Disclaimer: Nolan is the genius behind Inception. I am only borrowing but I promise I'll return them.
"Face it," sighed Yusef, "he's never going to show."
"Give him time," voiced Arthur, bent over the table and flipping through the dossier. "First daycare drop off."
As if on cue, the elevator doors opened and out stepped their Extractor. Ariadne, who had been pulling a wall over to the other side of the room, paused and gave him a sunny smile.
"Now that we're all here," Eames singsonged. "Let's get started, shall we?"
They spent the next few hours going over the case: Ilsa Redford, 85, of Beverly Hills. Only daughter and heiress of an old Hollywood director (whose extensive list of films was rattled off, without effort, by Arthur). Her granddaughter, even more wealthy, was getting married and hoped that the Institute would be able to help her grandmother in time for her wedding.
Arthur had gone in for the extraction on a solo, found she was looping. At that statement, the team settled into their seats in a way that left Cobb raising an eyebrow. "Care to explain?"
Eames sat up in his chair. "Looping occurs, usually, when the subject has some sort of unfinished business or guilt. In those cases, the dream is always the same, and always repeated. It takes an outside force," at this he gestured around the room at everyone, "to surface them."
"If we can progress their time line, we stabilize the dream enough for us to get them to realize they're dreaming, and that they need to wake up,"elaborated Ariadne. From the way he was looking at her, she figured that Cobb was thinking of Limbo, of her shooting Mal. He seemed to be seeing something past the walls of the room they were in, and it left her feeling uncomfortable.
Arthur handed Dom a few pages of notes. "I don't think it will be much of a problem getting her out; no real deep-seated issues down there, just a single regret."
The Extractor looked up from the pages, to his best friend. "Which is?"
Eames tapped the chalkboard behind him, where an old black-and-white photograph was taped. "She never got to tell her soldier boy that she loved him. Bit sad, really. Anyway, she keeps reliving some big party where he confessed his love for her, and being Daddy's darling, she never went after him."
"So we fulfill her fantasy."
Ariadne shook her head. Now for the hard part. "We're not," she answered. "Eames is going to Forge himself into looking like her husband. After the soldier leaves, he will remind her of the life they have together, and why she should wake up."
Cobb nodded, taking it all in. They had promised that it would be an easy case. "Just tell me one thing: is her husband really still alive?"
Of course he would think of that, of waking up and finding what you thought you knew to be the truth was only really smoke and mirrors. Ariadne assured him that the husband was alive and well, and missing his wife. He seemed to relax a little after that.
Yusef laced his fingers across his stomach and smiled broadly. "And while all of you are doing that, I will be here, monitoring your vitals, just in case. It's the hardest part, after all."
Eames snorted and rolled his eyes.
They went over their parts, how Dom would be on hand to extract information should it be needed in the surfacing, how Ariadne had constructed a building adjacent to the hotel where the party was being held (just in case), how Arthur would probably be bored out of his mind in an old woman's dream.
"Lies," laughed Eames, "Arthur is going to be a kid in a candy store with all this big band music and the like, aren't you, darling?"
Arthur kept his face expressionless, but said to his partner "You just never know when you need a Point Man. We had a deal, Cobb: no going down without one another. Does it still stand?"
Cobb looked up from appraising one of Ariadne's floor plans. "Of course," he replied, without hesitating.
"Then we will monitor the subject for a few days, track her R.E.M. cycles and compare them to the time line of the dream. Until then, let's all enjoy a little down time, shall we?"
Cobb smiled softly at Arthur; it had a touch of paternal pride. "Leadership suits you, Arthur."
"Had to, without you here," was Arthur's terse reply. "It's really great to have you back, Cobb."
It was a rare moment in their friendship, for them to be so open with one another. Cobb gave the Point Man a brotherly pat on the back and bid everyone goodbye.
Ariadne knocked on the door, and waited for the seated man to give her some sign to come in, despite his door being wide open. The folders were moved, but put back into the same pile of work. Good.
"Yes?" Stephen asked, and looked up..
"I'm rescuing you from your paperwork and inviting you to Mel's for lunch," she announced, smiling. Her heart beat a little faster at the realization that this was all going to be one of the biggest deceits she'd ever perpetrated in a while. At least in reality. "Don't know about you, but I haven't had a decent thé à la menthe in a while."
