The small red die turns through his fingertips, ghosting along the whorled skin of his index finger and thumb that are placed firmly in his coat pocket. It's raining, and the smell of the wet ground and damp cotton cloth are all that greet him when he steps out onto the crowded Parisian street. He knows this street and the familiar door of the warehouse that they used to construct Inception seven months ago, the dark brown paint flecking off that almost give the air of unkempt charm and intrigue resting in an archway on the other side. He fights the sudden urge to walk across the road and touch it, knowing the action to be futile and in the end only add to the pang of disappointment that taste bitter in his mouth. He continues to walk on, missing the flash of a red coat and tangled brown hair that appear as soon as he turns around, away from the street upon which only a memory sits.
-:-
"Excuse me?"
The voice seems to tease him as the familiarity of it sends a slight thrill up his spine. He thought never to hear it again. Her voice is something he realises all too suddenly, is something he's missed hearing. He curls his fingers gently around the coffee cup and counts one, two, three, before looking up. But it isn't her, and the frown is all too quick to flit across his face, sending waves of confusion across the blonde's face. She is most un-Ariadne like; tall, blonde, tanned with piercing blue eyes and for all her good looks he can't help feel that she lacks something. He manages a polite nod.
"Yes?"
He realises in that second that she is a waitress here, just another staff member with her name sewn onto her lapel. He reads it, the red letters mocking him, a tiny frown tugging at his lips. 'Arianna'– the name is so similar that it grates at him and he finds that his fingers curl tighter against the white porcelain. Yet, his inner frustration is broken by her next few words, so smooth and confident but with a twinge of Her accent he is almost certain that if he closed his eyes he'd be fooled completely.
-:-
The bullet shatters the tile next to him before he truly has time to react. He is never this slow, not in all his history of dream sharing, of extraction. It is his worst fear. The projections are faceless, nameless beings that only seek to hunt and the type that he can sense before he sees. Car tyres screech in the background and he is dimly aware of someone screaming before the landscape changes to haunt him again. This staircase, he knows his staircase, it was the one he taught Her in, the Penrose steps, but this time it isn't her dream nor her projections and this is not a training session. The invisible guns fires again and he ducks, a curse escaping his lips almost in breathless wonderment as his assailant takes shape.
"Fuck."
She does not speak, she never speaks. Her red jackets stands out brighter than the blood he can feel is soaking through his dress shirt, and her brown eyes are as hardened and cold as quartz. He begins to feel himself fade into nothingness, a dying bewildered accusation on his lips as music floats through the background.
'Non, je ne regrette rien.'
-:-
He wakes in a cold sweat, the ghost of her bullet wound itching his chest with the rest of his body, a mess of tangled sheets and limbs. His hands grips his totem so hard he knows there will be imprints on his palm when he finally opens it. The PASIV lays beside him nudged onto the bed in a faded brown suitcase, and he tears the IV drip out his his arm as if to rid the nightmare from his mind at a faster pace.
He thinks he can smell her perfume in the air, remnants from a memory patched together with shaky hands. He knows that it's a lie, sitting here on this bed in a top-end Paris hotel.
It's been seven months now.
Seven months since the job, seven months since they each said their muted goodbyes and walked off in opposite directions to wherever their lives were headed next and seven months since he saw the true Ariande.
The rest were just shades, shadows, haunting him each time he flicks the PASIV on and enters the dream, his dream.
In his dreams, she kills him every night.