A/N: I just saw Inception yesterday and, like the rest of, well, everyone, I was completely blown away by all the complex philosophical layers and elements! I literally had a headache (in a good way) when it was over. My only objection to the film was that, despite all the obvious restrictions and obstacles that would make it impossible, I felt like Ellen Page (Ariadne) and Leonardo DiCaprio (Cobb) had all the chemistry, but they placed Ariadne with Arthur instead. They were still cute, and obviously more believable, but still...! So, of course, I resort to fanfiction. A girl's gotta do what a girl's gotta do, right?
Five Reflections on the Psyche of Ariadne
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Ariadne: I designed the place...(offering to go with the others)
Cobb: No. You're with me.
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1. Ariadne had always been too feisty. Her father used to say so. He also used to tell her that asking so many questions, reading so many books and butting into so many people's business would never help her get married, which was, of course, all she would amount to in life. (It was as if his mind had not yet processed the transition from Jane Austen era).
Her father used to tell her a lot of things that she later resented. He told her that she should learn to be more like her mother; more elegant, more ladylike, more demure (he used that word quite often, though Ariadne had yet to discover exactly the behavior it entailed). Her mother had died giving birth to her, so as far as Ariadne was concerned, she had been the most perfectly demure person who had ever walked the earth.
One night she lashed back. Her father was sitting in his armchair watching the game. He had ordered his daughter to "get him a beer," and when she'd snapped at him to get it himself (perhaps the birthplace of all her future feminism), he retorted, as per usual,
"Your mother would've gotten me a goddamned beer. She was-" Wait for it... "-demure. She fucking did things right."
Ariadne flashed back, "Yeah, and I bet she gave you all the head in the world, too, because that's all women are good for, right, Dad?"
His face reddened. Ariadne watched from the kitchen as his lips thinned and he rose menacingly from his chair. As he turned to look at her, she realized for the first time she wasn't afraid of him. In fact, she pitied him. She told him so, the words slipping from her lips quickly and unstoppably, like sand through her fingers.
Her father merely grew redder still, grumbled a bit about her being an ungrateful little bitch, and shuffled off to his room.
He never hit her. He never laid a hand on her. He only hurt her with his words. That was more than enough most of the time.
2. Ariadne had never been pragmatic. She had yet to decide whether this was a good or a bad thing.
When she was seventeen, she proved her father wrong with the first of may future instances. Her father used to pick apart everything she did, watch her from his chair in the kitchen with flashing, narrowed eyes and sucked-in cheeks, criticizing the way she walked or talked or even the way she simply stood. He told her exactly what she was doing wrong, and made sure to inform her that she would never do anything right. He said that drawing so many abstract pictures and letting her mind wander in the middle of Science class would never get her anywhere. He called her a dreamer.
(Little did he know this was more of a career option for her than anything Science could teach her).
Ariadne's father said no man wanted a girl who was smarter than he was, because the man was the man and that's the way it is. Ariadne simply scowled at him and tried to tune out his brutal rantings, but even for all the daydreaming in the world she couldn't block out the words that ripped bloodily at her ears, harsh and rough-sounding: bitch, whore, worthless, slut...These words cut into her dreams sometimes, a little piece of her life that didn't fit in with the rest of it.
(Which of these things do not belong?)
Ariadne liked to sit on a bench on top of Knob Hill and watch the sun set over the city skyline. She sat cross-legged with her sketchbook in her lap, her wavy brunette hair falling out from where she had tucked it neatly behind her ears. She drew a city that defied gravity (literally), bending the rules of physics, buildings that mirrored other buildings, walls that mirrored other walls, intricate details, a swirl here, a zig-zag there.
"What are you drawing?" a voice said from over her shoulder, and she jumped, startled, a tiny gasp escaping her lips.
"Is this what you do for fun?" she asked, placing her hand over her heart in relief; "Sneak up on innocent people, observe their personal drawings, then scare the shit out of them for your own entertainment?"
"Why, yes!" said the young man with the thick blonde hair and shiny blue eyes. He took a seat beside her, uninvited, and instead of this making her grow more wary, she liked him a little more. His face grew serious, and he said, "I like your drawings." That was it. Simple as that. Ariadne was sold.
She dated Sam until the end of summer, when she decided to take all of her newfound feminist powers and pour them into college. Independence was good.
(She never had to speak to her father again).
But she did learn her father was wrong about boys not liking smart girls. (Arthur).
Her father was wrong about a lot of things.
3. Due to her inescapable longing to pry into other people's business, Ariadne had never been polite.
When she met Dom Cobb & Co., she never expected that her dreams would become reality (or vice versa). Her drawings became real. In the dreams she could see her imagination come to life before her eyes. She never imagined that she could enter a world so complex, so deeply layered and cruelly beautiful.
And it didn't take her long to discover that Cobb's own mind was equally as complex, as layered and beautiful. She could see in his eyes that he was scarred, haunted by some ghost in an otherworldly dimension. In his dreams, creeping into his reality. She didn't know why Arthur and the rest couldn't seem to notice this.
In that moment where she saw him sleeping, alone in that cold room in that uncomfortable chair at that steel table, she almost let him be. Almost let it lie for the first time in her life. Some things are better left alone.
