"Wake up, Cobb. You have to wake up."

"No," I whisper, brokenly, "Not again, leave me alone, please."

"Wake up, Cobb, please,"

I'm always waking up these days. I reach the same point every time; James and Philippa have married and I have grandchildren. Then a voice comes, not always the same voice, but saying the same thing. Wake up. Always voices from that last mission, the mission that gave me back my children.

"Cobb, will you at least look at me?"

I look up, on reflex. And see that this voice is different. There's a girl of about 17 years standing there who I don't recognise. She's looking at me pleadingly.

"You have to wake up," she tells me again.

"Dad?" Philippa calls, and I turn to see her standing behind me, by the door of her house with Lucy, her daughter. "Who's this?" she asks, taking Lucy's hand.

"Just a friend, sweetheart," I tell her, "Just a friend," she retires into the house. I look back to the girl, who suddenly looks familiar, like someone I know, or knew a long time ago.

"Your...daughter?" she asks, as if she finds it hard to say the word.

"Yes," I say, "Sorry, what did you say your name was?"

She pauses, opens her mouth as if to answer, then closes it again.

"I didn't," is her only reply.

"Then what do you want from me?"

She takes a deep breath, and closes her eyes as if focusing very hard, then recites,

"I am asking you to take a leap of faith. You're waiting for a train. A train that will take you faraway. You know where you hope this train will take you, but you can't know for sure. But it doesn't matter, because...because you'll be together."

"Mal?" I whisper, my heart beating harder in my chest.

"No," she says, "but I need you to trust me. Ariadne...they said that it would be the best way," She takes something out of her pocket, a small object which I just about recognise. An object that I locked away a long time ago, that I forgot about.

"Your totem," she reminds me.

"Mal's totem," I correct her. She hands it to me, and looks at me expectantly. Slowly, reluctantly, I kneel down on the pavement, and she joins me. I put the totem on the pavement and spin it. Then I wait for it to stop spinning. We watch it together – we watch, and watch and watch, but it doesn't stop. I meet her eyes, knowing what she wants now. Perhaps it's the only way to stop the endless cycle of waking up. Pocketing the totem, I stand up.

"I understand," I tell her, "I'm ready."

With unmistakeable joy in her eyes, she leads me down the streets I now remember building and out of the city, to a railway track. She takes my hands, as I took Mal's that day all those years ago, and we lie down together on the track. I see her fight of the flash of apprehension that glimmers in her eyes, reminding me of Mal, unnaturally so.

"You're waiting for a train," she says, again.

"A train that will take you faraway," I respond. I hear the train, far off at the minute but getting nearer. Death or an end to the torture, I remind myself, sternly, no more waking up. I can't help but grip her hands harder though.

"You know where you hope this train will take you," she says, a little louder.

"But you can't know for sure," I complete the sentence.

"But it doesn't matter," she yells, above the noise of the train. She's gripping my hands now, like Mal did. I can tell that, like Mal, she can't bring herself to feel certain that this will work.

"Because you'll be together," I yell.

Then I wake up. I blink a few times, and look round to see a room that looks like something out of an old people's home. I am surrounded by people who I don't recognise, and in a chair next to me is the girl from what I now know to be the dream. Putting my hand in my pocket, I pull out my totem, and spin it on a nearby coffee table. It spins for less than a minute before stopping. This time, I conclude, I have woken up for real.