Fic: dream a dream (and what you see will be) - mizzy2k - PART

[mizzy]

dream a dream (and what you see will be)

mizzy2k


Cobb looks unsettled. He stays on the edge of the seat, curled a little over himself, a hand going unconsciously to his gut and Ariadne doesn't blame him. She feels sick.

"It doesn't stop me from wanting to push Seb away permanently," she says.

Cobb's head flings up, his eyes widening in shock. "I was thinking and failing of a way of breaking a similar version of that to you gently without you thinking any less of me than you already must, Ari."

Ariadne feels sick and unsettled, but she also feels determined. Guilty and sick, but determined."Out of the three personalities, Arthur has the best chance of a full, happy life. All three can't continue to share the same body. It'll rip him apart. Arthur's the one I want to win, and I know you feel the same too. I doubt we'll get an ounce of argument from Eames. Yusuf may have some moral issues, but we're leaving him on Level 1. I say we make a pact now. We get Arthur back. Whatever it takes."

She feels ruthless, dizzy with it, almost on the edge of dangerous. She's shot at thousands of angry projections with guns, thrown grenades into their midst, blown up buildings to take some out and killed more people in the PASIV than she's ever known in real life; this decision is what makes her feel like a bad-ass. A guilty as hell bad-ass, but a bad-ass nonetheless.

Cobb doesn't hesitate in thrusting out his hand, and Ariadne has no compunctions in shaking it just as quickly. For a moment she thinks Cobb doesn't feel as guilty as she does, until she feels how moist his palms are. She looks at him with less hostility, and he smiles tightly.

He understands that this is a decision where the only two choices are frying pan or fire.

"We've got a hard day in front of us tomorrow, you should go and get some sleep," Cobb says.

"Like sleep and work are mutually exclusive in our line of business," Ariadne says. It's an old dreamsharing joke, but Cobb doesn't pull her up for the ahem tired line. "I'll see you tomorrow."

Cobb nods, and hesitates like there's something else he wants to say. But then he just smiles, soft and sad, and Ariadne nods and bids him goodbye quickly, heading out of the warehouse with her head ducked down and her thoughts rumbling through her brain.

It takes everything she's got not to flinch when she walks through the door.

#
Eames is already in the house when Ariadne and Cobb pull up in front, Yusuf, Seb and the PASIV in the backseat. He's chatting to Amelia's mother in the kitchen over a cup of tea, in low, charming tones, and she looks much more relaxed than Ariadne remembers. Then again, that's one of Eames' gifts.

Chameleon, she thinks, not forger.

Eames looks up at her over the top of his tea-cup like he's heard her thoughts. It's just coincidence, but it makes Ariadne sad again. Only last week she was thinking no one knew Eames, and now she knows Arthur does - only Arthur's life is as much at stake as Amelia's at this point.

"This compound's specifically designed to work with Amelia's medication," Yusuf is telling Amelia's mother as Ariadne slides closer to her. Ariadne flashes her as reassuring a smile as she can manage. "I've worked with many brain-damaged patients in Mombasa on the same drugs. It's specifically designed to leave the body within fifteen minutes, which is perfect for our purposes. If we need to get her out earlier we can use a kick-" Her mother looks a little startled. "No violence. The technical name is a hypnic jerk. We've briefed your husband on how to perform it."

Ariadne smothers her less reassuring smile, because it is probably best not to let Amelia's mother know that a kick will basically mean tipping her very ill daughter out of the bed.

"The somnacin for this trip is an especially formulated one which just... wakes the sleeper naturally," Yusuf continues, throwing a small warning look at Ariadne. Perhaps the eviller smirk is threatening on her face despite her best efforts. "It's the safest one I have for someone on the medication that Amelia's on."

Amelia's mother's fixed smile tightens. Yusuf continues his techno-babble, and Ariadne can feel the older woman physically relax as Yusuf outlines the few steps they'll need to take to counter the very few side-effects of the compound he's brewed for this job. While the tricky steps would make anyone tense, Amelia's mother is calm - because Yusuf's words indicate no if. Yusuf is saying when.

It's a hell of a bluff - they all know the odds that even finding Amelia on level one are lower than anyone likes - but Ariadne's so proud of her whole team. Even Seb's quiet and is refraining from making any of his trademark surly comments or jokes.

When they take the PASIV into Amelia's room, and see her frail nine year old body rising and falling, no one has to make much of an effort to be quiet. They're sombre and silent by virtue of the circumstances.

Seeing Amelia there just makes all the sacrifice seem almost worthwhile.

Ariadne looks around the rest of the room, looking for clues on how to further connect with Amelia in the dream. She drags her fingertips over the surface of things. Connecting to all the sensations in a dream is difficult; Ariadne finds it easier if before a job she does her best to feel and smell and listen to anything that might be pertinent. Anything to drag into the dream which might make the Mark more willing to believe the dream.