"Well, if you're buying..." he prompted, merrily, then pointed at his desk. "Give me ten minutes."
"I'll meet you in the parking lot, then."
It had been a while since Ariadne had lifted something from somebody in real life, and for the most part, lifts were Eames' area of specialty. She managed it fairly well, ghosting the ID card into her jacket pocket during a clumsy looking bump into Miles when they passed in different directions.
"Sorry! Looking for that report I wanted you to look at during lunch about potential changes to department regs." She fumbled through her briefcase, balancing it against her hip and slightly raised knee, continuing for a few minutes before exhaling loudly. "Damn it, I think I left it on my desk."
"Want me to wait?" he asked, but she dismissed his offer, saying she'd have to go hunt for it. "I suppose I'll start on over, then."
She turned, counted to four and then twisted back around. "Stephen," she called. "Don't take Grand Central, there's some kind of construction. Looks like the parkway is going to be our best bet." It would mean the ten minute trip would take him at least twenty, and she didn't even really need that long.
He thanked her and got into his car, where he would listen to a satellite radio station of classical music that had no traffic reports, which she already knew. Ariadne walked back in quickly, and took the elevator to the floor where their offices were located.
Miles' door clicked open with a quick swipe of the card, and she immediately closed it behind herself. The folders were still where they had been before; she carefully moved the stack of work resting on top of them over to his desk, and grabbed the blue folders. As she scanned one directly onto her own portable drive, she flipped through the other.
They were dossiers, with identical jackets. Only the small tabs on the top indicated that they were for the mother and daughter, separately. The information on her mother was a little out of date. Ariadne knew she was in D.C., at a new lab, although the file located her in Havana. Her mother's visage peered coolly up at her from the glossy photograph above her name: Ismene Maurer.
Surprise washed over her when she opened her own file and a younger, cheerfully smiling variant of herself lay inside. Her face was fuller, and her grin wider. Unsettled, she flipped the picture over to skim through the typed contents.
It was her life's story, up to a point and slightly revised (no doubt, by her mother). A progress report, signed by her mother herself, assured Cobol of her success during training, under her indirect command. There was no maternal warmth to it; it might as well have been a financial report. She placed the files back carefully, moved the stack of files to sit on top of them, and headed out the door after disconnecting her drive. She stopped by her office and grabbed the report for Stephen, having purposely left it on her desk, slightly buried, for credibility.
Grand Central was empty, as it always was that time of day. As she pulled into the parking lot, she could see through the window that Miles was waiting for her, tea already ordered for both of them. Guilt rose, unbidden, in her stomach, but she tried to tamp it down. He'd obviously been sniffing around her past without telling her, and it was important to know what others knew about you. The old Agency rhetoric was far too easy to spout, too easy to cite as an excuse for her behavior.
Later, Ariadne decided as she let herself into the little Moroccan restaurant. Later, she would confront him. After lunch. After she dropped the ID below his car door and then pointed it out to him on the ground. After she felt brave enough to admit the truth.
The room is marble and gold and red velvet drapes dramatically falling from the ceiling. In the room below, the party-goers chat, sitting at tables or dancing on the polished dance floor. Everything is clean lines, and class and-
"Darling, you really must stop salivating," hisses Eames, purposely bumping into Arthur on the way to the bar. Arthur's look of adoration falters, flipping into a scowl for a second before he regains control of his features and his typically calm face appears, but there's something about the way he holds his head for the rest of the dream, like he's craning his neck to take it all in, that discreetly betrays his eagerness.
Cobb surveys the party and the room with more than a little weariness.
The last member of the team is curiously peering out the window at the Manhattan skyline, circa roughly 1942.
"It's lovely, but the perspective is off," she decides. Cobb sidles over to look for himself. It's as if the entirety of Manhattan has been draped over a gently sloping bowl, and they are at the center of it.
"She remembers the proportions from the first time she came here," he easily explains, but his frown grows as he continues. "She was eight years old and her family stayed here at this hotel."
Cobb looks down and messages the growing crease in between his eyes. Ariadne watches him, as always, slightly worried.
