She had never bothered with psychology during her undergraduate career. Except for a few prerequisite courses to guarantee her degree, she had stuck close to her field. For as long as she had known herself, she had known she wanted to design, to build. It was because of this track that she had never studied the sub-sect of psychology including dreams, much less lucid dreaming.
Before she could realize she might one day need it, she had been off to Paris, the city of love. She loved creating.
When Cobb had approached her, he had mentioned nothing of psychology, but spoke of mazes and traps, time limits and impossible constructions. The ideas were circular stairwells that lead to the heavens. He knew all of the right words to say, and she accepted the schematics of her destiny as greedily as she had avoided psychology.
Had she been looking closely she could have seen herself reflected in his impassioned explanation.
The Rue had exploded around them, demitasse and espresso projectiles like meteorites through the air before she woke, not missing the irony that coffee had both killed and woken her. Then had come Mal.
Ariadne herself had been so consumed by the process, that her will could shift and shape, defy gravity, defy reason. She understood the warnings Cobb had given her, but they had been so overshadowed by the dream. Mal had come like a vapor on the wind, the steely glint in her hand as potent as the horrid anger on her face.
Even when she had stormed off in her anger-fear-anxiety, discreetly testing the flesh over her stomach and the tissue beneath, she had already been remembering the metropolis that had rolled itself like she rolled the morning paper. Cars moved like rockets, propelling themselves upward along a plumb line as long as there was road beneath them. People moved in the same way, converting their paths to perpendicular similes when they reached non-existent limits. Her doing. Her work. All of it.
Pure creation.
The bad memories faded. Even Mal's face faded, and the knife was all but a shadow in the recesses of her mind when she returned to the warehouse where they had gathered in secrecy. In safety.
Cobb had given her the line art and guidelines, and she knew that she would always admire him and the genius behind his meager introduction. But he kept himself distant, spent more time in the dream than out of it. When he was not directly planning, his eyes said he was miles away. Somewhere else. Somewhen else.
If he had given her framework, it was Arthur who gave her substance.
From the time that she had woken after her first encounter with the late Mrs. Cobb, to the Penrose stairs that Escher would have envied, he was a steady anchoring presence. He was the first, the only person, to really greet her at her meek return. At the time he had been working steadily for the job, and she realized then why he was their de facto front man. He seemed unflappable.
"I wanted to stay away," she had lied. She had wanted no such thing. He had smiled, given a soft and understanding response. His eyes had never strayed from hers, confident in his assessment and she had agreed. "It's pure creation," she said, and that was all that was needed.
They studied together, or rather she studied, and he filled in the limitless gaps in her education, and she began to know what it meant to dream. Her control was stronger than his in a matter of sessions, and he never tried to take it from her, content to let her explore learn. She never crossed the line she had the first time, never tried to reconstruct full places and memories. Even with her totem she found the earlier repercussions too controlling to try. Then as time passed, she was realizing she did not need to pull from "what you know."
Paris was like a dream in itself. The Eiffel Tower did not stand on its head, but at night seemed as magical as the first time she had ever laid eyes on it. The Arc de Triomphe never budged, but shaded them just the same. The Conciergerie did not burst forth with golden light, but its dank dimness did not seem so caging with Arthur's hand steadying her down the slippery stairs. All the while he stood next to her, smiling that same assuring smile. The golden queen reminded her that she was awake
The constructs for their job seemed to build themselves, Yusuf's urban labyrinth laying itself out in only two sessions and Eames taking even less. It was not hard to create a sparse landscape and a hospital with limited rooms. Arthur's was her favorite, lush and personal. Not too open like the city, or too uninviting like the fortress.
There was a permanent fixture in the dreams now, one she could neither construct nor wish away, even had she wanted to. Arthur was there, and at times she wondered who was helping whom more.
Between the time she woke, struggling against belts meant to protect her, and the time she crawled onto the rocky terrain beneath the bridge, she knew the answer to her question. When he'd held the compressed air to her mouth and then nearly swam the distance to safety for both of them, she knew.
"He'll be all right," she said after a long moment, drawing sopping wet hair from her eyes. Arthur was watching her again, the smile was gone, another intense expression in his face. Cobb had not come with them. It was only right that he would be afraid for what would happen to his partner, to his friend.
"It's not him I'm worried about," he responded quickly, and she did not know if he was lying or not. She remained silent. He was still watching her, and she noted the beads of river water falling from his hair over the smooth planes of his cheeks, past the corners of full lips to his angled chin. She reached in her pocket and felt the heavy totem, miraculously present after all of the jostling and shaking they had gone through.
It would do no good to grab for it now. In the dream it could do anything she commanded it to.
He stood, and helped her from the slippery rocks to more stable footing. Time at the Parisian prison fluttered in the back of her mind. "The projections will be looking for us soon. At this level of the dream Fischer doesn't know that he's dreaming," he explained. A short distance away Eames and Yusuf were still clambering up the shoreline.
Arthur turned his head, and Ariadne did not bother dropping the fingers that clasped hers so tightly. She watched his tall profile as his mind blazed through possibilities and solutions.
Mazes.
They would be looking for Yusuf, but their team would not likely separate. Safety was best in numbers, especially if they could ward them off together.
Time Limits.
Nearly a full week of dream time here where they would have to fight and hide.
Traps.
Saito had been wounded in the first few minutes.
Waiting.
Could they hope to make it out alive?
Mal.
The woman was no longer a threat, but a sharp reminder of what they were facing.
Impossible constructions.
An unlikely smile found its way onto her face. She tightened her hold, determined.
At the intensified grip, Arthur turned, words on his lips ready to comfort the fear he perceived, his brow furrowed. Ariadne grasped his shoulder and pulled him down to her level, quickly pressing her lips against his. Her quick breath had nothing to do with the van at the bottom of the river. She tried not to think that his might be.
He barely pulled away, forehead resting against his hers and licked his lips before swallowing. "A diversion?" he asked, snorting softly. He could not hide his racing breath at this distance.
She mimicked his actions, still tasting him on her mouth, then shook her head. "A promise," she replied. He straightened as Yusuf and Eames ambled onto the service road.
This was her dream as much as Yusuf's. The mentoring had been Arthur's. The anchoring had been Arthur's. If he was afraid now, she would anchor for him.
If they were lucid dreaming then she would choose to bring them home.