Thanks for the reviews. I have a question: is it permissible to call in-laws by their first name? Or their last name? For the sake of clarity, I've used a little of both, but I'm just wondering what the usual procedure is.

Inception belongs to Christopher Nolan.

- Li

S i x D e g r e e s

Of Erdős, Shusaku and Karinthy

p a l m l i n e s .

Cobb never quite figured out the spaces in between. Later, when he found time to think back, he would recall only a vague numbness in his extremities and an odd ringing sensation in his ears. One minute he was in bed with the receiver dangling lifelessly from his hand, and the next, he was everywhere at once, packing bags and shaking his children awake. James, groggy with dreams, crawled into his car seat without fuss and immediately dropped back to sleep. Phillipa, on the other hand, was still wide awake from the caterpillar episode, and protested so loudly on the way to the car that the house across the street actually switched on its lights.

"But I don't want to go visit Grandma," she declared for the third time. "She always makes me eat broccoli."

"I know," replied Cobb distractedly. He checked his pocket one last time for his wallet and passport. "Put on your seatbelt."

"Why?"

"Because it keeps you safe."

She pulled a face. "Why do we have to go to Grandma's house?"

In the two o'clock silence, the sound of the van's engine roaring to life grated painfully against his ears. As he pulled out of the driveway, he saw one of his neighbours pressed up curiously against their front room window. He fervently hoped that they would not mistake him for a kidnapper and report him to the police. Saito had promised that all record of any charges against him had been wiped, but he was not willing to take any chances. It would not have been the first time that one of his clients had proved less than truthful.

A sharp kick against the back of his seat drove him from his thoughts. He glanced up at the rear view mirror and saw Phillipa scowling at him.

"Why?" she repeated.

Cobb swallowed. "Daddy has to go on a business trip," he lied. "I'll pick you up when I'm done."

Phillipa kicked his seat again. "How long?" she demanded, and craned her head higher to try and see his reflection.

He tore his eyes away from the mirror and back to the deserted street. He was a practiced liar, but not in front of Phillipa. Never in front of Phillipa. Her resemblance to her mother was too close, and he would always find his left eyebrow twitching at the last, crucial moment.

She used to laugh at him for it.

"Just a few days," he mumbled through dry lips.

"That's what you always say."

The car swerved abruptly to the right as his hand slipped on the steering wheel. In the backseat, Phillipa inadvertently smacked her brother's face with her flailing arm. James mumbled something unintelligible and rolled onto his other side. Heart pounding painfully against his ribcage, Cobb jerked the car onto the side of the street and dropped his hands into his lap, where they continued to tremble uncontrollably. There was nothing else to do. Nothing to say that could overturn the undeniable fact that he had lied before, and more than once. Every phone call from every exotic place on the face of the planet had been a lie to himself, but also to Phillipa. And James. He wondered what his son would say if he was conscious enough to grasp what was happening. Would he accuse him of lying too, or was he still too young to remember or care?

"Daddy?"

He twisted around in his seat to look at his daughter. She stared back at him with wide eyes, watery eyes shadowed by an unnameable presence that did not belong on a child's face. A painful lump rose in his throat. He cleared it quietly, or at least, tried to.

"This time, it will be different," he forced himself to say. "I'll be back before school ends and we'll go somewhere fun for the summer. Deal?"

Phillipa scrunched up her nose and mulled over the offer for a while. "Will you call?" she asked finally.

"Everyday."

"And you won't let Grandma make me eat broccoli?"

He nearly laughed. On any other day he would have, but the lump still lodged in his throat stopped him. "I'll try my best."

She considered it a moment longer, and then stuck out her hand. "Promise?"

The pain in his chest grew tighter and threatened to cut off his oxygen supply, but he closed his finger around her small, childish one and tugged hard on the knot they formed.

"Promise."

b o r d e r l i n e s .

Marie Miles lived in one of those bungalow cottages that were always being given away on early afternoon game shows. She had been living there for longer than Cobb cared to recall, although he did clearly remember a time when her husband, too, had lived there, and he himself had been a welcome guest for Sunday brunch. Now, with Phillipa curled up in his arms and James stumbling at his feet, he was not so sure as to what kind of welcome he would get.

He heard the doorbell echoing through the silent house when he pressed it. At first, there was nothing, and then a light flickered on in an upstairs window. After a moment, there was the sound of feet shuffling down steps before the hall light also flashed on and the door clicked open.

"What are you doing here?"

Cobb could not help flinching at her brusque manner. No matter how often he heard it, he could not accustom himself to the sound. It always gave him a strange sense of detachment from his body. Before he could reorient his senses and explain his sudden appearance on her doorstep, she caught sight of James and Phillipa. Her frown became, if possible, even more pronounced.

"What are they doing here?"

