn’t want to. “What question? What question was I supposed to answer?”
“Do you know what it is to be a lover?”
Ariadne’s mind flashes back to the hotel room. The fear of being face-to-face with Mal was stronger then, laced with the knowledge she was Cobb’s projection and had already killed her once before. This Mal was hers and was, essentially part of her own mind.
(She tried not to think about how little that meant.)
“I answered that,” Ariadne says slowly, getting to her feet cautiously, but Mal doesn’t pull the trigger. Blood is starting to drip down onto the concrete, and Ariadne wonders how much longer they both have left in this dream. “I don’t - I haven’t. No.
Mal smiles and Ariadne knows if it was with warmth and laughter, Mal would be so stunning it would hurt. But when it’s brittle and dark, she just looks like what she is - a shade, a manifestation of the dark part of someone’s mind.
“Without love there are no dreams.”
Before Ariadne’s mind can try to understand that, Mal has blown it away.
She wakes with a sharp inhale and frantically grasps for her totem. Pulling the IV from her arm, she stumbles to the closest available surface. Her bishop falls perfectly every time and Ariadne lets out a bemused if somewhat shaky laugh.
“Problem?”
She startles at Arthur’s voice, edged with concern and paused in his research; she’d forgotten he was in the warehouse and she blushed slightly in embarrassment, fervently grateful that Eames was following the mark. Arthur wouldn’t pester her.
“Fine, just. Dream went a little… odd.”
He gives her one more scrutinizing look before nodding and turning his attention back to his work. “Take a break. Inform me if it becomes a reoccurrence.”
“I’m not unstable,” she teases.
A hint of a smile curves his lips, but when he looks up his eyes are still serious. “Yes. People say that.”
He’s talking about Cobb. Ariadne swallows. But he doesn’t know it was Mal... and he doesn't need to.
She isn’t going to stress him unnecessarily, it’s just overworking and having spoken to Cobb a few days ago. Ariadne knows Mal’s shade still holds tension between Arthur and Cobb and she doesn’t want to bring that mess between them too by explaining Mal has shown up in her subconscious. It was like Arthur said; if it becomes a reoccurrence.
“I thought you said everyone in the dreamshare community was,” she overdramatically tries to adopt his accent (it’s probably not the one he was born with), “‘almost completely insane and better kept at not only arms distance, but with someone you dislike in-between you’.”
“It was not an exaggeration. I also said ‘almost’ and would rather prefer to keep you amongst the ‘sane’ portion.”
“You also added that the person that should be between you was Eames, to which he suggested that you were both already insane and should keep each other company. So maybe I should develop instability. Isn’t it supposed to help creativity?”
Arthur’s smile twitches again. “I am not prone to exaggeration, Eames is a different story.” He nods towards her module. “And I don’t think the world is ready for a more creative Ariadne.”
She beams at Arthur’s compliment, and his eyes are fond when he smiles back. They both turn back to their respective work and continue in silence until Eames bustles in ten minutes later and starts with his favourite pastime of pestering Arthur.
By the time the day is over, Ariadne has almost completely forgotten about the presence in her dream.
The problem is that the next time she goes under (the brightly lit office their mark and his secretary have all their nightly sexual escapades in) Mal is there once more. She’s sitting in the mark’s chair, looking out the small window that overlooks the alley beside the bank. She’s not bleeding this time.
“What are you doing here?” She feels better about being direct, slightly more in control.
Mal looks over at her. “Do they miss me?”
Ariadne very nearly blanches. “I think Arthur likes his kneecaps in one piece.”
She hadn’t felt better about her stab wound after hearing that story, only cautious and rather concerned at what it meant that Arthur took that sort of thing so well.
“I think about them, sometimes. You do not project them; do you know this, ma petite?”
Ariadne blinks. “Did you just call me little? And, also; why are you here?”
The eerie tone of Mal’s voice fades as her eyes sharpen to laser points. “Why are you here, architecte?”
Running a hand through her hair, Ariadne mutters, “I think Arthur’s lost this battle for my sanity.” She looks at Mal, feeling a déjà vu she wished she wasn’t about to repeat, “I’m just trying to understand.”
Mal doesn’t stand up and stalk closer to her, which is a mild relief, her words are not, “You understand nothing. You will learn nothing, ma petite architecte,” she mocks, “until you start to listen.”
Ariadne feels frustrated and doesn’t know where to begin, “Listen to what? To my subconscious? To my one-time-co-worker’s projection of his dead wife that I’m suddenly dreaming about? You were never my problem to solve!”
“But you wanted to solve me.” Mal stands up and walks around the desk this time. She’s in a two-piece suit and jacket. She still looks impeccable. “And now,” her teeth are sharp, jagged (perfect), “you have me.”
Ariadne shoots herself out of the dream this time. She’s angry beyond words and can’t even spare a thought to be grateful that they think it’s about the architecture. She just throws herself into work and pretends not to notice that she does want to solve this new version of Mal - this new part of herself.
She wonders if in Limbo she didn’t somehow incept herself with this.
“Is it possible to steal a projection? Can you steal something more than information from a mark’s mind?”
It’s the first time Ariadne’s shared a dream since Mal started showing up (in every dream with varying degrees of interaction). She hasn’t told anyone and isn’t sure she wants to explain (or have them work out) what her subconscious might be doing.
She asks Arthur when they’re walking down the street and she can see Mal coming towards them. Arthur is looking in the opposite direction and hasn’t seen her yet. He frowns, and he’s observing the outside of the bank she’s been constructing so Ariadne isn’t sure which part has caused the expression.
“It’s… possible. I suppose. Well, the concept isn’t impossible.” He turns to face her, and Ariadne expects him to see Mal and start piecing things together, but none of the expressions she expects crosses his face. “You would only steal what you had observed. It would be like a musician hearing a song, playing it from memory but as time passed and he forgot, or he felt different, it would change to what he now perceived. Your mind would reconstruct the projection - your subconscious would...” he seems to be searching for a word. “Well, it would, in essence, make it your projection.”
Ariadne has to force herself not to glance away. Arthur doesn’t seem suspicious, barely curious and she’s thankful she’s known for asking all kinds of questions. “Right.” She hurriedly searches for a new one to fire at him, to make him forget answering this one. “So what else can you steal from someone’s mind then? You couldn’t actually copy an ability, could you?”
He chuckles and begins walking towards the bank. “Did you watch The Matrix recently? Hoping to download information from a mark?”
“I don’t think I’d want to download from them.” She screws up her face.
“Well is there anything in particular you’d like to learn?”
All about Mrs Cobb, but she holds her tongue. “I wouldn’t mind knowing how to create a rocket launcher.”
“That's more Eames’ area of expertise, but I’ll see what I can do.” The trouble is that Arthur is being serious. “The vault has a second entrance?”
Ariadne confirms it and leads Arthur through the maze, keeping a wary eye out for Mal as they go. Yet everything progresses smoothly without any interruption, they’re even done a few minutes early, and, ever the productive one, Arthur casually kicks himself out of the dream to make notes.
She’s about to follow, feeling relieved until she spots (making her way casually out of the bank with a worryingly large bag full of money) Mal walking towards Ariadne. She steps over Arthur’s prone body without a glance and stops in front of her.
“This is why you ask Arthur about me? Do you think you stole me, ma petite architecte?”
“I don’t know.”
Mal smiles and reaches forward, her nails digging into Ariadne’s shoulder where she grabs her. Ariadne winces, hearing police sirens begin wailing in the background of the dream and confirming that Mal had indeed been robbing the bank earlier. She wonders if that is her subconscious practicing irony.
“You did steal me, chère.” Her fingers tighten. “You stole me from Dom’s mind and let me fade away.” The grip Mal has on her was where Ariadne’s bullet had landed in Limbo, she realizes with a start. “I do not fade so easily.” She draws herself closer, bending to lower herself further into Ariadne’s space, holding their faces inches apart. “We grew old together. We would grow old together once more, but Dom does not dream anymore. Dom will not see me, and I will not grow old alone,” the words come out more mocking here, more vicious, “ma petite architecte. You will live with what you stole.”
Ariadne eyes have never been wider. “You can’t!” She sputters. “I’ll tell them. The others; they’ll know how to get rid of you!”
Her eyes dance and this might be the first time Ariadne’s ever seen her happy. It’s terrifying. “Arthur, he does not stop me. They do not stop me. I have only found you who will try.”
The fingers relax the hold they’ve been gripping her with and Ariadne lets out a wince, only to flinch at the touch that moves to pet her hair. Mal clicks her tongue, it’s disapproving, like a mother might - but this is nothing like what a mother would do.
“This is different, they will,” Ariadne says firmly, or as firmly as she can when she’s almost quivering.
“Non.” She shakes her head. “If they know me, they will make you stop dreaming. Do you wish to stop dreaming?”
Her heart stutters and she can’t answer. Mal smiles, and moves with grace and soft touches to link their arms and walk Ariadne down the road. It would be friendly, casual if her grip wasn’t strong and her existence intimidating - yet, it feels like Mal is pleased with her.
“Oui, you do not. You will visit me, ma petite, and you will learn to live. You will learn what it is like to be a lover.” They stop walking suddenly and Mal turns them to face one another, bidding her farewell in the way only a projection can to a dreamer. “Bonne nuit.”
She presses a chaste, soft kiss to Ariadne’s mouth.
When Ariadne wakes up, she feels like more than just her lips are tingling. She also feels a little bit wrecked.
Mal is right though, she doesn’t tell the others. She borrows Arthur’s PASIV with the excuse of doing some extra work and practicing some freelance architecture. He takes a bit of convincing but he trusts her and it’s that part that hurts the most about what she’s doing, knowing that he doesn’t think twice about doubting her.
Arthur instructs her that she has an hour in her hotel room before he comes back to reclaim the device. She knows how to set everything up by now but her hands are still shaking slightly when she allocates herself the time and hooks herself up.
She had spent sleepless hours the previous night deciding how to handle it, knowing the next dream could reveal Mal to the others. She has one night to try and expel something Cobb had to go through Inception and give up dreaming to achieve. She isn’t filled with overwhelming confidence when she slides into sleep.
She’s in the hotel they brought Fischer to in the second dream. Her outfit is a complete contrast to the suit and skirt she was wearing then; she’s in jeans and a loose top and it’s night time, rather than day. It takes a few minutes to find Mal this time. She’s sitting in the spot where Arthur had kissed her. Mal’s dress is shorter than her knees, an off the shoulder deep burgundy - almost black - material and she has black stockings and high heels to complete the elegance of the outfit.