On the dresser there's photographs of her, eight years old and happy; it's hard to believe it's the same girl in the bed behind her. Ariadne's fingers linger on the contents of the shelf to the left - soft toys. There's a couple of clowns made of soft, limp fabric, rough red wool hair curling out from beneath identical stripy hats, obviously handmade from the button eyes and the coarsely stitched mouth. Ariadne pauses at them.

When she looks up, Cobb's moved to stand beside her. His eyes are soft, like his expression around James and Phillipa.

"Is this going to be a problem?" Ariadne asks, holding up one of the clowns. "Considering what our level one theme is?"

"Her father tells me she loves carnivals," Cobb says. "Show one to Eames. He might be able to forge one, be a familiar face."

Ariadne nods. Normally she'd challenge Cobb, make him stop using her as an intermediary just because he had a fight with Eames, but she's eager to keep the dream as free from conflict as possible.

After the dream is another story.

Ariadne passes the doll to Eames, who throws her the hackiest look he's given her in a while and mutters something about Cobb being a bastard which doesn't sound entirely antagonistic; it reassures Ariadne that Cobb and Eames might work things out later, even if neither of them see that right now.

And if they're stubborn about it, well. None of them have a woman in their life consistently apart from her. (Phillipa's too young to count; Marie too bitter from her divorce from Miles) They're unused to defending themselves from the devious techniques and feminine wiles she has at her disposal. Ariadne's engineered her fair share of sneaky conflict resolution since signing up to Cobb's team.

Ariadne snags one of the armchairs for herself, pushing it into position around the PASIV table where Seb's showing Amelia's father how to monitor the numbers and which button to press to get them out. Ariadne's been talking him through it over the webcam constantly for the last week - Amelia's parents have been understandably nervous - but it does no harm to cover the basics. She's been on that side of it too, watching over the sleeping extractors.

The five minutes of a job feel extraordinarily long when you're stuck on the outside of them, almost as long as they do on the other side.

Amelia's mother buzzes around, offering them coffee. Seb's head jerks up involuntarily when Ariadne refuses, citing the way it would weaken her synapses. She tries to soften the grin of victory she wants to make at Arthur's memories seeping through to him. Seb's good at pretending he's fully savvy about the team and what's happened in the last couple of years; he's made enough small blunders to let Ariadne know Arthur's suppressing many of his memories.

Like when she mentioned limbo, once, and Seb didn't seem too frightened of it; yet Arthur always mentioned limbo like it's the worst possible place in physical or metaphysical existence.

The memory of the coffee fight obviously unsettles Seb. He pats Amelia's father on the shoulder awkwardly, and wanders over to Amelia's bedside, looking down at her body thoughtfully. He looks so young with his hair scruffy, curling over his forehead, a loose blue hoodie hanging from the thin frame of his body. Ariadne focusses for a moment on thinking how Arthur's going to react when he wakes up like that, because if she thinks about opening her eyes and finding Seb looking back, she feels sick.

Seb picks up the book next to Amelia's bedside, and looks at it blankly. It's like he doesn't even recognise what it is. Then the corner of his mouth twitches down, a hint of an Arthur expression, and he looks at Amelia and then pulls a pen out of his pocket. Ariadne finds that curious, until she remembers Seb's actually the one that wrote the book as therapy. No one writes that much as therapy unless they enjoy writing, so it does stand to reason Seb would carry a pen to write, should the occasion occur. He bends his dark head over the cover, and scrawls something across the page.

"Hey, what are you doing?"

They all look up and to the door as Amelia's mother comes back through with a tray of water glasses - Yusuf told her to have them waiting even though it's not normally protocol, and it took Ariadne a moment to realize he was asking so that Amelia's mother felt useful and not a burden or an obstacle to their work. It was kind - and yells at Seb.

Seb doesn't pause, just finishes his scrawl with an unnecessary flourish, and he turns the book around. "I wrote this," Seb says. "Ariadne tells me Amelia's a fan. I doubt any fan would object to getting the author's autograph." He turns to Amelia's mother, the back of the book and his author photo positioned helpfully next to his face. "See?" He takes the tray from her one-handed, puts it on one of the folding chairs Cobb brought in, and pushes the book into her hands. "I'm Bastian Bux. Pleased to meet you."

Ariadne gasps despite herself. Eames, who's lounging on one of the chairs, one of the clown dolls still on his knee, murmurs so only she can hear, "I think the name thing only works in the dream."

It makes sense. Seb's sudden, surprising introduction brings a flood of surprised color to Amelia's mother's face. "Oh, oh. How marvellous to meet you! When Mr. Cobb pitched this, I never imagined such an expert."

Seb looks inordinately pleased at her words.

