Disclaimer—Recognizable characters belong to the insanely talented Christopher Nolan. No copyright infringement intended. Any similarity to events or persons living or dead is purely coincidental.

Author's Notes—I can't seem to get these characters out of my head, so we'll visit them for a bit. Thanks to the wonderful and "awesome" Night_Lotus for the assist with the beta! I couldn't have done this without you! Many, many thanks. Also, I have to thank my UK v US English expert, basched. Between my US-itude and your UK-iness, I think we figured it out. ;) And bless you for helping without having seen the movie yet! I'm sure you'll like it when the DVD is finally released.

Encapsulation—Extractions steal ideas. Inceptions plant ideas. Encapsulations trap ideas, but can it ever be reversed? Arthur hopes so. