Work Text:
My love has concrete feet
My love's an iron ball
Wrapped around your ankles over the waterfall
"Do you know what it is to be a lover? To be half of a whole?" Mal asks, moving around her, their skin nearly touching. Ariadne can smell her neck—something classic and old. L’Air du Temps; something like that. But I’m not smelling that, Dom is. Or he did, she tries to remind herself. It’s just a memory. It’s not real—
"No," she whispers, her mouth dry. Something is rooting her to the spot; she can’t bring herself to look into those gray eyes. Something about looking into her haunted face makes her so much more than someone else’s memory. "No, I—"
"Never?" Mal asks, stopping in front of her; the word is a purr in her mouth. "A girl such as you? So clever, to make it all the way down here." She lifts a hand, an elegant, careless movement, gesturing to the wrecked room around them. "And so lovely." She ducks her head, catching Ariadne’s gaze against her will, and tipping her chin up with one finger. Her touch is imperceptibly light, like a ghost’s (she is, she is, she’s not real anymore, she’s just a projection), but Ariadne can’t move. "No one has ever loved you?"
"I—I’ve had...but I just wanted to know..." How can she explain? What she’s had—fumbling, sweaty touches in a half-lit dorm room; kisses sliding off her mouth and tasting of beer, the jingle of a belt buckle and panting breath—how is that anything next to what Mal and Dom once had? To be a lover...it’s so much more than the act, than mere hands on skin. "I just...wanted to know...how it felt."
"I see," Mal says, her voice cold. She begins to move around Ariadne again; she steps on the broken glass glittering on the floor, but she doesn’t seem to notice. "So you want him for yourself? You think you can send me away? You can make him forget me?"
"No," she gasps again, panic flooding through her like ice across her skin. Does that mean he wants me to...? "That’s not what I—I just wanted to know how...how he keeps you...here. You’re so..." She can’t finish it. "Real"? "Perfect"? "Terrifying"?
"You want to know him? Understand him?" Mal asks, pausing at her side, standing very close. Ariadne can feel her breath against her hair. "Now you know." She slides one finger down Ariadne’s arm, and then closes her fingers, one by one, around her wrist. "This is him." She lifts her hand and presses it to her own chest, above the place where her velvet dress curves over her breast, where her heart was—is—should be. She feels movement and life under her frozen fingers—or is that her own pulse pounding like the rhythm of train wheels? Chills spread through Ariadne’s entire body at her touch. "Do you see? He keeps me here; he asks me to leave but he keeps me here, alone." She reaches down and takes her other hand and pulls it up to meet the first, forcing her to turn fully to face her. Her stormy eyes are bright with tears now, and she can’t look away. "He said we’d be here together, but I’m always alone."
"I’m sorry," Ariadne whispers. And although she knows she has no right to say it, it comes tumbling out: "I don’t think he—he can let himself let you go, even if he knows that he should." And how could he? she finds herself thinking as a tear slides down Mal’s face, their hands still tangled together. How could anyone let you go?
"Stay with me," she says, her voice half a sob. "Please. Please stay. There’s so much I can show you. We can build things together. I know you’re his architect." She knows because he knows. "I can give you more than he can. He doesn’t understand; he’ll hold you back. But look." She drops their hands so they fall between their waists, and then pulls her by one hand across the room to one of the windows, brushing aside the sheer white curtains. A city spread out below them and out, sparkling gold and blue—but silent and empty. "You can have whatever you want here," Mal tells her, and she tries to smile, but it is like curved steel.
"I can’t," Ariadne tells her, although she can’t pull away just yet. The glow from outside the window throws a bell of light across Mal’s face, carving deep shadows across her cheek. "I can’t stay. I have to...I have work to do, and..."
"He’s trying to train you, isn’t he? He tells you all the rules and makes you afraid of yourself," Mal says, and her voice sharpens into a hiss. "Of what you can do. That’s what he tried to do to me. But I can show you. I can take you further down than he’d ever let you." Her grip on Ariadne’s hand is suddenly painfully tight.
"Please," she whispers, her voice barely audible. "Please, you have to let me go. I can’t stay. Mal, I—I have to wake up." Finally, gently, she tries to pull her hand out of Mal’s, but she’s barely twitched her fingers before Mal has seized the side of her face with her other hand, making her jump.
"You can’t," she says, and now the tears are falling again. "You can’t come here like this and then leave me alone again. I can’t bear it anymore. Stay, and I’ll show you. You want to know love? I’ll show you. Please." She brushes Ariadne’s hair from her face, caressing her cheek.
"Mal," Ariadne says, and just her name sounds like pleading, but she doesn’t know quite what she’s begging for; all she can see are gray eyes and golden lights and she still smells L’air du Temps, and then Mal is leaning forward and placing salty raindrop kisses against against her cheek and then, finally, on her lips, and Ariadne doesn’t know if it’s really her or if it’s just Dom’s mind showing her its truth; all she knows is that the touch on her face is soft and she’s trembling again and she doesn’t even notice that Mal’s other hand is no longer in hers.
The click of the window latch means nothing to her; it’s just another tiny sound in this frighteningly real place, but suddenly Mal’s hand has slipped to her neck and she has pulled away, looking her in the eyes, and her gray eyes are blades as she hisses "You shouldn’t have come here" and a sudden blast of cold air sweeps her short, dark hair across her face. And Ariadne is still breathless from the kiss, so she doesn’t have the air in her lungs to scream as Mal shoves her, hard, and she falls out and down into cold and dark and tiny golden lights and nothing and she—
wakes, in the workshop, her body jolting off the chair. She gasps like she’s been underwater, her heart pounding, still aware of the sensation of falling and of her scent. Dom is beside her, and his eyes are open when she looks over at him. They look at each other for a long moment, and a thousand words seem to flicker through the air in front of her and she doesn’t know which ones are right: "how could you"? "I’m sorry"? "I would do the same"?
After a moment, Cobb leans over and pulls the tubes from his arm. "Now you know why I don’t build" is all he says. Then he stands. "Come on. We have a lot to do." After a moment, she follows, standing up, her fingers drifting slowly to her lips.