[FIC] To Build a Dream On
Title: To Build a Dream On
Author: toujourspret
Disclaimer: Clearly, I don't own Inception. This is a work of fiction written by a fan for fans. Any resemblance to people or situations fictional or otherwise is pure coincidence.
Rating: NC-17
Characters: Ariadne/Mal, Arthur/Eames
Summary: An active imagination is a powerful thing.
Author's Notes: Written for livelikejack in the Inception Reverse Bang! I was incredibly inspired by the art that she created; it made me rethink about how I saw both Ariadne and Mal, the similarities and differences between them, and that's honestly the best kind of art, in my opinion. Many thanks again to short_hemline for the fantastic (and very, very speedy) beta, since I think I gave her, like, three days total to finish it. She always seems to "get" exactly what I was going for and help me mold a shaky piece into a solid work that's going in the right direction.
Link to Art: livelikejack.livejournal.com/35264.html
Give me a kiss to build a dream on
And my imagination will thrive upon that kiss
Sweetheart, I ask no more than this
A kiss to build a dream on
To Build a Dream On
She wakes and it’s lilacs in her mouth, lilacs pale and lovely, and she shivers. She remembers nothing of the dream but dark, dark eyes and the barest brush of curls against her skin.
::
“What was she like in real life?” she’d asked him, and Arthur’s eyes had crinkled around the edges.
“She was lovely.”
It wasn’t enough. It was going to have to be enough.
::
Each time she sees Mal in a dream, she realizes two things at the same time:
One-she’s dreaming. Two-she has dreamt Mal in every dream since the inception. She has dreamt Mal in a thousand thousand ways; sloe-eyed and sleepy leaned against the wall like a femme fatale or gliding across the dance floor in the background as if to say, Darling, you’re dreaming. Mal’s face in a photograph on the desktop of an office cubicle and, in one memorable scene, Mal draped across the top of a baby grand in a jazz bar, her dress a knit of pearls and nothing else, spilling across her breasts in a tantalizing show that reveals nothing. Mal always smiles at her, dusky-sweet and slow, lips tucking up at the side. I’ve noticed you, too, her smile says.
Ariadne always wakes up, palms wet with sweat and brow knit as she tries to grasp at a memory that’s more blue cigarette smoke and red lipstick than substance. She doesn’t remember, and it leaves her aching and wanting.
::
She hasn’t worked with Cobb or the others since the Fischer case, and she longs for that world of pure creation. She holds out for as long as she can, waiting for a call from Arthur, a note from Eames, a job from Cobb, but none materialize and she goes to her professor and all but begs for an in. Miles sighs. He rolls his eyes. He hands her a slip of paper, and three weeks later she’s in Zurich meeting Kim for a run-of-the-mill job. It’s routine; she’d almost say it’s too easy after inception, but she’s sure she’s unremarkable to a team that’s got its in-jokes, its dynamic, its personality, and then she sees her. She’s sitting at the bar, a martini in her hand and the most exquisite cocktail dress nearly painted across her body like a black, clinging skin. Ariadne can taste the bitters in the drink on the back of her tongue.
“Worked with Cobb, have you?” Kim asks sotto. Ariadne’s heart thumps panicked, suddenly, strangely guilty, and her fingers clench around the glass in her hand reflexively.
“Don’t worry about it,” Joey tells her, laughing. “Nearly everyone brings Mal home with them the first time they work with him.”
“She’s not going to, like, sabotage the case, is she?” Ariadne asks, taking a deep draw of her gin and tonic. “No trains through the middle of a busy intersection?”
Joey whistles low. “Rough case, was it?”
“This Mal is yours. She’ll only act the way your subconscious tells her to,” Kim tells her, and across the bar, Mal smiles, twirling her finger along the rim of her glass. “All you took was a face; you can’t take Cobb’s delusions with you. No worries.”
The case goes off without a hitch, almost painfully easy. She’s addicted. As she’s watching Kim wind the lines back into the PASIV’s case, Joey invites her to come work with him on a case in Argentina. She immediately accepts. He smiles wide and her gaze drifts behind him to the shining silver case.
::
She stops returning Joey’s calls in Shanghai, when Mal shows up on the third straight case in a row and he laughs at her. She’s made enough connections of her own to pick up in the world of mind heist without his help anymore, but she figures she’d best nip this thing in the bud, so gets Eames’s number from Kim and gives him a call. Turns out he’s in Manila, so she hops a short flight and meets him for lunch under the swaying palm trees. Even the air tastes like bananas. The poverty is horrifying.
“Tell me about her,” she demands, and he opens his mouth to answer, face fond. “No, I mean really. I want to know more about her,” she insists, because she doesn’t want empty platitudes and smiling generalities.
“I don’t know what you’re looking for,” Eames says instead, tucking a wrinkled cigarette under his top lip and fumbling through his pockets for a lighter. “And what good would it do? She’s dead.”
“I’ve picked up a passenger,” she tells him, and his face twists around his cigarette.
“That happens. Cobb’s head is a very fucked up place to be; it wouldn’t surprise me if we all picked up a critter or two from that wasteland,” he says.
“She’s not a critter!” Ariadne says sharply, then frowns. “I mean, Kim said I took the face, not the stuff behind it. So it’s like she’s part of my subconscious, now, too.”
“Well, that’s true, in a way. What you’ve got in your head is yours now, and it’s got nothing to do with Cobb,” he admits, fidgeting with his coffee cup.
“Is there a way to get rid of a face in your subconscious?” she hedges.
He regards her thoughtfully. “Normally it’ll fade. You won’t even notice she’s there in six months; in a year she won’t show up at all. Unless,” he says, pausing to tap ashes onto the ground, “Unless your subconscious has attached her to something.”
She stabs at the lumpia on her plate viciously, spilling bean thread across like pale hair on a pillow.
::
“I want to know why you’re here,” she hisses, but Mal just laughs, her voice lilting up like teasing. Her eyes are sparkling in a way they’d only done in Cobb’s memories, but the set of her mouth is dark, wry, as it had been in that shattered hotel room.
“No, you don’t,” Mal tells her. She sidles up to Ariadne until she can feel the heat of her body through her clothes, until she has to tilt her chin up to meet her eyes. Mal smiles then, lashes fluttering over hooded eyes as she leans in, and Ariadne goes still, trembling like butterfly wings. She can smell the wax of Mal’s lipstick as she skims her lips over her cheekbones, breath hot against her ear. “Do you want to know a secret?”
Ariadne feels a bird trapped in her chest. Her ribcage swells, contracts, and the bird beats against her ribs frantically. “Yes,” she whispers, and Mal’s laugh is soft this time, but all the more cruelly mocking for it.