"Are you okay?" she asks in a calm voice, although it's forced.
"Just getting used to all of this," he utters. "It's like learning to drive a car without a steering wheel."
Eames saunters over with a champagne flute in hand and eyes Ariadne's dress critically. It's black, and vague, and it sort of hurts to look at it closely because she hasn't defined it. In truth, she had no idea what to wear, and the result is glaringly obvious. With the men, so long as they wore a black suit, they were fine (although Arthur's looked to be perfectly in keeping with the time period).
"It needs to be a little more specific, sweetheart," he chides, and in the time span of an eye blinking, Ariadne can feel the fabric has changed; air hits a part of her back that hadn't been exposed before. "Not perfect but it's better. Beautiful."
"Much more era appropriate," compliments Arthur before going to join the crowd with Eames.
Cobb appears to be starting to say something, but she holds up a commanding finger.
"Don't," she orders. "Don't say anything. You and your monkey suit can just keep on walking."
When they walk down the stairs, he puts a steadying hand on her back, and its presence causes her to nearly falter.
Eames wanders off to get into character, and Arthur spends time taking in the clothing and décor. The Extractor and the Architect are left to blend in, and bide their time. Ariadne can sense her building is finished on the other side of the ballroom, just behind a side door that hasn't existed before. Some of the party attendees are starting to get suspicious, but only a little. She knows that all three men are probably armed.
In fact, she knows that Cobb is, because at one point while they sit at a table he discreetly pats his side even as he scans the room with a grim expression. She can feel how tense he is, anxiety rolling off of him in waves.
"Projections are going to catch on quickly if you keep looking around the room like that," she whispers out of the side of her mouth, behind her champagne glass. His blue gaze swivels to take her in. He looks good in a suit, she decides. He wears them well, in a way that is different from the restrained Arthur or the cocky Eames. It belies his usual confidence, even as he sits here, fearing the sudden appearance of his wife.
"Relax," she reminds him, bluntly.
"Not used to spending time on the sidelines," he explains, and then, spotting Ilsa and her beau on the dance floor, stands up swiftly. "Come on," he says, and offers her a hand. She stares at him, alarmed.
He takes the champagne out of her grasp. "If we sit here the entire time, people will notice."
She continues to gawk, not believing that explanation for a second.
He sighs, then says "Just come dance, Ariadne."
And for a while it's actually fun. Cobb is a decent dancer, and Ariadne isn't much worse, so they end up pairing together quite well. Seventeen-year-old Ilsa is positively enraptured with her soldier, and doesn't notice the projections' gradual suspicion of an outsider increasing. When the song ends, the soldier whispers something in Ilsa's ear, and she's clearly shocked. He leaves her on the dance floor looking heartbroken.
"She never thought she'd get over this," says Dom, with a sympathetic look, still moving Ariadne around the floor. "Never thought she'd find love."
"But then came Conrad," she reminds him.
As if on cue (as everything is in a dream), a dashing man wearing Eames' clothing asks Ilsa to dance. She cautiously takes his hand and he starts to maneuver them, while dancing, towards the door. The pair are too far away for them to overhear their conversation, but whatever is happening, the woman isn't recognizing her husband, and is starting to try to pull away from Eames. It's fairly obvious now to see that the projections are actively seeking out the intruder. Arthur, Ariadne, and Cobb all start to try to furtively make their way towards the door.
Whatever Eames is saying to the young woman does not have her pleased.
"Let me go!" she shouts, and all eyes are on Eames.
In an flurry of action, Eames sighs and grabs the woman, hefts her over his shoulder, and darts for the exit door. The dance floor's occupants and the rest of the party all start to surge towards the kidnapper. Arthur holds open the door to allow Eames through, followed closely by Ariadne and Cobb, and then he swings it shut, locking it. There is pounding on the other side, and the door jiggles, but it holds.
"Ariadne," prompts Arthur. She imagines that wall to be an unblemished surface, and so it is. The angered party is remarkably muffled.
"Put me down, you...you cad!" Ilsa shouts, pounding her fists against Eames back. Conrad's face shows a great deal of displeasure at her attempt to be released. The group moves towards the back corner of the room, where there is a pillar, with a mirror leaning against it, and a chair. He deposits her into this.
