Fic: The Other Half, Part One (Inception, R)
title: The Other Half, Part One
author: ilovetakahana
pairings: Main pairing is Ariadne/Mal. Secondary pairing is Arthur/Eames. Mention of previous Mal/Cobb.
warnings: Okay, finally, Part One of my Ariadne/Mal AU is up! The setup: Dominick Cobb killed himself, leaving his widow Mallorie to pick up the pieces of her life. Luckily, Stuart Eames and Arthur Hardy are her best friends and her own private Stadtler and Waldorf, and luckily, she's about to meet Ariadne Mann. AU hijinks and lots of guns galore, lots of slash, and of course femmslash!
Thanks to chn_breathmint for help with the guns and the action sequences, and to the Twitter gang for the never-ending encouragement and pompoms.
This one covers pretty much all the genre bases: drama, comedy, action. Healthy doses of snark and humor ahead, and characters changed to fit the new concept. Watch out for all the cameos and mentions! Unbeta'd.
disclaimer: I don't own the original story or the characters. Not making any profit, just playing in the sandbox.
summary: The Other Half, Part One - Dom dies and Ariadne is in mortal danger. Just another day at the office for Mallorie.
Also archived at http://ninemoons42.dreamwidth.org/.
“I’m going to wake up now, Mal.”
“Dom, no, please, we talked about this - ”
“See you on the other side. I love you.”
“NO!”
And she stretched out her hands, fruitless gesture, useless effort, as if she could catch the body plummeting to the street. Sickening crunch of bones. Dominick lay broken, far below, still in the suit he was wearing when they’d come up to the room, smiling and happy together. Mallorie clung to her windowsill, feeling her knuckles creak under the strain of her clenched fists, fighting the urge to jump and join him. Bile rising in her throat, the screams that she was desperately choking back. She felt the hot tears streaking down her cheeks, the sharp edges of the top pressing into her left fist, cold against her wedding ring.
In the end, she closed her eyes against the sight of his broken body, curled into a ball, and wept.
///
“Dominick.”
It was the first word she’d spoken in the hours since the fall.
The mortician had put in a tremendous effort. On the metal slab lay her husband’s body, his face composed as though he were only sleeping. Lines in his face and the unbelievable gaping hole in his skull smoothed away, the jagged edges stitched neatly shut.
Mal traced the Y-incision down his torso. The coroner’s report had made mention of the insignificant amount of alcohol in his bloodstream. They had been drinking at dinner - it had been their seventh anniversary, was that just last night? It felt like a million years ago now - an excellent white Meursault. Fruity, golden, a half-bottle to go with their steaks. Just a glass or two each. And anyway, it took far stronger spirits than that to intoxicate Dom; he had always been able to drink everyone else under the table.
They had retrieved his cufflinks. Cold weight in her pockets, now, and the silver and copper diamonds stained a rusty red-brown.
There her husband lay. Cold. Gone. Dead.
“Why, Dom?”
Mal could only think, thank goodness she’d miscarried? Was that even an option? This would be unbearable, but there would be more pain than she could imagine if there were children involved; children that she would need to talk to, to explain that Daddy was gone and would never be coming home again.
But this pain was already more than enough, and it tore at her heart. Made her want to howl again. This loss, this was unbearable beyond any experience she’d ever had.
With gentle fingers she brushed his cold, bruised cheek. How could he have done this? What part of the dream had snatched at him and sunk its claws into him?
Her mobile phone chirped and for a long moment she just stared at the device in her hand, uncomprehending. What was this noise? The world receded for a long second. Here she was with her husband and he was dead. He had thrown himself off a building on the night of their wedding anniversary. He had been convinced that he had only been dreaming.
Nothing made sense.
But the phone kept shouting and almost of their own accord, her fingers pressed the “answer” button, and, shaking, raised the phone to her ear.
“Mal. I - I just got the call from Miles.”
She almost fell to her knees. Steady Arthur, I-get-things-done Arthur. “Where are you, mon coeur?”
“Driving. Toward you, actually. And probably breaking several speed limits in the process.”
Pause, and she thought she could hear the wind rushing, the roar of his motorcycle.
“I’m about an hour away at the rate I’m going. Where are you staying?”
“That’s funny,” and she laughed, the sound harsh and broken, coming undone in the cold confines of the morgue. “I was waiting for you to ask me what’s happened.”
“I - Miles told me, some of it, and I cut him off and called you instead. I, I need to know how you are.”
“Take a wild guess,” Mal said, whispering now. She felt the tears roll down her cheeks again. “My husband is dead, Arthur. I watched him throw himself off a fucking building.”
“Shit.” And the roar in the background got even louder. “Just hang on till I get there. Please.”
“So kind of you.”
“Mal. I want to see you alive when I get there. Do you understand me?!”
“Yes, Arthur,” and even to her own ears it all sounded wooden and unreal and distant.
///
Mal woke up to the sound of a raspy, familiar accent.
“That sounds like a bit of old Bilbo’s rhyming,” said Pippin. “Or is it one of your imitations? It does not sound altogether encouraging.”
“I don’t know,” said Frodo. “It came to me then, as if I was making it up; but I may have heard it long ago. Certainly it reminds me very much of Bilbo in the last years, before he went away. He used often to say there was only one Road; that it was like a great river: its springs were at every doorstep, and every path was its tributary. ‘It’s a dangerous business, Frodo, going out of your door,’ he used to say. ‘You step into the Road, and if you don’t keep your feet, there is no knowing where you might be swept off to. Do you realize that this is the very path that goes through Mirkwood, and that if you let it, it might take you to the Lonely Mountain or even worse places?’ He used to say that on the path outside the front door at Bag End, especially after he had been out for a long walk.”
“Eames,” she said quietly.
“Hello, Mal,” the shadow in the chair next to the bed murmured.
She watched as he closed the book - her own battered paperback copy of The Lord of the Rings - and turned towards her, taking her hand in both of his.
“When did you get here?” Mal asked, quietly, feeling the tears leaking out of her eyes again.
“I came as soon as Arthur called.”
Mal sighed and sniffled and swiped at her cheeks with her free hand. Gracefully admitted defeat. “Thank you, Stuart dearest.”
“Any time. Just please don’t call me that again.”
She managed a watery little smile. “I’ll do my best.”
“Good to hear that.” She closed her eyes as Eames bent over her, pressed a kiss to her forehead. “Sleep. Arthur and I will do what needs doing here. And when you’re feeling better, I’m leaving something here in the book for you.”
“Thank you,” Mal said, and she felt herself sinking back into the darkness. This time it was a welcome kind of night, and she found herself diving in after it. Sleep without chemicals, without regrets.
///
When she woke up she didn’t know what day it was.
But the sun was shining, high in a blue sky, when she looked out her window.
She was curious, remembering that Eames had given her a gift of some kind, but that she was also very hungry, and it felt like something had died in her mouth.
Mal took her time scrubbing the yech from her teeth and tongue, fought her tears as she realized she was back in her own room - back in the room she and Dom shared - and the counter in the bathroom held his shaving cream, a small bottle of painkillers. Next to her hairbrush, to her small collection of nail polish in blues and greys and purples, the vivid red lipstick she favored: his razor, his bottle of the musky cologne they had brought back from their last trip to Paris, down to about one-fourth full. Their two toothbrushes still in the same cup.
Mal washed her face violently, scrubbing her face with blunt nails, and sobbed as she splashed icy-cold water all over.
Arthur was standing in the doorway to the bathroom when she looked up. Wordlessly, he offered her a thick, plush white towel.
Mal buried her head in the towel, in her hands, hiccuped pathetically.
He placed an arm around her shoulders. She willed herself to stop crying. No more tears. Hang on. There’s things need doing.
“Better?”
Mal started - Arthur normally didn’t sound like gravel and rocks - and stared at him.
And he looked just as broken as she, truth be told: circles under his eyes, the skin already a sallow yellow around the edges. Lines in his face that seemed to have dug themselves in deeper since the last time she saw him, in the small hours after the jump. The whites of his eyes no longer red, but already shading towards orange with grief and exhaustion.
And Mal remembered: I’m not the only one. I’m not alone. And she straightened and wiped off her tears and resolutely nodded her head in an answer and a promise. “Better now. Really.”
He nodded back. “Good to hear that. Now, come on, when was the last time you had anything to eat?”
“I have no idea,” and Mal wrapped herself in Dom’s robe, plaid blue and grey and yellow, and followed Arthur downstairs.
A sizzling sound and a mouthwatering smell welcomed them into the kitchen.
“Cherie, you’re awake at last.”
And Mal flung herself into her father’s embrace.
But she wasn’t crying. She promised herself. She was just clinging to him. She was allowed to do that.
When she looked up from Miles’s shoulder Arthur and Eames were standing at the stove, the two of them moving together, hands perfectly coordinated as they cooked: pancakes and bacon by the sound of it, and some kind of fruit-fragranced concoction that, as Mal watched, Arthur stirred contemplatively, dripping a small amount into a teaspoon, blowing on it for a moment before pushing the whole thing into Eames’s mouth.
Eames said, “Little salt,” and Arthur nodded and pinched out some, sprinkling most of it into his saucepan and throwing the rest over his left shoulder.
They sat down to breakfast and Mal thought she should be suffocated; all three men were being overly attentive to her.
