Hi guys! Er, I'm terribly sorry about the three month wait... You can all shoot me, now, if you are so inclined. I was kind of blindsided by life and then I found all the Inception communites on livejournal, and I ended up signing on for a Inception Big Bang fic (it's a monsterrrrrrrrr) and the inception_kink meme is like crack, so... yeah.

My apologies!

Dedicated to , who reminded me to update this today! You rock, darling!

Disclaimer: If I owned Inception, I would be the most awesome person ever.

Hope: That ridiculously tenacious thing that makes us feel as if everything, no matter how bad, is going to turn out all right.

vi: hope

She opens her eyes and is surrounded by light.

Brilliant, shattering, piercing white light. It glows from everywhere and she almost thinks that she's dreaming about Cobb and Mal on the shore in limbo again. But there is no rush and crash of waves, no cawing of birds or laughing children.

There's the muted sound of traffic from somewhere, and the groan of wind against a building, and Ariadne blinks rapidly and a room starts to swim into view, the light softening, going golden and quiet.

She knows this room.

Wooden floors, granite countertops, light that slants golden from a window—this is Cobb's house, the home he made with Mal, and there's a knife and tomatoes on the counter and dozens of pictures lining the walls.

Ariadne has time to look at them all, to see Cobb and Mal, barely older than she is, dancing at their wedding, holding Phillipa, then James, and she sees James and Phillipa grow from babies to adults, sees graduation photos and gowns and dresses.

"Dad," someone says, and Ariadne turns, surprised, and sees two people standing in the kitchen. One is Dom, his hair the color of a clouded sky and his eyes tired and blue, and the other is a young woman, blonde, blue-eyed, maybe twenty or so.

Ariadne recognizes her from the pictures—Phillipa, all grown up, no longer a little girl laughing in her father's dreams.

Phillipa is angry. "Dad," she says again.

Cobb smiles, lopsided. "Phil."

"Get out," Phillipa says, coldly, and her shoulders are pulled back. She stands proudly, fiercely. She is angry, and her father is sad.

"Phil—" Cobb tries, spreading shaking hands pleadingly, appealingly. "Phil, please."

"No," says Phillipa, and Ariadne sees a bit of Mal flash in her eyes. "No, Dad. Get out. I don't want you here."

Dom winces. "Phil," he tries again. "You're my daughter."

"Am I?" Phil shouts, and Mal sparks in her gaze. "You left me, Dad. You fucking left! I was three and you disappeared."

"I know, Phil, I am so sorry, so sorry—"

"Save it," Phillipa hisses. "I don't want to fucking hear it, okay? James might forgive you, Grandpa might forgive you, hell, Grand-mère might forgive you, but I'm not going to."

Cobb drops his eyes and Ariadne aches for him, hurts for him, because this isn't a memory, this is a fear, this is a nightmare, a glimpse at a future that he very well might have to face one day.

"I didn't want to," he says, very quietly, and Phillipa laughs and it sounds like it causes her pain.

"You didn't want to?" She cries. "You didn't want to? Then why did you, huh? Why did you run? Is it because you really did kill Mom?"

"No," Dom snaps, and Ariadne sees the glimmer of old anger. "No, I did not kill Mal—I loved her, Phil, I really did. Your mom was sick, she was confused and hurt and—"

"You did something to her," Phillipa cuts in, her eyes glittering. "You and Mom, you did something and then she was never the same, right?"

Dom's face goes white and Ariadne watches.

"How did you—"

"Find out?" Phillipa's voice is scathing, is harsh and angry. "I asked Uncle Arthur. He said it was time that I knew. You made Mom sick, Father. You made her sick and then she died, and it's all your fault!"

"No," Dom says, and it sounds like the gasp of a dying man, short and ragged and pleading. Ariadne wants to go to him, wants to be with him, but she's rooted to the spot, can't move.

"Yes," Phillipa cries, and she takes a step towards him. "Yes, Dad, it's your fault. You killed her and then you left us!"

