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fae_boleynStory Title: Architecture of Your World and Mind
Chapter Title: Let's Just Make This Part Go Faster
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: I have no excuse for this, really.
I should tell you I'm disaster
I forget how to begin it
Let's just make this part go faster
I have yet to be in it
I should tell you... – I Should Tell You, RENT
“Hey, Anita, everything all right?”
Anita manages not to snap at Ariadne, but after already dealing with this from Cobb of all people, she's in no mood to be polite. “Everything's just fine, Ariadne, why do you ask?” As if she doesn't already know.
“Well it's just, you and Eames... Is it normal, for you to be so hostile?”
“More or less, depending. This seems to be one of the 'more' times.” Technically, that's true, but only by splitting quite a few hairs. It's actually never been this bad before, and there's some part of Anita that regrets her words, as much as she still thinks they were necessary.
The way Ariadne is eyeing her tells Anita that the younger woman's not convinced, and she braces herself for more questioning... that doesn't come. Instead, Ariadne applies herself to her models, making minute adjustments and asking questions when necessary. Anita starts to relax a little.
“You know, I actually thought there was something going on between you two, when Eames first got here,” Ariadne says conversationally, eyes still on her model. Anita glares at the architect's back.
“Well, your emotional radar or whatever you might call it must be on the fritz then, because there's nothing.”
Ariadne turns around then, one eyebrow raised. “You know, you don't have to talk to me, but you should probably talk to someone. I don't know you that well, but I can tell you're upset about something.”
Anita doesn't bother to answer, and Ariadne doesn't bring it up again, but when they go home for the day, she heads back to the hotel and turns her laptop on, signing into Skype. She's half-hoping no one will be on, because then she can tell herself she tried to follow Ariadne's unsolicited advice and it was stupid anyway. But no, there's Aubrey's name right there, and with a sigh, Anita clicks it.
“'Nita! Hey, what's up with you? I thought you were on a job?” Aubrey says the second the screen loads.
“Yeah, but I've got some time, so I wanted to see what you were up to,” Anita says, hoping that she can just listen to her sister and not think about her life for a while.
“Same as usual, working with my patients, so on and so forth. I've finally started on that novel in my bits of spare time, though,” Aubrey says with a grin. Anita frowns, trying to remember which one that would be.
“Oh, the one where Richard III won the Battle of Bosworth?”
“Yeah, that one. So, how's the job? Basic heist or...?”
Anita shakes her head. “Dom's... He took an offer to try inception.” Her sister's reaction, eyes widening, is exactly what Anita expects to see. After all, Aubrey's a forger. She works in dream therapy rather than mind crime, but that doesn't mean she's unaware of just what inception could mean, if successful.
“Holy shit,” she says, the Southern accent that she tones down and Anita suppresses entirely coming out in full force thanks to her shock. “What on earth possessed him to try that?”
“The client's going to pull some strings and get the charges dropped,” Anita replies simply.
“Oh. That would do it.” And here comes the moment Anita's been dreading, when her sister narrows her eyes and says, “So, what's wrong?”
It's a twin thing, everyone says, but whatever it is, Anita and Aubrey have always been able to read each other. Even when everyone else is fooled, they can't fool each other. Even when they fool themselves. Anita has been telling herself that she's not bothered by what happened with Eames, but she is. And Aubrey can see that, even without knowing what the problem is.
“Eames is here,” she says finally.
“Ah,” Aubrey says, and Anita can tell her sister is leaning back in her chair. She scowls inwardly.
“I swear, if you spout off that shrink line “How does that make you feel?” I'm going to kill you.”
“I wasn't going to ask that. I was going to ask how it's going.” Aubrey's the only one who knows about Alexandria, and Anita's fears, so the question is expected.
“I... Well...” Anita tells her everything, and only regrets it when she sees the spark of anger in her sister's dark eyes.