"So," Eames mutters, and the enthusiasm in his voice matches Seb's expression perfectly. Ariadne's a little baffled, because this doesn't seem a moment to be pleased about. "Someone has a mother complex."

It's in his 'gathering information' voice; this tidbit is something Eames is storing away in his head to use for later, just like when he realized Arthur walking toe-to-heel was wrong. Toe-to-heel is how Seb walks, after all.

Ariadne looks down at Eames' slightly bowed head, and frowns. She doesn't know how it will be useful, but she's glad it will be.

"Well, we don't have a good excuse for putting things off any longer," Cobb announces, pulling attention away from Seb and Amelia's mother. "Remember: we're taking Fantasia to Level 2 this time so don't call Seb Bastian on Level 1. I'll be countering Seb's violent urges as best as I can; if he loses control the whole mission will go crazy."

"Ooh," Eames says to Ariadne, "that's never happened before on one of Cobb's extractions."

Cobb—in a great show of grown-up restraint—completely ignores Eames. "Let's get this retrieval effort started."

He claps his hands. Hiding in the flurry of movement, Ariadne takes a moment to pick up the now-autographed copy of "The NeverEnding Story" from Amelia's mother to see just what Seb might have written. It's easy to swipe the book from her. She's still, almost frozen, the opposite of her husband. Amelia's father is tapping his fingers on his knees, his eyes darting around the room, at all these people around his daughter.

Her breath catches in her throat a little as she reads what Seb's written in the book. "To Amelia, May you always remember that real life always, always trumps fantasies and dreams. Real life has candy and cartoons for a start. Sebastian Balthazar Bux."

When Ariadne looks up from the book, Seb catches her gaze from where he's sitting as far away from Eames as possible, casually rolling up his sleeve so the cannula can be inserted. He doesn't look away from her, but his expression is less defiant than usual. Ariadne tries to smile at him, because it's a wonderful engraving for a book, but her emotions are too raw, too close to the surface. Seb can probably see the tears in her smile.

She hopes to hell he translates that to mean she's extra pleased with him, not that she's basically plotting his murder.

She hands the book to Amelia's mother, who nods at her nervously. Ariadne squeezes her hand, and moves over to her chair.

"We find Amelia, take her to Fantasia, solve the Quest, and home. Got it?"

Cobb's pre-mission briefings leave a little to be desired. Thankfully Ariadne has her own pre-PASIV routine. She clears her mind and measures her breathing, and embraces the pain of the somnacin needle.

She closes her eyes, opens her mind and thinks and thinks Amelia until the dream takes her.

#
Dreams always take on some of the characteristic of the environment they're being dreamt in.

Amelia's room had been light, cozy, warm. There was no artificial light, but plenty of sunlight from the windows, streaming in to the pleasantly decorated room. Her bedroom was a haven of warm colors and smiling faces.

Amelia's mind must be really discolored to do this to the dream.

Ariadne's transfixed by this place. It's like nothing she's ever imagined on her own. She can't even say it's her every nightmare world joined together, mismatched and haphazard; this place is more disturbingly weird than anything she's seen. The joy of dreamsharing can often be its curse; this nightmarish world they've found themselves in could only have come a little bit from everyone - albeit mostly from Amelia.

Amelia's much more lost than they'd anticipated.

Ariadne tries to take in the surroundings more logically. The idea for Level One was to design it as somewhere safe, somewhere fun but not too fun. Amelia's mother told them how much Amelia liked carnivals, and yet when they went, Amelia used to cling to her mom. She loved the colors and the smells and the sounds and the games, but disliked the crowds.

The idea had been simple. Create a carnival like the one near the beach, with a different layout. Take out the majority of the people. Leave a few milling around, for verisimilitude - Amelia mustn't realize it's a dream after all - so that it was the best of both worlds.

They hadn't reckoned for the state of Amelia's mind, nor the fact her subconscious might be more than a little disturbed.

The carnival looks a lot like the one Ariadne used to go to as a child, a lot more worn down than the one by the beach. They've emerged into the dream by a tilt-a-whirl. Ariadne could reach out and run a finger along the peeling paint, but this place feels absurdly real, like one of Yusuf's epic compounds which they can't use for extractions because the dream becomes one big head rush. She knows, for instance, that if she gave into usual temptation and ran her finger along the rusting metal, she'd get a splinter and her hand would hurt.

It wouldn't hurt a whole lot. Real pain in dreams relied upon one being the dreamer, after all. It was why a lot of the training Arthur gave her when they went over militarization strategies involved trying your best not to let your own personal sense of style overwhelm the dream.

