[Inception] The Cast of the Die, Chapter 2

Author's Note: I know that this story is A/A but that it hasn't featured Ariadne yet. As a quick note, Ariadne will come into the story for the next three chapters, and the bulk of Arthur's narrative will focus on their blossoming relationship. :) In the meantime, I thought Mal's relationship with Dom was something that didn't get enough treatment... especially Mal's and Arthur's relationship. After all, Arthur did tell Ariadne that Mal was lovely. ;)

 

 

 

The Cast of the Die 

 

Chapter 2: Raising the Stakes

 

…

 

His first experience going into the dream world was something he would never, ever forget.

 

He had been nervous when Dom and Mal hooked him up to the devices that pumped those sedatives into his blood. Before he fell asleep, flashes of Dom's lessons about kicks and the dreamscape fluttered through his mind. He wanted to be as prepared as possible before going into such a foreign environment, but no amount of training could have prepared him for entering his own subconscious.

 

He stood in the middle of the restaurant of the Four Seasons hotel. It looked exactly the same as it had before—dimly lit and elegant. He blinked, and he wondered whether or not he had dreamed up Dom and Mal. Was he really connected to tubes of sedatives?

 

"You have no imagination at all," Dom's dry voice said from behind him. "The restaurant, of all places? Why not a ski resort in Aspen? Or a shore house in the Caribbean?"

 

Arthur stiffened slightly and turned. "If you wanted to go to exotic places, why didn't we enter your dream instead?"

 

A soft, feminine laugh chastened them both. "Arthur, don't mind Dom. I think this is a perfectly good place to start off. It's familiar and warm."

 

Mal walked up behind her husband with a small smile on her face. She looked stunning in her black cocktail dress. Dom placed his arm around her shoulder, holding her close to him.

 

Arthur shifted his weight from one foot to the other, secretly relieved that Mal accompanied them. She had a gentleness about her that put everyone at ease, and Arthur needed as much calm as he could get. He never believed that entering dreams was possible and that there was a common meeting "space"—he supposed he could call it—that joined them together. A common space that Dom, the architect, constructed.

 

"So this is it?" asked Arthur, voice skeptical but with an undercurrent of curiosity. "Nothing but a reflection of life?"

 

Dom and Mal exchanged glances. Dom was smiling as if he were the cat that swallowed the bird.

 

"Hardly," Dom replied after a while, nodding his head to indicate something behind Arthur.

 

Arthur heard the crash before he saw it. He whipped around and widened his eyes, horrified to find that the ground behind him was crumbling and the walls were collapsing to the ground. It was a dark and stormy night, and the sky seemed to shatter in thunderous booms. The clouds and the winds and the lightning approached them like a vengeful phantom, intent on engulfing and destroying them.

 

Arthur quickly backtracked, panic and fear seizing his body. He stumbled over the overturned chairs as he turned to run. The ground trembled underneath his feet as if the face of the earth were splitting open. For one insane moment, he thought that this was the true apocalypse.

 

He felt someone grab his arm and pull him toward the door. He spun around and gazed wildly into Mal's large eyes.

 

"Come! Hurry!"

 

He allowed her to lead him to the door with Dom trailing slightly behind.

 

They ran through a number of hallways, escaping the screams of the people left behind in the restaurant. Arthur had half a mind to turn back to help them, but Mal held onto his arm tightly.

 

They soon entered a hotel room and slammed the door behind them.

 

At first, the silence following the slamming of the door was deafening. Arthur's body shook like a frail leaf succumbing to a chill autumn wind. He abruptly sat down on the edge of a bed, trying to force open his shaking fists.

 

Dom barked out a small laugh.

 

"You aught to be ashamed of yourself, Dom," Mal admonished, her lips tightly drawn in a frown. "This is his first time. You couldn't just make a purple sun rise in the west?"

 

"Aw, Mal, what's the fun in that?" Dom clapped Arthur on the shoulder, causing the latter to jump. The sudden physical contact jarred him and pumped little shocks of adrenaline through his bloodstream. He looked up and glared at Dom.

