Architecture of Your World and Mind: Chapter Two

[fae_boleyn]

Story Title: Architecture of Your World and Mind
Chapter Title: 700 Branching Limbs, 700 Ways To Fail
Fandom: Inception
Summary: Inception's not an easy job, it takes months of careful planning. These are the planning stages. Also, genderbend, girl!Arthur and girl!Yusuf. Movie AU, begins when the movie does, but the primary focus is the pre-job months.
Pairings: past Mal/Cobb, girl!Arthur/Eames, Ariadne/girl!Yusuf (so, yes, het and femslash, no m/m in this one, I do apologize)
Author's Note: Ariadne, you stubborn girl! I don't know why she keeps insisting on the last word. Sigh.


Parminder Nagra as Yasirah Nazari

Somewhere is the promise
Of an uncharted trail
With seven hundred branching limbs
And seven hundred ways to fail – Cardinal Directions by Thou Shalt Not

 

“Rub 'em together all you want, they're not gonna breed.”

 

Oh, lovely. It's Dominic Cobb. But all Eames says is, “You never know.”

 

“Drink?” Cobb asks.

 

“You're buying.”

 

After a lovely little exchange in which Eames finds his spelling derided and also gets asked about his handwriting, as if it would be anything but versatile, he and Cobb settle at a table on the casino's veranda. Cobb takes a pull from his beer bottle before setting it down and giving Eames a level look. For a moment, it's the old Cobb back, rather than the half-crazed, grief-shattered man Eames has worked with on and off for the past two years. And his interest is piqued.

 

“Inception,” Cobb begins. “Now before you start telling me it's impossible – ”

 

“It's perfectly possible, it's just bloody difficult,” Eames cuts in smoothly. And he believes that. Just because the time he tried it didn't work means it can't be done. Plenty of extractions go awry, after all.

 

“Really?” Cobb asks, surprised. “Because Anita keeps telling me it can't be done.”

 

“Anita?” Eames comments with a wry smile. “You still working with that stick-in-the-mud?”

 

“She's good at what she does.”

 

“Oh, she's the best.” Which is nothing but the truth. “But she's got no imagination.” Less true.

 

Cobb shakes his head. “Tell her that, please. I could use the entertainment of the two of you going at it again.”

 

“Oh, Anita and I understand each other very well, don't you worry.” We were partners long before the two of you were, you bastard. “But in all honesty, Cobb, if you're going to perform inception you need imagination.”

 

“Let me ask you something. Have you done it before?”

 

“We tried it. We got the idea in place, but it didn't take.”

 

“You didn't go deep enough.”

 

Curious how Cobb should immediately think of depth, and assume that's the only way, as if... “No, no, it's not just about depth. You need the simplest version of the idea, so you can let it grow naturally in the subject's mind. It's a very subtle art.”

 

Eames knows where this is going. Cobb wants him on a team for inception. And to be perfectly honest, he's not sure he's interested. Yes, he's wanted to try inception again, but that's not quite enough to make him want to work with Dom Cobb again. He'd seen it on their last job, that Cobb was slowly going mad, and worse, dragging Anita with him. And that's the other reason why he hasn't worked with the two of them in over a year; he and Anita quarreled on that very topic, rather heatedly. It wasn't a pleasant experience. And he still thinks he was right, that Anita should have gotten far, far away from Cobb a long time ago. But he couldn't convince her, and Eames has always been self-centered enough to save himself, especially when staying isn't going to accomplish a bloody thing. So he left them to their messy spiral, and had absolutely no plans of ever working with either of them again.

 

Now Cobb is back. And where Cobb is, Anita is. And despite it all, Eames has only ever had one partner, and he's not about to let her go on a job like this with only a half-madman along for the ride. Besides, it's a second shot at inception, and he's wanted that. Killing multiple birds with one stone has always been his way.

 

“What's the idea you need to plant?” he asks, knowing that the question itself is a declaration of intent.

 

“We need the heir of a major corporation to break up his father's empire,” Cobb explains.

 

“Well, right there you've got various political motivations – anti-monopolistic sentiment and so forth. But all that stuff... It's at the mercy of your subject's prejudice. You've got to go to the basic.”

 

“Which is?”

 

“The relationship with the father.” He finishes his drink in one go, and then raises an eyebrow. “Do you have a chemist?”

 

“No, not yet,” Cobb says, shaking his head.

 

“Yeah, well, there's a woman here, Yasirah. She formulates her own versions of the compounds. Better than what we had in the Project Morpheus days.”

 

Cobb's eyes narrow. “Better than the best that MI6 and the CIA could provide?” he asks skeptically. “All right, let's go see her.”