Mal is staring at the ceiling and Ariadne considers changing her outfit like Eames told her, slide on something to fit the feel, the setting of the dream (to keep the projections happy) when Mal’s head tilts to the side and she looks at her.
“Ma petite architecte, I see you have come back to me.”
Ariadne swallows. “I’m here to get rid of you. You’re not real, you’re part of my subconscious and I’m going to remove you.”
If she’s being truthful, Ariadne had expected to be attacked when she said this; she knows how well Mal had handled being told that last time. It’s to her surprise that all Mal does is shift in her seat in a way that once again brings to mind the kiss with Arthur. Mal isn’t quite copying the way Ariadne had sat at the time, but it’s a near thing. She pats the place beside her lightly, perfect nails matching her perfect dress.
“Your day has been long, you must sit.”
Ariadne knows how to make a gun now and she forces herself to do it, pointing the handgun at the (beautiful, beautiful) woman in front of her. Mal looks unconcerned beyond perhaps some disappointment. She sighs and looks away. “You will shoot me? Once more? You live for such violence, now, ma petite? Arthur is training you well.”
She almost feels like it’s an insult to him and she tightens her hold on the gun. “Arthur is teaching me how to be a part of this business.”
“Business,” she mocks. “He is teaching you be a thief. He teaches my Dom, he teaches the petite architecte and soon he shall have you teaching new little dreamers.”
“I-” she starts but Mal moves like lightning and she's in front of Ariadne.
Ariadne flinches and tries to use her gun, but Mal’s hands are just as deft and fast, pushing the gun away so it fires to their right. (None of the other projections take any notice).
Mal’s body is inches from her own now and a hand is darting forward to tug at loose strands of her hair. “We could be here together. I could teach you, petite one. I could teach you much; to love and to build such things. I could teach you a riddle we could share. I think you would like that.”
She tries to lean back from Mal’s presence but the projection just leans closer, steps closer until they are flushed; each part touching and Ariadne’s pulse is rabbit fast against the fingers around her wrist. Ariadne feels like she’s powerless, wonders if this is how Cobb felt in front of this dangerous woman in his own dreams. Mal squeezes her wrist and the gun clatters to the floor beside them. Mal makes a pleased sort of humming noise and the hand that had been in Ariadne’s hair touches her face, curls around her cheek. Ariadne shudders and she hates what it’s from; not fear - or not predominantly anymore.
“Oui,” it’s spoken with such relish before lips are pressed against hers.
Ariadne lets out a sound as the soft touch becomes harder and more purposeful, a harsh demand that she obey as (perfect, everything always so perfect) teeth tug her lip until she responds with a gasp. She feels like she’s drowning in sensation as the woman kisses her like she’s never been kissed before. Like she’s half of one whole. The noise that comes out of her mouth is desperate and wanton and Ariadne didn’t know she was capable of it until it slipped out and into the other woman’s lips.
She wraps herself into Mal's embrace; her gun, mission and dream all forgotten as she tries to find more of the kiss, desperately needs whatever it is that feels so out of her reach. It seems a lifetime and a second before Mal is breaking away and pulling back. Ariadne follows, her eyes still closed but a startlingly wonderful yet cruel laugh makes her eyes open.
Mal hardly seems effected by the kiss but Ariadne that knows if there was a wall behind her she’d be slumped against it and looking debauched. Mal taps Ariadne’s lips in an almost childish gesture that belies the wicked amusement in her eyes.
“Ma petite architecte,” it’s not quite fond but somewhere nearby, “you hide so much, but you do not hide from me.” She smiles and it sends a jolt of pure desire through Ariadne, making her aware of just how much this woman has already inspired in her, “I will ask you just once more; do you know what it is to be a lover?”
“N-No,” she whispers and her voice is hoarse.
Mal is still smiling at her and she leans in with a whisper and a promise, “Shall we teach you?”
There are hundreds of rooms in this hotel and Ariadne nods faintly, hoping, praying Mal will lead her to one. She doesn’t; Mal smirks and steps back. The proximity that grows between them, for a second, makes Ariadne think of her gun, but when Mal kneels onto the ground in front of her Ariadne chokes on her breath.
Her eyes dart around her at the other people walking calmly through the lobby and she startles when hands touch her thighs. Mal is still smiling as fingers dance across her jeans to her zipper, “You may do wherever you like, little dreamer.”
It’s the first time she hasn’t said the word in French - petite - Ariadne notes vaguely while the rest of her is sucking in a breath as those fingers begin rubbing her lightly through her jeans. Ariadne knows this would be a good time to shoot herself out of the dream and hand back the PASIV to Arthur as well as taking herself out of dreamsharing for the rest of her life.
She knows that’s what she should do but Ariadne also knows she isn’t going to anything of the sort. Those touches get firmer and a small moan escapes her lips. When her zipper comes down and her button is undone, Ariadne looks down at Mal. Her eyes are locked on Ariadne and she’s smirking deviously; it makes Ariadne throb with want.
“M-Mal,” she gasps as the other woman’s fingers now press against the one barrier left, a firm flick of a nail making her shudder.
The other woman doesn’t respond but to lean her mouth close, her breath ghosting over the growing damp patch in Ariadne’s underwear. She has to look away from Mal and she wants to feel self-conscious to push the other woman from her and run from the still populated hotel lobby but every time she so much as thinks it, that flick of a nail is back and she’s shivering as she waits for more.
It’s her dream, her projections and her subconscious, she tells herself. She doesn’t need to feel or think about anything other than what Mal is doing to her because nothing is real.
A second after she assures herself of it she feels a tongue against the fabric of her underwear and she muffles a shout as she jerks forward, her hands falling to the other woman’s shoulders. She doesn’t need to look to know the other is smiling.
“You will become a lover,” is breathed against her before she feels something sharp and metal against her thigh.
Ariadne has a jolt of utter panic and her eyes snap open as she remembers the last time Mal had been near her with a knife. (She feels a spark of shame and horror as well at the reminder of Cobb and Mal and it’s his wife). She tries to jerk away but a firm hand holds her in place a second before her jeans are being tenderly sliced under her thighs. She freezes, her heart pounding as that gentle, dangerous touch makes short work of her pants, and moments later, her underwear.
She realizes with different kind of shock that Mal has just made up her own way of removing the clothing that was stopping her. Ariadne’s underwear is hanging almost like a flap, barely protecting what little modesty she has left in this lobby.
Ariadne hears the sound of the knife dropping to the ground (doesn’t even wonder where she got it from, when she conjured it) and looks down in just enough time to see the other woman’s fingers slip under the fabric and run lightly over her sensitive skin.
Shuddering, her hands clench the other woman’s shoulders as her head tilts back, it’s such a simple touch but everything feels so alive with sensation as those light touches dance over her, never parting and never truly touching what she needs.
Ariadne tries to keep herself still as those fingers ever so slowly begin to spread her open, a finger coming up to swipe her cilt only once, only in passing.
“Please,” she whispers, but the touches never gain a second of speed or pressure. There is a another brush to her cilt though that makes her bite her bottom lip.
“You wish to be a lover,” Mal starts, but it’s not a question and her fingers never stop dancing. “You wish to be taught.” She suddenly feels the words breathed over her. “You will not find all lessons to be easy.”
The warning is followed by little kitten licks on her outer folds, the fingers still doing their almost non-existent strokes. She has barely been opened at all and she wants to push forward into the touch, but she feels unable to move, backwards or forwards.
She wanted this once, she remembers, in a half-remembered dream she once had, waking up in the middle of an orgasm after dreaming about being unable to move and being brought to the edge and over it.
Ariadne doesn’t know whether it’s Mal or her own mind that’s managed it (she doesn't think of them as one and the same anymore - not now, not after this, never again) but all she can do is stand there and whimper as Mal continually teases everything but what she wants. The little licks turn into two long strokes on either side of her before the fingers gently part her. Her stomach clenches as warm breath falls over her.
She isn’t sure if Mal can see her clearly but it feels like that, like the other woman is studying her. Ariadne yearns to squirm, to push forward or just gain some sort of friction. Mal makes a small thoughtful sound and then she blows into her and Ariadne is caught between shuddering and trying to jerk her hips when she’s unable to move. She curses instead and wonders how it’s possible that Mal is doing this to her.
A vague snatch of memory passes across her mind that everything is enhanced in a dream but then that tongue has made one long lick from top to bottom and her brain is not about to work. She gasps and her hands go to Mal’s head but she know she has no control over the other woman’s decisions. The knowledge that she is at Mal’s mercy shouldn’t make her even more aroused then she is, but it does.
Mal’s tongue slides away and she has another few torturous beats of nothing with just breath against her before the long lick is repeated but this time Mal’s tongue lingers, a soft pressure on her clit that makes her muscles clench. It must be a step in the right direction because suddenly those kitten licks of before are centered on her clit and all of Ariadne’s focus is zeroed in on that touch. It becomes her whole world as she moans and tries to grind closer, push Mal harder against her but there isn’t any give, just soft little touches that burn along her skin nowhere near enough.
It’s like eternity as she feels each drag against her most sensitive point. She’s desperate to be filled to be sucked - for anything more than these little brushs that leave seconds between each other that feel like forever.
It’s after one particularly slow lick that Mal pulls back, giving her thattormenting breath again. The air comes out in a gush of Mal’s laughter and Ariadne shudders.
“Oh, ma petite,” another lick, “dreams are so overwhelming. They can last forever and be,” a firmer lick that almost makes Ariadne bite through her bottom lip, “so intense, oui?”
“O-Oui,” she gasps out, hoping it’s the right thing to say but when no further licks follow, she begs, “Please, Mal?”
There is a moment where nothing happens and then the licks are back but not on her clit, everywhere else without penetrating her either. It’s as if Mal is casually exploring her, she seems to have all the time in the world and no concern about the thrashing, sweating, desperate woman she’s creating above her.
Ariadne feels Mal open her wider and she spreads her legs to accommodate; only realizing she can move after she’s done it. She tries to press forward but she’s back to being frozen and Mal is taking the time to lap up the juices from her arousal. The touches are maddening; she feels like she’s going to collapse and all she wants, all she needs is fingers in her and a tongue sucking her clit. The huff of laughter makes her think Mal knows exactly what she wants, knows exactly where to keep her to not make her come, and is using it to her advantage.