 

"It's an inversion of the dream," Dom said, blatantly ignoring Arthur's indignant look. "Lesson one: the architect is the person building the dream, and therefore he can unbuild it as well."

 

Mal scoffed at the crude explanation, though Arthur managed to get his breathing back to normal pace. Dom left his side and opened the door slightly. He peered out through the crack and turned to them. "So far, so good. Quiet. The restless natives haven't found us yet."

 

Arthur looked up and narrowed his eyes suspiciously. "'Restless natives'?"

 

"Your subconscious," Mal said gently, kneeling in front of him and placing her hands on his. "What happened out there, the storm and the earthquake… They weren't yours. They were the result of Dom's interference with the architecture of the dream. Your subconscious will slowly realize that it's dreaming, that there is an intruder. It will try to…oust the intruder."

 

Arthur's eyes widened as he shot a look at Dom, who shrugged helplessly as he gently shut the door, leaving it slightly open to prepare for their escape. "It happens, sooner or later. The trick is to make it later than sooner."

 

Arthur stood up and paced the room slightly, head spinning. This was too much to absorb. What had he gotten himself into? He couldn't do this again. This was a nightmare!

 

The shouts from downstairs got louder. Dom glanced out into the hallway again.

 

Mal took pity on him. "It's better the second time around, I promise." She cast a sidelong glance at Dom. "Dom really isn't the best mentor. We should have warned you."

 

Dom sidled up next to him. "It's better to plunge into the deep end headfirst. Anyway, we have to go now or things are going to get really—"

 

BAM!

 

It all happened in a single instant, but the impact of this one moment induced far-reaching ripples that forever altered the fabric of their lives and those connected to them.

 

The shot exploded from the door, and Mal stiffened. Blood sprayed out from her lovely rose-petal lips, splattering Dom's crisp white shirt and face. She slowly crumbled to the ground, head lolling like a broken doll's, the spark of light extinguished from her glassy eyes.

 

"MAL!" Dom cried, his disbelief and anguish thick in his voice.

 

The man who shot Mal from behind spotted them, but Arthur kicked him unconscious in his head before he could shoot again. The shouts from the hallway got louder and more raucous. Arthur shot a look back into the room, seeing Dom kneeling beside Mal's lifeless body.

 

"Let's go, Dom!" Arthur yelled, his voice sharp with shock. "We've got to get out of here. They're going after you next!"

 

Dom looked up, and for a split second, Arthur saw the lost look in his eyes that would haunt him for years to come. A premonition of the nightmare that would never end for the rest of Dom's life. But Dom, a professional, quickly regained his composure. He stood and ran out the door, Arthur trailing behind him.

 

"We need the kick," Dom said breathlessly. "Come on."

 

They ran up endless flights of stairs. The atmosphere shifted around them slightly, and their pursuers were trailing further and further behind. At one point, the staircase broke off straight down the middle and shifted, successfully separating them from their pursuers. It was one of the maze mechanisms that the architect put in place.

 

They ended up on the roof of the hotel, up what seemed like thousands of feet in the air. The storm still raged on, and bolts of lightning ripped the sky in millions of different places. Arthur wanted to tell Dom to ease up a bit, but somehow he knew that Dom wasn't in a right state of mind. He was letting his emotions get a hold of him, which manifested in the apocalyptic turbulence of a grief-stricken soul. After all, they weren't just in Arthur's subconscious; Dom's also made up the fabric of this nightmare.

 

"We've got to jump!" Dom yelled over the thunder, rain splattering his face.

 

Arthur already knew. It was the only strong enough kick since no one was going to dunk them in water on the other side. It didn't mean he liked the idea.

 

He held his breath and ran to the edge of the building. He saw Dom somewhere in his peripheral vision, but all he could think was, I want to get out of this dream.

 

Arthur jumped at the edge, feeling his stomach where his heart should be. He squeezed his eyes shut and yelled in terror.