But she let herself wallow in it just once. Later on there would be time enough to lovingly tyrannize them again. With the wound in her chest still raw and bleeding, she was just happy that they were all still here. That each one of them remained.
She was happy that Arthur was eating, pushing pancake after pancake onto his plate and smothering each one in maple syrup. That Eames was eating most of the bacon and was only just remembering his manners, was not actually sticking his spoon in the fruit - it turned out to be some kind of banana cream pudding, and Arthur sheepishly explained, “It’s the only thing I know how to cook - and I cook it whenever I feel like crap, so....” And that remark then made her father dig in, dolloping the pudding over his pancakes and eating in huge bites.
Miles was famous for refusing every kind of sweet and dessert under the sun except fudge, which he often made in enormous quantities at Christmas, and seeing him turn to sugar for refuge like this was both amazing and sad.
Mal picked at her pancakes but drowned her sorrows in the pudding - because it really was excellent and it had a surfeit of cinnamon, her favorite spice in the world - and Eames conceded the last bites to her.
They sat, contented, around the kitchen table for a very long time.
And then Miles’s mobile rang. He answered it, and he suddenly, visibly aged as he spoke, growing more agitated with every word.
“How dare you,” he hissed, and he got up from the table, paced around the kitchen. “I have already given notice of what has happened in my family. Can you not respect that I am going through an extremely difficult period right now?
“I will not be threatened like this,” Miles snapped abruptly, and Mal froze, traded glances across the table with Eames and Arthur. “You should know I have my own resources, my own people. Don’t you dare threaten me like I’m some upstart fool. You know damn well who I am.
“I opened this world to you, and believe me, I have the option of closing it to you forever. Whatever you’re thinking of: stop it right now. Or I will move against you, and I won’t be alone, and you won’t want that.”
“Papa,” Mal said when Miles sighed loudly and came back to the table.
But he spoke to Arthur and Eames first: “Old friends of ours, I’m afraid. Those Cobol fools. I’d appreciate it very much if one or both of you could begin making inquiries. I am not Proclus Global, but I am sure I can make it worth your while.”
“For this, Miles, I could say no charge and almost mean it,” Eames rasped.
Arthur nodded vigorously next to him.
“Thank you both. But let’s not talk about something so gauche now, yes?” To Mal he said, “Sorry, dearest. Your Maman would pitch such a fit if she were to know all the details. Don’t tell her about this; I’ll do it myself.”
“What’s going on? Is it something I can help you with?”
“Are you sure you want to hear this, Mallorie? It’s about the dreamshare....”
“Papa, if it’s anything to help me find out just what happened to Dom, to understand why he...did what he did. I’m willing to help. Please.”
Miles sighed again, placed a hand over hers on the table. “I’ve been keeping track of recent developments. Lately some people have been coming out with very interesting ideas, and one or two of them have come to me. I think they see me as someone they can trust.”
Arthur sighed, quietly, and got up from the table, placed his dishes neatly in the sink. Inwardly, Mal shook her head at the not-so-subtle way in which he cocked his head, looking back at Eames.
Eames made it obvious when he snorted and stood, carrying his plate and fork to the sink and following Arthur out.
Mal held a hand up to her father, bent backward in her chair. Called after them: “Try harder, boys.”
She exchanged a smile with Miles when that got her the sound of Arthur’s low chuckle, just outside the now-closed door.
And then they both turned serious again, with Miles crossing his arms as he sat back in his chairs. “I have some students who have independently come to discover, and express interest, in the ideas that you and Dominick had been pursuing. Multiple dream levels, complex labyrinths, levels looped inside levels. I am trying to keep them safe so that they may do their research in peace, but it looks like Cobol has already heard about them, and I’m going to need help if I’m going to protect them.”
“Then send me, Papa,” Mal said immediately. “I’ll help you.”
To his credit, Miles only shot her one long, considering look, before his lips thinned out into a pale line. “All right. After the funeral.”
///
She buried her husband on a summer’s day, beneath a cloudless blue sky.
Mal threw a handful of soil over the coffin, the armful of lilies and roses in her hands, and walked away as the minister finished speaking.
When she stopped walking, she was nearly to the cemetery gates.
Arthur and Eames dodged around another set of grave markers and went to stand next to her.
Mal held her arms out to the two, and they stepped in, the three of them a complex and desperate knot of grief and of comfort and of pain.
///
Mal woke up and her eyes hurt. Puffy and bruised. Tear-tracks dried stiff down her cheeks, running toward her ears.
But when she woke up her eyes were dry.
That was a first.
Eames and Arthur had left as the weeks went by after the funeral. Arthur left to chase a Cobol-related lead to Havana; he had entrusted his contact details to Mal and to Eames both, as he was wont to do.
Three days later Eames had received a coded email message from him, and he’d immediately booked tickets for a flight to Manila.
Eames had left her with a hasty kiss and a heap of white roses.
Now Mal looked up her copy of The Lord of the Rings again. It didn’t take long to find out what Eames had hidden in it.
Wrapped around the key was a strip of blue paper, and written on the paper in Eames’s surprisingly legible scrawl was an address in Paris, and the note: Just in case you want to go home but not *home*. XOXO Eames
Last night her father had called her from Charles de Gaulle: “Be safe. Be careful. Carry Dominick’s gun with you. Watch yourself at all times. Come when you can.”
There were a few more things that she needed to do before she left for Paris, though. The black leather folder on the dining table, containing Dom’s will. He hadn’t had much to his name, dreamshare or not, and the legalese boiled down to “I leave everything to my wife, Mallorie.” It was enough. It would have to be. She had to make her way through the world somehow.
She cried herself to sleep that night, again, but somehow the pain was beginning to drain away and the wound in her heart where Dom had been was scabbing over. A glacial pace. But she was healing.
The next morning found Mal in the indoor pistol shooting range that Dom and Arthur had frequented together.
Earplugs. Earmuffs. She carefully pulled Dom’s Beretta Px4 Storm out of its holster and slid a magazine in, under the watchful eyes of the rangemaster. When he nodded at her Mal took a deep breath and racked the slide. One smooth motion to bring up the gun, classic Weaver stance, eyes already sighting toward the silhouette of the target. Double-tap. Mozambique drill. Double-tap again.
She looked at the center of the paper. One ragged-edged hole in the center of mass and one shot right between the eyes.
It was the best result she had ever achieved.
With every round fired, she felt the stiffness leach out of her. The world was reduced to the sights on her gun, the target before her, the report of the gun as it fired.
Mal had first come to the dreamshare as her father’s assistant: the person who pressed the buttons on the PASIV. It was Mal who had come up with the initial concept of a means of getting people out of their dreams at a set time, tracing a path of logic that eventually led her to the musical kick, and to Edith Piaf’s catalogue: “Hymne a l’amour”, “La Foule”, and eventually to the song that Arthur had “inherited” from her - “Non, je ne regrette rien”.
When she was finally allowed to use the PASIV herself - she and Miles had of course had a fair few arguments about it, and it had taken him a few weeks and a blast of cold logic to come around - she took up the role for which she had passionately argued: the one who watched the dreamscape, who protected the dreamer from whatever danger might arise.
Mal had been the inspiration for her father’s concept of the idea of the “point man”. And she had guarded him faithfully, through the long months of initial experimentation. In real life she continued to accumulate instructor certifications in a number of martial arts; in dreams, she carefully put together a fearsome arsenal of weaponry, tactics, and defenses.
Her preferred strategy was to surround her charge with an intricate labyrinth, the corridors and passages booby-trapped and allowing her to access some high-caliber firearm or some convenient weapon that she could use against anyone or anything foolhardy enough to attack.
When Miles took in Dom and Dom started to put together the idea of the extractor, the one who probed a dreamer’s minds for secrets and for information, Miles had protested - but had let him continue, and had only shaken his head and turned away when Mal, by then an accomplished guardian and point woman, expressed interest in that, as well.
She had never had an eidetic memory, not like him, but she had always possessed a gift for retaining the high points of anything she read. Dom had approved; it was a skill that many extractors possessed. He had wanted her to try and better her retention; they had been running memory drills together, in the moments between the experiments on dreams within dreams, in the weeks leading up to their anniversary and his...his jump.
Mal safetied the Beretta and put it down, turned her back on the target, hands over her face. Tears pricked at the corners of her eyes, and she willed herself not to cry, not to cry. Forced herself past the emotions, forced herself toward the hard knowledge that they had been striving for.
Another deep breath and she picked the gun up again, shooting at her final target for the day.
The rangemaster nodded in approval as Mal ejected the empty magazine and packed the gun away, promised to clean it when she got home.
As she drove away from the range, she took a deep breath, and allowed herself a smile, the first smile since the jump. This was hers now. This was something she could hang on to. Here were her skills, skills that she could use to her advantage.
Maybe, just maybe, things would start looking up now.
///
Mal had been expecting a third-floor flat, maybe something like the almost-garret she had stayed in when she had been a student at the Sorbonne, with shared facilities and cold water in the pipes.
But apparently Eames had had other ideas because the key he’d given her unlocked a gorgeous studio, ninety-plus square meters of wooden floors and full-length windows, a coffee table and chairs left as if neglected in the northern corner, a four-poster bed in the opposite corner, and its own toilet and bathroom. Hot water poured out of the left-hand faucet when she turned it. There was an old-fashioned marble tub, the glaze cracked in several places, raised off the floor on claw feet. Everything was airy and free and beautiful.