She’s so focused on that lapping tongue and expecting each repetitive motion that’s she taken by surprise when it darts in suddenly. She convulses around it and shouts for the split-second Mal gives her before her tongue is gone and the fingers holding her apart are massaging lightly, waiting for her to come back down.
Ariadne curses and wails as she feels her orgasm falling back away from her. It’s still close enough to taste but too far to reach when Mal’s slowly licking her juices again. She’s shivering as she clenches around nothing before that tongue slides slowly, almost impossibly up and back to her cilt. This time she’s not licking, she’s tapping her tongue and Ariadne is desperately trying to push into that touch with no success.
“Fuck, I need-” she gasps out.
She gets a fast, firm lick for her troubles and would have snapped herself forward if she was able. Mal licks her once more before, “You will tell me when you need and I will tell you when you will.” The smile is in her voice. “Do you dream of this? Do you not deserve this? You will get what you want when I let you, when I have had my fun.”
Mal comes back with fast, almost impossible to feel strokes that occur all over her, but never enough, never enough to let her come. It’s like she’s held on the edge, pushed closer and closer and half leaning down it but Mal refuses to allow her the satisfaction of the fall. (She wonders if there’s some dark amusement, some revenge in that but she doesn’t have enough functioning brain cells to really tell.)
She’s vibrating out of her skin. Mal has pulled back so many times, humming over her, warm breath teasing her before she would go in and lick her clean again, driving her to the point of orgasm and stopping, waiting, and then starting the whole process again. She feels swollen, sore and more aroused than she ever thought possible, she doesn’t even know how long she’s been here. Mal must know every bit of her by now.
She feels the warm breath, the shiver-inducing gusts Mal deliberately blows over highly sensitive areas and knows the long lick from bottom to top is coming. Mal doesn’t disappoint and she almost wants to scream when Mal reaches the top but unlike the other times, swirls her tongue like it’s the tip of a lollipop.
Ariadne gasps in air and thrusts again without any success but she can’t stop it, the sweet tendrils of orgasm are there again and she’ll do anything to reach them. Mal keeps up her twirling circles, fast, slow, a drag of a tongue that’s hardly a circle at all and then a continual string of them that has Ariadne throwing her head back and keening.
They get faster and faster and faster and… stop. She almost sobs as Mall pulls back and away, no breath no nothing on her skin.
She looks down at the face that is still perfect, no hint of what’s been happening when she knows she must look ragged. Mal smirks at her, predatory and pleased. She’s still spread open and she gasps when Mal’s fingers dance over her again.
“I know what you want,” her fingers dart the path her tongue had, less than an inch from moving inside of her and giving her the bliss she craves. “I wonder to give it to you at all.”
“Please,” Ariadne is sure she can feel the air move around and press against her inner walls from where Mal moves her fingers above her she is that aroused. “Please.”
Mal leans close. “I will make you a lover.” She smirks again. “You are almost to go.”
Ariadne begins to hear the chime of the alarm she’d set on her phone. No, she thinks dreadfully, no, no. Because if she leaves the dream without Mal finishing this she thinks she might die. She has to come, she needs it and she needs this woman who has been teasing her for what must be nearly an hour to do it.
"Will you be my lover?"
Ariadne will be her anything, Ariadne already is her everything. "Yes, oh God, please, just, oui, Mal!"
And then the tongue is back and it’s still gliding, slow and leisurely and Ariadne doesn’t know what to do - but then, then she feels Mal move up with purpose to her cilt and she feels lips close gently around it. Mal’s fingers dance to her entrance and tease her with promise.
“Oh god,” she whispers and then Mal is making good on everything she’s done so far.
Fingers move into her fluidly but they hold still and for one horrifying moment she thinks it’s another step where Mal keeps her on the edge - but then they’re coming out and her tantalizing, horrible, wonderful tongue is lashing across her cilt and it’s too much sensation and not enough.
She cries out and wants to thrust into that perfect mouth and those long fingers but that’s still denied her. Mal’s fingers go in and out once more and then freeze, holding her open and Mal’s mouth disappears. She doesn’t know if she manages to shout her pleas her no, no, oh god, I need before Mal’s tongue has taken the place of her fingers and is in and out and everywhere and for split-second her mind is sure she is actually vibrating and that Mal is touching every part of her and then finally, finally with a sob of relief she’s coming with tongues and fingers in her and is saved from collapsing by nothing but the hold the dream has on her as Mal's tongue continuously milks her orgasm from her.
Ariadne is sure she blacks out at some point because when it's over and she comes to she’s lying on the ground and the soft licks Mal had continued to give her have finished. She opens her eyes and Mal is above her, eyes bright and a tongue coming out to run over her lips. Ariadne shudders and clenches with remembered want.
“Now you know, little Ariadne,” it’s the first time Mal has ever called her by name. “A lover who knows all that is inside you. A lover who knows what you want better than even you.”
She blinks at the woman above her who suddenly bends down and kisses her mouth chastely, Ariadne doesn’t get a chance to taste anything or do anything before Mal pulls back.
“Little dreamer,” it almost but not quite mocking and this time the kiss is on the corner of her mouth before the words are whispered in her ear and this time they are amused as fingers tuck damp curls behind her ear, “bonne nuit.”
She wakes up shaking but with the effects of the afterglow still lingering in the corners of her mind. Ariadne forces herself to her feet and into a shower, trying to wash away what she let herself do.
It doesn’t help.
When Arthur comes to retrieve the PASIV almost twenty minutes later, he asks if she was able to solve the problem she'd borrowed it for. Ariadne somehow manages to look him in the eyes with only a faint blush and tell him that she had. Ariadne watches his eyebrows rise with suspicion but he doesn’t pry further.
Ariadne knows he’ll be checking the PASIV over once he’s safe in his hotel room and as long as it was fine, that would be that. It’s something she’s learned about Arthur; if she doesn’t do something to jeopardize the job than he won’t push to be involved in it.
She remembers angrily assuming he wasn’t noticing Cobb’s thin grip on reality when they’d first met and for a second Ariadne is terrified he knows exactly what she just did. She shakes the thought off; there is no reason for him to worry about Mal. There’s reason for her to worry about the other woman, but that’s a different thing entirely.
Ariadne knocks over her totem for the fourth time since coming out of the dream, it’s is constant, it is reality. She forces herself to work on some of her architecture for a distraction - it’s not for a dream or a job, but for her classes. She needs something normal that won’t have her mind flicking back to smiling lips and flicking tongues.
It's only later as she’s packing up her things for bed that Ariadne will wonder if she hadn't known exactly what she was walking into when she went to find Mal.
It's only much, much later that she’ll admit the truth of that to herself.
Mal doesn’t come back again.
Ariadne doesn’t actively seek her out at first, but she does look every time she goes under and there isn’t a sign that she’s ever been there. The night before the job, she borrows Arthur’s PASIV one more time. She walks through city streets and even revisits Fischer’s hospital, but there’s nothing.
When she wakes up… she doesn’t know what to think about it.
They finish the job and she heads home, carrying enough guilt and concern about her subconscious that she considers giving up dreamshare. She spends a few months telling herself it’s the right thing to do and hovers over calling Cobb’s number when she needs some extra convincing.
But when Arthur asks her for the third time about a job, she feels herself collapse into agreement. She misses dreaming like it’s a home away from home and if her first encounter with Mal hadn’t stopped her from dreaming then the one all her own fault wasn’t about to either.
She still dreamt on her own sometimes during her self-imposed exile; a flash of brown hair, a smile half cruel and half amused and she wakes up somewhere between exhausted and frustrated.
Meeting up with Arthur again settles a frantic part of her mind. She begins to draw the new set of mazes, sliding back into the familiar and fond patterns of watching Eames slide up to Arthur and chuckle against his neck.
It reminds her of Mal and she looks away, angry at herself at the wistfulness it brings. Mal is a shade and a projection but she was still something gorgeous and perfect too. Ariadne knows Mal wasn’t her lover, not really, not in reality but Ariadne wants to have it so much it’s close to consuming her.
She confronts Eames one day when Arthur’s out of the warehouse and she’s desperate enough to shrug off the sympathy she’d usually feel for him and keep her from addressing it. “Eames?”
He looks up from the mountains of paperwork Arthur has been throwing at him. “Yes, Ariadne?”
Ariadne has to keep herself from fidgeting on the spot. “How do you do it?”
His interest visibly increases as he puts down the papers, “And what might it be that I do? Forge so cleverly? Save cock ups like Inception with my ingenuity? Convince Arthur to leave to trail the mark to give us some peace and quiet from his constant working? If it’s the last one, it’s purely done by charm alone.”
He winks at her and Ariadne has to stop him before he starts again, before he makes her smile and she loses her nerve to continue. “No. How do you handle Arthur?”
“Arthur?” His surprise looks genuine, but he is a Forger.
“Well, Arthur and, um, other people,” she grimaces and just bites the bullet. “How do you find a lover?”
Eames actually seems to startle at her words before settling on disbelief. “Um, I’m sorry, dear; I think I must have misheard you?”
“A lover,” she repeats, because somewhere between a lobby full of projections and a career full of criminals she lost a lot of her shame. “You love Arthur and I want… I want that and I’m,” she ran a hand through her hair. “I’m frustrated by someone making me want it.”
Eames face is shuttered when she looks back at it. His hands are folded over the papers in front of him and while his eyes aren’t angry, there is a level of warning. “Ariadne, there are some things you would do best to leave alone.”
“But-”
He cuts her off firmly, the usual gentleness in his tone having disappeared. “I don’t know why you sought me for romantic advice, but I’ll answer your problem simply; whoever started making you think about this is probably the person you want to share that with.”
“They’re not-”
“If they’re not,” he speaks over her again, “then you have to wait like everyone else to stumble into it. You can’t force or manufacture an emotion like that; it will happen or it won’t.”
He pauses, waiting to see if she’s absorbed it. She doesn’t want to because it’s already sending a shiver of fear down her spine, but she does nod for his benefit.
“Good,” Eames tells her and feeling dismissed, she turns to go. “Oh, and Ariadne,” she looks back and stiffens at the cold look in his eyes. “Never mention Arthur again.”
Swallowing, she’s nervous but can’t quite bring herself to stop, “Don’t people know?”
Ariadne can see Eames weighing her, the pros of telling her versus leaving it alone. Eventually, he answers, “Not him.” Then. “Now go back to your mazes.”
She doesn’t need to be told again and hurries back to her desk. She focuses her attention on the designs in front of her, feeling discomfort rest heavy on her shoulders from the angry, quiet Eames’ she’d unintentionally brought out.
The rest of the afternoon passes in silence, it’s only when Arthur returns that the usual motions of their working environment reform. She only catches Eames’ eyes once, but in that second she gets both a warning and forgiveness and Ariadne knows she’ll never bring it up again even as she watches Eames’ hand touch Arthur’s shoulder but release it before he can be rebuffed.
Watching them, she wonders if maybe all relationships in the dreamshare community aren’t problematic.
She sleeps without dreams that night. (She misses Mal every morning.)
Ariadne doesn’t know if she’s going crazy or if she’s just gaining enough psychosis to fit into her chosen, illegal, profession.
It’s been a year of reality and jobs and dreams and no sign of Mal. She’s been to Cobb’s house twice and only reacted with a stab of pain (and jealousy) at the photos on the dresser once. The second time she’d learned to control herself better.
Eames is speaking to her more and Arthur is just as oblivious to the Forger as ever, but she’s not involving herself in that mess. She’s already inherited the problems of one dreamer and she doesn’t need another. Cobb might have let Mal go, but Ariadne can’t find the shade to release her. She’s not sure if she could now, the woman is in the corners of her waking mind, a constant presence and sinful pleasure.
There are moments late at night when she’s battling insomnia, chasing exams or reconstructing a new maze because there’s been a change in the plans that the stray thought always presents itself; was it possible she stole Mal and this was the conjured shade of Dom Cobb? Was she the fractured, beautiful, imperfect version of a grief-stricken husband?
(Then she remembers tongues and laughter and promises and knows this is all about her.)
Her new life isn’t so bad, all things considered. She graduates, disappears and settles into life as an established, stable and brilliant architect for the dreamshare. She’s… content.
There’s a night somewhere in the depths of winter in a cabin she can’t remember the location to when she has a conversation with Arthur she’ll never forget.
They’d been working a job with an Extractor who makes a stupid mistake and she has a bullet wound to her shoulder and Arthur doesn’t have a hair out of place. He’s drowning her in alcohol to get her through the stitching but the pain and liquor give her crystal clear memory that she never admits to Arthur lets her recall the entire thing.
“People are stupid,” she grumbles, holding a bottle of rum. “Jenkies is stupid.”
“Jenkins,” Arthur corrects absently. “And he will no longer affect the quality of work.” Ariadne blinks and shudders; she had been shot in the shoulder; he had been shot in the head. “Don’t move,” Arthur corrects absently. “You’re almost as bad as Eames.”
“Was that an inu-” she frowns, knows it isn’t going to happen, “a sexual comment.”
The stunned look that comes over Arthur’s face is worth the flinch he also makes and pulls her stitches. She makes a pained noise and while he doesn’t apologize he does give her arm a brief, soothing touch. “You are clearly spending too much time around him.”
“Nuh-uh,” she protests. “He won’t even answer my questions.”
The pull of the stitch slows and he looks at her carefully. “Are you suggesting you’ve gone to Eames for romantic advice?”
“He didn’t help me,” Ariadne confirms and sadness slides out with the help of alcohol to smooth and loosen the path. “And I think I’m in love with her and do you know how much of a fucking mess, I am, Arthur?”
Arthur stills for a long moment before he continues fixing her wound. “It’s not wrong to love someone of the same gender.”
She snorts in an entirely unlady-like manner. “Tell that to Eames.”
She shakes her head and regrets it instantly when her head spins and before she can think she’s throwing up on the floor. Arthur, to his credit doesn’t even flinch. She doesn’t doubt if it had looked like it would hit his suit he would have been out the door though.
“Eww,” she groans. He moves away and comes back with a towel for her to wipe her mouth. She does and swallows so rum to take the taste out. “I’m never getting shot again.”
“A good life goal,” Arthur agrees.
Ariadne doesn’t look at the mess she’s made or she is going to make it even bigger. “Sorry about your floor.”
He shrugs elegantly. “It’s not mine and we won’t remain her for long.”
She’s trying to figure out just which question she wants to ask first (whose cabin is it? Where will we go? How do you know about this place then?) but Arthur speaks before she can, “What did you mean about Eames?”
“Eames?”
He’s patience is obviously never-ending as he responds, “You implied he wasn’t encouraging about you having a female companion?”
“Huh?” she takes another sip as she remembers what she’d said, what she’d meant. It makes her think of Mal and she brings a hand, coincidently the one holding the rum, up to her face and presses against the glass. She sniffles. “I miss her so much, Arthur.” She makes a pitiful sound. “It was the best sex of my life.”
(Later, much later, when she’s gone past petrified, mortified and depressed, Ariadne will remember this moment and Arthur’s reaction and she’ll laugh so hard her sides ache.)
Arthur clears his throat, and Ariadne looks through the bottle and sees the awkward slant to this mouth, the avoidance of his eyes and sniggers. Arthur’s stern mask quickly slides back into place and any embarrassment is gone. “That didn’t answer my question about Eames.”
“Oh, that,” Ariadne takes a fortifying sip of her rum. “He’s got the worst guy to be in love with. The guy hates him.”
Arthur’s movements are very measured and very steady as he finishes up her stitches. When he speaks, his words are slow and careful. “A lot of people hate Eames.”
“Mm,” she hums. The bottle is almost empty and she’s wondering if when she falls asleep, Mal might be there to meet her and call her little again. “But you hate him the best.”
Arthur makes a small sound in his throat that Ariadne can’t classify and when she looks at him, she can’t read his face. She stares at him with a furrow between her eyebrows before he eventually begins to move again and ushers her to one of the beds with a promise to check on her in the night.
She doesn’t dream about Mal that evening or if she does, she doesn’t know about it when she wakes up. She feels like she’s been scraped off the road after being hit by a freight train and tells Arthur as much. Arthur never mentions what she revealed and neither does she when it comes to her again a month down the line when she’s prodding her bullet wound.
Ariadne spends two weeks petrified Eames is going to show up and kill her.
(She never finds out that Arthur never slept that night. He kept hovering his finger over his phone, never quite bringing himself to call Eames’ number.)
In the end, when they meet up the next time to work together, nothing seems any different, but the first time Eames places his hand on Arthur’s shoulder, after a shrewd glance from the pointman and to the subtle, silent shock of the others, he leans carefully back into it.
(“Hi, I’m Mindy,” says the bottle-blonde in the coffee shop, her hair is long and falls in curls. She’s bouncy and energetic and not a single shade of what Ariadne wants.
Ariadne smiles. “I’m Amy; it’s nice to meet you.”
It doesn’t last - it’s not what she wants and it hurts every second she tries to make it - but it’s nice for the weeks it does.)
There’s a job in Brazil that is almost as much of a disaster as Inception could have been but they luckily, amazingly pull it off.
Eames and Arthur present her a PASIV as a gift when they’ve left the country.
“Holy shit,” she announces. “Holy shit.”
Reaching forward, Ariadne runs reverent hands over the case, feeling like it’s humming against her skin.
“I knew she’d like that, Pet,” Eames says to Arthur smugly.
Arthur rolled his eyes. “Anybody in dreamshare would give their right arm and first child for one. It’s hardly a stroke of genius.”
“You wound me, Arthur. I put a lot of thought into making our present perfect.”
“You did it together? Does that mean I get an ‘from Eames and Arthur card?” It’s the closest she’ll come to meddling in those waters (when she’s not drunk off her head) and she gets a deep thrill of satisfaction when not one, but both of them blush. It easily spins into an argument over why ‘Eames’ name would be first’ but she has to think, maybe there’s hope for them yet.
(Ariadne still dreams of Mal every so often but she doesn’t feel so angry, so bitter at the people who knew her in life. People who have a chance with the people they love. She still can’t bear to look at Cobb some days, but she’s going to get herself over that someday.)
When she arrives in her hotel room later that night with nothing more than a glass of wine in her and a buzzing energy to give her PASIV its first test, she isn’t thinking of anywhere or anything in particular, she wants to let whatever happens happen.
She wakes up on the balcony of a hotel room that looks familiar in a way she can’t pinpoint; she’s looking out over a cityscape that makes her remember falling but without a sense of vertigo. It’s with a sense of comfort.
Ariadne closes her eyes and breaths in, the scent memory registers a second before she hears the words.
“Hello, ma petite,” they are purred behind her.
The amused, pleased smile is pressed against her neck and ear as arms curl around her waist and a womanly (perfect, impossible) figure is along every line of her body.
It’s so startling but it’s also nothing like that at all. “Mal?”
“I have been waiting.” A kiss brushes just behind her ear, “you have grown. You have seen what it is like to be lost, apart, forgotten.” There is a pause and Ariadne feels like her heart, her mind, her world hangs in the balance. “Shall you now learn more?”
Time has passed like levels in a dream since they last touched and the warmth of the woman behind her makes Ariadne want to curl into her and never leave. It's for the first time in years and held possessively in the other woman's embrace that Ariadne relaxes.
She’s home.
-Fin-
Rating: NC-17
Beta: None. Any and all errors are mine. Please point out if you see some and I’ll get right on fixing them.
Pairing(s): Shade/Projection!Mal/Ariadne as well as faint Arthur/Eames
Word Count: 8772
Warnings: Swearing and violent themes. (Much like the movie, only with more obscenities.) Oh and a surprising turn of events that led to sex. I was rather surprised as it rarely happens with me.
Summary: Ariadne asks Arthur when they’re walking down the street and she can see Mal coming towards them. Arthur is looking in the opposite direction and hasn’t seen her yet. “Is it possible to steal a projection? Can you steal something more than information from a mark’s mind?”
Author's Note: I can’t believe it’s been over two years since I wrote anything - or finished anything. It’s… surprising. Ah, well. I’ve wanted this completed for a long time, I’ve always enjoyed it. I hope you do as well since I've been second guessing this for too long. It's being posted now.
When I Wake Up, Do You Still Remember Me?
by starsdontsleep
Ariadne’s working on architecture for a job when it first happens. It’s startling because it’s not the first time she’s dreamed since the Inception. Not the second, third or fourth even. It’s her second extraction and she’s mildly concerned she might have been there all along.