“Anita. What the everloving fuck. Why did you do that? I only met Eames that one time, so I'll admit I don't know him that well, but he does care about you. That much has always been obvious.”
Anita can't deny that, so she shrugs. “As I said to him, maybe he shouldn't. Nothing's going to happen, and so it's a waste of time.”
“Only because you won't allow anything to happen, and to be perfectly honest, that's just stupid.” Aubrey is leaning back in her chair, if the angle of light across her face is anything to go by, and her dark eyes are flashing, reminding Anita more of Mal than anyone. Aubrey had liked Mal too, even if their friendship hadn't been as strong as Anita and Mal's was.
“I won't do this again,” Anita says, not looking at her sister, because even through a computer Aubrey's gaze is uncomfortably sharp.
“Eames is not Isaac, and Ashley... I thought you forgave her.”
Ashley. Their exotic, green-eyed half-sister, two years older than the twins, with her London accent driving most of the boys and some of the girls at their high school wild. Ashley, who had, eight years ago, fallen into bed with Anita's fiance. She says she's forgiven the other woman – after all, Isaac was Ashley's lover before he was Anita's and he betrayed both sisters with each other, Anita should have expected it. But deep down she can't quite forgive, and she can't trust that another man won't hurt her the same way.
“I'm not going to put myself out there like that again, Aubrey,” Anita says firmly. And it's not just that. Eames called her out on something she didn't want to face, something she can't afford to face. Not now, not when this entire house of cards depends on her keeping things stable until it's all over.
“Anita – ”
Anita closes the chat window, cutting her sister off. She doesn't want to do this now, she just can't. They're doing inception; that's enough to worry about without letting her personal life get the better of her.
~ ~ ~
“So is this a test run or a date?” Ariadne asks before she can bite her tongue. And once she's asked, hell, she's not going to be embarrassed about it. It's a valid question after all, since they seem to be in the shore town she and her family spent a week in every summer when she was growing up. They're certainly not on any of the levels for the Fischer job.
Then again, Yasirah had told her this would be “free-dreaming”, done without setting a specific level. Even so, Ariadne's surprised that her subconscious came up with this.
“Nice place,” Yasirah says thoughtfully, glancing around. “Did you live here or visit on holiday?”
“Vacation spot,” Ariadne says absently. “We used to come here every year. The family still might, I wouldn't know.”
“You don't speak to them?” Yasirah asks, then flinches. “I'm sorry, it's not my business.”
“No, it's fine,” Ariadne says with a wave of her hand. “They didn't like my choice of dates, to put it simply.” It was a very generalized way of saying that her grandfather had told her she was going to Hell and her parents had told her they'd pay her college tuition only on the agreement that she lived on campus even in the summer, and in fact never came back at all. “Speaking of, you never answered my question.”
Yasirah raises an eyebrow. “Which would you like it to be?”
Ariadne grins impishly. “Well, I am a bit tired of thinking about work and nothing but, how about you?”
“Well then, I guess it's a date, isn't it?” Yasirah's dark eyes are dancing, and Ariadne can admit to herself that this is probably a terrible idea, liking one of the shadowy members of this new world of hers, but she can't help herself.
They end up at the local ice-cream parlor, and end up sharing an order of waffles and ice cream (vanilla) because Yasirah's never had it and Ariadne finds that unacceptable. Yasirah finds it funny but doesn't argue, and grins at Ariadne after trying it. “If it tastes the same as reality, no wonder you were so shocked,” she quips, and Ariadne smirks.
“Told you.”
They walk along the shoreline after, at first in a companionable silence. “We didn't do this kind of thing growing up,” Yasirah says after a while, and Ariadne looks at her questioningly. She pauses, and then continues with, “They were both academics, my parents. Dad was a physicist, Mum was an anthropologist. They didn't care what field I went into, but it was always going to be academia. I went to cities around the world for academics' conventions, to places most people would never see for anthropology digs, but we never did anything like a holiday, just for fun.”