Mal’s hands shook as she pulled out her phone and punched in a message to him: I never expected that you’d be lending me this place! I had heard about it from A, but to be standing in it - it’s like suddenly standing in a slice of paradise. Pause, and then she added, Where are you staying if you should come back while I’m here?
After the initial wave of euphoria she took the sheaves of documents and information out of the safe pocket in her luggage and sobered again, spreading out the papers in a warm spot on the floor. Here were the three students that her father was working with and protecting, with notations penciled in for their locations and their current work.
Nash Michaels. Worthwhile ideas on fine detail work within the dream. Has had multiple run-ins with Cobol group. Holed up at [coordinates].
Mal carefully blacked out the numbers with a marker - and then turned over the piece of paper and blacked out the reverse side as well.
She felt her eyebrows go up when she read the name of the second student, a name that had already become familiar in the news.
Robert Fischer. Son of the owner of Fischer-Morrow. Shows extreme talent for dream-forgery. Sources confirm he is in protective custody of Proclus Global.
Mal didn’t really know much about the enigmatic Proclus CEO, only that he was named Saito, and that Dom had known of him only as a strident supporter of increased security and militarization of the subconscious. Her father had mentioned him once or twice.
The information attached to the third name made her narrow her eyes in concentration.
Ariadne Christine Mann. Lives up to her name; an expert in creating and navigating mazes that incorporate entire dreams in the passages. What she’s doing is already considered impossible by other people and other dreamers. Paris.
That was all she needed to send a message to her father. Where exactly is AM? Also, I will probably need to borrow your PASIV. E has ours.
Message from unknown number: Not coming back to Paris for a while. Meeting A in Sp after this job.
Mal smiled, nodded, and deleted Eames’s message.
Message from P: Come and see me at the university. Classes end in two hours.
Before leaving for the Sorbonne, Mal bought an armful of November lilies and arranged them in a vase next to the four-poster, scattering the rest on the bedspread itself; she bought some bread and milk and the blue cheese that she liked, and a handful of ripe plums.
Eames had seen fit to leave her two bottles of the tokaji cuvee wine that she liked.
///
The sun had long since set behind the Paris skyline when Mal walked through familiar corridors - familiar enough that the sharp smells of wax and cleaning fluid made her recoil in both disgust and nostalgia - and she snapped on one set of lights as she pushed through the door into her father’s rooms.
“Sssh,” Miles whispered, finger to his lips, as he beckoned her over to the PASIV device set up in the corner, huffing mournfully to itself. There was a girl lying down on the battered chaise longue, her feet propped up on a stack of textbooks, dark hair spread out like a halo around her pale face.
Most dreamers hooked up to a PASIV let their faces relax into the slackness of sleep. Not this dreamer, whose eyebrows were still knotted even as the seconds ticked past on the timer.
Mal made to plug herself in - but her father placed a hand on her shoulder, shook his head minutely. “Don’t go in there yet. I’m having her complete an exercise for me. Helical labyrinths,” he explained, motioning her over to the chair in front of his desk. “A simple thought experiment.”
“Simple - helical - only you, Papa,” Mal said, both intrigued and amused. “Please don’t tell me you intend to use one of those against someone, because, frankly, people might choose to drop straight into limbo to avoid having to navigate something as completely strange as a double helix. Human minds might not be able to actually handle it.”
“Is it really my fault if this girl actually thinks in terms of impossible shapes? I’ve been thinking of introducing her to your friend with the crush on the Penrose stairs, except that perhaps Eames might not be so happy with me if I did.”
Mal actually clapped her hands over her mouth and squeaked once or twice as she tried to muffle her giggles.
Arthur didn’t have a crush on the Penrose stairs.
Except that he sometimes did.
Miles let her go on for a few moments and then the beeping of the PASIV filled the room, and he looked over at the girl, whose face was slackening and then frowning again as she roused from the drug-induced sleep. “How are you feeling, Ariadne?” Miles asked.
“Like someone smashed my head in, again,” she said, groggily, scrubbing her face with the heels of her hands. “It’s going to take me a while to get used to the PASIV, seriously.”
Mal chuckled, long and low and amused - she supposed today was the day when the universe decreed it was time for her to laugh again - and the girl turned to look at her, head tilting to the side like an inquisitive bird’s.
Miles smiled and handled the introductions. “Ariadne, this is my daughter, Mallorie. Mal, dear, this is Ariadne Mann.”
“Pleased to meet you, Mallorie,” Ariadne said, walking over to shake hands.
“Hello, Ariadne. And please, call me Mal,” Mal said. “Professor Miles said that he was putting you to work on creating impossible landscapes?”
“Klein bottles, Mobius strips, the devil’s tuning fork. Creating the figures is easy; even children could try drawing those things. It’s the landscapes that refuse to cooperate, usually, although I may be getting close to a breakthrough.”
“Which involves what, precisely?”
“A seam in the landscape here, a stitch in the scenery there.”
Mal must have looked puzzled at that point because Ariadne added, “Oh, I’m interested in fashion design; I make some of my own clothes. They do seem related, fashion and architecture....”
Ariadne moved her hands while she was talking, small, contained motions, just as she sat down and crossed her ankles, as though she were conscious of the space that she occupied in relation to others. Mal watched as she twisted her long, dull-brown hair up into a rough approximation of a bun around a pencil that she pulled out of her pocket, as she piled her things back into her bag.
When Ariadne made as if to stand up and leave, Miles shook his head and waved her back into her chair. Said quietly, “Before you leave, Ariadne, there is something very important that you need to know. That your knowledge and your skills are already highly sought-after, you already know; that your life is in danger, likewise, as you yourself brought that to my attention.
“The situation has become, shall we say, extremely precarious in the last three months.”
Mal started. Three - had she really been out of commission for that long? No wonder her arms had felt stiff, no wonder she had almost forgotten the safety procedures for the PASIV. She might as well have fallen into limbo for a small eternity.
“So, what do I need to do now?” Ariadne simply squared her shoulders and stared Miles right in the eyes. Mal wanted to applaud, and to call Arthur and Eames.
Instead, she stepped forward, changed her stance just a little, and watched as Ariadne spotted the thread - or rather, the butt of the Beretta, which she was deliberately letting print along the right side of her shirt.
[Dom’s shirt, of course. She’d taken nearly all of his shirts, each one a shade too large for her.]
“Hello, Ariadne,” she said again. “My name is Mallorie Cobb, and I’ve volunteered to be your bodyguard.”
“You have heard me talk about the roles that people can take in the dreamshare, Ariadne,” Miles said. “My daughter is the original point man. Even the name was her idea.”
And the younger woman’s composed mask finally cracked; she collapsed backwards into her chair, as if suddenly deflated. “That - that bad?” Wide eyes, the irises brown flecked with gold; red high on the cheekbones; a sudden intake of breath, and she was exhaling raggedly.
Miles nodded gravely. “I have similarly made arrangements for your classmates. As your work here is unfinished, as you are the only one remaining in Paris, I must make sure of your safety. I would not wish to lose such a prodigy - nor such a good woman.”
“Wait,” Ariadne said, “made arrangements - you mean they really did disap - ” and she slapped one hand over her mouth. “Fischer? Nash?”
Miles nodded again. And looked at Mal. “I entrust you to her, my dear.”
Mal nodded, once, and turned to Ariadne. “A friend of mine lent me his studio. Would you like to come and see it?” She placed her hands on Ariadne’s shoulders and stooped a little to look her straight in the eyes. “Do you trust me?”
“I’ve only just met you,” Ariadne said. “But - but I do.”
They had had this same exchange, Mal and Dom, back when they first met in this same room.
She had asked him the same question, having had to take him someplace safe on her father’s orders, and he would never have been called “fearful” but the sudden jump in the pulse at his throat had given away his sudden emotion. Mal had put her hands on his shoulders, and he had squinted doubtfully at her - the first time she’d seen the expression. He had held himself rigidly.
Mal swallowed past the lump in her throat and finished the exchange with the same words she had replied to Dom with. “That’s good enough to be going on with. Come on.”
///
“Taxi,” Mal called, and slipped the cabbie a hundred-euro bill and a piece of paper. “Drive around the arrondissement and take every back route and alley you can find, then drop us off at this address when I give you the signal.”
“Is this really necessary?” Ariadne asked, her whisper nearly lost as the driver, quickly getting over his surprise, gunned his engine and started whipping around the city streets.
“We’re in real life,” Mal said.
When they had left the Sorbonne behind she added, “We could have done this differently if we were - you know,” and she motioned to the silver briefcase of the PASIV at her feet. “Much safer and much quicker that way, too. But as we’re here, we have to make do with other methods. This way I make sure no one can follow us back to the studio.”
“And if they decide to watch us there?”
“Good, you’re thinking ahead,” Mal said. “I also have a few tricks up my sleeve for that, but mostly we have my friend to thank. I look forward to introducing you to him and to his partner very soon.”
///
Mal smiled and breathed in the sweet scent of lilies as she locked the door to the studio securely.
Ariadne had made a beeline for the flowers scattered at the foot of the bed and was holding one, carefully, in her graphite-stained hands. “I’ve always liked lilies,” she said quietly.
