AN: Hooray for father-figure Dom drabble!
Inception and Dom and Arthur and Ariadne and Fisher are and always will be Chis Nolan's, no matter how much i wish otherwise.
Enjoy!
Move
There's just something about the way she talks, the way she behaves, that leads Dom to believe she comes from a completely different place than they do. She's so young, so uninvolved, that she often times comes up with ideas none of the men would have thought of. This not unexpected. Actually, this is the point.
They've lived, whereas she—she's only thought about living.
Dom realizes that this is great for the job, her fresh innovation. But he sometimes worries what it's doing to her. He doesn't want her to lose that spark, but he's almost positive that it's inevitable.
Everyone knows what happens to the youth who dreams too quickly, too hard, too often. Miles saw it happen to Dom, and Dom himself could look in the mirror and watch the job take control of his life, but it's always different when it happens to you. If it had been only him, he would have teased her and prodded her and challenged her, constantly egged her on.
But he's seen someone besides himself age twenty years in a matter of days. He's seen someone he knows and likes loose his spunk and his youthful joy.
He can't remember the last time Arthur acted his age. Arthur (Arthur's only twenty three, you know) used to be like a son to Dom and Mol. And then, he grew up. He grew up fast, after he started extracting. Sometimes, Dom worries that he subconsciously did it on purpose, that he brought Arthur in because he no longer wanted a pseudo-son, he wanted a friend. And that's what he got, for one easy payment of half of Arthur's childhood.
He can't let that happen with Ariadne, Dom realizes, when he watches her work on the first level of what will soon be their dreams filled by Robert Fischer's subconscious. He won't let her into this dream. She's not coming on this job, and she's never going to meet Mol again, and he's not going to make her shoulder his burdens. She's not his to lean on; she's just a child.
He's going to let her enjoy that for as long as possible.