Work Text:
Prompt: "Saito does flower arranging in his spare time. Everyone gets surprised by the lovely little arrangements that keep turning up in their vicinity for them to find."
Buds, Stems, Bright Life
"The mark's on the third deck. Eames? You're the captain. Arthur, keep watch, the boiler room is key."
The team split to take their positions around the ship (they'll enter the next level of dreaming once they hit the iceberg) and Cobb finds himself stuck in the main banquet hall with nothing to do but wait. He nods to a projection at the buffet line and admires the setting.
Ariadne---having never designed for the ocean before---had really come through in the superstructure, but it's the sphere of carnations below the chandelier that impresses Cobb most. It is beautiful, an orb of red and white petalblooms as tall as a man. The target wasn't even supposed to be in this room, much less appreciate its decoration. The dining dishes have no flavor. The floorboards are the same square-foot pattern tiled over and over. Why had Ariadne gone to such trouble to get the flowers right?
Just then, the ship's whistle sounds---for the last time, Cobb knows---and he rushes to the aft deck to meet with Yusuf.
-----
"This was my first shared dreaming space. I know we're not supposed to recreate real places, but I've always tried to keep this one. It's important to me."
Arthur nods. He likes this street, and he likes being here in this cafe with Ariadne.
A projection refills their waters and changes out their table's centerpiece, two blue orchids in a vase.
-----
"Oh! I get it! It's a field of poppies! Like where they fell asleep in The Wizard of Oz! That's perfect!"
"I... I guess it is. But I didn't add that to the dream, I was just supposed to make sure that the mark took this path off the yellow brick road."
Eames briefly shifts out of being an enormous lion-person and addresses Arthur. "Your contribution then darling?"
Arthur shakes his head as best as his new metal neck and shoulders will allow. "No. Though, it is fitting, I'll admit."
Ariadne sets down the basket with the prop Toto in it. "Wasn't me."
Cobb pulls a loose piece straw from his wrist and shrugs. "Well, it'll work, and that's what matters. Now everyone take a needle---Eames, don't even say it, I realize I'm a haystack---and get ready to meet the mark on level three."
-----
"What? No chocolates, Arthur?"
The point man grins. It is so good to me awake. "Saito told me roses would be best."
Prompt: "EAMES IS A FANFICTION WRITER OF THEIR TEAM. LULZ ENSUE."
Rough Draft
"We're going to be writing fanfic?"
"We're going to be performing an Inception," Cobb speaks the word with a capital letter, "and it's going to be a very serious and very dangerous mission."
"Would it actually be... fanfiction if the author herself writes it? I mean, all we're supplying is the idea."
"Maybe she already wants to write it. Plenty of authors compromise their works to appease fans and publishers."
"No one said we were writing fanfiction. We're just going to be taking existing characters and settings and manipulating them to tell a new story."
"That's... We're writing fanfiction."
"Dreaming fanfiction. Inside the author's head. 'Dreamficcing.' Why does it matter what it's called?"
"I was going to be an architect, before this."
"Has anyone actually read these books?"
-----
"I cannot believe you own a fucking Kindle."
-----
"Prischa Denua. Writes under the penname 'Penny Dime'---yes, I know. Best-selling contemporary fantasy series internationally after Harry Potter. Newberry finalist three times. Book tours in symphony houses. Oprah's recommended book list sixty-one times times, the third book in her 'Sword of the Rainsky' series 'Fogmark' sticking for forty consecutive weeks. Random House publishing stock is expected to split when preorders for the upcoming fifth book come online. Only four people in the entire world apparently know any details of the plot: Miss Dime herself, her editor, and President Obama's daughters. She was invited to a dinner at the White House last fall. The first family are all avid fans."
"And we're going to be sleeping with her."
"Eames, don't... please don't phrase it like that."
"Apologies, love."
-----
"What chapter are you on?"
"Page... oh! Uh, twenty-four I think."