“Something we have in common, in any case,” Mal said, and put the cheese and the bread and the plums on a tray, and carried everything over to the bed. “Help yourself, though you’ll want to wait on the cheese for a few moments.” Scratching idly at the purple-black skin of one of the plums, she sat down on the floor at the foot of the bed, mindful of the hard weight of the gun riding just at her hip.
She felt, rather than saw, Ariadne move to sit in front of her; opened her eyes to see that the younger woman was studying her, hands moving over a sketchpad in her lap.
When she was sure that Ariadne was looking at her she tipped her a broad wink and a smile, and she smiled when Ariadne threw back her head and laughed.
“So tell me,” Mal said, and started to eat her plum, cursing quietly when some of the juice squirted into her face, “what exactly is an American girl like you doing studying with my brilliant and slightly mad father? It’s not just architecture or Papa wouldn’t have even given you the time of day. I would know.”
Even in the failing light the blush on Ariadne’s cheeks was unmistakable. “You’re right; it’s more than just architecture. It’s not just blueprints and structures that follow building codes and whatever.” She took a plum from the tray and started rolling it around in her hands. “I literally grew up on a bunch of computer games and fantasy novels: The Lord of the Rings, Thomas Covenant, The Wheel of Time, Final Fantasy, The Clan of the Cave Bear, and all that. So I got started by drawing the characters and the creatures - and later on the locations, the landscapes, the buildings. Drawing Coneria Castle from Final Fantasy - that was when I decided I wanted to learn how to build things, to become an architect.” Ariadne drew rapidly on a blank piece of paper, showed Mal an image of a castle with a tall spire and an ethereal style.
“Of course I can’t build this in real life. But I can dream of castles and cathedrals and things. I...I accidentally turned an Escher-ish castle sketch in to one of my other teachers, when I was supposed to be submitting a design for an office building in - I can’t remember, London or Shanghai or whatever. But, that was it - next thing I knew I was being told that I would start studying with Professor Miles in the next semester. And from there, the PASIV, the dreamshare. And now labyrinths in impossible shapes.
“And now my life is in danger, what the hell is that?”
Mal smiled and tore off a hunk of bread, nibbling on the dark, flour-dusted crust. “Papa has been known to take people in for smaller or stranger reasons. If those reasons sometimes lead to us having to flee for our lives from time to time, to learn how to use guns and to defend ourselves, well, that’s not exactly his fault. He only invented the PASIV; he never created those Cobol creeps, or all those untrained thugs wrecking other people’s minds.
“And he could never have created all the things that keep us prisoners in our own minds.”
Mal felt Ariadne shift to sit next to her; heard her chewing quietly as she attacked the plum, and then the bread and the cheese.
They were both sitting against the sheltered side of the bed, away from the windows and the view of the street below, of Paris.
“You’re taking this well, for all you know there are people on the street waiting on us to do something stupid and then it’s bang bang bang time,” Mal joked, “or in my case I start kicking and punching.”
“Maybe I’m just teetering around the edges of an epic nervous breakdown,” Ariadne replied, and pulled a horrible face, hands stretching and contorting her eyes and mouth and cheeks.
“I wouldn’t actually blame you if had one; I nearly did the same thing once, a long time ago, the first time I had to kill someone in the dreams.”
“What was that like?” Ariadne asked around a huge yawn.
“It was strange,” Mal said. “My brain knew that I wasn’t really doing anything wrong, that killing my father in the dreams would do nothing worse to him than wake him up, get him the hell out of there. Rogue elements in the dream; nothing worse than the stuff that causes your nightmares,” she said in response to Ariadne’s startled look.
“Sometimes, it’s the nightmares that can destroy us,” Ariadne said, and carefully wobbled to her feet, walked off in the direction of the washroom.
“That’s true,” Mal continued, eyes darting around the studio every now and then, watching the shadows for trouble.
When Ariadne had returned to the bed and curled up near the lilies at the other end, Mal went on: “He was yelling at me, Mallorie, Mallorie, you need to shoot us out of the dream, hurry! I knew enough to make a gun appear - I was a bit of a romantic then; all I could dream up was a small revolver - and I knew enough to aim the gun at my father’s head. But I - I had to work up the courage to actually fire.
“Maman was so angry with both of us for a while. I’m still pretty sure we deserved it.”
She looked over at the bed and Ariadne had fallen asleep.
Mal sighed and settled in for the night in a chair near one of the windows.
///
Interlude
“Hello, darling,” were the first words out of Eames’s mouth when Arthur picked him up at El Prat Airport.
Arthur merely raised an eyebrow and pushed a button on the dashboard, and the sunroof folded up and away and Eames grinned and put on his aviators as they drove toward Barcelona.
The Mediterranean breezes moved through his hair - he was a bit weedy now, and he kind of liked it - and the sun was high in an azure sky.
“How was Havana,” he asked as they pulled up in front of Arthur’s apartment in the El Raval neighborhood.
“Muggy,” Arthur said. “I never did like humidity.”
“I imagine. Hard on the suits.”
“And on everything else.”
As soon as the door closed behind them Arthur did up the half-dozen locks and then he turned around and smiled at Eames.
“Now, that’s something I’ve been looking forward to seeing,” Eames said, and pulled Arthur close.
They stood there with their arms around each other for a long moment.
And then the silence was shattered by the buzz of both their mobile phones, and they broke away from each other - not too far, just enough to be able to reach into their pockets.
Message from LL: Surveillance team is here. Have barricaded door. Will try to hide here for a few days and then slip out of the city. Might have to move at a moment’s notice.
“Are we calling them, then,” and Eames let Arthur slide past him, loping after him into the bedroom, where Arthur kept his secured laptop and landlines.
The real-time map on Arthur’s screen zoomed in closer, closer, and - “There,” Eames said, when he spotted the blue van near the street corner. Luckily the apartment was smack in the middle of the block and its other end looked over a blind alley.
“Not yet. Mal will probably call us if she has to make a getaway,” Arthur said after a long moment looking at the image. “Let’s give her the time she needs to make plans - but let’s give her the chance to hand out a righteous ass-kicking or two, too.”
It was enough for Eames, but it didn’t stop him from looking out the window and thinking: If you’re out there, Dominick, you bastard, you better be watching over your wife or I’ll use your projection for bloody target practice.
From the look on his face it was entirely possible that Arthur was doing the same thing. Perhaps with more obscenities, but otherwise the same.
///
“Ariadne. Ariadne. Wake up.”
She watched the girl’s eyes flutter, slowly come awake, and she clamped her hand hard over Ariadne’s mouth as soon as she opened her eyes.
“Listen to me,” Mal hissed. “We’re about to be attacked; I just saw someone get out of the blue van and head here. I need you to stay quiet and to get under the bed. Pull your bags and the PASIV in after you.”
Ariadne stared at her, wide-eyed, and then asked, in a thread of a whisper, “And you?”
Mal made sure her grin was exactly like a predator’s. “I’m going to ask them to dance.”
But as the sounds in the background told her that Ariadne was doing as she had been told, Mal let the smile fall off her face.
Only a stroke of good luck, she knew, had stood between her and an ambush, and worse: she had been unable to sleep, again, and she’d prowled around the windows restlessly and then she’d seen the men moving around the van. Three hours had passed since Ariadne had fallen asleep.
There had just been enough time for her to find Eames’s backup weapon, a USP Compact pistol, and put it on her other hip, across from her Beretta. She’d stuffed a handful of magazines into her pockets, checked to make sure the apartment was secure, and woken Ariadne up.
Now she crouched just in front of the doorknob, and drew the Beretta, and waited, heart hammering in her ears.
Wham, and there was the door, and Mal was springing forward, absolutely silent as she smashed right into the first thug’s midsection, pistol right up under his chin and bang, his head was gone in a shower of blood and shattered bone.
“What the - ”
And that was all she needed, butt of the Beretta crashing down, right between the second thug’s eyes, and Mal shot him right in the back of his head as he fell down, bang and she was yelling, “Ariadne! To me!”
Sounds of frightened breathing behind her as she whirled and ran lightly down the stairs, muscles tense and ready. Two Mozambique drills later the other two thugs were down and in a few moments she was on the street, sprinting for the blue van, eyes darting everywhere. Ariadne panting and hauling all their bags after her, desperately trying to stay close to her back.
There was one more man in the vehicle and Mal let herself grin, knowing she must look a sight with all the blood and brains already splattered all over her and her shirt, and silenced him as fast as she had the other men.
“What are you waiting for,” Mal cried as she threw the driver’s corpse into the back of the van, “get in, Ariadne!”
She forced herself to drive at a steady but rapid pace through the early Paris morning, eyes riveted to the road and to the mirrors. “Ariadne. My phone’s in my pocket. Get it and start typing.”
She felt a small hand dipping into her jeans, hot and shaking, and spared a sideways glance at her white-faced companion. “Find Miles first, and say: Getting out of Paris. Heading to C cottage, that’s a capital C.”
“Okay, sent,” Ariadne said some ten seconds later.
“Next: find Eames. Message: You’re going to want the cleaning crew in at your studio. Will reimburse your bill. M knows where we are. All my love to you and him.”
“Done.”
“Okay, now we hide,” Mal said, more to herself than to Ariadne.