"I didn't mean—"

"But you did. You left and you never came back!"

Came back, echo the walls, came back came back came back until the dream rings it with, the floor and the pictures and the knife on the counter vibrate with it.

You never came back.

And then the dream changes, shifts. The sun dies, guttering like a candle. The tomatoes disappear, leaving only the knife. Pictures collapse from the wall, others ripple and change—Dom vanishes from all of them, leaving only his children, growing up without a father.

And Dom himself ripples, his hair going blonde and his age falling away, until he is thirty-something and bright-eyed and crushed again, and Phillipa stares at him and there are tears in her eyes.

"You're not real," she tells him, and he doesn't look her in the eye. "You're not real, Dad, you're gone. You're dead."

"Phillipa," Dom says, tiredly. "Phillipa, Phillipa, please."

"No." She's crying, tears rolling down her face. It starts to rain.

"No, Dad." Her hand twitches, moves, almost of its own accord. "I'm sorry," she tells him, and her fingers curl around the knife. "I'm so sorry, Dad."

"Phillipa, don't."

"Too late," she smiles, and with a cry she plunges the knife into her father's chest.

Ariadne shouts—she can't help it—and from the depths of the dream, she hears music.

Non, je ne regrette rien

"Phillipa," Dom says, and his hands are soaked red, his blue eyes wide. He falls to the floor and Phillipa sinks to her knees over him.

She's crying. "I'm so sorry," she murmurs, over and over and over. "So sorry, you're not real, you're a dream, I'm so sorry, Dad."

Ariadne is crying too, shaking a little, trembling.

It's raining, sheeting from the sky, and the dream is going dark, fading, and Ariadne is willing to go with it, lets it pull at her, take her away

Non, je ne regrette rien, Edith Piaf sings.

No, I regret nothing—

She is still dreaming. The ground is solid under her feet, made of stone, not wood. She hears voices and water and the sounds of everyday life, and reluctantly she opens her eyes, anticipating a new trauma, a new horror.

She's still shaking.

She's in her own dream this time. She recognizes the buildings, the design. Her projections mill comfortably and somewhere she here's the deep thundering footsteps of her lizard, stomping after his next meal.

She's standing in a square. She knows it instantly—it's one of the ones she created when she was angry or sad or hurt. The river flashes through it, sparkling, muted, and there's a large fountain in the middle that sprays silver mist that swirls in the air and turns it into shimmering fog.

It's chilly and she shivers, and the mist settles around her like a scarf.

"Nice place," Cobb comments, and he comes padding from the fog, his edges blurred and misted over. He offers Ariadne a smile.

She studies him. He looks like he did before, on the bridge, with his age on his shoulders and the slow, hesitant grace of an old man.

"Your daughter is something else," she tells him, because she doesn't know what else to say.

"Isn't she?" The smile Cobb gives her is almost fond, but its nervous too, tense, wound tight. "I always thought she'd grow up with her mother's passion."

"Passion?" Ariadne mutters. "Jesus."

Dom shrugs, and he seems half-faded into the mist, half-blurred, half-erased.

"We're trying to find you," she says.

"We?"

"Arthur and I."

Cobb actually almost grins this time. "You convinced Arthur?"

She nods. "He still loves you, you know."

"I know."

"He's trying to convince Eames to help, and Yusuf."

"Yusuf didn't know me that well in the first place," he says gently. "And Eames… Eames is a firm believer of 'cut and run.' He won't stay much longer."

"He's stayed for three weeks," Ariadne says defensively, because she's tired of everyone giving up on each other, she really fucking is.

Cobb shrugs again, cants his head. "Has it really only been three weeks?"

"Yes."

"Feels like centuries," he says, and looks off into the mist, at the projections that are leaving the square in droves, and one that's prowling, mostly hidden, just a shadow. "Maybe longer."

"You should come back with me," Ariadne tells him, and she reaches for his hand. "Come on, we can go, right now."