"Ha! Be you don't realize that Ren's promotion to Captain of the Fairgaurd wasn't stamped with the queen's real seal!"
"Eames, I was talking about the second book."
"Oh! Well... I'll get there."
-----
"Hey Ariadne! Bet you'll never guess who Petra sees when---"
"No!! No spoilers no spoilers no spoilers!!" Ariadne shrieks as she runs out of the room, trying to balance with her hands clamped over her ears.
"Eames. Stop it."
"It'll blow your mind!" Eames shouts after her.
-----
Arthur and Eames order dual sets of the paperbacks once Eames won't shut up about Arthur's Kindle but they wind up trading copies back and forth, crisscrossing the warehouse to change chairs or spots where the light is good. No one sees Cobb read during the time he's there, but he frills the hardback editions he carries with post-it-notes and bookmarks. Ariadne tries Arthur's Kindle for the first few chapters, then trades with Yusuf when she needs someone to check her mazes against the text.
Saito buys the audiobooks.
-----
"So, layer one: 'I am honest.' Ariadne's working on the layout already, should be expansive, give us plenty of room to separate and rejoin. Planting that line too far down might cause the target to lose all communicative inhibitions, permanent sodium pentathol, really mess them up, but we're still in light REM for the first part, so..."
Eames changes the slide.
"Second layer! Building on that: 'Marc and Ren are in love.' She won't be so much writing anymore as... telling the truth! About fiction. And then the third layer," Eames steps over the projector cord, "is that Marc and Ren cannot be in love unless she writes it. We get set, and then Misses P. sings and we kick on home."
"Sounds like a plan."
Yusuf flips the lightswitch. The team all rub their eyes.
-----
"You finished?"
Arthur looks up from the stack crate he'd made into a chair.
"Just now, yeah. What'd you think?"
"I kinda want to read the fifth book on my own now! Just to see how it continues."
"I think she only has five planned."
"That stinks. Well, as long as Queen Nadrang gets the dungeon in the end..."
"Yeah."
"Well, that and... Marc and Ren don't really hate eachother, do they? I mean, they just haven't been able to understand eachother."
"Uh... Ariadne?"
"What? I'm just saying I can see why someone would pay so much money to make sure the book included what they wanted."
"It's a fine job, yeah, but... it's only a book. It only exists within itself."
"Aren't dreams the same way though? Last page, some line, you wake up?"
-----
"Turn around."
Eames, now resembling the rebellious and secretive knight Marc Ghanae, rotates in place on the pedestal.
"Hair's wrong."
"Eyes, too."
"Did you read different books?"
"Your shoulders... do not bear the weight of the character's battles."
"What?? Saito, my shoulders are covered in armor plate. And how can you even see my eyes?? I'm the perfect---I am damn near an exact copy!"
"Of what?"
"You need to be more... Mischa Collins and less... Roger Moore."
"Oh, I would cast, like, a male Anne Hathaway. I mean, if it was a movie."
"Or DiCaprio."
"I could see that. Definitely not Eames though."
"Never Eames."
"Fine, fine! I get the point. I'll tweak it, just, shut up already..."
-----
They time the crime for two months from that Sunday, for a hotel room in Scotland and a bribed police chief.
"We know she hasn't been trained to resist what we do. Accessing shared dreamspaces actually means she'll violate some insurance clauses---Arthur looked it up. She'll have a bodyguard with her, a security expert, but Yusuf will put him out with separate chemicals. Her train leaves at ten AM the next morning so we'll have a full night to operate and go."
"Hopefully Ariadne's maze and Eames's forgeries will trigger the author's dreaming through the plot of the books; We'll be trying to start things off just as book one finishes. It'll be a sudden drop, but we've practiced, and we should succeed just fine."
-----
They dream.
-----
"Where are we?"
"Near page 390, I think. End of book one. The plot details are sparse here---Ren should be returning to the witches of the forest with the bracelet---but try to stay in-character."
"Right. Even though we're not characters."
