Notes: This an Inception AU or fusion. Don't need to have watched the movie, but a quick skim of the wiki page may help understand the rules of the Inception verse.
Life's been tough, since Peter's arrest.
All the families, all the people Alicia's known most of her adult life, they're all whispering about him, about her, about their family.
She feels cold. Cold with fear, and cold with the fury that the whispers might be true.
Their accounts have been frozen. Alicia had to ask her brother for grocery money last week. (Her brother, who has always disapproved, always wished his sister had married someone else.) Eli's been unable to get his hands on any more money in the short term. It's all tied up, he says. With what, she doesn't ask.
Alicia hasn't officially worked since she was at school. She's helped Peter out, of course, but it's not like she's had to interview for that. She can't ask any of Peter's friends because they probably trust Peter – and by extension, her – about as far as they can throw him right now. She bites down her pride and calls the only personal contact she has in this world. It's not like she has any skills marketable outside of it.
She's never really asked what he does. She hasn't had the opportunity in over 15 years. She wonders if he won't just hang up on her.
"It's so good to hear your voice, Alicia. Of course I'll find you something." Will assures her. "You remember what we did in the good old days?"
"Yes." Alicia says, because how could she forget the good old days spent in a haze of drugs and needles, in and out of reality? Her life with Peter has never been boring, but she's hardly come across anything even a fraction as insane, as beautiful, as freeing as those days she spend under with Will.
"There's a market for that sort thing now." Will goes on to say. "Not recreational – well, some of it recreational, but there are uses we'd never thought of, back then. People will pay a lot for the kinds of services my kind of people can offer, and even more for the best in the business. And I am the best."
"Oh?" She asks carefully, and wonders what she's getting herself into.
She takes to extracting like a fish to water, Will says.
To be fair, she allows, she'd started off dreaming on experimental, barely tested chemicals, with shabbily put-together PASIVs, and timers so badly calibrated to the compound used that five minutes of real time was as likely to get you twenty under as it was three days. Technology's improved a lot since then, and going from that to what's available now feels suspiciously easy. It's as if before, she learnt to chop with a dull supermarket-brought knife, and now she's been given Shirogami steel instead and it sings in her hands.
"You should have stayed in school." Will grins at her after her first successful job. "You'd be surprised the people you meet in law. Or, well, not surprised at all, really, I suppose. They're all the same people on both sides of the board, you know. The colour of their hats don't change that much."
She smiles lightly and doesn't disagree. He's saying she should have stayed with him. Despite everything that's happened, despite how much of that spark is still there between them, albeit muted, hidden by baggage and by the unspoken issue of Peter – she's not so sure she agrees.
She's finally been to see Peter, they've finally let her, cleared her – and isn't that ironic? That they clear the mobster's wife of any nefarious acts just as she fully joins the criminal world?
"I'd never rat anyone out, Alicia, you know that." He tries to assure her quietly. "I'm giving them nothing they haven't already got. I have to look like I'm playing along, or they'll throw away the key. I'm no snitch, babe."
She stares at him, lost for words for what seems like an eternity but can't really be more than a minute. The buzzer tells her their time is over and the guard looks pointedly at her. She picks up her things.
She doesn't ask him, doesn't say: Is that why you think I'm angry? Is that what you think I care about? Your criminal associates?
She doesn't say: I'm livid because of what you've put the children through, what you've put me through.
She doesn't say: I'm scared because you're in prison and I'm probably going to join you soon.
She doesn't say: I'm angry because of those rumours of an affair ring awfully true to me.
She doesn't say: I'm terrified because I'm not sure I love you enough to actually mind you being gone.
She goes home and cries.
"We're going to need a forger on this one, I think." Will says, frowning at the notes in front of him.
Alicia looks distractedly up from her own copy of the file. "Hm?"
"The son-in-law, he's not just going to open up to us. But maybe if we got someone to look like his dead wife, we might get somewhere."
Alicia's only heard of forgers, never actually worked with one.
"You pick one." Will offers generously and leans back in his chair. "I've got a shortlist, but I want you to pick one. In fact, I want you to take point on this job."
"Me?" She asks, trying not to look as shocked as she feels.
"Yeah." Will fiddles with a pen and looks pensively out the window. "It's about time you start making a name for yourself in this business."