Cobb smiles at her, bitterly, sadly (resigned, he's resigned) and keeps his hands in his pockets.

"Come with me!" She says, and somewhere deep in the dream there's the white-hot of a gunshot and a cracking, a rumbling, deep and powerful and inescapable. The dream is collapsing.

"I can't," he says, and his hands stay in his pockets, this time, the mist swirling now, spinning, tugging at him, swallowing him.

The ground shakes under Ariadne and she's swaying, stumbling. "Please," she says.

"I'm sorry," Dom murmurs, and she's trying to stand on pitching ground. "You know where to find me," he says. "You know what you have to do."

And the mist swallows him and the ground heaves, and she's falling, and behind her she thinks she hears someone shout—

She woke alone. The PASIV hummed beside her steadily, and she lay back on the lawn chair and listened to her disturbingly even breathing.

Was she so used to pain now that it didn't hurt anymore? The thought caused her to chuckle, bitterly. She wouldn't mind if it was that way, actually, because there was an ache in her chest that she couldn't quite get rid of, no matter what she did or how she tried to find Cobb, to wake him, to drag him back.

I can't, he said, but you know where to find me.

Limbo—he was talking about limbo. Ariadne didn't want to go into limbo. She'd been once, and that had been enough. She'd seen it, felt it—eternity, stretching every direction, dragging on and on and never ever stopping.

She wondered how many lost souls were down there. One could go for literally centuries and never find anyone.

So how am I going to find him? She thought, and she stared up at the ceiling, at the stains and the cracks and the splotch that was shaped like Tiger Woods. Where is he, in limbo?

Arthur had done some research—he said, according to the few who had been in limbo and returned, that it wasn't structured like a dream. There was no labyrinth, no great maze to solve. Each person dreamed uninterrupted—their dreams didn't bump with others, didn't mix or mingle. Cobb and Mal had been down there fifty years and never saw another soul. Dreamspace was flexible there, was, for all intents and purposes, unlimited.

But Cobb found Saito, she argued with herself. Dreamspace obviously overlaps somehow, otherwise he never would have found him.

But what's the connection, the shared bridge?

She was on her feet before she was consciously aware of getting up, staggering over to her worktable, shaking the dream out of her legs.

Her cell phone was lying on it, turned off, unused in the past three weeks.

She turned it on.

Instantly, it began to buzz almost continuously—text messages, missed calls, emails flooded her phone by the dozen. She caught some of the messages as they flashed past;

Ari where r u?

Helloooo?

Ari we're worried bout u.

Ari?

Hey, u there?

Where are you?

Prof. M says you got a work placement….

R u coming back? It's been five weeks.

She stared at them all, from her college friends, her roommate, her classmates. They missed her, they were worried about her.

She checked her missed calls too; twenty from her roommate, eighteen from her parents ten from her friends, seven others from classmates. Her emails were the same, all worried and anxious messages, questions.

Are you coming home soon?

The ache came back, persistent, heavy in her chest. She hadn't realized that she would be missed—meeting Cobb, dreaming that first time, all of it had swept her away from her comfortable life. She had left to go with him without even saying goodbye, without even thinking to.

Absent-mindedly, she opened a new message and started typing.

I'll be home soon, she said. We're wrapping up the job here. I can't wait to see you all.

She sent it to every contact in her address book.

Saito's number was preprogrammed into her phone—it was something ridiculously complicated and encoded—but she managed to get it from the mess of her contacts and she hit call.

And she waited.

And waited.

After a few minutes, there was a click and then someone started to speak rapid Japanese, firing off what sounded like accusatory questions.

"I need to talk to Mr. Saito," she said, loudly and clearly. The person on the other end increased their babbling. "I need Mr. Saito."

There was another sound, a sharp word, and a click. "Hello," a smooth voice said. "I am Hana. How may I help you today?"

"I need to talk to Mr. Saito," Ariadne said, relieved. "It's important."