"That's correct. And that gives us around two hours to travel to the castle to see the king dethroned in the beginning of book two."
"Oh god. Yusuf."
"What?"
"You know what I just realized? All of us, except for Eames? We're OC's."
"Oh... Wow. Gross."
"I know."
-----
"What ho, fair lass! Great and strange are the times of these late moons!"
Ariadne freezes. The projection---one of the forest kind---frowns at her. "But you are strange yourself..."
"Uh... No! No no, I---I agree! These are strange times. Unrest in the court I hear, and the holy woods cut back."
The projection nods, satisfied, and continues on its way into the trees.
Arthur smiles at her. "Nice work."
-----
They dream.
-----
"Uh Cobb? Marc and Ren... I mean, the projections... they're not fighting anymore."
"What? What are they doing? They haven't disappeared have they?"
"No! They're uh... They're kissing. Kind of a lot."
"Shit! That's not in the book!"
"Eames! Are you doing that?"
"Why would you think it's me making them suck face?"
"Well it's not me. Not consciously, I mean. I always thought Marc was more Effy's type."
"You're joking, right? The stablehand?"
"He has noble blood!"
"Both of you! Focus! This whole world is going to start coming apart if we don't get back onto canon!"
"We weren't even up to the fourth book yet..."
"Maybe we were never in the books to begin with. Maybe this has been a separate fantasy of the author's all along."
"We still need to drop one more layer at the same point the actual fourth book would have ended. If we can't do that, we fail."
"What if---" Eames was interrupted by a shout from Ariadne.
"Cobb! It's... I can see somebody! There's someone else---someone real, I mean, in the dream!"
"What?? Who?" Dom's most lethal enemy had spent years imprisoned in his head, no more "real" than a memory, but an interferent that might follow them into the waking world was far more frightening.
It's... it's the guy in the room with us! It's Penny's bodyguard!"
"What the hell is he doing here? Yusuf---"
"He must've fallen into the same REM-heart frequency! When you're this far down, the brain..."
"No time. We need to get out of here before the story unravels."
"No!" Arthur grabs Cobb's arm. "We jump early, screw the fourth book, and just try to avoid events that have already been written."
"It's not safe. We're too close to hitting limbo already and the author's going to notice that we're messing up the plot."
"Actually Cobb," Ariadne cuts in, "All that's different is... well, that Marc and Ren aren't behaving much like mortal enemies. I don't think any of us are making the projections do that."
"But, when Penny..."
"It's the bodyguard, Cobb. He must ship Marc/Ren."
"Then we leave him here, on this level, with Yusuf. We're four against two that way. If we move down now we can still get repositioned."
"Right. Let's just hope our mister Security Expert doesn't make any other major edits."
-----
They dream.
-----
They are standing on the shores of the Bhurant Jaunt. Another beach, so like the one before, but this time not from any of their heads.
"Marc and Ren! They're still here!"
Eames focuses.
"Damnit! We can't try to dictate what major characters will do! Our slightest thoughts at this level will affect the projections! Once the author realizes she's not watching something that's hers, she'll know she's dreaming and tear all of this up!"
"Then we run with it," says Arthur. The grains of sand are already starting to become less distinct. The ocean is a frozen mass, and below it: limbo. Cobb has not said anything.
"We Mister Charles."
-----
"This is a dream, Marc."
"If this is a dream, where will you be when I wake up?"
"Never without you, I should hope. Is our love false? Is this not real? I feel so much."
Cobb stares at the two characters. He does not speak or make any sound.
"But if we are but shades, night-things playing at-a-parts---"
"We should not be a dream, good Ren. Rather, a story. Retold and made into this time."
"Then I will make our end, and end with you."
Ren lifts Marc's blade from the scabbard at his side---the plot is shaky now, and more dreamlike than ever---and lifts it high. The sea moves in and out. Marc speaks to Ren in a clear voice not his own. "You are waiting for a train."
The sword finds both their hearts.