[end part one]
[to be continued]
On to Part Two
author: ilovetakahana
pairings: Main pairing is Ariadne/Mal. Secondary pairing is Arthur/Eames. Mention of previous Mal/Cobb.
warnings: Okay, finally, Part One of my Ariadne/Mal AU is up! The setup: Dominick Cobb killed himself, leaving his widow Mallorie to pick up the pieces of her life. Luckily, Stuart Eames and Arthur Hardy are her best friends and her own private Stadtler and Waldorf, and luckily, she's about to meet Ariadne Mann. AU hijinks and lots of guns galore, lots of slash, and of course femmslash!
Thanks to chn_breathmint for help with the guns and the action sequences, and to the Twitter gang for the never-ending encouragement and pompoms.
This one covers pretty much all the genre bases: drama, comedy, action. Healthy doses of snark and humor ahead, and characters changed to fit the new concept. Watch out for all the cameos and mentions! Unbeta'd.
disclaimer: I don't own the original story or the characters. Not making any profit, just playing in the sandbox.
summary: The Other Half, Part One - Dom dies and Ariadne is in mortal danger. Just another day at the office for Mallorie.
Also archived at http://ninemoons42.dreamwidth.org/.
“I’m going to wake up now, Mal.”
“Dom, no, please, we talked about this - ”
“See you on the other side. I love you.”
“NO!”
And she stretched out her hands, fruitless gesture, useless effort, as if she could catch the body plummeting to the street. Sickening crunch of bones. Dominick lay broken, far below, still in the suit he was wearing when they’d come up to the room, smiling and happy together. Mallorie clung to her windowsill, feeling her knuckles creak under the strain of her clenched fists, fighting the urge to jump and join him. Bile rising in her throat, the screams that she was desperately choking back. She felt the hot tears streaking down her cheeks, the sharp edges of the top pressing into her left fist, cold against her wedding ring.
In the end, she closed her eyes against the sight of his broken body, curled into a ball, and wept.
///
“Dominick.”
It was the first word she’d spoken in the hours since the fall.
The mortician had put in a tremendous effort. On the metal slab lay her husband’s body, his face composed as though he were only sleeping. Lines in his face and the unbelievable gaping hole in his skull smoothed away, the jagged edges stitched neatly shut.
Mal traced the Y-incision down his torso. The coroner’s report had made mention of the insignificant amount of alcohol in his bloodstream. They had been drinking at dinner - it had been their seventh anniversary, was that just last night? It felt like a million years ago now - an excellent white Meursault. Fruity, golden, a half-bottle to go with their steaks. Just a glass or two each. And anyway, it took far stronger spirits than that to intoxicate Dom; he had always been able to drink everyone else under the table.
They had retrieved his cufflinks. Cold weight in her pockets, now, and the silver and copper diamonds stained a rusty red-brown.
There her husband lay. Cold. Gone. Dead.
“Why, Dom?”
Mal could only think, thank goodness she’d miscarried? Was that even an option? This would be unbearable, but there would be more pain than she could imagine if there were children involved; children that she would need to talk to, to explain that Daddy was gone and would never be coming home again.
But this pain was already more than enough, and it tore at her heart. Made her want to howl again. This loss, this was unbearable beyond any experience she’d ever had.
With gentle fingers she brushed his cold, bruised cheek. How could he have done this? What part of the dream had snatched at him and sunk its claws into him?
Her mobile phone chirped and for a long moment she just stared at the device in her hand, uncomprehending. What was this noise? The world receded for a long second. Here she was with her husband and he was dead. He had thrown himself off a building on the night of their wedding anniversary. He had been convinced that he had only been dreaming.
Nothing made sense.
But the phone kept shouting and almost of their own accord, her fingers pressed the “answer” button, and, shaking, raised the phone to her ear.
“Mal. I - I just got the call from Miles.”
She almost fell to her knees. Steady Arthur, I-get-things-done Arthur. “Where are you, mon coeur?”
“Driving. Toward you, actually. And probably breaking several speed limits in the process.”
Pause, and she thought she could hear the wind rushing, the roar of his motorcycle.
“I’m about an hour away at the rate I’m going. Where are you staying?”
“That’s funny,” and she laughed, the sound harsh and broken, coming undone in the cold confines of the morgue. “I was waiting for you to ask me what’s happened.”
“I - Miles told me, some of it, and I cut him off and called you instead. I, I need to know how you are.”
“Take a wild guess,” Mal said, whispering now. She felt the tears roll down her cheeks again. “My husband is dead, Arthur. I watched him throw himself off a fucking building.”
“Shit.” And the roar in the background got even louder. “Just hang on till I get there. Please.”
“So kind of you.”
“Mal. I want to see you alive when I get there. Do you understand me?!”
“Yes, Arthur,” and even to her own ears it all sounded wooden and unreal and distant.
///
Mal woke up to the sound of a raspy, familiar accent.
“That sounds like a bit of old Bilbo’s rhyming,” said Pippin. “Or is it one of your imitations? It does not sound altogether encouraging.”
“I don’t know,” said Frodo. “It came to me then, as if I was making it up; but I may have heard it long ago. Certainly it reminds me very much of Bilbo in the last years, before he went away. He used often to say there was only one Road; that it was like a great river: its springs were at every doorstep, and every path was its tributary. ‘It’s a dangerous business, Frodo, going out of your door,’ he used to say. ‘You step into the Road, and if you don’t keep your feet, there is no knowing where you might be swept off to. Do you realize that this is the very path that goes through Mirkwood, and that if you let it, it might take you to the Lonely Mountain or even worse places?’ He used to say that on the path outside the front door at Bag End, especially after he had been out for a long walk.”
“Eames,” she said quietly.
“Hello, Mal,” the shadow in the chair next to the bed murmured.
She watched as he closed the book - her own battered paperback copy of The Lord of the Rings - and turned towards her, taking her hand in both of his.
“When did you get here?” Mal asked, quietly, feeling the tears leaking out of her eyes again.
“I came as soon as Arthur called.”
Mal sighed and sniffled and swiped at her cheeks with her free hand. Gracefully admitted defeat. “Thank you, Stuart dearest.”
“Any time. Just please don’t call me that again.”
She managed a watery little smile. “I’ll do my best.”
“Good to hear that.” She closed her eyes as Eames bent over her, pressed a kiss to her forehead. “Sleep. Arthur and I will do what needs doing here. And when you’re feeling better, I’m leaving something here in the book for you.”
“Thank you,” Mal said, and she felt herself sinking back into the darkness. This time it was a welcome kind of night, and she found herself diving in after it. Sleep without chemicals, without regrets.
///
When she woke up she didn’t know what day it was.
But the sun was shining, high in a blue sky, when she looked out her window.
She was curious, remembering that Eames had given her a gift of some kind, but that she was also very hungry, and it felt like something had died in her mouth.
Mal took her time scrubbing the yech from her teeth and tongue, fought her tears as she realized she was back in her own room - back in the room she and Dom shared - and the counter in the bathroom held his shaving cream, a small bottle of painkillers. Next to her hairbrush, to her small collection of nail polish in blues and greys and purples, the vivid red lipstick she favored: his razor, his bottle of the musky cologne they had brought back from their last trip to Paris, down to about one-fourth full. Their two toothbrushes still in the same cup.
Mal washed her face violently, scrubbing her face with blunt nails, and sobbed as she splashed icy-cold water all over.
Arthur was standing in the doorway to the bathroom when she looked up. Wordlessly, he offered her a thick, plush white towel.
Mal buried her head in the towel, in her hands, hiccuped pathetically.
He placed an arm around her shoulders. She willed herself to stop crying. No more tears. Hang on. There’s things need doing.
“Better?”
Mal started - Arthur normally didn’t sound like gravel and rocks - and stared at him.
And he looked just as broken as she, truth be told: circles under his eyes, the skin already a sallow yellow around the edges. Lines in his face that seemed to have dug themselves in deeper since the last time she saw him, in the small hours after the jump. The whites of his eyes no longer red, but already shading towards orange with grief and exhaustion.
And Mal remembered: I’m not the only one. I’m not alone. And she straightened and wiped off her tears and resolutely nodded her head in an answer and a promise. “Better now. Really.”
He nodded back. “Good to hear that. Now, come on, when was the last time you had anything to eat?”
“I have no idea,” and Mal wrapped herself in Dom’s robe, plaid blue and grey and yellow, and followed Arthur downstairs.
A sizzling sound and a mouthwatering smell welcomed them into the kitchen.
“Cherie, you’re awake at last.”
And Mal flung herself into her father’s embrace.
But she wasn’t crying. She promised herself. She was just clinging to him. She was allowed to do that.
When she looked up from Miles’s shoulder Arthur and Eames were standing at the stove, the two of them moving together, hands perfectly coordinated as they cooked: pancakes and bacon by the sound of it, and some kind of fruit-fragranced concoction that, as Mal watched, Arthur stirred contemplatively, dripping a small amount into a teaspoon, blowing on it for a moment before pushing the whole thing into Eames’s mouth.
Eames said, “Little salt,” and Arthur nodded and pinched out some, sprinkling most of it into his saucepan and throwing the rest over his left shoulder.
They sat down to breakfast and Mal thought she should be suffocated; all three men were being overly attentive to her.