“You want me to be here,” Mal murmurs, and Ariadne’s eyes bolt open. The expanse of white ceiling is disorienting at first until she recognizes the bells declaring morning mass. Her breath escapes her in ragged sobs as she stares at the cracked plaster overhead and tries to understand.
::
She’s called Arthur on the phone, the number he gave her for emergencies back before they knew whether or not Saito would clean up his mess. She’s surprised he still has the phone.
“Why do you do this dream work?” she asks, and he’s indulgent.
“Because law school is hellishly expensive, and after that, because the law is hellishly boring compared to breaking it,” he says, and for a moment, she’s surprised to remember that he was once a real person with a real history beyond mind crime. He gives her a moment for stunned silence, then laughs. “If you’re looking for a flashy past, ask Eames. Maybe he’ll tell you; he won’t tell me. Says I don’t have the proper security clearance. I almost half believe it,” he adds with a chuckle.
“And,” she starts, drawing up her courage, “And what about Cobb?”
“Well, you know why he did the illegal stuff. He was an architect before that, too.”
“A real one?” she asks.
“Both. He was drafted into dreaming because his designs showed imagination: where other students’ drawings made sense or followed some kind of logical plan, his were all over the place. Some of them probably couldn’t have even supported themselves; it was almost like modern art instead of architecture-he even had a gallery show once. That’s where he met Mal.” Arthur’s voice trails off, dreamy with memory.
Ariadne bit her lip, then blurts out, “And Mal?”
“What about her?” Arthur asks, surprised.
“What did she do before,” she breathes like a gasp, “everything?”
Arthur is silent, and when he speaks again, it’s slow, considered. “Ariadne, there’s a rumor going around about you.”
“I never pegged you for a gossip,” she says sharply.
“Ariadne, you’ve got to understand that the dream world, the scene for it, it’s really very small. You’ve done well for yourself, really, to have your name on so many tongues,” he says, and she frowns into the phone. “Don’t make that face.”
“How do you know what face I’m making?” she asks, irritation shoved aside as she peers through her window into the inky Paris night.
“I’m guessing,” he tells her. Frowning again, she lifts the glass and tugs the shutters flat, hooking them together.
“How’s Joey doing, anyway?” she asks casually. Arthur’s laugh is tinny through the speaker.
“He’s fine. Disappointed, I think. I saw you today, so I wasn’t too surprised you’d called.”
“You’re here in Paris?” she asks, but the minute the words come out of her mouth she knows he’s not. Something about the low buzz of the bar behind him leaves her guessing lowland China, fragments of English and something else-it connects in her mind and her lips curl around the smile forming. “No,” she says, “How’s Eames? Still on vacation?”
Arthur laughs. The phone makes a scrabbling sound. “Hello, love. I hear you still haven’t shaken your visitor loose.”
“No such luck,” she agrees wistfully. “Are you taking your vacation with Arthur, of all people?”
“I am, as ever, attempting to get him to remove the stick from his arse,” Eames replies jovially, and Ariadne can hear Arthur’s scowl through the phone.
“Eames,” she asks, then bites her lip. “Why didn’t you guys ever invite me to do a case with you? I waited, but you never called.”
“It’s a life of crime, not a tea party. I couldn’t stand the idea of dragging you down this rabbit hole without giving you a chance to be a legitimate citizen first, and Arthur agreed-I know, stunning, isn’t it? But we both knew that if you loved it enough, you’d find your way back in when the time was right.”
“So it wasn’t that I’m, like, really terrible at it,” she blurts.
“Perish the thought.” Eames’s voice is soothing, but it only makes the irritation sharper.
“Then why can’t I get rid of her?” Ariadne snaps, and Eames is silent. She can hear him murmuring low to Arthur, can hear the press of his palm against the microphone.
“That’s something you’ll have to ask her, love,” he finally says gently. She hangs up and throws her cell across the room.
::
“You’re waiting for a train.” Mal’s voice is coffee, dark and smooth. She’s wearing an impossible dress of black crepe, one that hugs each curve close without looking too tight. Ariadne feels underdressed in her jeans and nubby sweater.
“Then change what you want to change, darling. This is a dream, after all,” Mal tells her, laughing. It’s a simple laugh; today’s Mal is a Cobb’s-memory-Mal, not a Cobb’s-imagination-Mal. Ariadne closes her eyes and dreams, and when she opens them, Mal’s eyes are shining. “You look lovely.”
Ariadne looks down at the simple plaid sundress she’s wearing, a hoody still thrown over its feminine shape. She wiggles her toes inside the converse hi-tops she’s wearing and frowns. “I still can’t be girly. Not really. Even when I’m using all of my imagination.”
“Is girly something that’s important to you?” Mal asks. She turns away before Ariadne can answer, and the background filters in as if it has always been there; they’re on the street outside the brownstone Ariadne grew up in in Boston. She tilts her head back and she can still see the drawings pressed against the glass of her bedroom window, knows they’re the blueprints she was always drawing: her dream bedroom, and later her dream apartment, the house inspired by a book on Frank Lloyd Wright she’d read in the school library, the imaginary museum she’d designed after a trip to the Smithsonian. Eventually the drawings had been early, simple drafts of her portfolio for school, drawn on graph paper to give a quick idea of the dimensions and taped to the glass so they could be backlit, could almost glow from within the way they did in her mind. She looks back at Mal, and Mal is looking at her.
“Why are we here?” Ariadne asks.
“Because you want to be.”
“No, that’s bullshit,” Ariadne says, turning on her heel to march away from the apartment. She’s not ready for Mal to see that part of her yet, even if this Mal is hers. A park springs up in front of her, the same park she remembers passing every day on her way to classes in Paris. She still sees it sometimes, even though she avoids the school, avoids running into her professors and their disappointed faces that someone so promising could drop out.
“I remember this park,” Mal says, because Ariadne makes her. “I used to go to this park often.” Ariadne uses her as a puppet, Ariadne’s words coming from Mal’s lips. Mal is peaceful, letting her do it. “I liked to fuck on that bench,” Mal’s mouth says, her arm coming up like a marionette’s to point at a stone bench that Ariadne creates as she says it. “I liked to fuck men on that bench. I liked to suck cock on that bench.” Rage boils in Ariadne’s stomach and she drops Mal’s arm, turning to run frustrated fingers through her hair.
“Did that make you feel better?” Mal asks.
“No!” The word explodes from Ariadne’s throat, burning on its way out. “What is the point of you?”
Mal is silent.
“What’s the point of you?” Ariadne repeats, sinking to the ground and clenching her eyes shut until she sees sunlight behind them and knows she’s awake.
::
“I’m sorry, Joey. I’ve just been going through a lot right now,” she says over the phone. Joey’s voice makes an understanding noise.