"Is this something George cooked up, because it's certainly not funny, not at all," the young woman seethes, trying to look prim in her seat despite her rumpled dress and hair.
"Ah, so George was his name," says a rich voice. Conrad points a finger at Arthur. "I expect you to pay up when this is over."
"Save it, you two," snaps Cobb. The two men pause and turn to the Extractor. It's the first moment that he's shown any sign of the authority he used to have over the group. The affect of his words on Arthur is instantaneous. He's back to being all professionalism and poise.
"Mrs. Redford, we would like to have a word with you, please."
"My name," she declares, "is Miss Ilsa Farlow, and don't you ever forget that."
Cobb smoothly crouches next to her seat, and the others are taken aback by his forwardness. "Miss Farlow, we're here to help you. We're friends, and felt that we should intercede when we saw what George did to you."
Her eyes tear up and she wrings her hands in her lap. "Please, just let me go after him, I know if I try I can catch up with his taxi."
"But you have tried," says Ariadne. She sits down on the floor on the other side of the chair. She knows that both Eames and Arthur hate how personally she gets involved when she is in the field, but she doesn't really care. She takes up one of Ilsa's hands into her own. They need to keep moving through this process and quickly, because while it's next to impossible to get through the maze-like hallway that leads to this room, there is always that one projection that does. "Do you remember trying? Remember going after the taxi, in the rain, and not being able to catch him in time? Think about how the rain felt, and how cold it was."
"No," she says but Ilsa cries openly, clutching at her face. Her sobbing lessens, and she looks up, confused. "Yes...wait, how?"
"This is a dream, Miss Farlow," says Arthur. "This is a memory."
"A memory?" she echoes. "So George really didn't leave me?" Ilsa looks as if she is about to spring from the chair.
Eames steps forward. "No, I'm terribly sorry to tell you this, but George did not come back."
"Maybe it's better this way then," she argues, bitterly. "If I get to be with him, here."
Ariadne squeezes her hand. "Try to remember, Ilsa. Remember what happened after this party. Where did you end up going to college?"
"Vassar, of course," she readily answers, and appears shocked that she can.
Cobb adds "You studied art and you went to all the best parties. You met someone there, didn't you?"
Ilsa has suddenly matured, she's in her twenties, although she doesn't notice. She stares at the floor while she tries to think. "I met...I met a man. Conrad. Conrad Redford."
Ariadne gives her an encouraging smile. "That's right, you met Conrad."
"And you fought in front of the Pollock," adds Cobb, to which she laughs.
"It was positively the most downright hideous thing I had ever seen in my life, but-"
"But I loved it," interjects Eames, gallantly stepping forward. Ariadne mentally applauds his timing, his dramatic sense of entrance. "Almost as much I love you."
"Oh, Conrad," she breathes, getting out of the chair to embrace Eames. He reacts as they suspect the real Conrad will, when she wakes up.
"Honey," he says, gently. "Please tell me that you remember the children? The summer home on the Cape? You always loved it."
"The children..." she whispers. "I remember them. Doris and Steven."
"Do you remember the day Steven put Beth into your arms? The pride you felt?"
She's smiling now, through the tears, and probably somewhere in her fifties. Cobb watches all of this with awe.
"The birth of my granddaughter was probably the happiest day of my life, aside from marrying you, sweetheart. I miss you," she adds in a voice so hollow that it makes Ariadne ache with empathy. Cobb stands with his eyes closed, pained.
"I miss you too, honey. The whole family does. We want you there for Beth's wedding. Wake up and come back to me," begs Eames. Ariadne has always wondered how he does this so well. He'd have made an amazing actor.
Cobb hands her a photograph from his pocket; it's Conrad and Ilsa's wedding portrait.
"Oh, Conrad," she breathes, touching the picture's surface with brittle fingers. Her eyes fall upon her own reflection in the nearby, and her face shows her true age. "My Conrad." She says his name like a prayer.
"All you have to do wake us up, Mrs. Redford," coaxes Arthur. "Close your eyes, feel reality. Try to get a good hold of it, and then push."
Her eyes close, lids as thin as parchment, and she stands that way for a minute or two, whispers her granddaughter's name, and then she was awake.