It’s as she’s crumpling a building, re-arranging the insides and wondering about adding one of Arthur’s paradox’s to keep him happy that a voice says quietly behind her, “My question was never answered.”
Ariadne spins around so fast she actually stumbles and falls onto the ground. She looks up into the beautiful - always so beautiful - and only version she’s ever (and will ever) meet of Mal. Her eyes are frosted, ice-cold but not as venomous as Ariadne’s used to; but that’s not saying much, she’s still holding a handgun. Her emerald dress falls on her like a second, perfect skin.
She knows this is a dream, but she’s still fearful of the older woman and all the ways she could (and probably would) kill her. Although, they were even so far.
It’s as she thinks it that Mal’s dress starts to grow a stain. They both look it at as the bulletwound Ariadne fired in limbo becomes a part of this Mal.
Mal looks at her, no change in her expression, still as hard as before and no pain showing, “You did not answer my question.”
Ariadne doesn’t scurry backwards when Mal raises the gun, but it doesn’t mean she doesn’t want to. “What question? What question was I supposed to answer?”
“Do you know what it is to be a lover?”
Ariadne’s mind flashes back to the hotel room. The fear of being face-to-face with Mal was stronger then, laced with the knowledge she was Cobb’s projection and had already killed her once before. This Mal was hers and was, essentially part of her own mind.
(She tried not to think about how little that meant.)
“I answered that,” Ariadne says slowly, getting to her feet cautiously, but Mal doesn’t pull the trigger. Blood is starting to drip down onto the concrete, and Ariadne wonders how much longer they both have left in this dream. “I don’t - I haven’t. No.
Mal smiles and Ariadne knows if it was with warmth and laughter, Mal would be so stunning it would hurt. But when it’s brittle and dark, she just looks like what she is - a shade, a manifestation of the dark part of someone’s mind.
“Without love there are no dreams.”
Before Ariadne’s mind can try to understand that, Mal has blown it away.
She wakes with a sharp inhale and frantically grasps for her totem. Pulling the IV from her arm, she stumbles to the closest available surface. Her bishop falls perfectly every time and Ariadne lets out a bemused if somewhat shaky laugh.
“Problem?”
She startles at Arthur’s voice, edged with concern and paused in his research; she’d forgotten he was in the warehouse and she blushed slightly in embarrassment, fervently grateful that Eames was following the mark. Arthur wouldn’t pester her.
“Fine, just. Dream went a little… odd.”
He gives her one more scrutinizing look before nodding and turning his attention back to his work. “Take a break. Inform me if it becomes a reoccurrence.”
“I’m not unstable,” she teases.
A hint of a smile curves his lips, but when he looks up his eyes are still serious. “Yes. People say that.”
He’s talking about Cobb. Ariadne swallows. But he doesn’t know it was Mal... and he doesn't need to.
She isn’t going to stress him unnecessarily, it’s just overworking and having spoken to Cobb a few days ago. Ariadne knows Mal’s shade still holds tension between Arthur and Cobb and she doesn’t want to bring that mess between them too by explaining Mal has shown up in her subconscious. It was like Arthur said; if it becomes a reoccurrence.
“I thought you said everyone in the dreamshare community was,” she overdramatically tries to adopt his accent (it’s probably not the one he was born with), “‘almost completely insane and better kept at not only arms distance, but with someone you dislike in-between you’.”
“It was not an exaggeration. I also said ‘almost’ and would rather prefer to keep you amongst the ‘sane’ portion.”
“You also added that the person that should be between you was Eames, to which he suggested that you were both already insane and should keep each other company. So maybe I should develop instability. Isn’t it supposed to help creativity?”
Arthur’s smile twitches again. “I am not prone to exaggeration, Eames is a different story.” He nods towards her module. “And I don’t think the world is ready for a more creative Ariadne.”
She beams at Arthur’s compliment, and his eyes are fond when he smiles back. They both turn back to their respective work and continue in silence until Eames bustles in ten minutes later and starts with his favourite pastime of pestering Arthur.
By the time the day is over, Ariadne has almost completely forgotten about the presence in her dream.
The problem is that the next time she goes under (the brightly lit office their mark and his secretary have all their nightly sexual escapades in) Mal is there once more. She’s sitting in the mark’s chair, looking out the small window that overlooks the alley beside the bank. She’s not bleeding this time.
“What are you doing here?” She feels better about being direct, slightly more in control.
Mal looks over at her. “Do they miss me?”
Ariadne very nearly blanches. “I think Arthur likes his kneecaps in one piece.”
She hadn’t felt better about her stab wound after hearing that story, only cautious and rather concerned at what it meant that Arthur took that sort of thing so well.
“I think about them, sometimes. You do not project them; do you know this, ma petite?”
Ariadne blinks. “Did you just call me little? And, also; why are you here?”
The eerie tone of Mal’s voice fades as her eyes sharpen to laser points. “Why are you here, architecte?”
Running a hand through her hair, Ariadne mutters, “I think Arthur’s lost this battle for my sanity.” She looks at Mal, feeling a déjà vu she wished she wasn’t about to repeat, “I’m just trying to understand.”
Mal doesn’t stand up and stalk closer to her, which is a mild relief, her words are not, “You understand nothing. You will learn nothing, ma petite architecte,” she mocks, “until you start to listen.”
Ariadne feels frustrated and doesn’t know where to begin, “Listen to what? To my subconscious? To my one-time-co-worker’s projection of his dead wife that I’m suddenly dreaming about? You were never my problem to solve!”
“But you wanted to solve me.” Mal stands up and walks around the desk this time. She’s in a two-piece suit and jacket. She still looks impeccable. “And now,” her teeth are sharp, jagged (perfect), “you have me.”
Ariadne shoots herself out of the dream this time. She’s angry beyond words and can’t even spare a thought to be grateful that they think it’s about the architecture. She just throws herself into work and pretends not to notice that she does want to solve this new version of Mal - this new part of herself.
She wonders if in Limbo she didn’t somehow incept herself with this.
“Is it possible to steal a projection? Can you steal something more than information from a mark’s mind?”
It’s the first time Ariadne’s shared a dream since Mal started showing up (in every dream with varying degrees of interaction). She hasn’t told anyone and isn’t sure she wants to explain (or have them work out) what her subconscious might be doing.
She asks Arthur when they’re walking down the street and she can see Mal coming towards them. Arthur is looking in the opposite direction and hasn’t seen her yet. He frowns, and he’s observing the outside of the bank she’s been constructing so Ariadne isn’t sure which part has caused the expression.
“It’s… possible. I suppose. Well, the concept isn’t impossible.” He turns to face her, and Ariadne expects him to see Mal and start piecing things together, but none of the expressions she expects crosses his face. “You would only steal what you had observed. It would be like a musician hearing a song, playing it from memory but as time passed and he forgot, or he felt different, it would change to what he now perceived. Your mind would reconstruct the projection - your subconscious would...” he seems to be searching for a word. “Well, it would, in essence, make it your projection.”
Ariadne has to force herself not to glance away. Arthur doesn’t seem suspicious, barely curious and she’s thankful she’s known for asking all kinds of questions. “Right.” She hurriedly searches for a new one to fire at him, to make him forget answering this one. “So what else can you steal from someone’s mind then? You couldn’t actually copy an ability, could you?”
He chuckles and begins walking towards the bank. “Did you watch The Matrix recently? Hoping to download information from a mark?”
“I don’t think I’d want to download from them.” She screws up her face.
“Well is there anything in particular you’d like to learn?”
All about Mrs Cobb, but she holds her tongue. “I wouldn’t mind knowing how to create a rocket launcher.”
“That's more Eames’ area of expertise, but I’ll see what I can do.” The trouble is that Arthur is being serious. “The vault has a second entrance?”
Ariadne confirms it and leads Arthur through the maze, keeping a wary eye out for Mal as they go. Yet everything progresses smoothly without any interruption, they’re even done a few minutes early, and, ever the productive one, Arthur casually kicks himself out of the dream to make notes.
She’s about to follow, feeling relieved until she spots (making her way casually out of the bank with a worryingly large bag full of money) Mal walking towards Ariadne. She steps over Arthur’s prone body without a glance and stops in front of her.
“This is why you ask Arthur about me? Do you think you stole me, ma petite architecte?”
“I don’t know.”
Mal smiles and reaches forward, her nails digging into Ariadne’s shoulder where she grabs her. Ariadne winces, hearing police sirens begin wailing in the background of the dream and confirming that Mal had indeed been robbing the bank earlier. She wonders if that is her subconscious practicing irony.
“You did steal me, chère.” Her fingers tighten. “You stole me from Dom’s mind and let me fade away.” The grip Mal has on her was where Ariadne’s bullet had landed in Limbo, she realizes with a start. “I do not fade so easily.” She draws herself closer, bending to lower herself further into Ariadne’s space, holding their faces inches apart. “We grew old together. We would grow old together once more, but Dom does not dream anymore. Dom will not see me, and I will not grow old alone,” the words come out more mocking here, more vicious, “ma petite architecte. You will live with what you stole.”
Ariadne eyes have never been wider. “You can’t!” She sputters. “I’ll tell them. The others; they’ll know how to get rid of you!”
Her eyes dance and this might be the first time Ariadne’s ever seen her happy. It’s terrifying. “Arthur, he does not stop me. They do not stop me. I have only found you who will try.”
The fingers relax the hold they’ve been gripping her with and Ariadne lets out a wince, only to flinch at the touch that moves to pet her hair. Mal clicks her tongue, it’s disapproving, like a mother might - but this is nothing like what a mother would do.
“This is different, they will,” Ariadne says firmly, or as firmly as she can when she’s almost quivering.
“Non.” She shakes her head. “If they know me, they will make you stop dreaming. Do you wish to stop dreaming?”
Her heart stutters and she can’t answer. Mal smiles, and moves with grace and soft touches to link their arms and walk Ariadne down the road. It would be friendly, casual if her grip wasn’t strong and her existence intimidating - yet, it feels like Mal is pleased with her.
“Oui, you do not. You will visit me, ma petite, and you will learn to live. You will learn what it is like to be a lover.” They stop walking suddenly and Mal turns them to face one another, bidding her farewell in the way only a projection can to a dreamer. “Bonne nuit.”