She looks closely at Will's candidates before they go under with her. Yes, it's what they can do in dreamscape that matters, but she doesn't want any forger she can recognise after a few minutes of small talk in reality. They'd need to be better than that.
She'll go under with some of them individually, but she wants to see how well they play with others, how well they can work around unknown variables, so they go under as a group.
"You'll be fine." Will assures her as he swabs her skin and inserts the needle. "You're a fantastic judge of character."
She shoots him a quick smile and doesn't take offence at his assumption that she needs reassurance.
Alicia builds a busy shopping mall. A woman with a pram pushes past her with a glare. Alicia mutters some sort of apology and moves out of the way. If it's a projection of her own, she's not even remotely surprised.
"Alicia, sweetheart, there you are." A familiar voice calls out.
She turns and tries not to flinch. "Peter."
She's been worried that he might haunt her dreams, been dreading it, but so far he's been a more subtle influence on her dreamscape.
"Remember the last time we did this?" He says, going for jovial. "Christmas shopping a few years back. Much busier, then."
The corner of her mouth curls. In amusement, in relief, in dissatisfaction.
"I suppose you've seen him on TV." She says, and starts to notice that the shade of 'Peter's' tie is the same colour as the skirt one of the forgers was wearing. Sloppy. "Only you got his voice wrong, and we've never gone Christmas shopping together."
It's cute that the blonde girl tried to use Alicia's person life to impress her, but the workmanship is shoddy, and cute ideas aren't going to be enough if there's no follow-through.
Peter morphs into Senator Jameson, a prominent and outspoken voice against organised crime, and starts quoting an oft replayed segment of her inauguration speech.
"We need to fight this threat at the source." The senator says, and the voice is pitch perfect, the pacing just right, almost like a recording. "These people think that they are above the law, above the good folk of this state, but we need to show them that they're wrong."
"Menace." Alicia corrects. "The word she used was 'menace', not 'threat'."
The forger drops the senator's skin, and Alicia finds herself to have been right – it was the blonde with the turquoise skirt.
"I suppose I'm out, huh?"
"I'm sorry." Alicia agrees.
She wanders through the shopping mall and smiles when she notices the pet shop whose windows Grace used to leave grubby handprints on while she cooed over the puppies. Next to it is a café she once visited in Paris, never mind that they're in a completely different wing to where the food court is supposed to be. There's no danger in using real things to build if she mixes them up in a way that could never be reality, and there's no danger that she'll inadvertently hide something important in a shopping mall. She's made sure there are no bank branches here, just in case. She's not naïve enough to trust a bunch of dream thieves inside her mind.
The next forger might have done well, but they chose to forge the blonde with the skirt, who Alicia's already seen shoot herself out of the dream.
"You need to update your information." Alicia tells them and guesses that this is the man with the receding hairline because his version of the blonde has hair that is much bouncier and more voluminous than the real blonde had. "And stop overcompensating."
A few more try: one is Britney Spears circa 1999, crooning on a small stage about how she shouldn't have let her baby go, one is another Peter, and one even tries to forge Alicia herself, which is a spectacular disaster because if nothing else, Alicia knows the shape of her own hands and the colour of her own hair, and she also knows never to wear that shade of lipstick – not with her skin tone.
By her calculations, the timer's almost out upstairs, and Alicia seats herself down on a courtesy bench that overlooks the lower storey.
"No one?" Will asks from behind her, and he's using that voice he has when he knows he's about to be disappointed, but he's holding out for a miracle until it's actually been confirmed.
She sighs and moves over to make room for him, continuing watching the projections milling around down below. "Maybe I'm being too picky." She admits. "Maybe you should have done this yourself."
She can see him shrug out of the corner of her eye. "It's not a failure of yours. It's good to have high standards, and it's perfectly sensible to refuse to work with anyone but the best."
"I suppose you're right." She turns to him, corner of her mouth curling in amusement. "I also suppose that's you paying yourself a compliment again, isn't it?"
"Modesty is for those with nothing worth bragging about."
He startles a laugh out of her. "You really haven't changed that much, have you?"
"You don't sound like you disapprove." Will raises a playful eyebrow, and there's a hint of before in his voice, the flirtation that hasn't entered their interaction since she's started working with him. Since she left him to marry Peter.