-----
They leave through the hotel's kitchen in the morning, eight real hours having passed. They are paid in full nine hours after that. Cobb throws the parts of the temporary cellphone he uses out the window of Saito's car. Eames lies low in Wales. Arthur and Ariadne return to Paris.
-----
One year later, on page 601, they kiss.
Prompt: Ariadne was the forger. Yusuf was the point man. Arthur, the Extractor. Cobb, the chemist. Eames was the architect."
Othering
"How do you make yourself taller? Because it's not just your appearance that changes, is it? How do you literally become a different shape? Is it just like wearing a whole lot of sports mascot costumes around?"
Ariadne smiles at Eames with her own face before shifting back to the redhead standard. "Trick of the trade."
Showing off now, she changes her copied's clothing to an athlete's jersey, invents a fake team: "The Fighting Projections."
She is shorter in the mirror. Eames is the team's worldbuilder, a specialist, and experienced to boot, but Ariadne---for having been little more than a second-year acting student---absolutely fascinates him.
"You have two minutes to disguise yourself so that it takes me more than one minute to identify you." Arthur'd said, sounding like he'd been quoting someone else.
She can do even better than that, now.
-----
Yusuf just shakes his head. "I'd hate to see out of control."
Arthur is furious---he can tell; Yusuf knows he hates to be questioned---but he's scared too, so Yusuf says nothing else. His leg is already starting to feel better (the dream of the bullet in his kneecap slipping on) but for all of Arthur's moodiness he might as well be still bleeding all over their train cabin.
The same kind of thing had happened on the Stein job, and with Shaemus, but Yusuf still trusts Arthur ("Because he is the best extractor.") and that means he needs Arthur to trust him. Being a good point man means that you take care of your team, in dreams and in reality.
He'll do a little baking later, delay returning to his cat. That always cheers Arthur up.
-----
"How did she die?"
The vial Cobb is holding doesn't even tremble---he's too good for that---but he holds the tube suspended in its angle for a long time, the syrup line of dripping fluid seemingly the only movement in the whole warehouse.
"She was poisoned." His voice is controlled and quiet.
"Oh."
Another golden drop descends.
"Thank you, by the way." Cobb says suddenly.
"For what?"
"For not asking if I did it."
-----
"There's no room for tourists on this job."
Robert shakes his head. "How else will I know you've done the job? I must be sure that Saito will disinherit his two sons."
"It's really not---"
Arthur interrupts her. "Ariadne. It's fine. He's right. Tell Eames that Fischer needs a copy of his layouts and that he's to start entering the practice dreams starting immediately."
Robert smiles---he's not being mean, he's only always been awkward, and the reward he's promised Arthur has put all the team on edge to win. But all he has to do is stay observant and alive, no?
It's not until four hours (eighteen minutes) later, trying to keep track of gravity and spacial distortions on the floor of an impossible casino that he starts to have real doubts about his going in as well.
The roulette mobius twists over on itself and folds in half. Eames grins. "Red nine. Go double then? I'll bet that wallet's worth a little price."
"More than you'd believe."
Prompt: "[Crossover] Citizen Kane (Robert-centric.) Whirligig/Sled. Run with that any way you like."
Citizen Fischer
He begs for it, at the end of his long life, begs for the mark of the one truth that still eludes him, the one idea that still gives him any hope. He has been proven right in all things before this, his private mistrusts concerning friendship, loyalty, and money---his money---verified again and again over the past eighty years. Let him test this final theory. But they will not understand, because he is old, and dying, and he has always been delusional. "Senile", now, is the word he's aged into. If he should rave and cry out to be lifted from his hospice bed and thrown down a snowbank, no one will heed his final wish. They wipe the spittle from his mouth. It is the middle of July.
The first object---now long lost---was the pinwheel, of course. It wasn't small, but it was unique to him, and the way the replica twirled was rich with a meaning almost more affirming than its function. It was the proof that he might be himself. It'd been packed into a box and misplaced, or sold, at about the same time the Fischer-Morrow arts endowment was suspended. That was around when Robert stopped recognizing faces. When they told him that his wife had died.