But she let herself wallow in it just once. Later on there would be time enough to lovingly tyrannize them again. With the wound in her chest still raw and bleeding, she was just happy that they were all still here. That each one of them remained.
She was happy that Arthur was eating, pushing pancake after pancake onto his plate and smothering each one in maple syrup. That Eames was eating most of the bacon and was only just remembering his manners, was not actually sticking his spoon in the fruit - it turned out to be some kind of banana cream pudding, and Arthur sheepishly explained, “It’s the only thing I know how to cook - and I cook it whenever I feel like crap, so....” And that remark then made her father dig in, dolloping the pudding over his pancakes and eating in huge bites.
Miles was famous for refusing every kind of sweet and dessert under the sun except fudge, which he often made in enormous quantities at Christmas, and seeing him turn to sugar for refuge like this was both amazing and sad.
Mal picked at her pancakes but drowned her sorrows in the pudding - because it really was excellent and it had a surfeit of cinnamon, her favorite spice in the world - and Eames conceded the last bites to her.
They sat, contented, around the kitchen table for a very long time.
And then Miles’s mobile rang. He answered it, and he suddenly, visibly aged as he spoke, growing more agitated with every word.
“How dare you,” he hissed, and he got up from the table, paced around the kitchen. “I have already given notice of what has happened in my family. Can you not respect that I am going through an extremely difficult period right now?
“I will not be threatened like this,” Miles snapped abruptly, and Mal froze, traded glances across the table with Eames and Arthur. “You should know I have my own resources, my own people. Don’t you dare threaten me like I’m some upstart fool. You know damn well who I am.
“I opened this world to you, and believe me, I have the option of closing it to you forever. Whatever you’re thinking of: stop it right now. Or I will move against you, and I won’t be alone, and you won’t want that.”
“Papa,” Mal said when Miles sighed loudly and came back to the table.
But he spoke to Arthur and Eames first: “Old friends of ours, I’m afraid. Those Cobol fools. I’d appreciate it very much if one or both of you could begin making inquiries. I am not Proclus Global, but I am sure I can make it worth your while.”
“For this, Miles, I could say no charge and almost mean it,” Eames rasped.
Arthur nodded vigorously next to him.
“Thank you both. But let’s not talk about something so gauche now, yes?” To Mal he said, “Sorry, dearest. Your Maman would pitch such a fit if she were to know all the details. Don’t tell her about this; I’ll do it myself.”
“What’s going on? Is it something I can help you with?”
“Are you sure you want to hear this, Mallorie? It’s about the dreamshare....”
“Papa, if it’s anything to help me find out just what happened to Dom, to understand why he...did what he did. I’m willing to help. Please.”
Miles sighed again, placed a hand over hers on the table. “I’ve been keeping track of recent developments. Lately some people have been coming out with very interesting ideas, and one or two of them have come to me. I think they see me as someone they can trust.”
Arthur sighed, quietly, and got up from the table, placed his dishes neatly in the sink. Inwardly, Mal shook her head at the not-so-subtle way in which he cocked his head, looking back at Eames.
Eames made it obvious when he snorted and stood, carrying his plate and fork to the sink and following Arthur out.
Mal held a hand up to her father, bent backward in her chair. Called after them: “Try harder, boys.”
She exchanged a smile with Miles when that got her the sound of Arthur’s low chuckle, just outside the now-closed door.
And then they both turned serious again, with Miles crossing his arms as he sat back in his chairs. “I have some students who have independently come to discover, and express interest, in the ideas that you and Dominick had been pursuing. Multiple dream levels, complex labyrinths, levels looped inside levels. I am trying to keep them safe so that they may do their research in peace, but it looks like Cobol has already heard about them, and I’m going to need help if I’m going to protect them.”
“Then send me, Papa,” Mal said immediately. “I’ll help you.”
To his credit, Miles only shot her one long, considering look, before his lips thinned out into a pale line. “All right. After the funeral.”
///
She buried her husband on a summer’s day, beneath a cloudless blue sky.
Mal threw a handful of soil over the coffin, the armful of lilies and roses in her hands, and walked away as the minister finished speaking.
When she stopped walking, she was nearly to the cemetery gates.
Arthur and Eames dodged around another set of grave markers and went to stand next to her.
Mal held her arms out to the two, and they stepped in, the three of them a complex and desperate knot of grief and of comfort and of pain.
///
Mal woke up and her eyes hurt. Puffy and bruised. Tear-tracks dried stiff down her cheeks, running toward her ears.
But when she woke up her eyes were dry.
That was a first.
Eames and Arthur had left as the weeks went by after the funeral. Arthur left to chase a Cobol-related lead to Havana; he had entrusted his contact details to Mal and to Eames both, as he was wont to do.
Three days later Eames had received a coded email message from him, and he’d immediately booked tickets for a flight to Manila.
Eames had left her with a hasty kiss and a heap of white roses.
Now Mal looked up her copy of The Lord of the Rings again. It didn’t take long to find out what Eames had hidden in it.
Wrapped around the key was a strip of blue paper, and written on the paper in Eames’s surprisingly legible scrawl was an address in Paris, and the note: Just in case you want to go home but not *home*. XOXO Eames
Last night her father had called her from Charles de Gaulle: “Be safe. Be careful. Carry Dominick’s gun with you. Watch yourself at all times. Come when you can.”
There were a few more things that she needed to do before she left for Paris, though. The black leather folder on the dining table, containing Dom’s will. He hadn’t had much to his name, dreamshare or not, and the legalese boiled down to “I leave everything to my wife, Mallorie.” It was enough. It would have to be. She had to make her way through the world somehow.
She cried herself to sleep that night, again, but somehow the pain was beginning to drain away and the wound in her heart where Dom had been was scabbing over. A glacial pace. But she was healing.
The next morning found Mal in the indoor pistol shooting range that Dom and Arthur had frequented together.
Earplugs. Earmuffs. She carefully pulled Dom’s Beretta Px4 Storm out of its holster and slid a magazine in, under the watchful eyes of the rangemaster. When he nodded at her Mal took a deep breath and racked the slide. One smooth motion to bring up the gun, classic Weaver stance, eyes already sighting toward the silhouette of the target. Double-tap. Mozambique drill. Double-tap again.
She looked at the center of the paper. One ragged-edged hole in the center of mass and one shot right between the eyes.
It was the best result she had ever achieved.
With every round fired, she felt the stiffness leach out of her. The world was reduced to the sights on her gun, the target before her, the report of the gun as it fired.
Mal had first come to the dreamshare as her father’s assistant: the person who pressed the buttons on the PASIV. It was Mal who had come up with the initial concept of a means of getting people out of their dreams at a set time, tracing a path of logic that eventually led her to the musical kick, and to Edith Piaf’s catalogue: “Hymne a l’amour”, “La Foule”, and eventually to the song that Arthur had “inherited” from her - “Non, je ne regrette rien”.
When she was finally allowed to use the PASIV herself - she and Miles had of course had a fair few arguments about it, and it had taken him a few weeks and a blast of cold logic to come around - she took up the role for which she had passionately argued: the one who watched the dreamscape, who protected the dreamer from whatever danger might arise.
Mal had been the inspiration for her father’s concept of the idea of the “point man”. And she had guarded him faithfully, through the long months of initial experimentation. In real life she continued to accumulate instructor certifications in a number of martial arts; in dreams, she carefully put together a fearsome arsenal of weaponry, tactics, and defenses.
Her preferred strategy was to surround her charge with an intricate labyrinth, the corridors and passages booby-trapped and allowing her to access some high-caliber firearm or some convenient weapon that she could use against anyone or anything foolhardy enough to attack.
When Miles took in Dom and Dom started to put together the idea of the extractor, the one who probed a dreamer’s minds for secrets and for information, Miles had protested - but had let him continue, and had only shaken his head and turned away when Mal, by then an accomplished guardian and point woman, expressed interest in that, as well.
She had never had an eidetic memory, not like him, but she had always possessed a gift for retaining the high points of anything she read. Dom had approved; it was a skill that many extractors possessed. He had wanted her to try and better her retention; they had been running memory drills together, in the moments between the experiments on dreams within dreams, in the weeks leading up to their anniversary and his...his jump.
Mal safetied the Beretta and put it down, turned her back on the target, hands over her face. Tears pricked at the corners of her eyes, and she willed herself not to cry, not to cry. Forced herself past the emotions, forced herself toward the hard knowledge that they had been striving for.
Another deep breath and she picked the gun up again, shooting at her final target for the day.
The rangemaster nodded in approval as Mal ejected the empty magazine and packed the gun away, promised to clean it when she got home.
As she drove away from the range, she took a deep breath, and allowed herself a smile, the first smile since the jump. This was hers now. This was something she could hang on to. Here were her skills, skills that she could use to her advantage.
Maybe, just maybe, things would start looking up now.
///
Mal had been expecting a third-floor flat, maybe something like the almost-garret she had stayed in when she had been a student at the Sorbonne, with shared facilities and cold water in the pipes.
But apparently Eames had had other ideas because the key he’d given her unlocked a gorgeous studio, ninety-plus square meters of wooden floors and full-length windows, a coffee table and chairs left as if neglected in the northern corner, a four-poster bed in the opposite corner, and its own toilet and bathroom. Hot water poured out of the left-hand faucet when she turned it. There was an old-fashioned marble tub, the glaze cracked in several places, raised off the floor on claw feet. Everything was airy and free and beautiful.