"I've missed that." She admits. "This, us. We used to be so good together. Even before we were, you know, together."
He looks away before she can see his expression. "Me too."
"Do you ever wish we could go back?" She asks, cautiously. "Life was so much simpler then."
He turns back to her and there's an expression that she's never seen on Will's face before. Chagrin. Regret. Guilt.
Alicia's heart sinks.
"Will didn't go under with us, did he?" She says, but it's not really a question. She's not sure what she feels. Disappointment that this Will isn't real, annoyance at herself for falling for it, and a kind of nakedness at being invaded by a stranger like this.
"I'm sorry." The forger wearing Will's face says. "I thought you'd figure it out. You picked the others out right off the bat."
Alicia sighs. "It's fine. It was your assignment to try to fool me. Congratulations. You fooled me."
Will's face morphs into a decidedly un-Will-like expression. "That's it? Don't you want to make sure that wasn't a fluke on my part?"
Alicia raises a shoulder. "Sure, why not. Can you do women just as well?"
The forger shoots her a withering look with Will's face, and the effect is disconcerting. Alicia tries not to remember the day that they broke things off.
"Do you mind if I do another that you know?" The forger asks carefully. "I find that people one knows in real life are the hardest to fake. It's hard to be sure if a celebrity's height or voice is right when the TV only shows you the persona they present to the world."
Alicia waves her okay, and is instantly faced by her mother in law.
"Now, Alicia, dear, I've left the casserole in the fridge, and Zachary is staying at his friend Mark's house. When will you be home?" Jackie is speaking into a phone clutched in her bony, evil hands. Her other hand is playing with her hair.
Alicia wants to burst out laughing, but the half-belief that this Jackie is real terrifies her into biting down the sound.
"Very good." Alicia admits. "Have you met her? I don't think they've shown her speaking on TV, have they? The voice is spot on. The hair-fiddling was a nice touch."
"Do you think so?" Jackie has transformed into an unknown man, not one of the forgers Alicia saw up in reality. He's about Will's height, with darker hair and skin and piercing grey eyes. "I only met her once, many years ago and quite briefly. I wasn't sure if she'd changed her mannerisms."
"Who, Jackie?" Alicia snorts. "Jackie wouldn't change for a tidal wave. She likes to pretend that no one else does, either."
"She does, doesn't she?" He grins. "She's a force of nature."
"That's one way of putting it." Alicia agrees.
"Well?" He asks, still smiling, only now there's a hint of playfulness in his voice that is different to the way he flirted as Will, but no less gratifying. "Do I pass muster?"
Alicia lets her smile fade and remembers that she has a husband. An imprisoned one who she's not sure she's in love with anymore, but a husband nonetheless.
"Assuming Will – the real Will – " Alicia chastises, "assuming he agrees, yes, I think you have the job, Mister...?"
"Sharma." He replies. "And, Mrs Florrick, I do believe our time is about to be up."
Almost as if on cue, the dream ends and Alicia wakes.
She sits up and takes the needle out of her arm. The other forgers have already been dismissed by Will, she can see, (and she chews herself out again for allowing herself to believe that Will went down with them after he explicitly told her that she was flying solo on this one), and Will's casually sprawled in an armchair, raised eyebrow asking Well?
Alicia looks for the forger – wanting to see what he looks like in real life, wanting to reassure herself that people make themselves better looking in dreams, that there's no way she's going to be making eyes at another co-worker, no matter how charming he is – but she only sees a tiny East Indian girl slowly pulling out the needle from her arm.
The girl meets her eyes and sticks out a hand to shake. "Kalinda Sharma. I'm pleased to be working with you, Mrs Florrick."
Alicia should be glad, should be relieved that there's no chance she'll be tempted to forget the ring on her finger.
As the coal black eyes bore into her own in something like challenge, and something like a joke only one of them understands, Alicia can't help being a little bit disappointed, and a little afraid that relief would be pre-emptive.
"Please to meet you." Alicia manages to reply and wonders if this choice is going to come back to bite her.
Notes: This idea has been swimming around in my head for rather a while. It may evolve into a series, but no promises. Kinda Kalinda/Alicia-ish, but again, no guarantees. Feedback always welcome and appreciated.