Disclaimer: I don't own any of the characters or concepts from Inception as they belong to Christopher Nolan.
A/N: Thanks for all the amazing reviews for the first one-shot. I know some people suggested that I leave that as a one-shot and turn the idea into a full story but since I'm a full-time university student, maintaining a chaptered, detailed story is difficult so for the meantime I'm going to continue posting one-shots but I do have a number planned out and they're going to be in (mostly) chronological order so it will be like an almost-complete chaptered story.
Also for those who were wondering a little more about Nick, WhatsGoingOn suggested that she seemed a little like Emma Stone which I didn't realize at the time, but now I'm cluing in that I kind of subconsciously (haha) patterned her after Emma Stone in Zombieland. So if you'd like more a visual of Nick, just look up pictures of Emma Stone as Wichita and it's a pretty close match. Thanks to WhatsGoingOn for the suggestion.
No matter how fuzzy the rest of his memories get, Arthur can always remember the day he met Nick. Well that's probably because that was the day he met everyone and was first introduced to the concept of extraction, but he knew it always brought a smile to her face that he could pinpoint the exact date when they were first introduced.
He'd been doing his final year of undergrad at Yale - a Mechanical Engineering Degree but he'd been registered in a Philosophy class to fulfill some stupid degree requirement. His professor though had been fascinating, an older British man who seemed to have the ability to make the theories he discussed seem almost tangibly real. Professor Miles Gough who later Arthur would learn was also the proverbial gatekeeper to all the secrets of extraction.
He'd been rather surprised when the professor had pulled him aside after class one day and asked if he would be interested in helping with an experiment that he was conducting. Arthur wasn't sure what kind of experiments professors of Philosophy could be involved in, but his curiosity overtook him and he found himself agreeing to meet the professor the following day.
The location the professor asked him to come to turned out to not be on campus but rather a small industrial warehouse in downtown New Haven. Temporary walls and platforms had been set up within the larger space, giving it the feeling of a crude maze constructed by a child.
Finally at what he guessed was near the centre of the warehouse, he found the professor with three other people who were sitting on dilapidated pieces of furniture, watching a fourth figure who was in a straight-back wooden chair, their back to him.
"Ah, Arthur. Welcome."
He was quickly introduced to the other participants as the professor termed them, in quick succession - Mallorie or Mal Gough, a pretty brunette who was the professor's daughter, Ilya Baskov, a huge beast of a man from Russia and Dominic Cobb, a rugged blonde man who was Mal's fiancée.
"And this is Nikola Evans. She's our youngest participant but is already proving to be quite talented."
The petite redhead did not move when the professor laid his hands upon her shoulders, in fact she didn't even seem to be aware of anyone's presence in the room. Her eyes remained closed, with her posture stick straight, hands resting on her knees, her legs drawn up in the lotus position.
The professor glanced at a stopwatch that was hanging from the back of the chair and then looked down at the girl again.
"Time for the kick, I should think. Arthur, you'll want to stand back a little."
Mal moved to girl's side and checked on the tubing that Arthur just noticed was snaking from the girls arm down into a silver briefcase on the floor. Straightening up, she placed a hand against the back of the chair and gave it a shove, so it tilted back towards the floor.
Arthur was about to step forward to do something, what he wasn't entirely sure but something, when he felt a hand holding him back. It was the other man, Cobb who was watching the scene with an intense look on his face.
"Wait."
Seconds before the chair and its occupant slammed into the floor, Ilya reached out, slowing the descent so the girl was left suspended at a parallel angle with the hard concrete. Grey eyes snapped open and the girl sat up abruptly, knocking over the chair in the process.
"Asshole" she frowned, smacking Ilya on the bicep.
The big man laughed, lifting her off the floor with one meaty arm, righting the chair with the other.
"I told you I'd catch you."
"You didn't have to take so long though."
The professor cleared his throat, the small sound echoing through the warehouse, instantly ceasing the bickering between the two participants.
"Nick, I'd like to introduce you to Arthur. Arthur, Nick is our architect."
What the professor meant by architect Arthur wasn't sure, but it didn't matter right now, as Nick was taking his hand in her small one, shaking it with the slightest smile on her face.
"Nice to meet you."
Arthur wasn't sure how long they'd sat at the coffee shop but he was too interested to bother checking his watch. Cobb has come with them initially to explain the finer points of extraction to Arthur, but he'd left some time ago, leaving the two youngest participants to discuss everything and anything that came to mind.
Through their conversations, Arthur had found out that Nick was 17 which made her four years younger than him, was an only child to a professor and a stay-at home mother, attended a private girl's school and was named for Nikola Tesla.
"So where are you going to school next year?"
She stirred the dregs of her tea leaves around, creating swirls in the muddy brown at the bottom of the cup. "Dunno. Yale maybe, maybe somewhere else. I think I want to study Architecture or maybe Psychology, who knows?"
"So how did you get into this?"
