storypaint (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
storypaint) wrote2010-07-21 09:05 am
storypaint) wrote2010-07-21 09:05 am
Entry tags:
[Inception] daytime language (Ariadne gen)
Title: daytime language
Fandom: Inception
Length: 563 words
Prompt: Awesome Ladies Ficathon: Inception, Ariadne, secrets
Pairing: Ariadne gen
Other: n/a
Excerpt: Ariadne carries her totem everywhere, tucked into the pocket of her jacket, where it weighs her down with secrets.
Ariadne carries her totem everywhere, tucked into the pocket of her jacket, where it weighs her down with secrets. She was careful with the lathe and there are no rough edges to rub her fingers against, but she often finds her hand creeping into her pocket at random hours. This is real.
She tells her roommate that it's a good-luck charm, one that will lose its potency if others touch it. Her roommate lifts her eyebrows and curls back her lips to show her teeth, but she indulges Ariadne, while making it clear that she thinks this is ridiculous.
Ariadne doesn't have a lot of time to think about it. Her mind is full of other minds. She builds, she breaks, she learns, she clutches at the pawn in her pocket and enjoys the irony, quietly, because dreams never move in straight lines. Sometimes she doesn't see her roommate for days. She quits going to class, because it doesn't seem to matter anymore. The professor promises to fix her grades. She doesn't ask how.
(She knows she was his favorite, before she said yes, but in the only class she attends afterward, he refuses to look at her, gaze sliding across her as if she isn't here at all.)
She doesn't fit in with the rest of Cobb's team. They're old, they're male, they live hard lives and this isn't their first job, it's their fifteenth, their fiftieth, even the nervous Yusuf. Sometimes Arthur looks at her and she clutches her fingers around the totem in her pocket, but he doesn't ask, and she doesn't either. She doesn't participate in their discussions unless they involve arches, domes, columns, spires.
Some days she isn't sure why she's doing this. The secrets fill her up and choke her silent and she feels like she's always being stared out, no matter where she goes. Cobb is broken inside from doing this, from Mal (Mal, what a name, she'd thought he was joking at first, because who calls their daughter bad, evil?). She wonders if she'll be like that someday. She knows this is supposed to be his last job, but can she let it be hers?
She's brought entire cities into existence, cornice and steeple, gargoyle and fruit stand. She has been a god, and wiped the world clean, and made it again. She burns with the need to tell someone and the knowledge that the only people whom she can tell already know.
When Ariadne was little, her mother told her the myth of the woman she was named after, a little ball of twine and a maze. Ariadne spent hours designing the maze. She eventually drops the habit, but it's almost a relief to pick it up again.
Cobb spins the top, watches it play out, and she remembers what Arthur said about how he breaks his own rules. If he knows how it's supposed to behave, how does he know he's awake? Where's his totem? Is it something as simple as Mal's absence?
Ariadne even takes her totem to the bathroom. She sets it on the sink and watches it cast stark shadows onto the floor.
"Good luck," she mutters to no one in particular, a little hopeful, tucking it in her pocket and stepping back into the world.
Fandom: Inception
Length: 563 words
Prompt: Awesome Ladies Ficathon: Inception, Ariadne, secrets
Pairing: Ariadne gen
Other: n/a
Excerpt: Ariadne carries her totem everywhere, tucked into the pocket of her jacket, where it weighs her down with secrets.
Ariadne carries her totem everywhere, tucked into the pocket of her jacket, where it weighs her down with secrets. She was careful with the lathe and there are no rough edges to rub her fingers against, but she often finds her hand creeping into her pocket at random hours. This is real.
She tells her roommate that it's a good-luck charm, one that will lose its potency if others touch it. Her roommate lifts her eyebrows and curls back her lips to show her teeth, but she indulges Ariadne, while making it clear that she thinks this is ridiculous.
Ariadne doesn't have a lot of time to think about it. Her mind is full of other minds. She builds, she breaks, she learns, she clutches at the pawn in her pocket and enjoys the irony, quietly, because dreams never move in straight lines. Sometimes she doesn't see her roommate for days. She quits going to class, because it doesn't seem to matter anymore. The professor promises to fix her grades. She doesn't ask how.
(She knows she was his favorite, before she said yes, but in the only class she attends afterward, he refuses to look at her, gaze sliding across her as if she isn't here at all.)
She doesn't fit in with the rest of Cobb's team. They're old, they're male, they live hard lives and this isn't their first job, it's their fifteenth, their fiftieth, even the nervous Yusuf. Sometimes Arthur looks at her and she clutches her fingers around the totem in her pocket, but he doesn't ask, and she doesn't either. She doesn't participate in their discussions unless they involve arches, domes, columns, spires.
Some days she isn't sure why she's doing this. The secrets fill her up and choke her silent and she feels like she's always being stared out, no matter where she goes. Cobb is broken inside from doing this, from Mal (Mal, what a name, she'd thought he was joking at first, because who calls their daughter bad, evil?). She wonders if she'll be like that someday. She knows this is supposed to be his last job, but can she let it be hers?
She's brought entire cities into existence, cornice and steeple, gargoyle and fruit stand. She has been a god, and wiped the world clean, and made it again. She burns with the need to tell someone and the knowledge that the only people whom she can tell already know.
When Ariadne was little, her mother told her the myth of the woman she was named after, a little ball of twine and a maze. Ariadne spent hours designing the maze. She eventually drops the habit, but it's almost a relief to pick it up again.
Cobb spins the top, watches it play out, and she remembers what Arthur said about how he breaks his own rules. If he knows how it's supposed to behave, how does he know he's awake? Where's his totem? Is it something as simple as Mal's absence?
Ariadne even takes her totem to the bathroom. She sets it on the sink and watches it cast stark shadows onto the floor.
"Good luck," she mutters to no one in particular, a little hopeful, tucking it in her pocket and stepping back into the world.