 

“Once you've lost your tail.” Cobb turns to look and Eames only just stops himself from rolling his eyes. Once a civilian, always a civilian, honestly it's a miracle Cobb's not dead yet. A miracle, or Anita. Cobb certainly isn't managing it himself. “In the blue suit, over by the bar. Came in a few minutes after you did.”

 

Cobb's face is grim. Eames would be grim too if he was the one Cobol Engineering was after. “Run interference? Meet back here in a half hour?”

 

“Back here?”

 

“It's the last place they'll look.”

 

Huh. Maybe Cobb's learned a little something about survival after all.

 

~ ~ ~

 

Anita's fixing one of the PASIV IV lines – it came a little loose in transit – when she hears a small cough behind her. Standing, she turns to see Ariadne there, and can't help but smile. “Cobb said you'd be back.”

 

“I tried not to come,” the younger woman admitted, “but...”

 

“There's nothing quite like it.”

 

Ariadne's expression is hard to read, but her eyes show the longing that Anita understands completely. “It's pure creation.”

 

Anita nods, then flashes Ariadne an amused smile. “Shall we take a look at some paradoxical architecture?”

 

~ ~ ~

 

Yasirah Nazari is used to new people stopping by her laboratory/dream den – her business runs by word of mouth, after all – but this is still a surprise. Dominic Cobb is everything Yasirah is not in this business; a superstar, if you will. That is, he has the skill and the reputation that goes with it, he's flashy. Whereas people like Yasirah have the talent but by choice or chance fly below the radar.

 

That it's Eames who brings Cobb to see her is not a surprise, as the forger is one of her best advertisers. She shakes his hand briefly, gesturing for Cobb ad the other man, who she doesn't know, to come forward. Cobb does, but the Japanese man doesn't.

 

“Mr. Cobb,” Yasirah says with a faint smile. “I've heard so very much about you. You work using Somnacin, yes?”

 

“You're very well informed, Ms....?”

 

“Yasirah is fine.” She turns to her shelves, running a finger along the tops of them until she finds the one she wants and picks it up, setting it on the desk in front of Cobb.

 

“Somnacin?” Cobb asks, skeptically. Yasirah narrows her eyes.

 

“My Somnacin.” She takes out the stopper and waves the botter under Cobb's nose.

 

“Is it as good as the original?”

 

She yanks the bottle back, irritated by his unconvinced attitude. “Better,” she says, her voice icy. “It binds the dreamers tightly, makes the dream real. Of course, you could use Somnacin brand if you preferred. I'd love to know how you plan to explain that to the international authorities.”

 

She puts the bottle back before taking her seat behind her desk and surveying Cobb calmly. “So. You are seeking a chemist? To formulate compounds for a job?”

 

“And to come into the field with us,” Cobb tells her.

 

“Oh, I rarely go into the field, Mr. Cobb.”

 

“Well, we'd need you there to tailor compounds specific to our needs.”

 

Damn it. Now her curiosity is piqued. Custom jobs are always the most interesting, not to mention a chance to try something she hasn't yet. But Yasirah's not convinced yet; she's still not happy with the way Cobb disparaged her work. “And what are these needs of yours?”

 

“Great depth.”

 

“A dream within a dream? Two levels?” Pity. She'd thought he was actually selling a challenge.

 

“Three.”

 

Wait. What? Three levels, that's... “Not possible. That many dreams within dreams would be too unstable.” But oh, if it could be done, if she could pull it off...

 

“I've done it before,” Cobb says evenly. “You just have to add a sedative.”

 

“A powerful sedative,” Yasirah stresses, her mind already whirling. Powerful sedatives... Now those she has. Perhaps, if she tried this ratio of Somnacin to sedative, or maybe that one...? “How many team members?”

 

“Five,” Cobb says. Now the Japanese man speaks up.

 

“Six.” Focusing on Cobb he adds, “The only way to know you've done the job is if I go in with you.” So he's the client, Yasirah notes. That explains why he's been lurking in the background, when he really doesn't seem the type.

 

“There's no room for tourists on a job like this, Mr. Saito,” Eames observes, just a hint of condescension in his tone.

 

“This time,” Mr. Saito says calmly, “it would seem that there is.”

 

Ignoring the mild power struggle going on, Yasirah returns to her shelves, searching for another compound. “There's this,” she says, holding up a bottle. “I use it every day.”

 

“For what?” Cobb wants to know.

 

In answer, Yasirah takes a heavy keyring from her desk drawer and crosses the room to her dream den's entrance, beckoning the men forward. “Perhaps... You will not want to see?” she says with a challenging smile. Cobb gestures for her to continue and she is hard-pressed not to smirk as she leads them down the stairs.