"I need you to take care of them for awhile," he replied rather guiltily. "Can we come in?"

But she did not open the door any further. "Mon Dieu!" she hissed. "I thought you said no more jobs!"

"I know, but-"

"That was what we agreed to, remember? You promised."

He felt Phillipa beginning to slip from his grip and shifted her weight to rest more securely against his chest. "Please," he begged. "I don't have any other choice. I have to keep them safe."

She crossed her arms tightly, but her steely glare softened at the sight of James practically sleeping on his father's legs. "I supposed I'll have to let you in," she said with a reluctant sigh, and stepped further back into the hall. "You can put Phillipa upstairs," she added, closing the door behind them. "Better take James with you too. He looks like he's going to keel over any minute. The spare room's just beside the stairs."

"I remember," said Cobb, and was rewarded with a withering stare and a string of French too fast for him to catch. He did not miss the gist of their meaning, though, and hurried upstairs.

Once upon a time, this house had been more familiar to him than his own. He'd visited it countless times, first to share dreams with Miles and later, with his daughter. Here, he'd dreamed of growing old with Mal. But it had been several years since he'd last set foot in the house, and though it felt vaguely familiar, there was much that he did not recognize.

He noticed the pictures first. There was a row of them climbing up parallel to the staircase, one frame for each step. He distinctly remembered that the last time he'd been here – was it really only two years ago? – they had all been family photographs. A pictorial documentation of the Miles family. Now there were only miniature paintings lining the walls, interspersed with the odd postcard.

The spare room was almost completely new. Only the furniture was still as he remembered it, and even then, they had been carefully rearranged. The room which had once been so cluttered with heirlooms and other odds and ends was gone, replaced by cold, bare necessities that reminded Cobb of too many lonely nights spent in foreign hotels, with only his dreams for company. He had no desire to leave his children here, where there was no space to escape from their nightmares.

There was the sound of feet at the bottom of the stairs. "Are you lost?" his mother-in-law called up.

Reluctantly, he set Phillipa on the bed, swung James up next to her, and tucked them both in. For a brief moment, he wondered if he should have taken off their shoes, but it was already too late. As he turned to leave, James reached out a hand and tugged at his sleeve groggily.

"Will you bring me back a toy?" he mumbled between yawns.

The lump returned. Blinking rapidly, Cobb ruffled his sons' hair. "I'll bring back a bag full of them," he promised, and James, satisfied, let go of his arm.

Back downstairs, Marie sat ramrod straight in her chair and stared at him dourly from across the empty kitchen table. She had not offered him anything to eat or drink, not that he would have been able to swallow anything in the first place. Still, it was disconcerting to be stared at, and it didn't help at all that her eyes were the exact same shade and shape as her daughter's.

"Phillipa wants me to tell you that she doesn't like broccoli," he murmured to his knuckles.

"And?"

It amazed Cobb how much disdain she managed to squeeze into the one syllable. His fingers itched to play with the totem in his jacket pocket, but he doubted Marie would appreciate it. He settled for clasping his hands together, tightly.

"Someone phoned me this morning," he said. "They told me that Miles – Stephen – was in the hospital."

She raised an eyebrow. "And you feel that's sufficient reason to leave your children and go gallivanting halfway across the globe?"

"He's sick, Marie," replied Cobb. "The doctor wouldn't say with what, but it must be serious if they're calling."

"And you believed them?"

He glanced up sharply at her impassive face. "Why not?"

She shook her head. "I don't know. But I wonder…"

"What?"

Marie fixed her eyes on the window above the sink, where the sky was already starting to turn a lighter blue. "I know Stephen and I are not on the best terms, but I wouldn't want him to die either. As far as I know, I'm still the first name on his emergency contacts." She suddenly looked back at him and searched his face closely. "Don't you think that the hospital would call me too, if he was really sick?"

Cobb did not miss the tinge of suspicion in her voice. He rubbed his temples tiredly and tried his best to keep the irritated edge out of his own.

"I wouldn't lie about something like this."

"Then why not take James and Phillipa with you?" she shot back. "I'm sure they would cheer him up considerably, if he really is sick. And they've never seen Paris."

"This isn't just about whether or not he's sick," he replied with as much calmness as he could muster. "The last time I saw Miles, he was perfectly healthy. I want to know what made him sick."

"So it is another job!" Marie exclaimed triumphantly. Cobb was seized by a violent urge to shake her until she lost all her mighty superiority and sank into a fear that was as acute as his own, however irrational it might be. He'd learned over the years of extraction that instinct was almost always right. Even Arthur, that perfect model for all things orderly and rational, had once grudgingly admitted it.

He curled his hands into tight fists to hold himself steady, but still his voice shook a little when he spoke.

"It might be," he said quietly. "Or it might just be that his surgery went badly. Either way, I need to know the truth."