“Well, we’re starting a new case in Vancouver next week. We’re in desperate need for an architect; we can’t even scare up Nash, so we thought we’d have to wait until Trudy wrapped up in L.A., but if we can go ahead and get on it,” he says, and she can hear his shrug. “You’re our pity fuck, though. No one else would use you after you dropped off the face of the planet on that Wexon-Smithy case, you know. We almost didn’t; I had to fight for you.”
“I didn’t know I’d signed up for that one,” she says dryly. He gives an embarrassed cough. “How soon do you need me?”
“Why don’t you come a day earlier and I’ll take you out to lunch, for old times’ sake?”
She wants to smack the smug tone from his voice.
“How about I show up Friday? I’ve got finals.” He doesn’t notice, or doesn’t mention, the lie.
::
She sleeps fitfully on the plane. Her eyes slip shut and Mal’s sitting there in the seat next to her, her red satin dress incongruous with the plane’s dull gray interior. Ariadne sighs.
“You’ve done a better job at girly this time,” Mal remarks lightly. “If girly is what you were going for.”
It is. She’d taken time this morning to make herself look like a different person for the flight, a different Ariadne who did things like curl her eyelashes and wear pumps that the real Ariadne had already kicked off under the seat in front of her. There was safety in slipping into another person’s face before a case, and Joey’d said this one had potential to go nasty. She tugs at the front of her blouse, a purple silk thing tied at the shoulder in a loose bow, and looks back at Mal.
“Please don’t show up this time,” she begs.
Mal arches a brow. “If that’s what you want,” she says simply. “Just dream of a prison, and I’ll be inside.”
“What?” Ariadne asks, startled. “You mean I could have…at any time…. Could Cobb have done that?”
Mal shakes her head. “He didn’t want to. He wanted me there. You do, too.”
“No, I don’t!” Ariadne cries, and the other projections turn to look at her, their eyes sliding smoothly over Mal until they turn back to the front. Ariadne laughs bitterly. “You really must be part of me now. They didn’t even notice you.”
“They don’t notice me because you don’t want them to notice me, and even if they did and something happened, I would be back the next time you dreamed. Your subconscious is more powerful than you believe, Ariadne, more uncontrollable.”
“Why?” And Ariadne can feel her voice crack in that one word. “Why do I want you here?” Mal takes her hand, skin warm and soft against her own.
“Finally you ask the right question.” She leans close and Ariadne smells her lipstick again before Mal covers her surprised, slack lips with her own. Ariadne shoves her away, touches shaking fingertips to her lips and stares when they come back red. Mal laughs. “Do you understand now?”
Ariadne wakes when the stewardess shakes her shoulder, her lips tingling and the faint taste of Chanel in her mouth.
::
Mal doesn’t bother her on the case, except for once when she sees a flash of dark hair curled against the white skin of a breast in the painting over the mark’s desk. She pretends not to notice it.
::
She sighs and her breath feels hot. She knows she’s dreaming, can tell from the taste of the air where she’s dreaming, and knows who she’ll see when she opens her eyes.
“Hello, love,” Eames says from her bedside. She cracks her eyes open and peers at him.
“So I’ve picked up another, what’d you call it, critter?” she asks the projection. He smiles wide and laughs Eames’s easy laugh.
“Oh, I don’t think so,” he says, and the tight knot in her chest loosens fractionally. “How are you doing?”
“I feel like I’m cracking up. I keep dreaming my ex-boss’s dead wife, and now I’m imagining a man I barely know to be my shrink.”
He laughs again. “It’s a side effect of paying attention to your dreams: they start to actually mean something more.”
“The real Eames isn’t so corny,” she notes, staring up at the Parisian plaster ceiling that has somehow made it to the Philippines.
“The real Eames is getting a little embarrassed that you keep calling him,” he says, and she scowls.
“Maybe. Maybe not, but some part of me obviously thinks so.”
“So you’re figuring out this whole ‘how to speak to your own subconscious’ thing,” he says and nods.
“I pretty much have to, don’t I? If I want to fix this,” she says to the ceiling.
“Is it something you want fixed?” he asks.
She doesn’t know. “Are you fucking Arthur?”
“Some part of you certainly thinks so,” he agrees. “I wouldn’t actually know. Except,” he says, “Except I think I am. So you must be pretty certain.”
“He kissed me once,” she tells him.
“I know. I was there,” he says.
“Eames was?” She’s surprised.
“Of course not. But I’m you, aren’t I?”
“In a roundabout way. I’m not fucking Arthur,” she adds.
“No,” he confirms. “You are one-hundred-percent uninterested in Arthur. And in Eames, if you were curious.”
“I’d rather assumed,” she sniped back.
“But Mal, on the other hand….”
“You know about that dream?” He fixes her with a pedantic look. “Of course you know about that dream.”
“Of course I know about that dream.”
“So which part of me are you?” she asks finally, rolling onto her side to look at her memory’s drawing of him. It’s nearly a caricature at first, a mix of things she remembers best about him. Her first impression is the rings on his fingers, his linen sport coat. Stubble, and then piercing eyes. He’s lips, slightly crooked teeth, too, and then the rest of him fills in like the background of an oil painting. “Are you the part of me that gives me sage advice?”
“Arthur should be along shortly,” he says.
“Then you’re the part of me that tells myself the obvious as if it were something new. I thought that part would look like me.”
“It can, if you’d like.” And she recognizes her own eyes in his face, the shape of the lips thinning and curling into a bow.
“No, stop that. It’s creepy,” she tells him sternly.
“See? You take the obvious better when it comes from someone else.”
“What are you here to tell me, then?” she asks him.
Eames clucks his tongue, flipping out a card from his sleeve to toy with idly. “Now what sort of subconscious would I be if I made it that easy for you?”
“The kind that’s not a jerk?” she suggests hopefully.
“Best wake up now, love. Joey’s on the phone.” He stands from the chair and stretches, shirt riding up slightly. It looks like it’s polyester. He places the card on the edge of the bed, just in front of her, and disappears.
The card is the Queen of Hearts.
::
The phone is ringing when she wakes up, and Joey sounds angry. “Where the hell have you been?” he demands, and she shrugs carelessly until she remembers he can’t see her.
“Sleeping,” she says, biting back a yawn.
“Better have been a damned good dream,” he grouses, but she can hear the panic fading from his voice. She’s sad for a moment that she doesn’t love him back.
“It was weird. I think I was dreaming of Eames,” she says, and as she says it, she remembers the card, that strange card he’d given her: the Queen of Hearts, full like rosebuds.
“Not me?” Joey asks playfully, and she holds the phone silently.
When she hears him give up, she says, “I’ll be there in twenty minutes.”
“Darren says you owe us all coffee,” he tries weakly, and her laughter is canned.
::
The others are gone for the night, and Ariadne is beginning to understand what was going through Cobb’s mind as she inserts the line and lies back, feeling every button of the tufted upholstery digging into her spine. She feels giddy, almost nervous.
