Of course I was lured into writing an Inception fanfic! After watching the movie and liking it more than a lot, I felt Ariadne and Arthur needed more attention, from me at least. They needed a lot more background, together or separately. They needed more story-time. So this is what I'm doing now. It sort of starts at the beginning of the movie, a quarter way through and continues throughout. I follow the line of the movie but I add some scenes, basically. I hope you enjoy it! And go see Inception if you haven't!
Their footsteps echoed on the smooth surface of the metal floor. She looked back at the Penrose stairs, smirking to herself. That woman there was still picking up the files.
Through the glass walls, a soft light was cast on their faces and into his brown eyes.
Arthur had just told her something. She registered the words and looked around at the strangers passing by. They were projections of her own subconscious. Although, it felt as if they were separate individuals, independent and free-willed.
What if, some day, someone came to her and told her all this time she had just been a projection in someone's head and all that she had achieved, all that she had done, seemingly based on personal decisions, had just been the thoughts and orders of someone else's mind?
She wouldn't be able to stand it. Maybe she would end her life.
But then, would she wake up and be free?
Many wise men had firmly believed life was just a dream and death was the wake up call.
But how many dreams did it take to wake up from before you found something real?
Maybe it never really happened; you never got to something real after all.
Maybe there was no need for it. You'd just have to be content with what you had now.
In the end, did it really matter what was real?
She was getting dazed and confused in these dreary and yet completely logical thoughts. A shadow of sadness and doubt crossed her face as Arthur explained to her the complexity of each level.
She realized the best way to guard themselves from the projections and to stall time was to build a complicated maze.
'Exactly,' Arthur said, content that she was a fast learner. He had to admit, he hated having to over-explain things to someone. He liked it when people picked up the pace quickly. It was a relief to him that she absorbed everything fast.
It meant she could keep up. He wouldn't always have to look back and wait for her. At least he hoped that would be the case.
She paused, looking at her feet briefly, before smiling.
'My subconscious seems polite enough,' she mumbled.
Arthur looked down at her, his lip curving almost reluctantly into a half-smile. He wasn't used to such phrases. Not in this world.
'Wait. It will get worse,' he replied, chuckling.
She decided she liked it when he smiled. He seemed like a serious man, a man that wasn't plagued by nightmares like Cobb was. He seemed to have no reason to be sad or happy, or even remotely excited. He had experienced the dream world before and though it probably amazed him each and every time he always appeared impassive and professional about it. As if he wouldn't want to compromise his integrity and act like he couldn't handle a different world.
So when he chanced to smile, it was like a surprise to her.
Almost like a kick.
Both their smiles disappeared though when the subject of discussion was turned to Cobb. It was never an easy talk. He wasn't a man you could figure out by a simple debate. It had taken Arthur years to know a small side of him.
He let Ariadne know of his suspicions about Mal preventing him from building. He couldn't rely on a suspicion though. He never did. Suspicions were guesses, based on his own preconceptions. Even if he knew it was likely true, he couldn't quite be sure, because he didn't know half of it. He didn't have all the pieces. And it tortured him because it always escaped him, the last part of the big picture, the key to Cobb's psyche. Without it, he just found himself somewhere in the middle, somewhere in a dream.
Some Point Man he was.
Internally, he was struggling with the need to be Dom's friend and support him throughout this crisis, but at the same time, respect his own code of principles that forbade him to endanger a mission foolishly.
He always ended up hating himself for coming short on one end of the problem.
It was a win-lose situation. In this job, there was always something that had to go. It was personal life, maybe friends, maybe ethics or even sanity.
So people gave up many important things just for the sake of dreaming.
Giving up on life might be the last thing to give.
Ariadne looked shocked and mortified when he told her that Mal had died. It was one of the predictable consequences of this 'job'. It entailed a commitment hard to find anywhere else.
He had never known Mal personally. He had only met her a couple of times. But she had seemed a lovely woman as Cobb's partner and wife. She was smart, beautiful, strong, and most of all ambitious, just like her husband.
There was nothing that she wouldn't want to try. There were no boundaries she did not set to cross.
Whatever she did, it had to be meaningful, it had to take the world by surprise.
It had to be larger than life. And twice as creative.
He had admired that in her.
Admittedly, he had resented her for it as well. Because she had everything he lacked.
She reminded him he was always falling short, although he seemed to be so impeccably high.
Mal was the constant shadow over Cobb's shoulder, reminding him he would never understand the kind of bond that two brilliant minds had. She also always made sure he knew he would never be as good as Cobb, or deserve him as a partner.
When Mal had died, he had been ashamed, because he had not felt sad. He had felt empty.
The news had struck him as some absurd notion, as some absurd gateway to a perverse freedom.
Only when he saw what it did to his friend, did he feel the pain. Only when her death became more than Cobb could handle, did he understand her necessity. Or at least he pretended, he tried to understand.
Ariadne asked him what she was like in real life. He had to be honest.
A small, unperceivable wave of anger and regret pierced his voice as he replied.
'She was lovely.'
He turned away immediately, staring at the projections on the other side of the room.
Ariadne wanted to ask him more, but she felt it wasn't the right place or time. Or maybe he wasn't even the right man to ask.
She was curious. She was hungry to know.
It wasn't just this world.
All these people had intricate lives that moulded into the dream world. She felt compelled to know more about them.
She thought she wouldn't be able to find much about Arthur, though, because she suspected there wasn't a lot to discover. He showed his true self in all his actions and words. He didn't hide. Or at least he gave her that strong impression. He gave her the impression of unwavering confidence.
But Cob...that was an entirely different matter.
'So...' she continued after a long silence, in which they kept walking, 'what else would you like to teach me?'
'Well, there's something else that could possibly help you in building the maze. It's called a fake kernel. Well, I call it that. Basically, what the maze appears to be to the dreamer is also a factor. You not only have to design a maze, but you have to make it look like it's something entirely different, or at least that, at the bottom of it, he will find what you want him to find and not what's really there. Does that make sense to you?'
Ariadne frowned slightly as she poured over the thought.
'So, basically, if let's say, I make one level a bank, the subject will conclude that there is money in it. But in actuality I would be placing something else in there. So a bank would be a good place to hide something completely unrelated to money.'
'Something along those lines,' he agreed, nodding his head pleased. She was getting somewhere. She wasn't half-bad, he decided. She still needed a lot of training, though.
She was so young. Her round hazel eyes reminded him of the eyes of a child.
He had checked her file thoroughly. He thought it had been a mistake when he found out she was only three years younger than him. She seemed a lot younger.
He stayed up one night reading her college student file. It had been an interesting read. It hadn't revealed enough, but he hadn't been exactly interested in finding out more. What he found was that, the only special academic achievement of her life had been this scholarship to Paris. It's as if fate had brought her to the place where it all begins.
She could have taken other scholarship, she could have never left home. She could have been lousy at this. She could have been weaker or stronger.
And her name was Ariadne, of all the ironic names in the world.
But she was a decent, kind girl and she was a good architect with a solid mind. There was nothing wrong with her.
She was exactly in the middle, between the dangerous extremes.
Just like him, in a way.
She looked so average and common, though.
And yet so delicate and sweet. She wasn't too pretty or too plain. In that respect, he felt she was almost too normal.
That's why he felt slightly more comfortable around her. He didn't have to be so tense or so focused around her, because she only offered him peaceful normality.
He didn't have to try and hide his shortcomings, because she didn't seem to see them, or if she did, she didn't care to talk about them.
She had turned outjust as expected when he had first seen her in Paris.
From the first second of their meeting, he knew she would only remind him of one thing; that he was the Point Man.
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