Ariadne sighs. “It was nice, growing up as part of a stereotypically normal family, but it makes it worse when they toss you for being into other girls.” She pauses, frowning. “We're both being oddly... honest, aren't we? Is it the drug we're testing?” They'd discussed it before going under, that this particular mix was supposed to encourage dreamers to be more open, but she hadn't expected it to work so well on a test run.
Stupid, really; the point of test runs was to keep doing them until they worked perfectly, after all.
Yasirah chews on her lower lip for a moment before she answers. “I think so. Is that all right?”
“I guess so... But, only on one condition.” Apparently the drug makes people bold too, or maybe that's just Ariadne.
“What?”
“We go on a date in the real world next.”
“Are you buying?” Yasirah teases.
Ariadne laughs. “Since I'm doing the asking, I probably should, shouldn't I?”
~ ~ ~
Yasirah and Ariadne are hooked up to the PASIV, Cobb's off talking to Saito, once again trying to talk him out of actually going on the job, and that leaves Eames alone with Anita for the first time since their argument the other day. He ignores her, putting the finishing touches on his current set of Browning sketches. Drawing, for him, is a way of examining appearances and capturing their every detail, a way to memorize them so that he can recreate them on himself in the dream.
He hears the soft click of a laptop being closed and feels someone's eyes on him. Eames looks up, meeting Anita's gaze head-on. “Is there something I can do for you?”
Anita twirls a pen over and under her fingers, the same way Eames will do with a poker chip. He picked it up from her, actually; it's a nervous gesture that she can't stop doing and that irritates her. In the old days he'd mimicked it to irritate her even more, and it ended up becoming a habit of his as well. Forging can be like that sometimes, even when it's only in the real world. Finally she says, “Look... About the other day, I'm...”
“You're what, Anita? You made it very clear that my concern about you is unwanted, what else is there to say?” He's pissed off and doesn't care what he sounds like.
“It's not... I don't... Fuck, I don't even know,” Anita says, and she drops her head into her hands, her voice muffled but still clear as she keeps talking. “I have to stay with Dom, I have to see this through. Mal... She was as much my sister as Aubrey, really, and a hell of a lot more than Ashley. But you're right when you say I've been with him too long. I was pissed because you were making me face that. I don't know what to do without having to worry about Dom, about him following Mal off the deep end, about her fucking shade stalking us in dreams and killing me every twisted way she can-”
Eames cuts her off. “What?”
Anita looks up at him then, and there's something in her dark eyes that scares him to death. Scares him because of what it could mean for all of them, on this job, but more because what it already does mean for Anita. “I told you about his shade.”
“You never mentioned that she was killing you. Attacking you, yes, but... For fuck's sake, what is she going to do to us on a job like inception, with the levels it'll require?”
“I don't know.”
He wants to hit something, preferably Cobb, but unfortunately the extractor's not present. He settles for snapping the pencil in his hand and taking a deep breath. “And you told me I shouldn't be concerned.”
“That's not exactly what I meant.”
“Oh, I know what you meant. And is that what you really want from me, Anita? Do you really want me to just shrug and say that it doesn't matter to me, what happens to you? Do you want me to do that, and actually mean it?” He knows the answer before he asks, because he knows Anita. Knows that even though she's done nothing but push him away, not all of her wants to do that. All he's doing is challenging her to admit that. A small victory, maybe, but the first real one he'll have managed over her.
She doesn't look away. Finally she sighs, tension falling away like she just can't hold it anymore. “No. Happy now?”
“Not even close, but it's a start. So, tell me, what's your plan for evading Mal? I know you have one.” Back to business, for now. Later, well... Later they'll have time to deal with this properly, once they've gotten through this job intact. They will deal with it, one way or another, this time. Eames is determined on that score.
Chapter Title: Let's Just Make This Part Go Faster
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: I have no excuse for this, really.
I should tell you I'm disaster
I forget how to begin it
Let's just make this part go faster
I have yet to be in it
I should tell you... – I Should Tell You, RENT
“Hey, Anita, everything all right?”