Her lashes flutter against her cheek, but it’s so dark. There is a hand on the small of her back; she feels like she’s wearing a slip, a camisole, something thin and silky and hot in the not-temperature of the dream space. Her eyes adjust. The sky blooms above her like a field of glowing flowers, and nimble fingers trip down her spine slowly.
“I’m dreaming,” Ariadne says aloud, and it’s halfway between a statement and a question. Mal laughs behind her, her breath hot against Ariadne’s neck.
“You are,” Mal says softly.
“I,” Ariadne says, turning to take in Mal’s expression, the way the stars are somehow more beautiful reflected across her face. “I’m using the PASIV. The line is in my arm; if I concentrate, I can feel the, the somnacin, I can feel it cold in my skin.”
“I always hated that feeling,” Mal confides, her hand sliding around to press against Ariadne’s belly. “So clinical, so poisonous.”
Ariadne’s not surprised that she agrees. Mal’s hand dips lower, to the hem of her slip and tracking up Ariadne’s thigh, and Ariadne quirks an eyebrow. “What are you doing?”
“What would you like me to do?” Mal asks, mocking-sweet, and because it’s a dream, Ariadne tips toward her, presses her flat against the ground. Parts her thighs until one is between her own, grinding against the lean, smooth limb in a way that she can feel singing in her head. “Oh?” And Mal is nearly breathless and much less sinister when she’s pressing sultry hot against Ariadne’s own thigh.
“Yeah,” Ariadne says. “‘Oh’.”
Mal looks like a silent movie star in her short satin slip, all dark, bruised eyes and full lips; Ariadne leans down to bite them and Mal bites back, tangling her fingers into Ariadne’s hair to pull her down. Mal’s body is hotter through the thin fabric than it could have ever been without it, scorching at Ariadne’s fingers as she plucks it up, higher and higher until Mal reaches down to lift it away and Ariadne can’t even look, can’t even look at the bare skin glowing beneath her until Mal slides clever fingers up her thigh again and into her body and she braces herself with one palm flat beside Mal’s head and one surrounding one heavy, lush breast. Mal swats her ass with the hand that’s not buried between her legs and Ariadne spreads them further, watching the twist of a graceful hand as it disappears beneath the silky-rayon, her mind supplies. It’s somehow more surreal than a dream and she moans. Mal looks up at her, hair spilled across the ground and tangling with the weeds as if she’s part of the ground itself. Her smile is sharp and dangerous.
“I want,” Ariadne says. Mal’s smile widens, more Cobb’s-imagination-Mal, but it’s Ariadne’s-imagination-Mal who grinds the palm of her hand against Ariadne’s clit hard and spreads her own legs until they can both see hair glistening with wetness.
“Then do it,” Mal tells her, and it’s all the permission she needs. Mal’s skin is salt-sweet-slick, and Ariadne’s jaw aches with the need to bite, so she does, hard, on an inner thigh. Her hands scrabble through the grass to clutch at Mal’s thighs, and she needs it so badly it hurts. Ariadne’s hips buck hard against the air and Mal laughs, a pained, aroused sound that echoes in Ariadne’s ears as she’s rolled onto her back, her legs spread and slip unceremoniously raised. She tastes blood and doesn’t know if it’s from Mal’s thigh or her own lip, worried between her teeth until it is raw. Her back arches and she keens; Mal’s fingers are inside her again and they’re curling, thumb rubbing vicious circles around her clit. Mal covers her with her body as she fucks her, riding her hard, relentless, until her heels can’t get traction and she can feel an orgasm building up inside her like a scream. The tension snaps and it’s so powerful the dream flickers, just once, hard enough for the moon to go out like a snuffed candle.
When she opens her eyes again, the stars flicker on, one by one, like Christmas lights after a year in storage. Mal is sitting nearby, expression distant. She’s dressed again, and when she notices Ariadne looking, she smiles slowly and shakes her head.
“Has this whole thing been about that?” Ariadne asks reluctantly.
“In a way, yes,” Mal says. There is a crushed wildflower tangled in her hair. “In a way, no.”
“Which part of my subconscious do you represent?” Ariadne curls against Mal’s side and lets her pick the grass from her skin, brushing gently with her fingertips.
Mal’s laugh is gentle. “I don’t represent you.”
Ariadne draws back, confusion knit on her face. “What?”
“You’re waiting for a train,” Mal says. Her voice is very soft. Ariadne can barely hear her over the thudding of her own heart.
“Don’t. Please don’t.”
“A train that will take you far away,” Mal continues blithely. “Don’t you understand yet?”
“Understand what? What is there to understand? That I’m in love with someone I’ve never met, with someone who doesn’t exist? With someone who isn’t even real?” Ariadne’s voice cracks. She reaches to cover her face, but Mal takes her hand.
“You don’t have to go back.” And Ariadne understands her. Oh, she understands, and her skin crawls.
“I’m not-I won’t,” Ariadne gasps, pulling against Mal’s grip.
“What is real? Is it out there,” Mal gestures widely at the empty field, “where the world makes no sense? Where dreams are for money, for purpose, for other people?”
“You’re not real.”
“But you love me anyway.” Ariadne can’t deny it, not when Mal says it so simply.
“It’s narcissism. It’s masturbation, it’s,” breath catches in her throat. “It’s not love.”
Mal leans in, kissing her forehead tenderly. “Did it feel real?”
“What, the,” Ariadne freezes. “The sex?”
“Love,” Mal corrects her.
“I. I don’t.”
“You know where you hope this train will take you,” Mal continues. Her eyes are wet. Ariadne shakes her head slowly, desperately.
“I can’t trust that, Mal. I,” she stops, clenching her hand in her lap. “I can’t trust you’ll be there, because I know you won’t. You’re not even real.”
“Ariadne.”
The sobs come then, huge, heaving sobs that shake her shoulders. She clenches her eyes tight and waits to wake up, because the one word she can’t imagine in Mal’s voice is her own name.
::
“I do wish you’d reconsider, love,” Eames says as she toys with the spoon resting against her teacup. “Finally, I get a case where we can use your expertise and you say you’ve retired.” His complaint is halfhearted, and Arthur frowns at him over his coffee cup.
“I can’t say I’m not jealous. NYU is getting a great architect. We could have used your delicate touch with the Pembrose stairs on this one, I think,” Arthur tells her, but his smile is wry. She feels glad to be getting out of their hair.
Ariadne shakes her head. “I’m thinking about changing majors. It’s too,” she stops, searching.
“That’s what Cobb said,” Arthur offers. Her heart clenches. “You can’t design here after designing there.” She nods, grateful for the excuse.
That night, she wakes in sweat-mussed linens, limbs tense and trembling, eyes searching the dark and her own name on her lips.