She presses a chaste, soft kiss to Ariadne’s mouth.
When Ariadne wakes up, she feels like more than just her lips are tingling. She also feels a little bit wrecked.
Mal is right though, she doesn’t tell the others. She borrows Arthur’s PASIV with the excuse of doing some extra work and practicing some freelance architecture. He takes a bit of convincing but he trusts her and it’s that part that hurts the most about what she’s doing, knowing that he doesn’t think twice about doubting her.
Arthur instructs her that she has an hour in her hotel room before he comes back to reclaim the device. She knows how to set everything up by now but her hands are still shaking slightly when she allocates herself the time and hooks herself up.
She had spent sleepless hours the previous night deciding how to handle it, knowing the next dream could reveal Mal to the others. She has one night to try and expel something Cobb had to go through Inception and give up dreaming to achieve. She isn’t filled with overwhelming confidence when she slides into sleep.
She’s in the hotel they brought Fischer to in the second dream. Her outfit is a complete contrast to the suit and skirt she was wearing then; she’s in jeans and a loose top and it’s night time, rather than day. It takes a few minutes to find Mal this time. She’s sitting in the spot where Arthur had kissed her. Mal’s dress is shorter than her knees, an off the shoulder deep burgundy - almost black - material and she has black stockings and high heels to complete the elegance of the outfit.
Mal is staring at the ceiling and Ariadne considers changing her outfit like Eames told her, slide on something to fit the feel, the setting of the dream (to keep the projections happy) when Mal’s head tilts to the side and she looks at her.
“Ma petite architecte, I see you have come back to me.”
Ariadne swallows. “I’m here to get rid of you. You’re not real, you’re part of my subconscious and I’m going to remove you.”
If she’s being truthful, Ariadne had expected to be attacked when she said this; she knows how well Mal had handled being told that last time. It’s to her surprise that all Mal does is shift in her seat in a way that once again brings to mind the kiss with Arthur. Mal isn’t quite copying the way Ariadne had sat at the time, but it’s a near thing. She pats the place beside her lightly, perfect nails matching her perfect dress.
“Your day has been long, you must sit.”
Ariadne knows how to make a gun now and she forces herself to do it, pointing the handgun at the (beautiful, beautiful) woman in front of her. Mal looks unconcerned beyond perhaps some disappointment. She sighs and looks away. “You will shoot me? Once more? You live for such violence, now, ma petite? Arthur is training you well.”
She almost feels like it’s an insult to him and she tightens her hold on the gun. “Arthur is teaching me how to be a part of this business.”
“Business,” she mocks. “He is teaching you be a thief. He teaches my Dom, he teaches the petite architecte and soon he shall have you teaching new little dreamers.”
“I-” she starts but Mal moves like lightning and she's in front of Ariadne.
Ariadne flinches and tries to use her gun, but Mal’s hands are just as deft and fast, pushing the gun away so it fires to their right. (None of the other projections take any notice).
Mal’s body is inches from her own now and a hand is darting forward to tug at loose strands of her hair. “We could be here together. I could teach you, petite one. I could teach you much; to love and to build such things. I could teach you a riddle we could share. I think you would like that.”
She tries to lean back from Mal’s presence but the projection just leans closer, steps closer until they are flushed; each part touching and Ariadne’s pulse is rabbit fast against the fingers around her wrist. Ariadne feels like she’s powerless, wonders if this is how Cobb felt in front of this dangerous woman in his own dreams. Mal squeezes her wrist and the gun clatters to the floor beside them. Mal makes a pleased sort of humming noise and the hand that had been in Ariadne’s hair touches her face, curls around her cheek. Ariadne shudders and she hates what it’s from; not fear - or not predominantly anymore.
“Oui,” it’s spoken with such relish before lips are pressed against hers.
Ariadne lets out a sound as the soft touch becomes harder and more purposeful, a harsh demand that she obey as (perfect, everything always so perfect) teeth tug her lip until she responds with a gasp. She feels like she’s drowning in sensation as the woman kisses her like she’s never been kissed before. Like she’s half of one whole. The noise that comes out of her mouth is desperate and wanton and Ariadne didn’t know she was capable of it until it slipped out and into the other woman’s lips.
She wraps herself into Mal's embrace; her gun, mission and dream all forgotten as she tries to find more of the kiss, desperately needs whatever it is that feels so out of her reach. It seems a lifetime and a second before Mal is breaking away and pulling back. Ariadne follows, her eyes still closed but a startlingly wonderful yet cruel laugh makes her eyes open.
Mal hardly seems effected by the kiss but Ariadne that knows if there was a wall behind her she’d be slumped against it and looking debauched. Mal taps Ariadne’s lips in an almost childish gesture that belies the wicked amusement in her eyes.
“Ma petite architecte,” it’s not quite fond but somewhere nearby, “you hide so much, but you do not hide from me.” She smiles and it sends a jolt of pure desire through Ariadne, making her aware of just how much this woman has already inspired in her, “I will ask you just once more; do you know what it is to be a lover?”
“N-No,” she whispers and her voice is hoarse.
Mal is still smiling at her and she leans in with a whisper and a promise, “Shall we teach you?”
There are hundreds of rooms in this hotel and Ariadne nods faintly, hoping, praying Mal will lead her to one. She doesn’t; Mal smirks and steps back. The proximity that grows between them, for a second, makes Ariadne think of her gun, but when Mal kneels onto the ground in front of her Ariadne chokes on her breath.
Her eyes dart around her at the other people walking calmly through the lobby and she startles when hands touch her thighs. Mal is still smiling as fingers dance across her jeans to her zipper, “You may do wherever you like, little dreamer.”
It’s the first time she hasn’t said the word in French - petite - Ariadne notes vaguely while the rest of her is sucking in a breath as those fingers begin rubbing her lightly through her jeans. Ariadne knows this would be a good time to shoot herself out of the dream and hand back the PASIV to Arthur as well as taking herself out of dreamsharing for the rest of her life.
She knows that’s what she should do but Ariadne also knows she isn’t going to anything of the sort. Those touches get firmer and a small moan escapes her lips. When her zipper comes down and her button is undone, Ariadne looks down at Mal. Her eyes are locked on Ariadne and she’s smirking deviously; it makes Ariadne throb with want.
“M-Mal,” she gasps as the other woman’s fingers now press against the one barrier left, a firm flick of a nail making her shudder.
The other woman doesn’t respond but to lean her mouth close, her breath ghosting over the growing damp patch in Ariadne’s underwear. She has to look away from Mal and she wants to feel self-conscious to push the other woman from her and run from the still populated hotel lobby but every time she so much as thinks it, that flick of a nail is back and she’s shivering as she waits for more.
It’s her dream, her projections and her subconscious, she tells herself. She doesn’t need to feel or think about anything other than what Mal is doing to her because nothing is real.
A second after she assures herself of it she feels a tongue against the fabric of her underwear and she muffles a shout as she jerks forward, her hands falling to the other woman’s shoulders. She doesn’t need to look to know the other is smiling.
“You will become a lover,” is breathed against her before she feels something sharp and metal against her thigh.
Ariadne has a jolt of utter panic and her eyes snap open as she remembers the last time Mal had been near her with a knife. (She feels a spark of shame and horror as well at the reminder of Cobb and Mal and it’s his wife). She tries to jerk away but a firm hand holds her in place a second before her jeans are being tenderly sliced under her thighs. She freezes, her heart pounding as that gentle, dangerous touch makes short work of her pants, and moments later, her underwear.
She realizes with different kind of shock that Mal has just made up her own way of removing the clothing that was stopping her. Ariadne’s underwear is hanging almost like a flap, barely protecting what little modesty she has left in this lobby.
Ariadne hears the sound of the knife dropping to the ground (doesn’t even wonder where she got it from, when she conjured it) and looks down in just enough time to see the other woman’s fingers slip under the fabric and run lightly over her sensitive skin.
Shuddering, her hands clench the other woman’s shoulders as her head tilts back, it’s such a simple touch but everything feels so alive with sensation as those light touches dance over her, never parting and never truly touching what she needs.
Ariadne tries to keep herself still as those fingers ever so slowly begin to spread her open, a finger coming up to swipe her cilt only once, only in passing.
“Please,” she whispers, but the touches never gain a second of speed or pressure. There is a another brush to her cilt though that makes her bite her bottom lip.
“You wish to be a lover,” Mal starts, but it’s not a question and her fingers never stop dancing. “You wish to be taught.” She suddenly feels the words breathed over her. “You will not find all lessons to be easy.”
The warning is followed by little kitten licks on her outer folds, the fingers still doing their almost non-existent strokes. She has barely been opened at all and she wants to push forward into the touch, but she feels unable to move, backwards or forwards.
She wanted this once, she remembers, in a half-remembered dream she once had, waking up in the middle of an orgasm after dreaming about being unable to move and being brought to the edge and over it.
Ariadne doesn’t know whether it’s Mal or her own mind that’s managed it (she doesn't think of them as one and the same anymore - not now, not after this, never again) but all she can do is stand there and whimper as Mal continually teases everything but what she wants. The little licks turn into two long strokes on either side of her before the fingers gently part her. Her stomach clenches as warm breath falls over her.
She isn’t sure if Mal can see her clearly but it feels like that, like the other woman is studying her. Ariadne yearns to squirm, to push forward or just gain some sort of friction. Mal makes a small thoughtful sound and then she blows into her and Ariadne is caught between shuddering and trying to jerk her hips when she’s unable to move. She curses instead and wonders how it’s possible that Mal is doing this to her.
A vague snatch of memory passes across her mind that everything is enhanced in a dream but then that tongue has made one long lick from top to bottom and her brain is not about to work. She gasps and her hands go to Mal’s head but she know she has no control over the other woman’s decisions. The knowledge that she is at Mal’s mercy shouldn’t make her even more aroused then she is, but it does.
Mal’s tongue slides away and she has another few torturous beats of nothing with just breath against her before the long lick is repeated but this time Mal’s tongue lingers, a soft pressure on her clit that makes her muscles clench. It must be a step in the right direction because suddenly those kitten licks of before are centered on her clit and all of Ariadne’s focus is zeroed in on that touch. It becomes her whole world as she moans and tries to grind closer, push Mal harder against her but there isn’t any give, just soft little touches that burn along her skin nowhere near enough.