Anita manages not to snap at Ariadne, but after already dealing with this from Cobb of all people, she's in no mood to be polite. “Everything's just fine, Ariadne, why do you ask?” As if she doesn't already know.
“Well it's just, you and Eames... Is it normal, for you to be so hostile?”
“More or less, depending. This seems to be one of the 'more' times.” Technically, that's true, but only by splitting quite a few hairs. It's actually never been this bad before, and there's some part of Anita that regrets her words, as much as she still thinks they were necessary.
The way Ariadne is eyeing her tells Anita that the younger woman's not convinced, and she braces herself for more questioning... that doesn't come. Instead, Ariadne applies herself to her models, making minute adjustments and asking questions when necessary. Anita starts to relax a little.
“You know, I actually thought there was something going on between you two, when Eames first got here,” Ariadne says conversationally, eyes still on her model. Anita glares at the architect's back.
“Well, your emotional radar or whatever you might call it must be on the fritz then, because there's nothing.”
Ariadne turns around then, one eyebrow raised. “You know, you don't have to talk to me, but you should probably talk to someone. I don't know you that well, but I can tell you're upset about something.”
Anita doesn't bother to answer, and Ariadne doesn't bring it up again, but when they go home for the day, she heads back to the hotel and turns her laptop on, signing into Skype. She's half-hoping no one will be on, because then she can tell herself she tried to follow Ariadne's unsolicited advice and it was stupid anyway. But no, there's Aubrey's name right there, and with a sigh, Anita clicks it.
“'Nita! Hey, what's up with you? I thought you were on a job?” Aubrey says the second the screen loads.
“Yeah, but I've got some time, so I wanted to see what you were up to,” Anita says, hoping that she can just listen to her sister and not think about her life for a while.
“Same as usual, working with my patients, so on and so forth. I've finally started on that novel in my bits of spare time, though,” Aubrey says with a grin. Anita frowns, trying to remember which one that would be.
“Oh, the one where Richard III won the Battle of Bosworth?”
“Yeah, that one. So, how's the job? Basic heist or...?”
Anita shakes her head. “Dom's... He took an offer to try inception.” Her sister's reaction, eyes widening, is exactly what Anita expects to see. After all, Aubrey's a forger. She works in dream therapy rather than mind crime, but that doesn't mean she's unaware of just what inception could mean, if successful.
“Holy shit,” she says, the Southern accent that she tones down and Anita suppresses entirely coming out in full force thanks to her shock. “What on earth possessed him to try that?”
“The client's going to pull some strings and get the charges dropped,” Anita replies simply.
“Oh. That would do it.” And here comes the moment Anita's been dreading, when her sister narrows her eyes and says, “So, what's wrong?”
It's a twin thing, everyone says, but whatever it is, Anita and Aubrey have always been able to read each other. Even when everyone else is fooled, they can't fool each other. Even when they fool themselves. Anita has been telling herself that she's not bothered by what happened with Eames, but she is. And Aubrey can see that, even without knowing what the problem is.
“Eames is here,” she says finally.
“Ah,” Aubrey says, and Anita can tell her sister is leaning back in her chair. She scowls inwardly.
“I swear, if you spout off that shrink line “How does that make you feel?” I'm going to kill you.”
“I wasn't going to ask that. I was going to ask how it's going.” Aubrey's the only one who knows about Alexandria, and Anita's fears, so the question is expected.
“I... Well...” Anita tells her everything, and only regrets it when she sees the spark of anger in her sister's dark eyes.
“Anita. What the everloving fuck. Why did you do that? I only met Eames that one time, so I'll admit I don't know him that well, but he does care about you. That much has always been obvious.”
Anita can't deny that, so she shrugs. “As I said to him, maybe he shouldn't. Nothing's going to happen, and so it's a waste of time.”