 

~ ~ ~

 

“You're going to have to master a few tricks if you're going to build three complete dream levels,” Anita says, and Ariadne gives her a sharp look.

 

“What kind of tricks?” she asks as a secretary walks by and drops some papers. Why they're in an office isn't clear to Ariadne, though she thinks it might have something to do with Anita and her neat, tidy appearance that just screams professional.

 

“In a dream, you can cheat architecture into impossible shapes. That lets you create closed loops, like the Penrose Stairs. The infinite staircase.” Ariadne freezes when she realizes they've walked back to the same exact spot where they'd been a moment before, complete with an identical secretary picking up identical papers. There's an amused light in Anita's eyes when she looks back at the point woman, and Ariadne frowns at her.

 

“What's so funny?”

 

“Oh, nothing, sorry. I've been told I have an unhealthy love of paradoxes,” Anita explains with a wry smile. She reaches out a hand to grab the back of Ariadne's shirt and points ahead. Looking, Ariadne sees why. They've walked to the top step at this point, but instead of a landing, there's... empty air. Oh my God.

 

“See, paradoxes like this create a closed loop, which helps you disguise the boundaries of the dream you've created.”

 

Ariadne's eyes narrow thoughtfully. “How big do the levels have to be?”

 

“Anything from the floor of a building to an entire city. But it has to be complicated enough so that we can avoid the projections.”

 

“A maze.”

 

“And the better the maze...”

 

“The longer we have before the projections catch up.” Which explains why her “job interview” for this had consisted of drawing mazes for Cobb's approval. Ariadne wants to roll her eyes, but since Cobb's not here, the effect would be lost. If he'd told her what she'd have to play with ahead of time, she could have done even better.

 

She reminds herself not to get too cocky; that's always what makes people mess up, she knows. Instead she glances around at the people walking by – her subconscious, she thinks, a bit unnerved. “My subconscious seems polite enough,” she comments. They're looking at Anita oddly, but they're not doing anything either.

 

Anita chuckles. “You wait, they'll turn ugly. No one likes to feel someone else messing around in their mind.”

 

Ariadne doesn't argue, because she figures Anita would know more about that than she would. The thought crosses her mind that if Mal attacks people in Cobb's mind, and Cobb and Anita are partners as they seem to be, how often has Anita been Mal's victim? To stop herself from imagining that, she asks, “Cobb can't build anymore, can he?”

 

Anita shoots her a sharp look, almost as though she's considering not answering, but then she sighs, tucking a lock of hair that's fallen from her bun behind her ear. “I don't know if he can't, but he won't. He thinks it's safer if he doesn't know the layouts.”

 

“Why?”

 

“He won't tell me. But I think it's Mal.”

 

“His ex-wife?”

 

“She's not his ex,” Anita says, sounding surprised that Ariadne would even think that. But what is she supposed to think, when Mal's running around attacking people in Cobb's dreams?

 

“They're still together?” she asks, incredulous. If that's true, then this is even more screwed up than she thought.

 

Anita shakes her head, and her eyes are distant, sad, even. “No, no, she's dead. What you see in there is just his projection of her.”

 

Oh. Oh God. That's... horrible. Ariadne doesn't know what to say for a moment, and then she remembers the photo on Professor Miles' desk, with Mal holding her baby. “What was she like in real life?”

 

It's definitely sadness in Anita's eyes now. “She was lovely.”

 

When they wake up, Ariadne says, “I'm sorry, about Mal. She was important to you too, wasn't she?”

 

Anita gives her a thoughtful look. “Mal was my best friend,” she says finally, her voice tired. “We met in college, kept in touch while she went into research and I worked for the government – I was a federal agent once, CIA. I didn't even know she was working with dreams until she and Cobb were hired as civilians on the project the U.S. and British governments were doing.”

 

Ariadne absorbs this, and considers asking Anita if she were actually in love with this Mal. But that's a little too private, whether it's true or not. “But if Mal was your friend...?”

 

“Why stay with Cobb? Because Mal would have wanted someone to, had she known what was going to happen to her.” Anita shrugs. “Cobb needs someone to keep an eye on him sometimes, and no one else will do it. I don't mind it.”

 

Somehow, Ariadne doesn't believe her entirely, but she also gets the feeling that if she tries to press further, she'll get shot down. So she leaves it alone, spending the rest of her time asking question after question about dreaming, what can be done and what can't, and how to do it all. And she can't help but feel that, dubious legality or not, she's made the right choice, because this is what she's always wanted, even before she knew it. The chance just to create, no boundaries. It's got to be worth it.