 

When he opened them again, he was in Dom's sun-warmed home.

 

…

 

Arthur spent the the days following his first entrance into the dream in a trance-like stupor. He would sometimes wake up in the middle of the night, in his bed, and wonder whether or not he was still dreaming.

 

He was scared, that was for sure; but even worse, he was curious. He often wondered what the boundaries were between reality and dream. Some part of his mind reasoned that there was no clear line between the two places, and Arthur found himself inexplicably drawn to a world where anything seemed possible.

 

But sometimes, he never wanted to go back.

 

Dom was right—Arthur didn't have much imagination. It wasn't because of the practical nature of his work or anything. It was just him. It was his psychology. Perhaps that was why his mind always wandered back to that first dream, to something that had happened, something that he had seen: Mal's body stiffening in death, her crimson blood spraying from her lips. The image played over and over again in his head. It was the exact same scene with no embellishments, which made it more real.

 

Death was the ultimate kick, but that didn't mean he would ever resort to it, if he could help it. After all, death and life were inexplicably connected with no clear boundaries…just like dream and reality. Even if a person died in a dream, that person still died in some way or another. Was there ever a moment between dreaming and reality that the person had ever entered the realm of the dead even for the briefest second? Did they escape death? Were they all gods in this simple way?

 

Mal visited him a week after his first "dreamwalk". When Arthur opened the door and saw her face, he couldn't help but think of that one moment that haunted his nightmares, when the spark of life in her was suddenly extinguished by a smoking bullet.

 

"I wanted to make sure you were okay," she said as she entered his apartment. She sat down after he gestured toward the black leather couches. Like its owner, the apartment was clean-cut with the simplistic elegance of black-and-white decor.

 

Arthur shrugged. "I'm absorbing the shock. I apologize if I've worried you by not keeping in contact. It's a bit much for me to handle, but I am getting along."

 

Mal smiled warmly. "Yes, I know you are. You have steel in you. I think Dom saw it immediately. He entered your dreams before he met you at the casino, did he tell you?"

 

Arthur shook his head. "No, but I think I knew already."

 

They sat in tense silence. Questions shot at a rapid-fire pace in Arthur's head, and he knew that this was going to be one of the few, if not only, chances that he would have to get answers.

 

"Does he enter your dreams?" Arthur asked finally.

 

Mal paused before answering. "Yes, and I his."

 

"Do you not keep secrets from each other, then?"

 

Mal smiled slightly. "We all have secrets, Arthur. But they aren't the secrets that you're thinking of. True secrets are feelings and desires—things that exist deep within your subconscious, so abstract that you can't describe them with words. They are secrets of the soul—something that can only be felt. Love is one, but only just one of the many."

 

Arthur remained silent.

 

"He's curious, you know," Mal said unexpectedly, leaning back into the couch. "He wants to know more, feel more."

 

"What do you mean?" Arthur asked, though he had a suspicion he was starting to understand. He too saw the glimmer in Dom's eyes. Ambition, perhaps. Or an obsession.

 

"He wants to go in more deeply. Petty data and concrete information has been reduced to child's play for him. They are too easy to extract, too simplistic. He is an artist. He wants to know more, to feel more. He wants to understand the human soul." Mal's voice, though calm, rang hollowly in Arthur's ears, and he knew that Dom had trapped Mal in his obsession as well.

 

"Why do you play the game, Mal?" he asked quietly.

 

She stared at him, and for the first time, he saw vulnerability etched on her face. It made him pity her, fear for her. "Because I want to know too, Arthur," she whispered. "I want to know the boundaries between reality and dream, whether or not they exist. Because, in all honesty, I don't think there are such things."

 

"You died, Mal, in that dream," Arthur said quietly. "But you're here now, alive. Isn't that proof of a boundary, of a separation? Don't seek to overcome it. I don't think you will be able to come back."

 

Mal smiled sadly at him and stood, and Arthur followed suit. "Always so practical. Dom chose you well." She walked to the door. "If you don't want to come back to us, it's all right. We understand. But if you do choose to come back, bring a totem with you."