“Only because you won't allow anything to happen, and to be perfectly honest, that's just stupid.” Aubrey is leaning back in her chair, if the angle of light across her face is anything to go by, and her dark eyes are flashing, reminding Anita more of Mal than anyone. Aubrey had liked Mal too, even if their friendship hadn't been as strong as Anita and Mal's was.
“I won't do this again,” Anita says, not looking at her sister, because even through a computer Aubrey's gaze is uncomfortably sharp.
“Eames is not Isaac, and Ashley... I thought you forgave her.”
Ashley. Their exotic, green-eyed half-sister, two years older than the twins, with her London accent driving most of the boys and some of the girls at their high school wild. Ashley, who had, eight years ago, fallen into bed with Anita's fiance. She says she's forgiven the other woman – after all, Isaac was Ashley's lover before he was Anita's and he betrayed both sisters with each other, Anita should have expected it. But deep down she can't quite forgive, and she can't trust that another man won't hurt her the same way.
“I'm not going to put myself out there like that again, Aubrey,” Anita says firmly. And it's not just that. Eames called her out on something she didn't want to face, something she can't afford to face. Not now, not when this entire house of cards depends on her keeping things stable until it's all over.
“Anita – ”
Anita closes the chat window, cutting her sister off. She doesn't want to do this now, she just can't. They're doing inception; that's enough to worry about without letting her personal life get the better of her.
~ ~ ~
“So is this a test run or a date?” Ariadne asks before she can bite her tongue. And once she's asked, hell, she's not going to be embarrassed about it. It's a valid question after all, since they seem to be in the shore town she and her family spent a week in every summer when she was growing up. They're certainly not on any of the levels for the Fischer job.
Then again, Yasirah had told her this would be “free-dreaming”, done without setting a specific level. Even so, Ariadne's surprised that her subconscious came up with this.
“Nice place,” Yasirah says thoughtfully, glancing around. “Did you live here or visit on holiday?”
“Vacation spot,” Ariadne says absently. “We used to come here every year. The family still might, I wouldn't know.”
“You don't speak to them?” Yasirah asks, then flinches. “I'm sorry, it's not my business.”
“No, it's fine,” Ariadne says with a wave of her hand. “They didn't like my choice of dates, to put it simply.” It was a very generalized way of saying that her grandfather had told her she was going to Hell and her parents had told her they'd pay her college tuition only on the agreement that she lived on campus even in the summer, and in fact never came back at all. “Speaking of, you never answered my question.”
Yasirah raises an eyebrow. “Which would you like it to be?”
Ariadne grins impishly. “Well, I am a bit tired of thinking about work and nothing but, how about you?”
“Well then, I guess it's a date, isn't it?” Yasirah's dark eyes are dancing, and Ariadne can admit to herself that this is probably a terrible idea, liking one of the shadowy members of this new world of hers, but she can't help herself.
They end up at the local ice-cream parlor, and end up sharing an order of waffles and ice cream (vanilla) because Yasirah's never had it and Ariadne finds that unacceptable. Yasirah finds it funny but doesn't argue, and grins at Ariadne after trying it. “If it tastes the same as reality, no wonder you were so shocked,” she quips, and Ariadne smirks.
“Told you.”
They walk along the shoreline after, at first in a companionable silence. “We didn't do this kind of thing growing up,” Yasirah says after a while, and Ariadne looks at her questioningly. She pauses, and then continues with, “They were both academics, my parents. Dad was a physicist, Mum was an anthropologist. They didn't care what field I went into, but it was always going to be academia. I went to cities around the world for academics' conventions, to places most people would never see for anthropology digs, but we never did anything like a holiday, just for fun.”
Ariadne sighs. “It was nice, growing up as part of a stereotypically normal family, but it makes it worse when they toss you for being into other girls.” She pauses, frowning. “We're both being oddly... honest, aren't we? Is it the drug we're testing?” They'd discussed it before going under, that this particular mix was supposed to encourage dreamers to be more open, but she hadn't expected it to work so well on a test run.