Mal’s hands shook as she pulled out her phone and punched in a message to him: I never expected that you’d be lending me this place! I had heard about it from A, but to be standing in it - it’s like suddenly standing in a slice of paradise. Pause, and then she added, Where are you staying if you should come back while I’m here?
After the initial wave of euphoria she took the sheaves of documents and information out of the safe pocket in her luggage and sobered again, spreading out the papers in a warm spot on the floor. Here were the three students that her father was working with and protecting, with notations penciled in for their locations and their current work.
Nash Michaels. Worthwhile ideas on fine detail work within the dream. Has had multiple run-ins with Cobol group. Holed up at [coordinates].
Mal carefully blacked out the numbers with a marker - and then turned over the piece of paper and blacked out the reverse side as well.
She felt her eyebrows go up when she read the name of the second student, a name that had already become familiar in the news.
Robert Fischer. Son of the owner of Fischer-Morrow. Shows extreme talent for dream-forgery. Sources confirm he is in protective custody of Proclus Global.
Mal didn’t really know much about the enigmatic Proclus CEO, only that he was named Saito, and that Dom had known of him only as a strident supporter of increased security and militarization of the subconscious. Her father had mentioned him once or twice.
The information attached to the third name made her narrow her eyes in concentration.
Ariadne Christine Mann. Lives up to her name; an expert in creating and navigating mazes that incorporate entire dreams in the passages. What she’s doing is already considered impossible by other people and other dreamers. Paris.
That was all she needed to send a message to her father. Where exactly is AM? Also, I will probably need to borrow your PASIV. E has ours.
Message from unknown number: Not coming back to Paris for a while. Meeting A in Sp after this job.
Mal smiled, nodded, and deleted Eames’s message.
Message from P: Come and see me at the university. Classes end in two hours.
Before leaving for the Sorbonne, Mal bought an armful of November lilies and arranged them in a vase next to the four-poster, scattering the rest on the bedspread itself; she bought some bread and milk and the blue cheese that she liked, and a handful of ripe plums.
Eames had seen fit to leave her two bottles of the tokaji cuvee wine that she liked.
///
The sun had long since set behind the Paris skyline when Mal walked through familiar corridors - familiar enough that the sharp smells of wax and cleaning fluid made her recoil in both disgust and nostalgia - and she snapped on one set of lights as she pushed through the door into her father’s rooms.
“Sssh,” Miles whispered, finger to his lips, as he beckoned her over to the PASIV device set up in the corner, huffing mournfully to itself. There was a girl lying down on the battered chaise longue, her feet propped up on a stack of textbooks, dark hair spread out like a halo around her pale face.
Most dreamers hooked up to a PASIV let their faces relax into the slackness of sleep. Not this dreamer, whose eyebrows were still knotted even as the seconds ticked past on the timer.
Mal made to plug herself in - but her father placed a hand on her shoulder, shook his head minutely. “Don’t go in there yet. I’m having her complete an exercise for me. Helical labyrinths,” he explained, motioning her over to the chair in front of his desk. “A simple thought experiment.”
“Simple - helical - only you, Papa,” Mal said, both intrigued and amused. “Please don’t tell me you intend to use one of those against someone, because, frankly, people might choose to drop straight into limbo to avoid having to navigate something as completely strange as a double helix. Human minds might not be able to actually handle it.”
“Is it really my fault if this girl actually thinks in terms of impossible shapes? I’ve been thinking of introducing her to your friend with the crush on the Penrose stairs, except that perhaps Eames might not be so happy with me if I did.”
Mal actually clapped her hands over her mouth and squeaked once or twice as she tried to muffle her giggles.
Arthur didn’t have a crush on the Penrose stairs.
Except that he sometimes did.
Miles let her go on for a few moments and then the beeping of the PASIV filled the room, and he looked over at the girl, whose face was slackening and then frowning again as she roused from the drug-induced sleep. “How are you feeling, Ariadne?” Miles asked.
“Like someone smashed my head in, again,” she said, groggily, scrubbing her face with the heels of her hands. “It’s going to take me a while to get used to the PASIV, seriously.”
Mal chuckled, long and low and amused - she supposed today was the day when the universe decreed it was time for her to laugh again - and the girl turned to look at her, head tilting to the side like an inquisitive bird’s.
Miles smiled and handled the introductions. “Ariadne, this is my daughter, Mallorie. Mal, dear, this is Ariadne Mann.”
“Pleased to meet you, Mallorie,” Ariadne said, walking over to shake hands.
“Hello, Ariadne. And please, call me Mal,” Mal said. “Professor Miles said that he was putting you to work on creating impossible landscapes?”
“Klein bottles, Mobius strips, the devil’s tuning fork. Creating the figures is easy; even children could try drawing those things. It’s the landscapes that refuse to cooperate, usually, although I may be getting close to a breakthrough.”
“Which involves what, precisely?”
“A seam in the landscape here, a stitch in the scenery there.”
Mal must have looked puzzled at that point because Ariadne added, “Oh, I’m interested in fashion design; I make some of my own clothes. They do seem related, fashion and architecture....”
Ariadne moved her hands while she was talking, small, contained motions, just as she sat down and crossed her ankles, as though she were conscious of the space that she occupied in relation to others. Mal watched as she twisted her long, dull-brown hair up into a rough approximation of a bun around a pencil that she pulled out of her pocket, as she piled her things back into her bag.
When Ariadne made as if to stand up and leave, Miles shook his head and waved her back into her chair. Said quietly, “Before you leave, Ariadne, there is something very important that you need to know. That your knowledge and your skills are already highly sought-after, you already know; that your life is in danger, likewise, as you yourself brought that to my attention.
“The situation has become, shall we say, extremely precarious in the last three months.”
Mal started. Three - had she really been out of commission for that long? No wonder her arms had felt stiff, no wonder she had almost forgotten the safety procedures for the PASIV. She might as well have fallen into limbo for a small eternity.
“So, what do I need to do now?” Ariadne simply squared her shoulders and stared Miles right in the eyes. Mal wanted to applaud, and to call Arthur and Eames.
Instead, she stepped forward, changed her stance just a little, and watched as Ariadne spotted the thread - or rather, the butt of the Beretta, which she was deliberately letting print along the right side of her shirt.
[Dom’s shirt, of course. She’d taken nearly all of his shirts, each one a shade too large for her.]
“Hello, Ariadne,” she said again. “My name is Mallorie Cobb, and I’ve volunteered to be your bodyguard.”
“You have heard me talk about the roles that people can take in the dreamshare, Ariadne,” Miles said. “My daughter is the original point man. Even the name was her idea.”
And the younger woman’s composed mask finally cracked; she collapsed backwards into her chair, as if suddenly deflated. “That - that bad?” Wide eyes, the irises brown flecked with gold; red high on the cheekbones; a sudden intake of breath, and she was exhaling raggedly.
Miles nodded gravely. “I have similarly made arrangements for your classmates. As your work here is unfinished, as you are the only one remaining in Paris, I must make sure of your safety. I would not wish to lose such a prodigy - nor such a good woman.”
“Wait,” Ariadne said, “made arrangements - you mean they really did disap - ” and she slapped one hand over her mouth. “Fischer? Nash?”
Miles nodded again. And looked at Mal. “I entrust you to her, my dear.”
Mal nodded, once, and turned to Ariadne. “A friend of mine lent me his studio. Would you like to come and see it?” She placed her hands on Ariadne’s shoulders and stooped a little to look her straight in the eyes. “Do you trust me?”
“I’ve only just met you,” Ariadne said. “But - but I do.”
They had had this same exchange, Mal and Dom, back when they first met in this same room.
She had asked him the same question, having had to take him someplace safe on her father’s orders, and he would never have been called “fearful” but the sudden jump in the pulse at his throat had given away his sudden emotion. Mal had put her hands on his shoulders, and he had squinted doubtfully at her - the first time she’d seen the expression. He had held himself rigidly.
Mal swallowed past the lump in her throat and finished the exchange with the same words she had replied to Dom with. “That’s good enough to be going on with. Come on.”
///
“Taxi,” Mal called, and slipped the cabbie a hundred-euro bill and a piece of paper. “Drive around the arrondissement and take every back route and alley you can find, then drop us off at this address when I give you the signal.”
“Is this really necessary?” Ariadne asked, her whisper nearly lost as the driver, quickly getting over his surprise, gunned his engine and started whipping around the city streets.
“We’re in real life,” Mal said.
When they had left the Sorbonne behind she added, “We could have done this differently if we were - you know,” and she motioned to the silver briefcase of the PASIV at her feet. “Much safer and much quicker that way, too. But as we’re here, we have to make do with other methods. This way I make sure no one can follow us back to the studio.”
“And if they decide to watch us there?”
“Good, you’re thinking ahead,” Mal said. “I also have a few tricks up my sleeve for that, but mostly we have my friend to thank. I look forward to introducing you to him and to his partner very soon.”
///
Mal smiled and breathed in the sweet scent of lilies as she locked the door to the studio securely.
Ariadne had made a beeline for the flowers scattered at the foot of the bed and was holding one, carefully, in her graphite-stained hands. “I’ve always liked lilies,” she said quietly.