"You need!" There was the sound of a cough from the upper floor and Marie lowered her voice to a soft, yet nonetheless scathing, whisper. "What about the children? Have you ever thought about what they need? No, don't say anything," she hissed when he opened his mouth angrily to reply. "James might worship the ground you walk on, but he's still young. He doesn't understand yet, and he would idolize anyone who buys him as many toys as you do. But Phillipa – you can't buy love or trust, not even when they belong to a five year old. One day you're going to wake up and realize you don't know your daughter at all. What are you going to do then?"

Cobb stared up at the ceiling. It occurred to him that if he had been born Superman, he would have been able to see straight through the peeling paint and stucco dots and floorboards and carpets to his daughter. She would be sprawled out on her stomach with one hand shoved deep under the pillow, like always. Of course, he would also have been able to fly around the world to see Miles and keep his children safe at the same time. And he would have been able to catch Mal as she fell, so there would have been no need for any of this in the first place.

"I'm hoping I never get to that point," he murmured more to himself than to his mother-in-law.

"You won't be far if you keep on like this."

At the sight of the sunken lines of misery on his face, Marie's expression softened a fraction. "I'll try not to cook too much broccoli," she sighed wearily and stood up. "But really, this is the last time."

"Thank you. I don't know what-"

"I'm not doing this for you," she cut in. "You deserve everything you get. This is for James and Phillipa."

He dropped the hand he had been holding out across the table. "Thank you anyway." He stumbled awkwardly to his feet. "Well…I should get going. I still need to find a flight."

She made no move to follow him, but while he was getting into the car, she suddenly opened the porch door again.

"Dominic?"

He looked up at her silhouette framed by the hall light and felt a sudden wave of pity washing over him. In another life, this same rigid woman had always been the laughing centre of any room. Like her daughter, she had possessed the rare gift of being able to capture attention gracefully, without any effort. And now, she was little better than the pale shade of Mal that still lingered in Cobb's memory.

She ran a hand through her greying hair uncomfortably. "If anything happens to Stephen…You'll let me know?"

"Yes. Of course."

Before the door swung shut, he could swear that she almost smiled.

p h o n e l i n e s .

Cobb did not drive directly to the airport. Once he was out of sight of Marie's house, he pulled into the first deserted gas station he could find. He had to knock several times on the door of the tiny adjoining convenience store before the attendant's head finally jerked off his arm. When he saw Cobb peering through the dirty glass, he started in alarm, grabbed a baseball bat of questionable cleanliness from behind the counter and approached the door cautiously.

"I'm armed!" he yelled from behind the flimsy construction. "And the police station is only five minutes from here. You won't get away with this!"

Cobb waved both empty hands in front of the small window. "I'm not here to steal," he shouted back. "I just need to use a phone."

The attendant's shoulders sagged in evident relief. He leaned the bat against the wall and opened the door a tiny crack, just enough for Cobb to slip through. The inside of the store was as rundown as the exterior. One look at the thick layer of dust gathering on the crooked shelves of chips and peanuts told him that he had picked the wrong place. Anyone after him – if there was anyone after him, and he was not merely suffering from some form of persecution mania – would be able to find him from a mile away. He doubted that the attendant had ever had much to do besides sleep. But there was no point in leaving now – he would be remembered as a rare customer regardless of whether or not he actually bought anything.

"I need to make a phone call," said Cobb. "Long distance."

The attendant shifted uneasily from one foot to the other. "The phone is for employee use only…and the manager…" he trailed off into an inaudible string of excuses. Cobb pulled out his wallet and flipped through it deliberately. The attendant's eyes immediately lit up and he stood up straighter. "Of course, I'm sure he would make an exception for a paying customer," he added hastily.

Cobb extracted a twenty and handed it to the attendant. "Five minutes. Privately."

"Of course. The phone is there, beside the fridge. I'll just wait outside until you're done."

He waited until the man had shuffled out the door before pulling his phone from his pocket and scrolling through the numbers quickly. He should have deleted it the moment he'd stepped back onto American soil, but a nagging suspicion that it might come in handy to have a contact in Paris had stopped him. That, and a reluctance to let go.

Now he only had to hope that his architect had not already left.

l i f e l i n e s .

"Did you know that slugs have four noses?"

Ariadne craned her neck around the thick stack of books she was sorting through. "Really?"

Her friend, one Lane MacLaurin, waved an old school planner at her from behind his own pile. "I don't know. Are these things trustworthy?"

She grimaced. "Probably not."

"Can I keep it then?"

Ariadne shrugged and returned to weighing the pros and cons of various art textbooks. "If you like."

"Excellent. When you grow rich and famous, I can auction this to some eccentric collector and live off of the proceeds."

"Don't be so sure," she warned him, tossing a ripped up copy of Art History for Dummies onto the rapidly growing garbage pile. "I don't even have a job yet, let alone a commission."