The sled was the second object. A stroke of inspiration taken from his most vividly remembered dream, a valley of white slopes, cold mountains, a profound setting that seemed to ignore the avalanches and the nameless violence that characterized Robert's REM time. When you sat upon the sled, it veered left. Always.
He'd had a notched cane handle and a carved bookend as well, they might be found, but he no longer trusts his shaking hands to recognize them. So, with the last part of his verbal strength, it's the sled he asks for, the only option that remains.
Who says a man might not keep many totems?
That night, barely able to lift his head, he leans out from his bedside and holds down the [New Display] button on the regulator machine. (They've locked the plug into the wall, but they don't know about this.) The device stutters, collapses, and Robert imagines his own body seizing in the same way, when the time comes. There. It's deliberate, now. He'll know for sure at last.
He expires.
-----
-----
-----
Robert Fischer wakes after eleven hours. His ears ring with a weird, familiar note, a tinnitus he is already used to. There is a tiny mark of blood---a needle wound---on his right wrist. His hands are young and smooth.
Later, alone in his kitchen, he flicks one bright end of the new whirligig and watches it spin round and round and round and round
Prompt: "The team, as individuals or as a group, tell bedtimes stories to Phillipa and James."
Bedtime Stories
"Once upon a time, there lived a girl in the woods named---"
"Little Red Riding Hood!"
"Li---Yes, that's right! Her name was Little Red Riding Hood, and she lived in the woods with her grandmother, who was very sick, and had to be taken care of. Now, Little Red knew that she definitely wasn't the best person to care for her sick grandmother, but she tried her best anyways, and would always bring her baskets of food and medicines.
"One day, Little Red Riding Hood was walking through the woods when she was set on by---"
"A wolf! The wolf!"
"Yes!! A fierce and cunning creature with a special talent: he could disguise himself to look like anyone he wanted! The wolf wanted nothing more than to eat Little Red right up, but Little Red mentioned that she was traveling to her poor grandmother's, and couldn't the wolf spare her?
"Now, the wolf knew a dangerous shortcut through the woods that would get him to grandmother's house much faster than Little Red. And so, he let our heroine continue on her way and rushed to anticipate her, hoping to gobble up both Red and her grandmother!
"When the wolf arrived, Red's grandmother was temporarily out, so the sly wolf disguised himself as the old woman so as to trick Red and catch her off her guard. It was a fine disguise, but Red knew it was the wolf right away. But seeing how well he'd transformed himself, Red had an idea that might benefit both her and the bad wolf.
"When Red's real grandmother returned, she was greeted with the site of Little Red speaking to a woman that looked just like her! In fact---and, Grandma's eyes had been bad for years---she could swear that old woman was her! She watched as Little Red doted on her doppelgänger, and she saw, observing the odd scene, how exhausted Red appeared to be, and how much it took out of Red's life to keep taking care of her.
"This had been Little Red's plan all along, because she loved her grandmother, and knew that she would be happier in better hands. And the wolf played along, because Red had promised to pay him three whole baskets of meats and goodies.
"So, when Red's grandmother woke up---"
"Wha..What?"
"Hush. When Red's grandmother woke up, she decided that it was time to move into a retirement home. It was a perfect inception."
"What? That's not how the story ends!!"
"Oh! Right. 'And they all lived happily ever---"
"No! The story doesn't go like that at all!"
"Well then," Eames says, and he kisses both their heads before turning out the light, "you are welcome to dream up a proper ending."
Prompt: "AN EXTRACTION FROM THE MIND OF A RAPPER GOES AWRY. AFTERWARDS, THE TEAM CAN ONLY COMMUNICATE IN RAP LYRICS."