“Something we have in common, in any case,” Mal said, and put the cheese and the bread and the plums on a tray, and carried everything over to the bed. “Help yourself, though you’ll want to wait on the cheese for a few moments.” Scratching idly at the purple-black skin of one of the plums, she sat down on the floor at the foot of the bed, mindful of the hard weight of the gun riding just at her hip.
She felt, rather than saw, Ariadne move to sit in front of her; opened her eyes to see that the younger woman was studying her, hands moving over a sketchpad in her lap.
When she was sure that Ariadne was looking at her she tipped her a broad wink and a smile, and she smiled when Ariadne threw back her head and laughed.
“So tell me,” Mal said, and started to eat her plum, cursing quietly when some of the juice squirted into her face, “what exactly is an American girl like you doing studying with my brilliant and slightly mad father? It’s not just architecture or Papa wouldn’t have even given you the time of day. I would know.”
Even in the failing light the blush on Ariadne’s cheeks was unmistakable. “You’re right; it’s more than just architecture. It’s not just blueprints and structures that follow building codes and whatever.” She took a plum from the tray and started rolling it around in her hands. “I literally grew up on a bunch of computer games and fantasy novels: The Lord of the Rings, Thomas Covenant, The Wheel of Time, Final Fantasy, The Clan of the Cave Bear, and all that. So I got started by drawing the characters and the creatures - and later on the locations, the landscapes, the buildings. Drawing Coneria Castle from Final Fantasy - that was when I decided I wanted to learn how to build things, to become an architect.” Ariadne drew rapidly on a blank piece of paper, showed Mal an image of a castle with a tall spire and an ethereal style.
“Of course I can’t build this in real life. But I can dream of castles and cathedrals and things. I...I accidentally turned an Escher-ish castle sketch in to one of my other teachers, when I was supposed to be submitting a design for an office building in - I can’t remember, London or Shanghai or whatever. But, that was it - next thing I knew I was being told that I would start studying with Professor Miles in the next semester. And from there, the PASIV, the dreamshare. And now labyrinths in impossible shapes.
“And now my life is in danger, what the hell is that?”
Mal smiled and tore off a hunk of bread, nibbling on the dark, flour-dusted crust. “Papa has been known to take people in for smaller or stranger reasons. If those reasons sometimes lead to us having to flee for our lives from time to time, to learn how to use guns and to defend ourselves, well, that’s not exactly his fault. He only invented the PASIV; he never created those Cobol creeps, or all those untrained thugs wrecking other people’s minds.
“And he could never have created all the things that keep us prisoners in our own minds.”
Mal felt Ariadne shift to sit next to her; heard her chewing quietly as she attacked the plum, and then the bread and the cheese.
They were both sitting against the sheltered side of the bed, away from the windows and the view of the street below, of Paris.
“You’re taking this well, for all you know there are people on the street waiting on us to do something stupid and then it’s bang bang bang time,” Mal joked, “or in my case I start kicking and punching.”
“Maybe I’m just teetering around the edges of an epic nervous breakdown,” Ariadne replied, and pulled a horrible face, hands stretching and contorting her eyes and mouth and cheeks.
“I wouldn’t actually blame you if had one; I nearly did the same thing once, a long time ago, the first time I had to kill someone in the dreams.”
“What was that like?” Ariadne asked around a huge yawn.
“It was strange,” Mal said. “My brain knew that I wasn’t really doing anything wrong, that killing my father in the dreams would do nothing worse to him than wake him up, get him the hell out of there. Rogue elements in the dream; nothing worse than the stuff that causes your nightmares,” she said in response to Ariadne’s startled look.
“Sometimes, it’s the nightmares that can destroy us,” Ariadne said, and carefully wobbled to her feet, walked off in the direction of the washroom.
“That’s true,” Mal continued, eyes darting around the studio every now and then, watching the shadows for trouble.
When Ariadne had returned to the bed and curled up near the lilies at the other end, Mal went on: “He was yelling at me, Mallorie, Mallorie, you need to shoot us out of the dream, hurry! I knew enough to make a gun appear - I was a bit of a romantic then; all I could dream up was a small revolver - and I knew enough to aim the gun at my father’s head. But I - I had to work up the courage to actually fire.
“Maman was so angry with both of us for a while. I’m still pretty sure we deserved it.”
She looked over at the bed and Ariadne had fallen asleep.
Mal sighed and settled in for the night in a chair near one of the windows.
///
Interlude
“Hello, darling,” were the first words out of Eames’s mouth when Arthur picked him up at El Prat Airport.
Arthur merely raised an eyebrow and pushed a button on the dashboard, and the sunroof folded up and away and Eames grinned and put on his aviators as they drove toward Barcelona.
The Mediterranean breezes moved through his hair - he was a bit weedy now, and he kind of liked it - and the sun was high in an azure sky.
“How was Havana,” he asked as they pulled up in front of Arthur’s apartment in the El Raval neighborhood.
“Muggy,” Arthur said. “I never did like humidity.”
“I imagine. Hard on the suits.”
“And on everything else.”
As soon as the door closed behind them Arthur did up the half-dozen locks and then he turned around and smiled at Eames.
“Now, that’s something I’ve been looking forward to seeing,” Eames said, and pulled Arthur close.
They stood there with their arms around each other for a long moment.
And then the silence was shattered by the buzz of both their mobile phones, and they broke away from each other - not too far, just enough to be able to reach into their pockets.
Message from LL: Surveillance team is here. Have barricaded door. Will try to hide here for a few days and then slip out of the city. Might have to move at a moment’s notice.
“Are we calling them, then,” and Eames let Arthur slide past him, loping after him into the bedroom, where Arthur kept his secured laptop and landlines.
The real-time map on Arthur’s screen zoomed in closer, closer, and - “There,” Eames said, when he spotted the blue van near the street corner. Luckily the apartment was smack in the middle of the block and its other end looked over a blind alley.
“Not yet. Mal will probably call us if she has to make a getaway,” Arthur said after a long moment looking at the image. “Let’s give her the time she needs to make plans - but let’s give her the chance to hand out a righteous ass-kicking or two, too.”
It was enough for Eames, but it didn’t stop him from looking out the window and thinking: If you’re out there, Dominick, you bastard, you better be watching over your wife or I’ll use your projection for bloody target practice.
From the look on his face it was entirely possible that Arthur was doing the same thing. Perhaps with more obscenities, but otherwise the same.
///
“Ariadne. Ariadne. Wake up.”
She watched the girl’s eyes flutter, slowly come awake, and she clamped her hand hard over Ariadne’s mouth as soon as she opened her eyes.
“Listen to me,” Mal hissed. “We’re about to be attacked; I just saw someone get out of the blue van and head here. I need you to stay quiet and to get under the bed. Pull your bags and the PASIV in after you.”
Ariadne stared at her, wide-eyed, and then asked, in a thread of a whisper, “And you?”
Mal made sure her grin was exactly like a predator’s. “I’m going to ask them to dance.”
But as the sounds in the background told her that Ariadne was doing as she had been told, Mal let the smile fall off her face.
Only a stroke of good luck, she knew, had stood between her and an ambush, and worse: she had been unable to sleep, again, and she’d prowled around the windows restlessly and then she’d seen the men moving around the van. Three hours had passed since Ariadne had fallen asleep.
There had just been enough time for her to find Eames’s backup weapon, a USP Compact pistol, and put it on her other hip, across from her Beretta. She’d stuffed a handful of magazines into her pockets, checked to make sure the apartment was secure, and woken Ariadne up.
Now she crouched just in front of the doorknob, and drew the Beretta, and waited, heart hammering in her ears.
Wham, and there was the door, and Mal was springing forward, absolutely silent as she smashed right into the first thug’s midsection, pistol right up under his chin and bang, his head was gone in a shower of blood and shattered bone.
“What the - ”
And that was all she needed, butt of the Beretta crashing down, right between the second thug’s eyes, and Mal shot him right in the back of his head as he fell down, bang and she was yelling, “Ariadne! To me!”
Sounds of frightened breathing behind her as she whirled and ran lightly down the stairs, muscles tense and ready. Two Mozambique drills later the other two thugs were down and in a few moments she was on the street, sprinting for the blue van, eyes darting everywhere. Ariadne panting and hauling all their bags after her, desperately trying to stay close to her back.
There was one more man in the vehicle and Mal let herself grin, knowing she must look a sight with all the blood and brains already splattered all over her and her shirt, and silenced him as fast as she had the other men.
“What are you waiting for,” Mal cried as she threw the driver’s corpse into the back of the van, “get in, Ariadne!”
She forced herself to drive at a steady but rapid pace through the early Paris morning, eyes riveted to the road and to the mirrors. “Ariadne. My phone’s in my pocket. Get it and start typing.”
She felt a small hand dipping into her jeans, hot and shaking, and spared a sideways glance at her white-faced companion. “Find Miles first, and say: Getting out of Paris. Heading to C cottage, that’s a capital C.”
“Okay, sent,” Ariadne said some ten seconds later.
“Next: find Eames. Message: You’re going to want the cleaning crew in at your studio. Will reimburse your bill. M knows where we are. All my love to you and him.”
“Done.”
“Okay, now we hide,” Mal said, more to herself than to Ariadne.
[end part one]
[to be continued]
On to Part Two