Unfortunately, it's a technique that even Arthur admits is hit-and-miss; he told Ariadne about a time when Cobb had to shoot him out of the dream, because Mal knew Arthur too well and used the Francis Bacon paintings to identify him as the dreamer. It's only now that Ariadne knows just why Mal knows Arthur so well. Back then, Arthur had just muttered that if a Mark is militarized and you didn't know, there's every chance they've researched you too. Things slip past and mistakes happen, he told her. Dreaming's not an exact science and sometimes you just miss things.

Things like the concept that a child trapped in a nightmare might turn the dreamscape into a nightmare.

The colors of this carnival are blood and dust. The daylight from Amelia's room is gone; the night blankets over them devoid of stars. There are three moons shining down on them, giving the angled edges of this nightmarish carnival the oddest lighting possible. Each booth, each stall, each game is wrong somehow. The structures are slanted. The tents are moth-eaten. The nearest game Ariadne can focus on is a shooting gallery and all the stuffed toy prizes hanging along the back wall are headless. The wall below with the targets is stained with blood. Ariadne would be sick if she processed this place thoroughly.

Ariadne takes a moment to take stock of where they are. It's not her job to hold this layout in her head, and besides, she doesn't know where Amelia is. None of them do. In an ordinary extraction, they would create a safe or a vault and heist the secrets out of it.

This isn't an ordinary extraction. Because choice is such an important part of re-integrating Amelia into the real world, there are three points they've created within Level One that are Amelia-focused havens. Places which would look like sanctuary to her.

One is the treehouse, which should be to the North, near the Ferris Wheel. The Ferris Wheel in the model Cobb brought out for Yusuf to memorise looked glossy and shiny, and it even moved; this one that she can see rising up from all the game booths is rusty, stuck in position. It's smaller than she thought it would be; it looks precarious, like it might come free from the axel at any time and rampage through the dream. She can't see the tree, but she knows it's there. It's designed to be identical to the treehouse Amelia and her father built last Summer, before she started to get sick.

There's the Hall of Mirrors, a total cliché of course, but someone who might be a little fractured in the brain would gravitate to that place of distortions. It's based on a mirror maze in a museum that Amelia went to three times.

Then there's the children's play area, a Chuck E. Cheese kind, with a ball pen and slides. It's been dream-filled with Amelia's favorite toys. Ariadne's silently plumping for that one; it has a foam fort, and balls are excellent projectiles.

It's the people living in this rusty, discolored carnival that are worse than the off-base, tilted games. Amelia's projections. They look like any normal carnival goer that Ariadne's ever seen, except their eyes are missing and the sockets are bloody, and their mouths are stitched closed with red, ragged stitches. Ariadne puts her hands to her mouth even though she's never been sick in a dream. She feels a hand at the small of her back, supporting her, and she looks up gratefully to see a worried Eames looking down at her.

The ears are clear, is all she can think, the least creepy thing about the projections that she can latch onto. Her coma's all in the mind now. People in comas can't talk and they can't see, but they can hear. So that's why the ears are clear.

"Uh," Cobb says eloquently, which is probably an accurate summation of what they're all thinking. "Right. The clock's ticking. We've got circa fifty minutes to find her, and this layout's expanded more than we anticipated."

Ariadne looks around again, because she hadn't clocked that. Then she counts the number of bucket seats she can see in the Ferris Wheel; fourteen over the half curve of it see can see.

The Ferris Wheel isn't small - it's just far away.

Well, Ariadne thinks, much less poetical than the lyrical waxing the terror of Amelia's projections caused in her mind, shit.

"Okay, we split up." Cobb reaches into his pocket and throws something at Ariadne. Ariadne fumbles and looks at the object.

It's so big that it takes her a while to figure out what it is.

"A walkie talkie?" Ariadne says. "Seriously?"

Eames tosses his in his hand, looking just as displeased. He tries to push it in his jacket pocket and fails. "There are occasions, Mr. Cobb, where it's preferable to dream a little smaller."

Cobb flushes. Instant emotional reactions aren't always so easy to hide when they're a surprise. "They'll work the whole range of this carnival. The projections don't look entirely friendly. The Ferris Wheel's furthest - Yusuf, Seb, you take that direction. Eames, Ariadne, you're with me."

He passes them each a walkie talkie before passing the PASIV to Yusuf. Ariadne tucks hers into the top pocket of her jean jacket. She hadn't bothered dreaming new clothes - that'll be more appropriate for Fantasia. She risks a look back as they head towards the Helter Skelter, their reference point for finding the two Southern hide-outs, and for a second she forgets everything and thinks that's Arthur walking off with Yusuf.

When she looks forward again, Eames throws her a look that's almost indecipherable, except Ariadne can almost decipher it - he understands.

Ariadne looks ahead as they walk. Although at this point in the dream it's safe to look around - causing unnecessary attention is more of a danger later - she can see enough of it without adding more of these disturbing images to her head.