It’s like eternity as she feels each drag against her most sensitive point. She’s desperate to be filled to be sucked - for anything more than these little brushs that leave seconds between each other that feel like forever.
It’s after one particularly slow lick that Mal pulls back, giving her thattormenting breath again. The air comes out in a gush of Mal’s laughter and Ariadne shudders.
“Oh, ma petite,” another lick, “dreams are so overwhelming. They can last forever and be,” a firmer lick that almost makes Ariadne bite through her bottom lip, “so intense, oui?”
“O-Oui,” she gasps out, hoping it’s the right thing to say but when no further licks follow, she begs, “Please, Mal?”
There is a moment where nothing happens and then the licks are back but not on her clit, everywhere else without penetrating her either. It’s as if Mal is casually exploring her, she seems to have all the time in the world and no concern about the thrashing, sweating, desperate woman she’s creating above her.
Ariadne feels Mal open her wider and she spreads her legs to accommodate; only realizing she can move after she’s done it. She tries to press forward but she’s back to being frozen and Mal is taking the time to lap up the juices from her arousal. The touches are maddening; she feels like she’s going to collapse and all she wants, all she needs is fingers in her and a tongue sucking her clit. The huff of laughter makes her think Mal knows exactly what she wants, knows exactly where to keep her to not make her come, and is using it to her advantage.
She’s so focused on that lapping tongue and expecting each repetitive motion that’s she taken by surprise when it darts in suddenly. She convulses around it and shouts for the split-second Mal gives her before her tongue is gone and the fingers holding her apart are massaging lightly, waiting for her to come back down.
Ariadne curses and wails as she feels her orgasm falling back away from her. It’s still close enough to taste but too far to reach when Mal’s slowly licking her juices again. She’s shivering as she clenches around nothing before that tongue slides slowly, almost impossibly up and back to her cilt. This time she’s not licking, she’s tapping her tongue and Ariadne is desperately trying to push into that touch with no success.
“Fuck, I need-” she gasps out.
She gets a fast, firm lick for her troubles and would have snapped herself forward if she was able. Mal licks her once more before, “You will tell me when you need and I will tell you when you will.” The smile is in her voice. “Do you dream of this? Do you not deserve this? You will get what you want when I let you, when I have had my fun.”
Mal comes back with fast, almost impossible to feel strokes that occur all over her, but never enough, never enough to let her come. It’s like she’s held on the edge, pushed closer and closer and half leaning down it but Mal refuses to allow her the satisfaction of the fall. (She wonders if there’s some dark amusement, some revenge in that but she doesn’t have enough functioning brain cells to really tell.)
She’s vibrating out of her skin. Mal has pulled back so many times, humming over her, warm breath teasing her before she would go in and lick her clean again, driving her to the point of orgasm and stopping, waiting, and then starting the whole process again. She feels swollen, sore and more aroused than she ever thought possible, she doesn’t even know how long she’s been here. Mal must know every bit of her by now.
She feels the warm breath, the shiver-inducing gusts Mal deliberately blows over highly sensitive areas and knows the long lick from bottom to top is coming. Mal doesn’t disappoint and she almost wants to scream when Mal reaches the top but unlike the other times, swirls her tongue like it’s the tip of a lollipop.
Ariadne gasps in air and thrusts again without any success but she can’t stop it, the sweet tendrils of orgasm are there again and she’ll do anything to reach them. Mal keeps up her twirling circles, fast, slow, a drag of a tongue that’s hardly a circle at all and then a continual string of them that has Ariadne throwing her head back and keening.
They get faster and faster and faster and… stop. She almost sobs as Mall pulls back and away, no breath no nothing on her skin.
She looks down at the face that is still perfect, no hint of what’s been happening when she knows she must look ragged. Mal smirks at her, predatory and pleased. She’s still spread open and she gasps when Mal’s fingers dance over her again.
“I know what you want,” her fingers dart the path her tongue had, less than an inch from moving inside of her and giving her the bliss she craves. “I wonder to give it to you at all.”
“Please,” Ariadne is sure she can feel the air move around and press against her inner walls from where Mal moves her fingers above her she is that aroused. “Please.”
Mal leans close. “I will make you a lover.” She smirks again. “You are almost to go.”
Ariadne begins to hear the chime of the alarm she’d set on her phone. No, she thinks dreadfully, no, no. Because if she leaves the dream without Mal finishing this she thinks she might die. She has to come, she needs it and she needs this woman who has been teasing her for what must be nearly an hour to do it.
"Will you be my lover?"
Ariadne will be her anything, Ariadne already is her everything. "Yes, oh God, please, just, oui, Mal!"
And then the tongue is back and it’s still gliding, slow and leisurely and Ariadne doesn’t know what to do - but then, then she feels Mal move up with purpose to her cilt and she feels lips close gently around it. Mal’s fingers dance to her entrance and tease her with promise.
“Oh god,” she whispers and then Mal is making good on everything she’s done so far.
Fingers move into her fluidly but they hold still and for one horrifying moment she thinks it’s another step where Mal keeps her on the edge - but then they’re coming out and her tantalizing, horrible, wonderful tongue is lashing across her cilt and it’s too much sensation and not enough.
She cries out and wants to thrust into that perfect mouth and those long fingers but that’s still denied her. Mal’s fingers go in and out once more and then freeze, holding her open and Mal’s mouth disappears. She doesn’t know if she manages to shout her pleas her no, no, oh god, I need before Mal’s tongue has taken the place of her fingers and is in and out and everywhere and for split-second her mind is sure she is actually vibrating and that Mal is touching every part of her and then finally, finally with a sob of relief she’s coming with tongues and fingers in her and is saved from collapsing by nothing but the hold the dream has on her as Mal's tongue continuously milks her orgasm from her.
Ariadne is sure she blacks out at some point because when it's over and she comes to she’s lying on the ground and the soft licks Mal had continued to give her have finished. She opens her eyes and Mal is above her, eyes bright and a tongue coming out to run over her lips. Ariadne shudders and clenches with remembered want.
“Now you know, little Ariadne,” it’s the first time Mal has ever called her by name. “A lover who knows all that is inside you. A lover who knows what you want better than even you.”
She blinks at the woman above her who suddenly bends down and kisses her mouth chastely, Ariadne doesn’t get a chance to taste anything or do anything before Mal pulls back.
“Little dreamer,” it almost but not quite mocking and this time the kiss is on the corner of her mouth before the words are whispered in her ear and this time they are amused as fingers tuck damp curls behind her ear, “bonne nuit.”
She wakes up shaking but with the effects of the afterglow still lingering in the corners of her mind. Ariadne forces herself to her feet and into a shower, trying to wash away what she let herself do.
It doesn’t help.
When Arthur comes to retrieve the PASIV almost twenty minutes later, he asks if she was able to solve the problem she'd borrowed it for. Ariadne somehow manages to look him in the eyes with only a faint blush and tell him that she had. Ariadne watches his eyebrows rise with suspicion but he doesn’t pry further.
Ariadne knows he’ll be checking the PASIV over once he’s safe in his hotel room and as long as it was fine, that would be that. It’s something she’s learned about Arthur; if she doesn’t do something to jeopardize the job than he won’t push to be involved in it.
She remembers angrily assuming he wasn’t noticing Cobb’s thin grip on reality when they’d first met and for a second Ariadne is terrified he knows exactly what she just did. She shakes the thought off; there is no reason for him to worry about Mal. There’s reason for her to worry about the other woman, but that’s a different thing entirely.
Ariadne knocks over her totem for the fourth time since coming out of the dream, it’s is constant, it is reality. She forces herself to work on some of her architecture for a distraction - it’s not for a dream or a job, but for her classes. She needs something normal that won’t have her mind flicking back to smiling lips and flicking tongues.
It's only later as she’s packing up her things for bed that Ariadne will wonder if she hadn't known exactly what she was walking into when she went to find Mal.
It's only much, much later that she’ll admit the truth of that to herself.
Mal doesn’t come back again.
Ariadne doesn’t actively seek her out at first, but she does look every time she goes under and there isn’t a sign that she’s ever been there. The night before the job, she borrows Arthur’s PASIV one more time. She walks through city streets and even revisits Fischer’s hospital, but there’s nothing.
When she wakes up… she doesn’t know what to think about it.
They finish the job and she heads home, carrying enough guilt and concern about her subconscious that she considers giving up dreamshare. She spends a few months telling herself it’s the right thing to do and hovers over calling Cobb’s number when she needs some extra convincing.
But when Arthur asks her for the third time about a job, she feels herself collapse into agreement. She misses dreaming like it’s a home away from home and if her first encounter with Mal hadn’t stopped her from dreaming then the one all her own fault wasn’t about to either.
She still dreamt on her own sometimes during her self-imposed exile; a flash of brown hair, a smile half cruel and half amused and she wakes up somewhere between exhausted and frustrated.
Meeting up with Arthur again settles a frantic part of her mind. She begins to draw the new set of mazes, sliding back into the familiar and fond patterns of watching Eames slide up to Arthur and chuckle against his neck.
It reminds her of Mal and she looks away, angry at herself at the wistfulness it brings. Mal is a shade and a projection but she was still something gorgeous and perfect too. Ariadne knows Mal wasn’t her lover, not really, not in reality but Ariadne wants to have it so much it’s close to consuming her.
She confronts Eames one day when Arthur’s out of the warehouse and she’s desperate enough to shrug off the sympathy she’d usually feel for him and keep her from addressing it. “Eames?”
He looks up from the mountains of paperwork Arthur has been throwing at him. “Yes, Ariadne?”
Ariadne has to keep herself from fidgeting on the spot. “How do you do it?”
His interest visibly increases as he puts down the papers, “And what might it be that I do? Forge so cleverly? Save cock ups like Inception with my ingenuity? Convince Arthur to leave to trail the mark to give us some peace and quiet from his constant working? If it’s the last one, it’s purely done by charm alone.”
He winks at her and Ariadne has to stop him before he starts again, before he makes her smile and she loses her nerve to continue. “No. How do you handle Arthur?”
“Arthur?” His surprise looks genuine, but he is a Forger.
“Well, Arthur and, um, other people,” she grimaces and just bites the bullet. “How do you find a lover?”
Eames actually seems to startle at her words before settling on disbelief. “Um, I’m sorry, dear; I think I must have misheard you?”