 

Arthur raised an eyebrow as he opened the door to show Mal out. "A totem?"

 

"It's an object, something unique and special only to you. Something that no one can ever replicate perfectly in a dream. That way, you will always know whether or not you're in reality or in a dream."

 

Arthur watched her closely. "Do you have one?"

 

"Of course," Mal replied flippantly with a wink. She walked down the hallway and turned to him before getting on the elevator. "But you will never know what it is."

 

In many ways, that was the last time Arthur ever saw the real Mal, not just the shell of her former self.

 

…

 

Arthur constantly told himself that he wouldn't go back, that the risks of this operation far outweighed the benefits.

 

He did some background research on Dominic Cobb. He was a researcher at Oxford University, specializing in psychology and sleep studies. It was there that he first met with a professor named Miles, Mal's father. Information about his research following the date of his transfer to the Sorbonne was hazy at best. It would seem that he didn't do anything significant in Paris—he stopped publishing papers and giving lectures to students and his fellow scholars. But Arthur knew better. Dom had entered the dream, and he was establishing a reputation for himself in the corporate world as a stealth weapon—someone who could discreetly blow the cover on the greatest corporate secrets.

 

If he were anyone else, Dom would have caved in or died under the constant pressure and scrutiny of corporate moguls who wanted to use him just as much as they wanted to destroy him. Dom had a cool head and strong will. He was also very, very good at what he did.

 

Like an addict slowly spinning down a spiral of no return, Arthur returned two months following his first entrance into the dream against his strongest objections. His mind told him to fold, but his heart yearned to take the risk, to see the dream world again and master it through careful analysis. It seemed he would see this game through until the end, no matter how high the stakes.

 

But this time, he carried some insurance. He had made his totem the night before he decided on going back. It was a weighted red die, something that he had made himself so that no matter how he tossed it, it would land on just one number. The odds that he would show the die to someone was slim, and the odds that someone who had seen it would be able to duplicate its weight exactly was even slimmer.

 

He was welcomed back by Dom. Perhaps it was his imagination, but Dom's eyes were shrunken and hollow, with a terrible wisdom clouding his irises. As if he had aged fifty years within a span of a day. Arthur hardly ever saw Mal, and she never accompanied them to do their jobs. When Arthur did see her again, it was after a year on the job, when he was slowly starting to understand the mechanics of entering dreams and the process of extraction. He saw her after a particularly difficult assignment, where he had to seek refuge in the Cobb household after his apartment had been ransacked by rival corporate spies.

 

It was past midnight. He found Mal sitting alone on the living room couch in the dark, wrapped tightly in a blanket. Her eyes were empty, staring off into space, not acknowledging his presence. She acted as if he didn't exist. Or rather, she acted as if she herself did not exist.

 

"Mal?" he whispered.

 

She slowly turned to him, gazing at him with her big, round eyes. She blinked slowly a few times, perhaps debating whether or not he was real, and turned away.

 

Arthur left her without saying anything further. He felt as if he were being choked—he couldn't breathe or say anything, though he wanted to. All he could see in his mind were her glassy eyes, the beautiful yet lifeless eyes of a porcelain doll. She had shattered underneath, and her real self was gone.

 

When he heard of Mal's suicide and the death note that implicated Dom, he felt that somewhere deep in his heart he knew this day would come. Dom explained in a rush what happened before fleeing the country, giving him the barest of details and whitest of lies. Dom didn't give him enough credit. Yes, he knew how to analyze data and dig up the dirtiest secrets of a client or target—but he also knew how to organize and arrange the myriad of puzzle pieces he gathered to form a coherent picture.

 

But for Dom's sake, he feigned concerned ignorance and offered distant companionship on his lonely descent into his self-made hell.

 

In his own way, Arthur cared deeply for both Mal and Dom, but he was also very afraid. He was jumping into a current without knowing how to swim. All he could do was keep tossing his die and hope that he wouldn't get sucked under the water.

 

…