And there's the fact that it any dream, any of the dreamers involved can bring elements in. Considering what's going on in Seb's head, and none of them have led exactly peaceful lives so far, Ariadne really doesn't want to think about the fact that coming into Amelia's head might have made it even more horrible and dangerous.

"Cobb," Eames says, like it hurts him to talk to him directly. Cobb and Ariadne turn to him and listen; someone as stubborn as Eames doesn't break an uneasy stalemate for a trivial reason. "The projections are responding to the sound of us. Might I suggest alerting the others to this fact?"

"How-" Ariadne starts.

"When the projections turn hostile," Eames says, "hold your breath and stay still."

"And they won't be able to see us," Cobb says, and then, very quickly, looking anywhere but at Eames says, "I appreciate the observation."

"I hold a grudge; I'm not an utter bastard." Eames grins his shit-faced grin. Cobb shakes his head and puts the message through the Yusuf and Seb.

"Times a-ticking," Ariadne says, in her firmest, no-nonsense Point Person voice. Eames salutes lazily and Cobb throws her an expression which might be fatherly pride or might be trapped wind.

Cobb plumps for the play area first. It makes sense - it's the most occupied path. Best to sneak quietly among the weird, blood splattered carnival projections now before they turn thirsty for flesh. Well, it's probably more likely they'll prise off random bits of the carnival and go after them, not rip the stitches from their mouths and become sightless zombies, but Ariadne's brain is justifiably - from the atmosphere - stuck on all the nightmarish things she's ever seen or imagined.

Sometimes when you start being scared you can't stop. And Amelia must be nothing but scared if she's not waking up...

"Come on," Eames says, soft by her ear, shocking her into looking up at him. "You can daydream later. Best we get this over with quickly, yeah?"

"Like a band-aid," Ariadne says. "So it hurts less."

"I'm not one hundred per cent sure that theory's applicable to this situation, pet. Sooner we're done, sooner we can go to the pub for a pint." Eames smiles at her.

He's making an effort to sound normal, like this is a run-of-the-mill extraction.

The least Ariadne can do is pretend on back.

"I sort of fancy nachos," she says.

"And cheese."

"What kind of weird-ass nachos don't come with cheese?"

"Sometimes in Britain you have to be specific," Eames says, and nearly falters at specific - it's a lightning-flash of a sadness that crosses across his face and he schools it away neatly and Ariadne wouldn't have seen it, except she's looking for it now and can't not see it. "Being geographically further away from South America makes us less cogent with South American cuisine. Dreadful, really, don't you agree?"

"Terrible," Ariadne says. "But if the inverse was true - the further away you are, the better the food - Britain would be suffocating under an influx of taco-perfectionists."

"Sounds like Leeds on a good day," Eames says, and Ariadne has no clue what he's talking about, but if it's not Arthur, then it's safe.

"I'd sort of kill for a burrito right about now," a tinny voice says out of nowhere. Cobb flails about himself hilariously, and comes up with his walkie-talkie.

"You forgot to disconnect," Yusuf adds. "Not that we have a battery issue or anything here, but-"

"But?" Ariadne prompts, loudly, so her voice will carry to the walkie-talkie. A family turns to her at that, a sea of bloody eye-cavities and crudely stitched mouths, and she shuts up.

"That," Seb's voice pipes in, redundantly.

"Whispering it is," Cobb decides. "And radio silence unless necessary."

"Roger," Yusuf crackles through the walkie-talkie, and Cobb hits a button - the green light on the machine turns to red.

If walking through this night carnival had been scary before, it's worse now that Ariadne can't talk. The silence settles down around them like it's almost a physical thing. Ariadne finds herself walking on tiptoe through the sandy ground, and her blood freezes for a moment in the chill of the dream when she remembers this is how both Seb and Bastian walk.

It must have been a physical tic carried through to Seb from Bastian. From what Cobb and Seb have both told her, she knows that Bastian wasn't consistently in the dreamden. He would have been at home at some point, to experience whatever it is that made dream life preferable. He'll have been forced to walk around like this, quiet and undetectable; forced to pretend to be invisible, to not be a burden.

Ariadne can't help think back to her own childhood, to what used to make her unhappy. She comes back blank at anything concrete. She makes a mental note to Skype with her mom when she gets back to her apartment, and maybe it's time for a visit. Ariadne's been putting it off - her mother has a nose like a foxhound and can sniff secrets on Ariadne like a cat can smell even a trace of fish - but she feels selfish now for sure.

Still, they're at the play area, which is Ariadne's private best bet for Amelia's location. She has to focus on the job. Ariadne steps forward, and stops. Something is holding her back.

Someone. Eames. She looks at him, eyebrows furrowing in her confusion, and he makes some sort of gesture with his fingers that Cobb - Ariadne sees as she twists her neck as far as Eames' firm, restrictive grip will allow - understands.