Author: toujourspret
Disclaimer: Clearly, I don't own Inception. This is a work of fiction written by a fan for fans. Any resemblance to people or situations fictional or otherwise is pure coincidence.
Rating: NC-17
Characters: Ariadne/Mal, Arthur/Eames
Summary: An active imagination is a powerful thing.
Author's Notes: Written for livelikejack in the Inception Reverse Bang! I was incredibly inspired by the art that she created; it made me rethink about how I saw both Ariadne and Mal, the similarities and differences between them, and that's honestly the best kind of art, in my opinion. Many thanks again to short_hemline for the fantastic (and very, very speedy) beta, since I think I gave her, like, three days total to finish it. She always seems to "get" exactly what I was going for and help me mold a shaky piece into a solid work that's going in the right direction.
Link to Art: livelikejack.livejournal.com/35264.html
Give me a kiss to build a dream on
And my imagination will thrive upon that kiss
Sweetheart, I ask no more than this
A kiss to build a dream on
To Build a Dream On
She wakes and it’s lilacs in her mouth, lilacs pale and lovely, and she shivers. She remembers nothing of the dream but dark, dark eyes and the barest brush of curls against her skin.
::
“What was she like in real life?” she’d asked him, and Arthur’s eyes had crinkled around the edges.
“She was lovely.”
It wasn’t enough. It was going to have to be enough.
::
Each time she sees Mal in a dream, she realizes two things at the same time:
One-she’s dreaming. Two-she has dreamt Mal in every dream since the inception. She has dreamt Mal in a thousand thousand ways; sloe-eyed and sleepy leaned against the wall like a femme fatale or gliding across the dance floor in the background as if to say, Darling, you’re dreaming. Mal’s face in a photograph on the desktop of an office cubicle and, in one memorable scene, Mal draped across the top of a baby grand in a jazz bar, her dress a knit of pearls and nothing else, spilling across her breasts in a tantalizing show that reveals nothing. Mal always smiles at her, dusky-sweet and slow, lips tucking up at the side. I’ve noticed you, too, her smile says.
Ariadne always wakes up, palms wet with sweat and brow knit as she tries to grasp at a memory that’s more blue cigarette smoke and red lipstick than substance. She doesn’t remember, and it leaves her aching and wanting.
::
She hasn’t worked with Cobb or the others since the Fischer case, and she longs for that world of pure creation. She holds out for as long as she can, waiting for a call from Arthur, a note from Eames, a job from Cobb, but none materialize and she goes to her professor and all but begs for an in. Miles sighs. He rolls his eyes. He hands her a slip of paper, and three weeks later she’s in Zurich meeting Kim for a run-of-the-mill job. It’s routine; she’d almost say it’s too easy after inception, but she’s sure she’s unremarkable to a team that’s got its in-jokes, its dynamic, its personality, and then she sees her. She’s sitting at the bar, a martini in her hand and the most exquisite cocktail dress nearly painted across her body like a black, clinging skin. Ariadne can taste the bitters in the drink on the back of her tongue.
“Worked with Cobb, have you?” Kim asks sotto. Ariadne’s heart thumps panicked, suddenly, strangely guilty, and her fingers clench around the glass in her hand reflexively.
“Don’t worry about it,” Joey tells her, laughing. “Nearly everyone brings Mal home with them the first time they work with him.”
“She’s not going to, like, sabotage the case, is she?” Ariadne asks, taking a deep draw of her gin and tonic. “No trains through the middle of a busy intersection?”
Joey whistles low. “Rough case, was it?”
“This Mal is yours. She’ll only act the way your subconscious tells her to,” Kim tells her, and across the bar, Mal smiles, twirling her finger along the rim of her glass. “All you took was a face; you can’t take Cobb’s delusions with you. No worries.”
The case goes off without a hitch, almost painfully easy. She’s addicted. As she’s watching Kim wind the lines back into the PASIV’s case, Joey invites her to come work with him on a case in Argentina. She immediately accepts. He smiles wide and her gaze drifts behind him to the shining silver case.
::
She stops returning Joey’s calls in Shanghai, when Mal shows up on the third straight case in a row and he laughs at her. She’s made enough connections of her own to pick up in the world of mind heist without his help anymore, but she figures she’d best nip this thing in the bud, so gets Eames’s number from Kim and gives him a call. Turns out he’s in Manila, so she hops a short flight and meets him for lunch under the swaying palm trees. Even the air tastes like bananas. The poverty is horrifying.
“Tell me about her,” she demands, and he opens his mouth to answer, face fond. “No, I mean really. I want to know more about her,” she insists, because she doesn’t want empty platitudes and smiling generalities.
“I don’t know what you’re looking for,” Eames says instead, tucking a wrinkled cigarette under his top lip and fumbling through his pockets for a lighter. “And what good would it do? She’s dead.”
“I’ve picked up a passenger,” she tells him, and his face twists around his cigarette.
“That happens. Cobb’s head is a very fucked up place to be; it wouldn’t surprise me if we all picked up a critter or two from that wasteland,” he says.
“She’s not a critter!” Ariadne says sharply, then frowns. “I mean, Kim said I took the face, not the stuff behind it. So it’s like she’s part of my subconscious, now, too.”
“Well, that’s true, in a way. What you’ve got in your head is yours now, and it’s got nothing to do with Cobb,” he admits, fidgeting with his coffee cup.
“Is there a way to get rid of a face in your subconscious?” she hedges.
He regards her thoughtfully. “Normally it’ll fade. You won’t even notice she’s there in six months; in a year she won’t show up at all. Unless,” he says, pausing to tap ashes onto the ground, “Unless your subconscious has attached her to something.”
She stabs at the lumpia on her plate viciously, spilling bean thread across like pale hair on a pillow.
::
“I want to know why you’re here,” she hisses, but Mal just laughs, her voice lilting up like teasing. Her eyes are sparkling in a way they’d only done in Cobb’s memories, but the set of her mouth is dark, wry, as it had been in that shattered hotel room.
“No, you don’t,” Mal tells her. She sidles up to Ariadne until she can feel the heat of her body through her clothes, until she has to tilt her chin up to meet her eyes. Mal smiles then, lashes fluttering over hooded eyes as she leans in, and Ariadne goes still, trembling like butterfly wings. She can smell the wax of Mal’s lipstick as she skims her lips over her cheekbones, breath hot against her ear. “Do you want to know a secret?”
Ariadne feels a bird trapped in her chest. Her ribcage swells, contracts, and the bird beats against her ribs frantically. “Yes,” she whispers, and Mal’s laugh is soft this time, but all the more cruelly mocking for it.