"My dad lets me audit classes sometimes and Professor Gough guest-lectured in one of his and I asked so many questions during the lecture that afterwards he asked if I'd like to help with an experiment. My parents think I'm doing some sort of serious psychology stuff that will look good on college applications."
Arthur took another sip of his coffee which was a little too sweet for his liking and swallowed before speaking again.
"So what's it like?"
"What's what like?"
"The dream world that Cobb was talking about. What's it like?"
Nick shrugged, pushing her long hair behind her ears. "You tell me."
"What?"
She leaned forward, close enough to kiss but then whispered into his ear. "Tell me how we got here."
"Well we left the warehouse and then went down the road and then..." A frown creased his forehead as he struggled to remember how they'd wound up at this particular coffee shop.
Suddenly he felt the sensation of several eyes upon him and turned around, realizing that all the customers and staff of the shop were staring at him. Turning back to Nick, he saw that she'd set a small circle of metal on the table between them.
"Nick, what's going on?"
She smiled, moving back from him and picking up the metal circle.
"You know how in a dream, you frequently know where you are but can never quite remember how you got there? Like you dream that you're at home and suddenly you're in China and you know you're in China but you can't remember how you wound up there or even sometimes where you were before that?"
She touched one finger to the hourglass in the middle of the circle and suddenly it was spinning wildly on its axis, black sand flying in all directions.
"So wait, we're dreaming right now?"
"Maybe."
"Whose dream is this then?"
"Well I built the world but this is your subconscious, so by Miles' logic, you're the dreamer. Wanna take a look?"
They passed out of the coffee shop and began walking down the road. Instead of the apartment buildings and pavement that Arthur thought he remembered when they arrived, the streets were made of stone and the buildings were red brick and iron like something out of a history book.
"So you designed all this? Where are we?"
A smile tugged on Nick's lips as she looked at her creation.
"Rule #1 - Never design an actual place within the dream. You can draw inspiration from places but you should never directly recreate them. At least that's what Cobb says."
"So what are you inspired by?"
"Victorian England, I think. The world I was building in my dream though was more like a bizarro Las Vegas. All places I've always wanted to go, I guess."
Nick kept walking but Arthur stopped her by putting his hands on her shoulders and turning her to face him.
"So this whole time, I've been asleep though? This isn't real at all?"
Before Nick could reply, a fissure opened up in the road, snaking its way towards them. When Arthur looked up he realized the sky had gone cloudy and more cracks were appearing on the buildings around them.
"Nick, what's happening?"
She worried her bottom lip between her teeth, twisting a strand of hair around her finger, her other hand playing with the hourglass. Frustrated Arthur pulled her hand away and turned her face towards his, forcing her to look at him.
"Nick, what is it?"
"Cobb warned me this could happen. If the dreamer knows that they are dreaming, the more aware they become, the more their subconscious starts to destroy the dream world. And since you've figured out you're dreaming right now -"
Before she could finish her explanation though, the world tilted sharply and then Arthur had the distinct feeling that he was falling.
Opening his eyes, he realized he was lying on a plastic lounge chair in the warehouse, a needle and tubing protruding from his arm. Next to him, Nick was curled up into a large armchair, her head practically resting on the armrest, the same tubing emerging from her wrist.
Ilya leaned over him suddenly, his fingers on his throat, to check his pulse Arthur guessed and he was pulling the tubing from his arm (none too gently Arthur noted with a grimace) before repeating the same motions on Nick.
Arthur tried to get up but the bigger man pushed him back into the chair with one beefy hand.
"Sit," he rumbled. "Get your head together first."
Arthur leaned back against the plastic strips on the chair and stared at the ceiling. When he glanced down, he realized Nick had shifted her position so her arms were pillowed on the armrest, with her head resting against them, grey eyes watching him carefully.
"Are we still dreaming?" he asked, but it came out barely louder than a whisper as he realized his mouth felt dry and rough like sandpaper.
She pressed her lips together and then pulled the same hourglass he'd seen in the dream from her sweater pocket. Holding it up, she gently spun the small glass, causing it to rotate a few times before it stopped.
"Guess not."
Letting out the breath he hadn't realized he was holding, Arthur relaxed against the plastic slats and stared at the ceiling again. "How long until we go back?"
A/N: So hope you all enjoyed part deux of Dream a Little Dream. I was trying not to be too similar to Ariadne's introduction to the dream world but I figured that maybe it was easiest to introduce everyone to the dream world in a similar fashion. The next fic will take a bit of a jump into the future, about a year, where Arthur has already been practicing in the dream world for some time, but hasn't had a chance to perform an Extraction himself. It'll be a two-parter with the second part being a little more... scandalous if you get my drift. So let me know if you'd like the second part to be T-rated, sort 'duh-dun-dun-duh' fade to black pseudo-scandalous or proper M-rated, hello details scandalous and I'll do my best to match what the majority of people would like to see.