Fan-frigging-great. She hates it when they use their army secret hand gestures at each other. Arthur had started to teach her them, a month or so before this job - perhaps that worrying idea of them all being replaceable had affected him more than Ariadne had originally thought - but she's got a lot on her mind, and she can't remember most of them.

She recognizes one of them that Eames throws at Cobb - his index finger travels in a square. It means window, but Ariadne can't see a window from the angle she's at. Cobb makes a signal in return she can't remember - a thumbs down gesture with his left hand while he's pulling his trademark Beretta out from its holster at his side. He keeps his finger away from the trigger, but Ariadne doesn't know if that's because the threat isn't real or because it's just correct firearm etiquette, she can't remember what Arthur told her. It's another mark in the column for bringing Arthur back.

Arthur's taken her down into a dream for some gun practice before, but it doesn't feel like enough. Ariadne still prefers hand-to-hand combat which she has more knowledge of; she took two years of Ai Kido at college, and Cobb's trained them all in close-combat fighting over the last year. It's why her usual dream weapon of choice for close quarters is the knife she can feel in her pocket, there's another one in her left boot, and in the backpack that weighs nothing on her back (it's a dream; the laws of physics to her own possessions don't have to apply, merely to things that the Mark needs to touch) is an automatic crossbow which has a sophisticated targeting system that's impossible in real life.

There are definitely perks to the dreamsharing lifestyle.

There's downsides too. Especially when the fake danger of it all bleeds into the real world, causing things which might even be worse than death.

Cobb beckons for them both to move closer, and Ariadne moves to step in front of him, because she can see Amelia now. She's stood at the window of the play area - which is why Eames was making a window sign - and she's looking out at the carnival, her small hands clenched in the foam of the soft, child-friendly window frame. Her hair is as long and golden as the photographs, like Amelia's hair when she was healthy; it stands to reason. There's no reason that Amelia should have been aware of the deterioration of her hair, even if there's deterioration in this landscape.

Ariadne moves to stand in front of Cobb, her mental reasoning being that a female Amelia would feel safest with her, but Cobb's the one holding her back this time. Ariadne scowls at him angrily, because this is not the time for any of Cobb's ideas that she's less capable because she's a woman, and-

"It's not Amelia," Eames whispers, the softest breath of a whisper. He's risking the sound for clarification; Arthur would be proud. Ariadne doesn't feel like deflating, even though her pride wobbles a little. The confusion obviously shows on her face. "Look at her eyes."

Ariadne looks again, and Amelia - or the girl she thought was Amelia - isn't facing away from them as she'd originally thought. The golden hair is hanging loosely in front of her face, and in the shadows between the strands, that's where Ariadne sees what Eames and Cobb noticed before her; two blood-streaked depressions where her eyes should be, and the coarse criss-cross of crimson thread over her mouth.

"If she was Amelia," Ariadne realizes out-loud, mimicking Eames' quiet whisper, "this place would have looked like the plans."

Cobb makes a gesture which Ariadne assumes means follow, and she does, staying close to Cobb's back. Ariadne flicks a glance up at the sightless girl at the window, imagining herself in her place for a second. She shivers. The vibration of it through her body makes her twitch, and she catches Eames in the corner of her eye; he's bringing up the rear of the group, now, a sawed-off clutched in his hands that hadn't been there before. He's worried and he's protecting her by staying close.

Cobb's pocket starts crackling, and he tugs out the walkie-talkie as he starts moving in the direction of the Hall of Mirrors.

"Treehouse is empty," Seb says in a hushed tone. "The projections are starting to get a bit testy."

"Noted that," Cobb says. "We're on our way to the Hall of Mirrors. Stay where you are."

"What?" Seb starts.

"The treehouse is the most defensible position in the whole Level," Cobb says, "unless you'd rather be in the play area with a creepy ass kid and two entry points, I'd secure the treehouse."

"Trap me some more why don't you," Seb sighs. "We'll meet you here."

Ariadne doesn't know why Seb sounds so surprised. Yusuf has the PASIV and the treehouse was always going to be the best location of this dreamscape. Then she reminds herself for the millionth time: Seb isn't Arthur. Arthur would understand why Cobb gave Yusuf the PASIV to hold; he would have been the one to propose it in this situation of the dreamscape being larger than they'd thought it would be.

Her thoughts are enough to distract her from the fear of the creepy projections and their unnerving habitat, right up until the point they make it to the entrance to the Hall of Mirrors.

"I'll take point," Cobb says.

"A talent of yours," Eames mutters.

Cobb lets the slight past. Ariadne's impressed. She doesn't say it out loud. For one, there's a couple of projections over by a booth which looked like a messed up version of the drop spot game, where the red discs are tiny and the circle is way too huge for the discs to cover it, and for another, she doesn't know how to say she's impressed without sounding condescending.