“You want me to be here,” Mal murmurs, and Ariadne’s eyes bolt open. The expanse of white ceiling is disorienting at first until she recognizes the bells declaring morning mass. Her breath escapes her in ragged sobs as she stares at the cracked plaster overhead and tries to understand.
::
She’s called Arthur on the phone, the number he gave her for emergencies back before they knew whether or not Saito would clean up his mess. She’s surprised he still has the phone.
“Why do you do this dream work?” she asks, and he’s indulgent.
“Because law school is hellishly expensive, and after that, because the law is hellishly boring compared to breaking it,” he says, and for a moment, she’s surprised to remember that he was once a real person with a real history beyond mind crime. He gives her a moment for stunned silence, then laughs. “If you’re looking for a flashy past, ask Eames. Maybe he’ll tell you; he won’t tell me. Says I don’t have the proper security clearance. I almost half believe it,” he adds with a chuckle.
“And,” she starts, drawing up her courage, “And what about Cobb?”
“Well, you know why he did the illegal stuff. He was an architect before that, too.”
“A real one?” she asks.
“Both. He was drafted into dreaming because his designs showed imagination: where other students’ drawings made sense or followed some kind of logical plan, his were all over the place. Some of them probably couldn’t have even supported themselves; it was almost like modern art instead of architecture-he even had a gallery show once. That’s where he met Mal.” Arthur’s voice trails off, dreamy with memory.
Ariadne bit her lip, then blurts out, “And Mal?”
“What about her?” Arthur asks, surprised.
“What did she do before,” she breathes like a gasp, “everything?”
Arthur is silent, and when he speaks again, it’s slow, considered. “Ariadne, there’s a rumor going around about you.”
“I never pegged you for a gossip,” she says sharply.
“Ariadne, you’ve got to understand that the dream world, the scene for it, it’s really very small. You’ve done well for yourself, really, to have your name on so many tongues,” he says, and she frowns into the phone. “Don’t make that face.”
“How do you know what face I’m making?” she asks, irritation shoved aside as she peers through her window into the inky Paris night.
“I’m guessing,” he tells her. Frowning again, she lifts the glass and tugs the shutters flat, hooking them together.
“How’s Joey doing, anyway?” she asks casually. Arthur’s laugh is tinny through the speaker.
“He’s fine. Disappointed, I think. I saw you today, so I wasn’t too surprised you’d called.”
“You’re here in Paris?” she asks, but the minute the words come out of her mouth she knows he’s not. Something about the low buzz of the bar behind him leaves her guessing lowland China, fragments of English and something else-it connects in her mind and her lips curl around the smile forming. “No,” she says, “How’s Eames? Still on vacation?”
Arthur laughs. The phone makes a scrabbling sound. “Hello, love. I hear you still haven’t shaken your visitor loose.”
“No such luck,” she agrees wistfully. “Are you taking your vacation with Arthur, of all people?”
“I am, as ever, attempting to get him to remove the stick from his arse,” Eames replies jovially, and Ariadne can hear Arthur’s scowl through the phone.
“Eames,” she asks, then bites her lip. “Why didn’t you guys ever invite me to do a case with you? I waited, but you never called.”
“It’s a life of crime, not a tea party. I couldn’t stand the idea of dragging you down this rabbit hole without giving you a chance to be a legitimate citizen first, and Arthur agreed-I know, stunning, isn’t it? But we both knew that if you loved it enough, you’d find your way back in when the time was right.”
“So it wasn’t that I’m, like, really terrible at it,” she blurts.
“Perish the thought.” Eames’s voice is soothing, but it only makes the irritation sharper.
“Then why can’t I get rid of her?” Ariadne snaps, and Eames is silent. She can hear him murmuring low to Arthur, can hear the press of his palm against the microphone.
“That’s something you’ll have to ask her, love,” he finally says gently. She hangs up and throws her cell across the room.
::
“You’re waiting for a train.” Mal’s voice is coffee, dark and smooth. She’s wearing an impossible dress of black crepe, one that hugs each curve close without looking too tight. Ariadne feels underdressed in her jeans and nubby sweater.
“Then change what you want to change, darling. This is a dream, after all,” Mal tells her, laughing. It’s a simple laugh; today’s Mal is a Cobb’s-memory-Mal, not a Cobb’s-imagination-Mal. Ariadne closes her eyes and dreams, and when she opens them, Mal’s eyes are shining. “You look lovely.”
Ariadne looks down at the simple plaid sundress she’s wearing, a hoody still thrown over its feminine shape. She wiggles her toes inside the converse hi-tops she’s wearing and frowns. “I still can’t be girly. Not really. Even when I’m using all of my imagination.”
“Is girly something that’s important to you?” Mal asks. She turns away before Ariadne can answer, and the background filters in as if it has always been there; they’re on the street outside the brownstone Ariadne grew up in in Boston. She tilts her head back and she can still see the drawings pressed against the glass of her bedroom window, knows they’re the blueprints she was always drawing: her dream bedroom, and later her dream apartment, the house inspired by a book on Frank Lloyd Wright she’d read in the school library, the imaginary museum she’d designed after a trip to the Smithsonian. Eventually the drawings had been early, simple drafts of her portfolio for school, drawn on graph paper to give a quick idea of the dimensions and taped to the glass so they could be backlit, could almost glow from within the way they did in her mind. She looks back at Mal, and Mal is looking at her.
“Why are we here?” Ariadne asks.
“Because you want to be.”
“No, that’s bullshit,” Ariadne says, turning on her heel to march away from the apartment. She’s not ready for Mal to see that part of her yet, even if this Mal is hers. A park springs up in front of her, the same park she remembers passing every day on her way to classes in Paris. She still sees it sometimes, even though she avoids the school, avoids running into her professors and their disappointed faces that someone so promising could drop out.
“I remember this park,” Mal says, because Ariadne makes her. “I used to go to this park often.” Ariadne uses her as a puppet, Ariadne’s words coming from Mal’s lips. Mal is peaceful, letting her do it. “I liked to fuck on that bench,” Mal’s mouth says, her arm coming up like a marionette’s to point at a stone bench that Ariadne creates as she says it. “I liked to fuck men on that bench. I liked to suck cock on that bench.” Rage boils in Ariadne’s stomach and she drops Mal’s arm, turning to run frustrated fingers through her hair.
“Did that make you feel better?” Mal asks.
“No!” The word explodes from Ariadne’s throat, burning on its way out. “What is the point of you?”
Mal is silent.
“What’s the point of you?” Ariadne repeats, sinking to the ground and clenching her eyes shut until she sees sunlight behind them and knows she’s awake.
::
“I’m sorry, Joey. I’ve just been going through a lot right now,” she says over the phone. Joey’s voice makes an understanding noise.