"I'm sorry, Saito-san does not take calls without an appointment."

"Please, it's really urgent, my name is Ariadne, tell him, he'll let you know—"

"I do not know how you got access to this line," Hana cut in coldly. "This is Mr. Saito's private line. We do not accept business calls."

"It's about Fischer-Morrow," Ariadne blurted. "Inception."

Hana was silent. "Very well," she said, after a long pause. There was more clicking in the background and more rapid-fire Japanese, but this time Ariadne heard her own name and Fischer's. Hana was talking about her.

There was another sharp click, and then

"Ariadne?" Saito's voice came over the line, deep and reassuring and a little perplexed. "To what do I own this pleasure?"

"Jesus," she told him, slightly frantically. "Couldn't you make it a little easier to get a hold of you?"

"My apologies," he soothed. "Your numbers are being programmed as we speak. Any future calls will come through directly to me without interference."

"Yeah," she muttered, dragging a hand through her hair. "Listen, Saito, I need your help."

"Oh? If it is legal trouble I assure you that I can buy a jury of your peers quite easily, a judge as well—"

"No, no, it's not legal trouble." Ariadne huffed a laugh. "Wait, you can buy a jury?"

"Technically I can buy several," Saito said dismissively. "But you are not in legal trouble, and you told my assistant about inception. You are still in Los Angeles, which leads me to think that this discussion is about Mr. Cobb."

"It is," she confirmed. "Listen, Arthur and I, we think we can get him out."

"Of limbo?"

"Yes. We've been working—well he's been researching and I've been dreaming—and we think we can get him out. We just need to find him."

"Can you not go under with him?"

"We tried that. We ended up in Arthur's subconscious and we were ripped to shreds. We think we need to go into limbo separately, in our own dream, and look from there. We'll still be connected to Cobb, but we'll go through three or four levels."

"Ah," said Saito. "And you are worried that you will not be able to find him, in the vastness of limbo."

"Yeah. We've learned that dreamspace in limbo isn't shared—it's infinite, there's a separate space for each individual. How did Cobb find you? You both went under at separate times, and you were in your dreamspace and he was in the city he built with Mal."

"I do not know how Mr. Cobb found me," Saito said, slowly. Ariadne's heart sank. "But when he was brought to me, my projections had dragged him from the ocean."

"The ocean?"

"Yes. He had been drifting for days."

Ariadne couldn't stop the smile from breaking out on her face. "The ocean?" She repeated, and Saiton agreed again, slightly bemused.

"Thank you," she told him.

"Do not mention it," Saito said, and she could imagine him waving his hand magnanimously. "I would come myself, but I am currently entangled in business. Do call me when he wakes up, though."

"Of course," she said, and Saito ended the call.

"Arthur!" She shouted, and bounded out into the main workspace. Excitement surged in her blood. She could find him, could figure it out—the ocean was the bridge between dreamspaces, was the common ground. Each dreamspace was like an island, then, all one had to do was swim. "Arthur!"

There was no response, and Ariadne stopped, surprised. Arthur was usually hunched over one of the tables, clicking away on a laptop or reviewing file after file. He was gone, and so were Eames and Yusuf, though that was typical.

"Hello?" She called. No one answered.

"Damn," she muttered, looking around a little helplessly. The only person in the warehouse was Cobb, unconscious in his lawn chair. Resigned, she sat down beside him, threading her fingers through his considerably paler ones.

"We're going to find you," she told him cheerfully. "We've found out how. The ocean is the bridge, did you know that? You did, obviously, you found Saito. We're coming after you now, there's nothing you can do to stop us."

She imagined that he'd smile, if he was with her, maybe chuckle just a bit, in wry amusement.

"You can't stay down there forever," she said, and ran her free hand through his hair. "I'm going to bring you back."

She imagined that he said I know, with his hands in his pockets and his head tilted a little to the side. He'd squint at her, putting together something in his head.

"As soon as Arthur gets back," she murmured. "We're coming after you."

~WSS