Without sounding like Arthur.

"We have no idea if there are any projections inside," Cobb says. "Most mazes you can solve by touching the left wall at all times; from the skew of traditional carnival imagery here on the outside, it's best to assume the Mirrors are even more skewed than they are in real carnivals, and-"

"-there are no mirrors at all," Eames says, sounding oddly confident all of a sudden, and before Ariadne or Cobb can stop him, he shoves his weapon in a holster on his belt and walks straight into the tent before they can stop him.

Ariadne and Cobb hold a worried gaze for a moment before bolting in after him.

Eames is right.

The tent is dark apart from a single light bulb, spluttering above their heads, and empty apart from a bed in the middle of the room.

On the bed is a young woman. Her eyes are closed. She looks like she's in her early twenties. She has blonde hair, just like Amelia's would be, but it's all hacked and torn short like the woman's done it herself without the aid of a mirror.

"I'll explain later why there's no mirrors," Eames says, in a low voice, before raising his voice and saying in the kindest voice Ariadne's ever heard him use, "Amelia? Amelia, pet. My name's Mr. Eames. This is Dominic, and this is Ariadne. We're here to rescue you."

The woman on the bed opens up her eyes. Her eyes are blue, just like in Amelia's photographs. "Muh," the woman says, "muh."

Eames moves a little closer, showing her his wrists, a subconscious clue that he's vulnerable, showing her a weak spot. "Take your time, Amelia. I know it's been a while since you've said anything."

"Muh," the woman says, "maybe?"

"Eames," Cobb says, "what-"

"You've said it yourself," Eames says, keeping his gaze on the woman. She's too old to be Amelia. "Time's relative. In the dream, in the brain, it's all the same. If this is the maze her brain has trapped her in... Three moons, no sun... How do you tell the time? How do you have any clue of how much time has passed?" He looks back at Cobb for a second; his expression is blank and impersonal. "Are you sure you and Mal spent a lifetime in limbo, or did you just believe you had? Is either answer any less valid?"

"So... Amelia thinks she's been down here what, fifteen years? And so her self image has adjusted to compensate..." Ariadne looks at the young woman, at Amelia, and she's horrified all over again. "Oh, my god."

"Amelia," Eames says, "we want to get you out. But it's not going to be easy."

"The clowns," Amelia says then, curling her bare toes in the blood-red coverlet on the bed, her hands reaching for the edges of the mattress and squeezing. Her blue, blue eyes are bloodshot and her crazy hair seems more appropriate every second. "We can't get past them, I try, I try-"

"Self visualisation of the illness," Cobb says, sounding actually impressed. Ariadne ignores him. Miles poached Cobb from the same academic environment he poached Ariadne from; Cobb gets these little academic glows on occasion from some potential use of dreamsharing which might not have been discovered before. They try to harsh his mellow when it happens - partly because it's fun, and partly because what if thoughts like that without proper research ended up in Mal, and that's never a conclusion any of them want happening to him again.

"I knew those clowns were going to be a bad thing," Ariadne mutters, and thinks about Pennywise the clown for a long, horrible moment. "Amelia, if you come with us, you'll be safe. Eames and Cobb have guns. I don't know about you, but I've always wanted to see a clown shot in the face."

Amelia straightens her neck, and climbs unsteadily off the bed. She's wearing a ragged version of the gown she's wearing in real life. Ariadne wonders if she knows it's a hospital gown.

"I'll cheerfully do it for either of you," Eames says, yanking out his saw-off and cocking it purely for dramatic effect. "Shall we?"

"Where going?" Amelia manages, tiptoeing over the sandy ground to stand next to Ariadne. Ariadne starts as Amelia wraps cold fingers around her right hand. Amelia smiles at her uncertainly. Ariadne tries not to flinch at the cold sensation. It makes sense. Amelia's mother must have spent months at her bedside, holding Amelia's hand. The sense memory must have soaked into Amelia's subconscious. Ariadne grips on tightly in return and smiles at her.

"The Ferris Wheel," Ariadne says. "There's a treehouse there, and a box."

"A box?"

"A box that's going to save us, Amelia," Ariadne says. "A box that's going to get us all out of here."

"I've been in the treehouse," Amelia says, tilting her head and staring vacantly at the gap in the tent. "Didn't see a box."

"A boy named Seb has the box. He's waiting for us. If we stay very quiet, and run very fast, the clowns might not even find us," Ariadne says.

Amelia blinks, very quickly. She looks around nervously. "The clowns usually find me," she says, her voice even clearer now. "Quickly, quickly."

"You heard her," Ariadne says. "Let's go."