All caps (all raps)
(read aloud)
"YO WAKE UP WAKE UP
WE ARE TOGETHER AND THE TRAIN HAS STOPPED
YOUR BRAINWAVES ARE ON THE WAKING CLOCK
PULL THE PASIV OUT YOUR VEINS
AND TOTEMS OUT YOUR COATPOCKETS
ROLL DICE, ROTATE TOPS.
HOW'D IT GO IN THE THIRD LEVEL MAZE?
DID THE CODEWORD "BIRD" SETTLE?
WE GET THE GOOSE AND THE GOLDEN EGG?"
"YOU MEAN THE SECRETS?
EAMES---TO STICK TO CODE---WE GOT THE FLOCK;
WE GOT IT MADE
WE LEARNED THAT HE'S EMBEZZLING: BEAT A CON MAN AT AN HONEST GAME
WE COULD'VE LOOKED THROUGH YEARS OF REPORTS, A LOTTA NAMES
I WAS READY TO 'DREAM BIGGER'---"
"ROCKET?"
"GRENADES---BUT ARIADNE THOUGHT: 'MAKE HIM DREAM UP A STOCK EXCHANGE.'"
"OH DAMN! BUT WHAT ABOUT WHAT HIS MIND SUPPLIED?"
"PROJECTIONS? MAN, I MURDERED LIKE NINETY-FIVE!
THEY WERE TOUGH THOUGH, I WAS SHOT, STABBED AND SLICED
AT THE END MY SUIT PRACTICALLY MATCHED MY DICE."
"AND THE KICK?"
"WHAT---OH FUCK YOU EAMES, A BATHTUB PACKED IN ICE?"
"I KNOW COBB WOULD ENDORSE IT TOO."
"I NEED A KICK EAMES, NOT TO HAVE MY ORGANS REMOVED. HOW'S SECURITY?
"STILL ON FLOORS SIX AND TWO, WITH FAKE FINGERPRINTS,
AND OF COURSE, WRONG SIZE-FIT SHOES.
BY THE TIME THEY FIGURE WE'VE BEEN MISCONSTRUED
WE'LL BE DISGUISED IN THE UNIFORMS OF A FIX-IT CREW.
BY THE WAY, HOW'D THIS BITCH WAKE UP, TAKE THE KICK UP?"
"SMOOTH AS SILK, EAMES, YES, I ALREADY TIPPED MY BISHOP
BUT I WAS JUST KILLED BY LIKE A TEAM OF NINJAS
I FEEL LIKE GETTIN' PAID AND THEN NOT SLEEPING THIS MONTH."
"WORD."
"WORD."
Prompt: "Counting Sheep"
Counting Sheep
"But I need to work on the next maze! And--and Arthur needs to memorize it! And you need to practice hunting down the mark! We've all got so much work!"
"Oh, we can still use the PASIV device. We just can't use the drugs for instant sleep."
"So... what are you saying?"
-----
"One sheep... two sheep... three sheep..."
"Eames, that's---"
"Four sheep..."
"Eames, that's not---Those aren't sheep."
"Of course they are!" An alligator lumbers over the little fence. "Seven sheep..."
"Eames, this next one is an ostrich. And so far you've seen two cats, one bison and three legendary pokémon. Zero sheep"
"They are sheep, Arthur. They've just disguised themselves as other things."
"Oh, like... like some sort of special forgery practice?"
Copies of Yusuf and Saito cartwheel over the divide.
"Either that of I just find sheep to be... cliché."
-----
"High Victorian... Low Victorian... Faux Victorian of the American midwest... Tressled arches... Deco slats... Turn-of-the-century Chinese gates..."
"Ariadne? Where are all the sheep? And what are you counting anyways?"
"Different styles of fences. Oh! There's raygun gothic!"
-----
"They're all wearing little suits. Tiny sheep in little suits. All of them. I can't--- I can't believe this."
"Ariadne, please... please don't tell Eames."
-----
"Why are your sheep jumping over train tracks?"
"Long story. Go to sleep."