“Well, we’re starting a new case in Vancouver next week. We’re in desperate need for an architect; we can’t even scare up Nash, so we thought we’d have to wait until Trudy wrapped up in L.A., but if we can go ahead and get on it,” he says, and she can hear his shrug. “You’re our pity fuck, though. No one else would use you after you dropped off the face of the planet on that Wexon-Smithy case, you know. We almost didn’t; I had to fight for you.”
“I didn’t know I’d signed up for that one,” she says dryly. He gives an embarrassed cough. “How soon do you need me?”
“Why don’t you come a day earlier and I’ll take you out to lunch, for old times’ sake?”
She wants to smack the smug tone from his voice.
“How about I show up Friday? I’ve got finals.” He doesn’t notice, or doesn’t mention, the lie.
::
She sleeps fitfully on the plane. Her eyes slip shut and Mal’s sitting there in the seat next to her, her red satin dress incongruous with the plane’s dull gray interior. Ariadne sighs.
“You’ve done a better job at girly this time,” Mal remarks lightly. “If girly is what you were going for.”
It is. She’d taken time this morning to make herself look like a different person for the flight, a different Ariadne who did things like curl her eyelashes and wear pumps that the real Ariadne had already kicked off under the seat in front of her. There was safety in slipping into another person’s face before a case, and Joey’d said this one had potential to go nasty. She tugs at the front of her blouse, a purple silk thing tied at the shoulder in a loose bow, and looks back at Mal.
“Please don’t show up this time,” she begs.
Mal arches a brow. “If that’s what you want,” she says simply. “Just dream of a prison, and I’ll be inside.”
“What?” Ariadne asks, startled. “You mean I could have…at any time…. Could Cobb have done that?”
Mal shakes her head. “He didn’t want to. He wanted me there. You do, too.”
“No, I don’t!” Ariadne cries, and the other projections turn to look at her, their eyes sliding smoothly over Mal until they turn back to the front. Ariadne laughs bitterly. “You really must be part of me now. They didn’t even notice you.”
“They don’t notice me because you don’t want them to notice me, and even if they did and something happened, I would be back the next time you dreamed. Your subconscious is more powerful than you believe, Ariadne, more uncontrollable.”
“Why?” And Ariadne can feel her voice crack in that one word. “Why do I want you here?” Mal takes her hand, skin warm and soft against her own.
“Finally you ask the right question.” She leans close and Ariadne smells her lipstick again before Mal covers her surprised, slack lips with her own. Ariadne shoves her away, touches shaking fingertips to her lips and stares when they come back red. Mal laughs. “Do you understand now?”
Ariadne wakes when the stewardess shakes her shoulder, her lips tingling and the faint taste of Chanel in her mouth.
::
Mal doesn’t bother her on the case, except for once when she sees a flash of dark hair curled against the white skin of a breast in the painting over the mark’s desk. She pretends not to notice it.
::
She sighs and her breath feels hot. She knows she’s dreaming, can tell from the taste of the air where she’s dreaming, and knows who she’ll see when she opens her eyes.
“Hello, love,” Eames says from her bedside. She cracks her eyes open and peers at him.
“So I’ve picked up another, what’d you call it, critter?” she asks the projection. He smiles wide and laughs Eames’s easy laugh.
“Oh, I don’t think so,” he says, and the tight knot in her chest loosens fractionally. “How are you doing?”
“I feel like I’m cracking up. I keep dreaming my ex-boss’s dead wife, and now I’m imagining a man I barely know to be my shrink.”
He laughs again. “It’s a side effect of paying attention to your dreams: they start to actually mean something more.”
“The real Eames isn’t so corny,” she notes, staring up at the Parisian plaster ceiling that has somehow made it to the Philippines.
“The real Eames is getting a little embarrassed that you keep calling him,” he says, and she scowls.
“Maybe. Maybe not, but some part of me obviously thinks so.”
“So you’re figuring out this whole ‘how to speak to your own subconscious’ thing,” he says and nods.
“I pretty much have to, don’t I? If I want to fix this,” she says to the ceiling.
“Is it something you want fixed?” he asks.
She doesn’t know. “Are you fucking Arthur?”
“Some part of you certainly thinks so,” he agrees. “I wouldn’t actually know. Except,” he says, “Except I think I am. So you must be pretty certain.”
“He kissed me once,” she tells him.
“I know. I was there,” he says.
“Eames was?” She’s surprised.
“Of course not. But I’m you, aren’t I?”
“In a roundabout way. I’m not fucking Arthur,” she adds.
“No,” he confirms. “You are one-hundred-percent uninterested in Arthur. And in Eames, if you were curious.”
“I’d rather assumed,” she sniped back.
“But Mal, on the other hand….”
“You know about that dream?” He fixes her with a pedantic look. “Of course you know about that dream.”
“Of course I know about that dream.”
“So which part of me are you?” she asks finally, rolling onto her side to look at her memory’s drawing of him. It’s nearly a caricature at first, a mix of things she remembers best about him. Her first impression is the rings on his fingers, his linen sport coat. Stubble, and then piercing eyes. He’s lips, slightly crooked teeth, too, and then the rest of him fills in like the background of an oil painting. “Are you the part of me that gives me sage advice?”
“Arthur should be along shortly,” he says.
“Then you’re the part of me that tells myself the obvious as if it were something new. I thought that part would look like me.”
“It can, if you’d like.” And she recognizes her own eyes in his face, the shape of the lips thinning and curling into a bow.
“No, stop that. It’s creepy,” she tells him sternly.
“See? You take the obvious better when it comes from someone else.”
“What are you here to tell me, then?” she asks him.
Eames clucks his tongue, flipping out a card from his sleeve to toy with idly. “Now what sort of subconscious would I be if I made it that easy for you?”
“The kind that’s not a jerk?” she suggests hopefully.
“Best wake up now, love. Joey’s on the phone.” He stands from the chair and stretches, shirt riding up slightly. It looks like it’s polyester. He places the card on the edge of the bed, just in front of her, and disappears.
The card is the Queen of Hearts.
::
The phone is ringing when she wakes up, and Joey sounds angry. “Where the hell have you been?” he demands, and she shrugs carelessly until she remembers he can’t see her.
“Sleeping,” she says, biting back a yawn.
“Better have been a damned good dream,” he grouses, but she can hear the panic fading from his voice. She’s sad for a moment that she doesn’t love him back.
“It was weird. I think I was dreaming of Eames,” she says, and as she says it, she remembers the card, that strange card he’d given her: the Queen of Hearts, full like rosebuds.
“Not me?” Joey asks playfully, and she holds the phone silently.
When she hears him give up, she says, “I’ll be there in twenty minutes.”
“Darren says you owe us all coffee,” he tries weakly, and her laughter is canned.
::
The others are gone for the night, and Ariadne is beginning to understand what was going through Cobb’s mind as she inserts the line and lies back, feeling every button of the tufted upholstery digging into her spine. She feels giddy, almost nervous.