Travelling in someone else's dream is a lot like travelling in her own dreams, apart from the fact that sometimes Ariadne can fly in hers. They tend not to change too many of the laws of physics in a dream because their primary objective is to fool the dreamer for the most part into believing they're still awake. As soon as the dreamer's aware it's a dream, the dream collapses and it becomes infinitely more difficult to swipe the information from the safe or the vault or whatever other location Cobb's insisted they build the dream around.

The journey is a mismatch of details. Because they're focussed on the destination, some of the detail in the booths they pass is missing. A giant dice roll stall has four dice which each have the number five on each visible face. A popcorn stand is full of rotting popcorn, and the word popcorn is heavily pixelated, like they're in a video game that hasn't fully finished loading yet. The balloons on a dart toss booth are all melded together in a giant, misshapen mass.

The Ferris Wheel is the only thing that remains fully in focus. It happens in dreams sometimes, especially when the dreamer's fixated on something. Details just start to disappear. Books start to empty. Logos vanish. Ariadne sort of understands the concept - the few times in real dreams where she's tried to go backwards, everything has changed. She wonders if it's anything like the concept of memory Arthur was talking about before he stepped through the door and became Seb.

Maybe even dreams are made up of blocks, and you can't revisit blocks you've passed through.

Ariadne's not going to mention this theory to Cobb. He might have one of his academic moments—he might start theorising again and who knows where they'd be when he got out of it.

By the time the treehouse is fully in sight, there's twenty-four minutes left in this world and the projections still aren't moving in on them properly, but they're noticing them; they're turning their blank, bloodied faces in their direction as they move.

"My treehouse," Amelia breathes when she sees it, happiness washing her face as she recognises it and starts hurrying towards it.

It's of course that very second, where Ariadne's thinking hmm, maybe this is going to be easy after all when the clowns show up.

#
They're a distance away, almost identical to the clown dolls in Amelia's room, albeit adult-sized. Amelia, predictably for their luck, starts freaking out.

The kind of freaking out where she starts screaming so loud that all the projections turn and face them.

Timing on this level isn't even enough to stop Ariadne thinking maybe this is going to be easy again, alas. It's a lesson she hasn't learned yet. If a year of dreamsharing hasn't hammered it in yet, maybe nothing ever will.

Eames clamps his hands over Amelia's mouth when it becomes clear she's not going to stop screaming on her own, and surprisingly she lets him - which reassures Ariadne once more that it isn't a male abuser that's left Amelia thinking she can't wake up from her coma, because Amelia calms down at his touch - and Ariadne pulls out her knife.

The Clowns are a little way away, but even a short distance can become no distance in a dream.

"Up the ladder," Cobb commands. "Eames, you're with me. Amelia, Ariadne, go. I'll hold them off if they come close."

"Shoot one in the face for me," Ariadne says. Eames grins, but there's no humour; it's his death-mask grin this time. His oh shit, is this what's going to kill me this time? grin.

Ariadne moves to prod Amelia towards the ladder as they reach it, but Amelia flinches from her touch and turns her face over her shoulder for a moment. Ariadne reels back for just a second. Amelia's face is gaunter in the moonlight than inside her dark tent, and her eyes are wide and colorless this close to Ariadne, but her fear isn't all from the Clowns ambling down the dark, sandy aisle between the ramshackle, leaning booths. Her eyes would be fixed on them, and they're not - Amelia's flickering between Ariadne and the Clowns.

"Up the ladder, both of you. Now," Cobb says, louder now. Amelia nods, flickers a wary look at Ariadne again, and turns away to start climbing up the ladder.

Ariadne hangs back for just a moment, shuffling in closer to Cobb and speaking in as quiet a murmur as she can manage. "Did you see that?"

"Mother complex," Eames mutters again, just as abstractly as he did in Amelia's bedroom.

"I saw. We have more time later to decipher it." Cobb nods at her, as if to say job well done for noticing it too. "I really hope I'm not going to have to shoot a clown. James'll know I've done it. He's a very judgemental toddler, you know."

"It's his eyes," Eames says. "He got them from Mal. They're very knowing eyes."

Ariadne rolls her own eyes. This, she thinks, is not the usual way extractors go about fighting for the survival of the dream. Normal extractors probably focus on the actual fight, not exchanging whimsical banter or trying to one-up each other. Normal extractors, Ariadne thinks, must be so dull. She grins at them and starts following Amelia up the ladder.

It's clever of Cobb to send Ariadne up after Amelia. Amelia pauses at the top of the ladder, obviously shocked by Seb and Yusuf being in there. Then she looks down and sees Ariadne a metre below her, and the Clowns advancing on Cobb and Eames, their curly red hair the color of blood in the triple moonlight, and obviously decides Seb and Yusuf are the lesser of two evils.

When Ariadne gets to the top of the ladder, Amelia's staring at Seb with wide-eyed wonderment. Unlike all of them, she's clearly not missed that his face matches up with the face on the back of her favorite book.

On to part 6

Masterpost