But her natural urge to nose into other people's business wasn't the only thing that ultimately made her decide to go lie down in that chair, bind herself to him in his dreams, his memories. It was the way his dark, calculating eyes cast downward when she mentioned Mal, his tortured steps, hollow down the cold hallways of the warehouse. The twisted daylight-or, perhaps, the exact opposite-that was Cobb, the very thing which drew her to him.
She saw Mal in the memories he refused to let go of. Ariadne was filled with contempt, for more reasons and furthermore, complicated reasons, than she could begin to explain. Ariadne resented Mal for the risk she imposed on the entire team. The way she crept into the recesses of Dom's mind and infecting his countenance with blackness and bitter nostalgia and sorrow; it leaked from his dreams into his reality. She resented Mal because she snuck her way into all of his dreams, and if they were going to complete the inception, Mal was the one thing-more than projections, more than a kick-that threatened to destroy all their intricate plans. One visit from Mal and all six of them could be launched into limbo, lost for years and years in haze and uncertainty. And there was another reason Ariadne resented Mal, one she didn't want to think about. It was what she had done to Dom, made him stony and scarred, torn up over her and almost certain never to let go. Never move on. Never...find someone else.
Obviously it was impolite, at the very least, for her to intrude on his dreams. He had many dark secrets, locked away from everyone, even Arthur. But someone had to know. And secretly, Ariadne liked that that someone was her.
4. Ariadne knew now she wasn't monogamous.
In the very moment Ariadne married Arthur, she knew she could never fully be faithful to him. In her mind she still fantasized about Cobb, his haunted eyes and tortured soul. Sometimes, right after she had kissed her husband hello or goodbye, she caught Cobb looking at her. Sometimes she stared right back, their eyes connecting to share a silent truth, something intangible, but thick in the space between them. He never turned away from anyone who stared him down. With Ariadne, he made an exception.
She hoped he knew that she was the one who had saved him (she knew he did). She had lived up to her namesake: Ariadne, a figure of Greek mythology who had aided Theseus in overcoming the Minotaur (the Minotaur, of course, being Mal. How clever she was with analogies). She had pulled him out of the labyrinth that one or both of them had created, rescued him from his own maze, awakened him out of his own dark night. Ariadne had saved him from Mal. In the few moments they were alone in limbo (his arms pulling her out of the ocean, holding her up, asking if she was all right), she knew they would be bound together in a way that Arthur and everyone else would never understand. It was then, alone with him in a world she knew would never be real, that she understood why Mal clung to him, why Mal didn't want to escape limbo.
She hadn't wanted to leave him there.
One night, after the team had successfully performed [a quite uncomplicated] inception on the Secretary of State, Arthur, Eames and the rest gone home, Ariadne stayed after to gather her things. She was slightly buzzed from the celebratory drinks the team had had that night, but not buzzed enough not to notice Cobb, asleep in a chair, the very same place she had found him five years previous.
This time she didn't try to intrude on his subconscious. She did what she used to think was easy and simple: she woke him up. She thought she might have to topple his chair over or splash cold water on him-sleep was deeper for an extractor-but at the first touch of her small, cold hands, her slender fingers gently tracing his cheekbones, he awoke.
"Hi," he said, still groggy.
"Hi," she answered back softly.
"Are you drunk?" Dom asked her.
Ariadne thought of Arthur waiting for her at home. "Not drunk enough," she answered. Cobb smiled. It was exactly something she would say.
They drank some more, toasting Arthur and dreams and Saito and the inevitability of death (escape). The clinking of their glasses, the softness of their hushed voices, was almost all she would remember the following morning.
Ariadne couldn't recall exactly how it happened. She said something about limbo, maybe something profound or maybe just a broken sentiment muddied by utter drunkenness. Then he was suddenly inches away from her face, his eyes intense, the shot glass toppled over on the table. He searched her eyes with his, asking if she remembered. If she remembered limbo.
He looked like he was about to kiss her.
For a second, Ariadne wondered if she would be the one to rapidly (all in one motion, just get it done) close the distance between them, no more thickness, no space, once and for all, just this once.
But she didn't. He didn't. The moment passed, the night long gone, she rose to leave and they never spoke of it again.
But she remembered. She remembered more than he would ever know.
5. Ariadne had never been-would never be-perfect.
She dreamt, sometimes, that they were together. Making love on the beach in limbo, in a world where they could be together, no Arthur, no Mal, no inception, no reality. She hoped Arthur never entered her subconscious. She wasn't very good at trying to keep down her dirty dreams.
She knew now that nothing was as private as she wanted it to be.
Ariadne knew she would always love Dom. This hurt her, not only because of the impossibility of their togetherness, but also because of how deeply she would hurt Arthur if he ever found out.
She had always thought of herself as the type of person never to let things lie, much to her father's detriment.
But this?
Stolen glances, almost-kisses, memories and dreams engulfed in darkness, a connection unbreakable for time and all eternity, a pair of arms pulling her out of an endless salty ocean...
This was all she could ever make of Dom Cobb.
Read and review pleeeease! XOXO