Her lashes flutter against her cheek, but it’s so dark. There is a hand on the small of her back; she feels like she’s wearing a slip, a camisole, something thin and silky and hot in the not-temperature of the dream space. Her eyes adjust. The sky blooms above her like a field of glowing flowers, and nimble fingers trip down her spine slowly.
“I’m dreaming,” Ariadne says aloud, and it’s halfway between a statement and a question. Mal laughs behind her, her breath hot against Ariadne’s neck.
“You are,” Mal says softly.
“I,” Ariadne says, turning to take in Mal’s expression, the way the stars are somehow more beautiful reflected across her face. “I’m using the PASIV. The line is in my arm; if I concentrate, I can feel the, the somnacin, I can feel it cold in my skin.”
“I always hated that feeling,” Mal confides, her hand sliding around to press against Ariadne’s belly. “So clinical, so poisonous.”
Ariadne’s not surprised that she agrees. Mal’s hand dips lower, to the hem of her slip and tracking up Ariadne’s thigh, and Ariadne quirks an eyebrow. “What are you doing?”
“What would you like me to do?” Mal asks, mocking-sweet, and because it’s a dream, Ariadne tips toward her, presses her flat against the ground. Parts her thighs until one is between her own, grinding against the lean, smooth limb in a way that she can feel singing in her head. “Oh?” And Mal is nearly breathless and much less sinister when she’s pressing sultry hot against Ariadne’s own thigh.
“Yeah,” Ariadne says. “‘Oh’.”
Mal looks like a silent movie star in her short satin slip, all dark, bruised eyes and full lips; Ariadne leans down to bite them and Mal bites back, tangling her fingers into Ariadne’s hair to pull her down. Mal’s body is hotter through the thin fabric than it could have ever been without it, scorching at Ariadne’s fingers as she plucks it up, higher and higher until Mal reaches down to lift it away and Ariadne can’t even look, can’t even look at the bare skin glowing beneath her until Mal slides clever fingers up her thigh again and into her body and she braces herself with one palm flat beside Mal’s head and one surrounding one heavy, lush breast. Mal swats her ass with the hand that’s not buried between her legs and Ariadne spreads them further, watching the twist of a graceful hand as it disappears beneath the silky-rayon, her mind supplies. It’s somehow more surreal than a dream and she moans. Mal looks up at her, hair spilled across the ground and tangling with the weeds as if she’s part of the ground itself. Her smile is sharp and dangerous.
“I want,” Ariadne says. Mal’s smile widens, more Cobb’s-imagination-Mal, but it’s Ariadne’s-imagination-Mal who grinds the palm of her hand against Ariadne’s clit hard and spreads her own legs until they can both see hair glistening with wetness.
“Then do it,” Mal tells her, and it’s all the permission she needs. Mal’s skin is salt-sweet-slick, and Ariadne’s jaw aches with the need to bite, so she does, hard, on an inner thigh. Her hands scrabble through the grass to clutch at Mal’s thighs, and she needs it so badly it hurts. Ariadne’s hips buck hard against the air and Mal laughs, a pained, aroused sound that echoes in Ariadne’s ears as she’s rolled onto her back, her legs spread and slip unceremoniously raised. She tastes blood and doesn’t know if it’s from Mal’s thigh or her own lip, worried between her teeth until it is raw. Her back arches and she keens; Mal’s fingers are inside her again and they’re curling, thumb rubbing vicious circles around her clit. Mal covers her with her body as she fucks her, riding her hard, relentless, until her heels can’t get traction and she can feel an orgasm building up inside her like a scream. The tension snaps and it’s so powerful the dream flickers, just once, hard enough for the moon to go out like a snuffed candle.
When she opens her eyes again, the stars flicker on, one by one, like Christmas lights after a year in storage. Mal is sitting nearby, expression distant. She’s dressed again, and when she notices Ariadne looking, she smiles slowly and shakes her head.
“Has this whole thing been about that?” Ariadne asks reluctantly.
“In a way, yes,” Mal says. There is a crushed wildflower tangled in her hair. “In a way, no.”
“Which part of my subconscious do you represent?” Ariadne curls against Mal’s side and lets her pick the grass from her skin, brushing gently with her fingertips.
Mal’s laugh is gentle. “I don’t represent you.”
Ariadne draws back, confusion knit on her face. “What?”
“You’re waiting for a train,” Mal says. Her voice is very soft. Ariadne can barely hear her over the thudding of her own heart.
“Don’t. Please don’t.”
“A train that will take you far away,” Mal continues blithely. “Don’t you understand yet?”
“Understand what? What is there to understand? That I’m in love with someone I’ve never met, with someone who doesn’t exist? With someone who isn’t even real?” Ariadne’s voice cracks. She reaches to cover her face, but Mal takes her hand.
“You don’t have to go back.” And Ariadne understands her. Oh, she understands, and her skin crawls.
“I’m not-I won’t,” Ariadne gasps, pulling against Mal’s grip.
“What is real? Is it out there,” Mal gestures widely at the empty field, “where the world makes no sense? Where dreams are for money, for purpose, for other people?”
“You’re not real.”
“But you love me anyway.” Ariadne can’t deny it, not when Mal says it so simply.
“It’s narcissism. It’s masturbation, it’s,” breath catches in her throat. “It’s not love.”
Mal leans in, kissing her forehead tenderly. “Did it feel real?”
“What, the,” Ariadne freezes. “The sex?”
“Love,” Mal corrects her.
“I. I don’t.”
“You know where you hope this train will take you,” Mal continues. Her eyes are wet. Ariadne shakes her head slowly, desperately.
“I can’t trust that, Mal. I,” she stops, clenching her hand in her lap. “I can’t trust you’ll be there, because I know you won’t. You’re not even real.”
“Ariadne.”
The sobs come then, huge, heaving sobs that shake her shoulders. She clenches her eyes tight and waits to wake up, because the one word she can’t imagine in Mal’s voice is her own name.
::
“I do wish you’d reconsider, love,” Eames says as she toys with the spoon resting against her teacup. “Finally, I get a case where we can use your expertise and you say you’ve retired.” His complaint is halfhearted, and Arthur frowns at him over his coffee cup.
“I can’t say I’m not jealous. NYU is getting a great architect. We could have used your delicate touch with the Pembrose stairs on this one, I think,” Arthur tells her, but his smile is wry. She feels glad to be getting out of their hair.
Ariadne shakes her head. “I’m thinking about changing majors. It’s too,” she stops, searching.
“That’s what Cobb said,” Arthur offers. Her heart clenches. “You can’t design here after designing there.” She nods, grateful for the excuse.
That night, she wakes in sweat-mussed linens, limbs tense and trembling, eyes searching the dark and her own name on her lips.