Lane snorted in disbelief. "Only because you're so picky. Professor Miles told me you got four offers and you turned them all down. And here I am, still waiting for one."

Ariadne could think of no way to respond without either giving away her secret or sounding incredibly rude, so she shrugged again and pretended to be fascinated by the book she'd just picked up. For several minutes, there was only the sound of rustling pages and the occasional curse from Lane when he dropped a particularly heavy book on his foot. After the third time he had done so, he let out a particularly unpleasant sound somewhere between a groan and a shriek and stood up.

"I need a drink," he mumbled, maneuvering his way between the piles and boxes of odds and ends that had sprung up all over Ariadne's living room floor. "Don't you have anything stronger than iced tea?" he called out in a supremely irritated fashion from the kitchen.

"I don't make a habit of binge drinking on weekends," replied Ariadne with a rather smug grin that Lane, unfortunately, could not see with his head buried in her refrigerator.

"Ha ha, very funny," he muttered, but did not deign to rise any further to her none too subtle dig at his weekend routines. "Ugh. Even your iced tea tastes disgusting."

Ariadne was about to say something about checking the expiry date on the bottle when the obnoxiously loud sound of a rooster crowing burst out from somewhere in the room. She searched her pockets frantically for the source, but could not find it.

"Your phone is in the kitchen!" shouted Lane over the noise, and a white and black blur came flying out through the open doorway. She managed to catch it before it crashed into the vase of flowers balanced precariously on the coffee table. The number flashing on the screen was not a familiar one.

"Hello?"

"Ariadne?"

All the blood drained from her head. The world spun in irregular arcs around her until she was certain that she was going to vomit at any minute. Her pulsed jumped erratically against her neck and threatened to burst out of her skin altogether.

"Ariadne? Are you there?"

"I-Cobb?"

There was a crackle of static that sounded like a prolonged exhale. "Yes."

Her heart stopped altogether for a moment before jumpstarting back at twice its normal pace somewhere in the region of her neck. She stumbled over her words in a rush. "What-Why are you calling?"

"Will you do me a favour?"

She took a long breath to steady the bubble of excitement welling up inside her. "A job?"

"No, nothing like that."

Her heart plummeted back past its usual place to her stomach. "Of course," she replied and hoped that he would not be able to hear the disappointment in her voice through the phone.

"I need you to go see Miles for me."

"What?" asked Ariadne, surprised. "Isn't he getting his hip replaced?"

On the other end, Cobb drew in a sharp breath. "Who told you?"

"He did," she answered, now thoroughly confused. "Why? What's going on?"

"It's nothing. I just thought…Never mind, it's not important. Do you think you can go see him? He's at the American Hospital of Paris. The nurse at the front desk will tell you what room he's in."

"What – you want me to go now?"

"Can you?"

"Of course I can, but aren't you going to tell me anything about it first? I don't think the hospital staff will take too kindly to some college kid sporadically bursting into the surgery room," she added, hoping her explanation would induce him to tell her something about his sudden and strange request. As a matter of fact, she had been to the same hospital numerous times and had found the nurses a little less discrete than was perhaps professional on the matter of patient confidentiality.

"Tell them you're my sister," suggested Cobb. "Make up anything you like. I just need you to see him. Call me once you do." And he rattled off a chain of digits that Ariadne had to struggle to copy down.

"And you're not going to tell me anything?" she demanded again once he had finished. "Not even what I'm supposed to do when I see him? Or what I'm looking for?"

"You'll know once you see him. I have to go now."

"Alright," agreed Ariadne. "I'll call you-"

But Cobb had already hung up.

"What was that all about?" Lane asked from the kitchen. "If you're going to go bursting into a hospital, can I tag along?"

"No," she replied brusquely – too brusquely, for his expression immediately turned into one of suspicion. She sighed. "Look, I appreciate it, but this is kind of personal. One of my dad's friends…and, well, it doesn't look too good for him. I'm just going to drop by the hospital and stay with him until his daughter gets here."

"I see," said Lane slowly. Ariadne was not entirely sure that he believed a word of what she'd said, but there was no time to invent anything more elaborate or convincing.

"I have to go," she said, stuffing her phone into her pocket. Her fingers brushed against the bishop lying inside. She rubbed it gently, whether for luck or comfort, she wasn't quite sure. "You can stay and finish sorting through everything if you want," she added dubiously.

He waved an arm randomly at the living room floor. "And get killed by all this stuff? No thanks. I'll save my good deed of the year for when you actually move. You might need something slightly sturdier than a caveman bicycle to lug all this around."

Ariadne nodded halfheartedly, although with her mind still on Cobb, she had not taken in half of what her friend had said. If she had, she would not have at all taken kindly to his thinly veiled criticism of her beloved bicycle.