Stupid, really; the point of test runs was to keep doing them until they worked perfectly, after all.
Yasirah chews on her lower lip for a moment before she answers. “I think so. Is that all right?”
“I guess so... But, only on one condition.” Apparently the drug makes people bold too, or maybe that's just Ariadne.
“What?”
“We go on a date in the real world next.”
“Are you buying?” Yasirah teases.
Ariadne laughs. “Since I'm doing the asking, I probably should, shouldn't I?”
~ ~ ~
Yasirah and Ariadne are hooked up to the PASIV, Cobb's off talking to Saito, once again trying to talk him out of actually going on the job, and that leaves Eames alone with Anita for the first time since their argument the other day. He ignores her, putting the finishing touches on his current set of Browning sketches. Drawing, for him, is a way of examining appearances and capturing their every detail, a way to memorize them so that he can recreate them on himself in the dream.
He hears the soft click of a laptop being closed and feels someone's eyes on him. Eames looks up, meeting Anita's gaze head-on. “Is there something I can do for you?”
Anita twirls a pen over and under her fingers, the same way Eames will do with a poker chip. He picked it up from her, actually; it's a nervous gesture that she can't stop doing and that irritates her. In the old days he'd mimicked it to irritate her even more, and it ended up becoming a habit of his as well. Forging can be like that sometimes, even when it's only in the real world. Finally she says, “Look... About the other day, I'm...”
“You're what, Anita? You made it very clear that my concern about you is unwanted, what else is there to say?” He's pissed off and doesn't care what he sounds like.
“It's not... I don't... Fuck, I don't even know,” Anita says, and she drops her head into her hands, her voice muffled but still clear as she keeps talking. “I have to stay with Dom, I have to see this through. Mal... She was as much my sister as Aubrey, really, and a hell of a lot more than Ashley. But you're right when you say I've been with him too long. I was pissed because you were making me face that. I don't know what to do without having to worry about Dom, about him following Mal off the deep end, about her fucking shade stalking us in dreams and killing me every twisted way she can-”
Eames cuts her off. “What?”
Anita looks up at him then, and there's something in her dark eyes that scares him to death. Scares him because of what it could mean for all of them, on this job, but more because what it already does mean for Anita. “I told you about his shade.”
“You never mentioned that she was killing you. Attacking you, yes, but... For fuck's sake, what is she going to do to us on a job like inception, with the levels it'll require?”
“I don't know.”
He wants to hit something, preferably Cobb, but unfortunately the extractor's not present. He settles for snapping the pencil in his hand and taking a deep breath. “And you told me I shouldn't be concerned.”
“That's not exactly what I meant.”
“Oh, I know what you meant. And is that what you really want from me, Anita? Do you really want me to just shrug and say that it doesn't matter to me, what happens to you? Do you want me to do that, and actually mean it?” He knows the answer before he asks, because he knows Anita. Knows that even though she's done nothing but push him away, not all of her wants to do that. All he's doing is challenging her to admit that. A small victory, maybe, but the first real one he'll have managed over her.
She doesn't look away. Finally she sighs, tension falling away like she just can't hold it anymore. “No. Happy now?”
“Not even close, but it's a start. So, tell me, what's your plan for evading Mal? I know you have one.” Back to business, for now. Later, well... Later they'll have time to deal with this properly, once they've gotten through this job intact. They will deal with it, one way or another, this time. Eames is determined on that score.
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Date: 2011-09-02 05:02 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-09-02 05:23 am (UTC)I'm very curious about the other uses for shared dreaming and therapy seems like an obvious one. (That is an odd coincidence.)
That was inspired by my being down the shore and seeing a couple sharing ice cream and waffles. I thought it was cute, and so I borrowed it. :D
I'm glad you can see shades of Arthur and Yusuf in Anita and Yasirah; if you couldn't then I'd be doing something wrong here.