“A lover,” she repeats, because somewhere between a lobby full of projections and a career full of criminals she lost a lot of her shame. “You love Arthur and I want… I want that and I’m,” she ran a hand through her hair. “I’m frustrated by someone making me want it.”
Eames face is shuttered when she looks back at it. His hands are folded over the papers in front of him and while his eyes aren’t angry, there is a level of warning. “Ariadne, there are some things you would do best to leave alone.”
“But-”
He cuts her off firmly, the usual gentleness in his tone having disappeared. “I don’t know why you sought me for romantic advice, but I’ll answer your problem simply; whoever started making you think about this is probably the person you want to share that with.”
“They’re not-”
“If they’re not,” he speaks over her again, “then you have to wait like everyone else to stumble into it. You can’t force or manufacture an emotion like that; it will happen or it won’t.”
He pauses, waiting to see if she’s absorbed it. She doesn’t want to because it’s already sending a shiver of fear down her spine, but she does nod for his benefit.
“Good,” Eames tells her and feeling dismissed, she turns to go. “Oh, and Ariadne,” she looks back and stiffens at the cold look in his eyes. “Never mention Arthur again.”
Swallowing, she’s nervous but can’t quite bring herself to stop, “Don’t people know?”
Ariadne can see Eames weighing her, the pros of telling her versus leaving it alone. Eventually, he answers, “Not him.” Then. “Now go back to your mazes.”
She doesn’t need to be told again and hurries back to her desk. She focuses her attention on the designs in front of her, feeling discomfort rest heavy on her shoulders from the angry, quiet Eames’ she’d unintentionally brought out.
The rest of the afternoon passes in silence, it’s only when Arthur returns that the usual motions of their working environment reform. She only catches Eames’ eyes once, but in that second she gets both a warning and forgiveness and Ariadne knows she’ll never bring it up again even as she watches Eames’ hand touch Arthur’s shoulder but release it before he can be rebuffed.
Watching them, she wonders if maybe all relationships in the dreamshare community aren’t problematic.
She sleeps without dreams that night. (She misses Mal every morning.)
Ariadne doesn’t know if she’s going crazy or if she’s just gaining enough psychosis to fit into her chosen, illegal, profession.
It’s been a year of reality and jobs and dreams and no sign of Mal. She’s been to Cobb’s house twice and only reacted with a stab of pain (and jealousy) at the photos on the dresser once. The second time she’d learned to control herself better.
Eames is speaking to her more and Arthur is just as oblivious to the Forger as ever, but she’s not involving herself in that mess. She’s already inherited the problems of one dreamer and she doesn’t need another. Cobb might have let Mal go, but Ariadne can’t find the shade to release her. She’s not sure if she could now, the woman is in the corners of her waking mind, a constant presence and sinful pleasure.
There are moments late at night when she’s battling insomnia, chasing exams or reconstructing a new maze because there’s been a change in the plans that the stray thought always presents itself; was it possible she stole Mal and this was the conjured shade of Dom Cobb? Was she the fractured, beautiful, imperfect version of a grief-stricken husband?
(Then she remembers tongues and laughter and promises and knows this is all about her.)
Her new life isn’t so bad, all things considered. She graduates, disappears and settles into life as an established, stable and brilliant architect for the dreamshare. She’s… content.
There’s a night somewhere in the depths of winter in a cabin she can’t remember the location to when she has a conversation with Arthur she’ll never forget.
They’d been working a job with an Extractor who makes a stupid mistake and she has a bullet wound to her shoulder and Arthur doesn’t have a hair out of place. He’s drowning her in alcohol to get her through the stitching but the pain and liquor give her crystal clear memory that she never admits to Arthur lets her recall the entire thing.
“People are stupid,” she grumbles, holding a bottle of rum. “Jenkies is stupid.”
“Jenkins,” Arthur corrects absently. “And he will no longer affect the quality of work.” Ariadne blinks and shudders; she had been shot in the shoulder; he had been shot in the head. “Don’t move,” Arthur corrects absently. “You’re almost as bad as Eames.”
“Was that an inu-” she frowns, knows it isn’t going to happen, “a sexual comment.”
The stunned look that comes over Arthur’s face is worth the flinch he also makes and pulls her stitches. She makes a pained noise and while he doesn’t apologize he does give her arm a brief, soothing touch. “You are clearly spending too much time around him.”
“Nuh-uh,” she protests. “He won’t even answer my questions.”
The pull of the stitch slows and he looks at her carefully. “Are you suggesting you’ve gone to Eames for romantic advice?”
“He didn’t help me,” Ariadne confirms and sadness slides out with the help of alcohol to smooth and loosen the path. “And I think I’m in love with her and do you know how much of a fucking mess, I am, Arthur?”
Arthur stills for a long moment before he continues fixing her wound. “It’s not wrong to love someone of the same gender.”
She snorts in an entirely unlady-like manner. “Tell that to Eames.”
She shakes her head and regrets it instantly when her head spins and before she can think she’s throwing up on the floor. Arthur, to his credit doesn’t even flinch. She doesn’t doubt if it had looked like it would hit his suit he would have been out the door though.
“Eww,” she groans. He moves away and comes back with a towel for her to wipe her mouth. She does and swallows so rum to take the taste out. “I’m never getting shot again.”
“A good life goal,” Arthur agrees.
Ariadne doesn’t look at the mess she’s made or she is going to make it even bigger. “Sorry about your floor.”
He shrugs elegantly. “It’s not mine and we won’t remain her for long.”
She’s trying to figure out just which question she wants to ask first (whose cabin is it? Where will we go? How do you know about this place then?) but Arthur speaks before she can, “What did you mean about Eames?”
“Eames?”
He’s patience is obviously never-ending as he responds, “You implied he wasn’t encouraging about you having a female companion?”
“Huh?” she takes another sip as she remembers what she’d said, what she’d meant. It makes her think of Mal and she brings a hand, coincidently the one holding the rum, up to her face and presses against the glass. She sniffles. “I miss her so much, Arthur.” She makes a pitiful sound. “It was the best sex of my life.”
(Later, much later, when she’s gone past petrified, mortified and depressed, Ariadne will remember this moment and Arthur’s reaction and she’ll laugh so hard her sides ache.)
Arthur clears his throat, and Ariadne looks through the bottle and sees the awkward slant to this mouth, the avoidance of his eyes and sniggers. Arthur’s stern mask quickly slides back into place and any embarrassment is gone. “That didn’t answer my question about Eames.”
“Oh, that,” Ariadne takes a fortifying sip of her rum. “He’s got the worst guy to be in love with. The guy hates him.”
Arthur’s movements are very measured and very steady as he finishes up her stitches. When he speaks, his words are slow and careful. “A lot of people hate Eames.”
“Mm,” she hums. The bottle is almost empty and she’s wondering if when she falls asleep, Mal might be there to meet her and call her little again. “But you hate him the best.”
Arthur makes a small sound in his throat that Ariadne can’t classify and when she looks at him, she can’t read his face. She stares at him with a furrow between her eyebrows before he eventually begins to move again and ushers her to one of the beds with a promise to check on her in the night.
She doesn’t dream about Mal that evening or if she does, she doesn’t know about it when she wakes up. She feels like she’s been scraped off the road after being hit by a freight train and tells Arthur as much. Arthur never mentions what she revealed and neither does she when it comes to her again a month down the line when she’s prodding her bullet wound.
Ariadne spends two weeks petrified Eames is going to show up and kill her.
(She never finds out that Arthur never slept that night. He kept hovering his finger over his phone, never quite bringing himself to call Eames’ number.)
In the end, when they meet up the next time to work together, nothing seems any different, but the first time Eames places his hand on Arthur’s shoulder, after a shrewd glance from the pointman and to the subtle, silent shock of the others, he leans carefully back into it.
(“Hi, I’m Mindy,” says the bottle-blonde in the coffee shop, her hair is long and falls in curls. She’s bouncy and energetic and not a single shade of what Ariadne wants.
Ariadne smiles. “I’m Amy; it’s nice to meet you.”
It doesn’t last - it’s not what she wants and it hurts every second she tries to make it - but it’s nice for the weeks it does.)
There’s a job in Brazil that is almost as much of a disaster as Inception could have been but they luckily, amazingly pull it off.
Eames and Arthur present her a PASIV as a gift when they’ve left the country.
“Holy shit,” she announces. “Holy shit.”
Reaching forward, Ariadne runs reverent hands over the case, feeling like it’s humming against her skin.
“I knew she’d like that, Pet,” Eames says to Arthur smugly.
Arthur rolled his eyes. “Anybody in dreamshare would give their right arm and first child for one. It’s hardly a stroke of genius.”
“You wound me, Arthur. I put a lot of thought into making our present perfect.”
“You did it together? Does that mean I get an ‘from Eames and Arthur card?” It’s the closest she’ll come to meddling in those waters (when she’s not drunk off her head) and she gets a deep thrill of satisfaction when not one, but both of them blush. It easily spins into an argument over why ‘Eames’ name would be first’ but she has to think, maybe there’s hope for them yet.
(Ariadne still dreams of Mal every so often but she doesn’t feel so angry, so bitter at the people who knew her in life. People who have a chance with the people they love. She still can’t bear to look at Cobb some days, but she’s going to get herself over that someday.)
When she arrives in her hotel room later that night with nothing more than a glass of wine in her and a buzzing energy to give her PASIV its first test, she isn’t thinking of anywhere or anything in particular, she wants to let whatever happens happen.
She wakes up on the balcony of a hotel room that looks familiar in a way she can’t pinpoint; she’s looking out over a cityscape that makes her remember falling but without a sense of vertigo. It’s with a sense of comfort.
Ariadne closes her eyes and breaths in, the scent memory registers a second before she hears the words.
“Hello, ma petite,” they are purred behind her.
The amused, pleased smile is pressed against her neck and ear as arms curl around her waist and a womanly (perfect, impossible) figure is along every line of her body.
It’s so startling but it’s also nothing like that at all. “Mal?”
“I have been waiting.” A kiss brushes just behind her ear, “you have grown. You have seen what it is like to be lost, apart, forgotten.” There is a pause and Ariadne feels like her heart, her mind, her world hangs in the balance. “Shall you now learn more?”
Time has passed like levels in a dream since they last touched and the warmth of the woman behind her makes Ariadne want to curl into her and never leave. It's for the first time in years and held possessively in the other woman's embrace that Ariadne relaxes.
She’s home.
-Fin-