Cobb wondered, afterward, at how similar it was to giving birth.
"She tried to put me under, you know. My mother," Ariadne said in the quiet that was stretching between them, the uncomfortable kind created by mutual knowledge without acknowledgment. Stephen fingers almost slipped on the pawn they held, but he placed the piece down soundly.
The house was quiet – an odd occurrence- because Florence had taken the girls to the museum with her to see the most recent shipment of paintings be opened. The two Institute employees remained behind.
"That," he declared and gazed at her over his wire-rimmed glasses earnestly, "was a cheap trick."
Tense, Ariadne crossed her arms across her chest. She remembered what had happened the last time there had been a major lack of communication and how badly it had damaged their little group. She was trying to be level-headed.
"If you wanted information about me or my life, then you should have just asked me. You trust me here, with those girls. You trust me to be on your top team. You know why I came to you, asking for a second chance. When I found out I'd been working for Cobol, that my mother was heading the Agency and keeping track of me, that she was basically finishing what she had started years before, I had to get out."
They watched one another, as if they, too, were pieces on the chessboard. Only neither one really knew what the other one was capable of. Years of friendship and learning and trying, honestly trying, to create a sense of family out of raw material and it all came down to this: an insecure foundation. Ariadne was very much ready to truly build, and so she settled into her chair.
"After reading my Cobol file, and whatever you could get on my mother, is there anything else you want to know? Because if you ask me right now, I'll answer you with as much honesty as I have in me."
"I daresay I have already intruded too far as is, but there is one thing that the files left out."
She waited for the question she knew was coming.
His voice was surprisingly gentle. "What caused you to be removed from her custody?"
The memory would always be there, of tall men in suits and one soldier, one young soldier, who couldn't be old enough to wear that uniform, and flashing lights, and her mother's expression – as if she'd been inconvenienced. The leather seats of a car. The shrinking, disappearing vision of her mother, emotionless as she watched her daughter be taken away. The feel of the bandage from the IV site.
Taking a steadying breath, Ariadne tried to explain.
"For two years, my mother had been playing these games with me. Guided visualizations, mazes on paper, reciting things...turned out later to be prototype phrasing for the project. It was the first time in my life that she had seemed to give a damn, so I tried so hard to please her.
"Then one day, she tells me we are going on a little trip. She takes me to her Cobol research building, into the lab. She got as far as trying to start the IV when the DoD police showed up. Turned out, she had figured using her own child meant she could skip the whole consenting process for DreamShare, and she could teach me to think in a way that would give me an edge down there." Ariadne scoffed, pulled at a loose thread in the throw on the chair. "And guess what? It worked. Years later, when the Agency came to my high school and gave my class this test – it was a circular maze, a maze I had been able to solve when I was five – I passed with flying colors, tested into their Architectural training group, and got my scholarship for college."
"Where you met me."
"Where I met you. And now several years and a couple life-altering events later, here we are," she dryly said. Ariadne watched Stephen try to wrestle with his paternal streak and lose.
"I can understand why my actions upset you. I really am sorry for not having come to you sooner. Curiosity as to why you'd excelled so quickly got the better of me."
"Well, for what it's worth, I'm really sorry I made you wait in traffic." Stephen's eyebrows rose, but he continued to study the chessboard.
She jumped over a pawn with an idle flick, knowing he had given her that move. It was something her mother had done once, only once, and it was one of those few instances where there had been, to the best of her recollection, any sign of affection.
They both watched the board, only halfheartedly playing. They were almost at a standstill.
"My king shall castle," her mentor announced, bobbing his head. Ariadne watched him move the rook across the two spaces, heard the scrape of the marble piece on the wood, and after only a second of thought looked up at Miles with startling clarity as thoughts slid into place.
"So what do you know about Project Minotaur?"
Alternate version: you advance
through the grey streets of this house,
the walls crumble, the dishes
thaw, vines grow
on the softening refrigerator
I say, leave me
alone, this is my winter,
I will stay here if I choose
You will not listen to resistances, you cover me
with flags, a dark red
season, you delete from me
all other colours
-iv, Hesitations outside the door, Margaret Atwood
Song list (with links if you're on livejournal):
Dream: Tangerine -
At Last – Glenn Miller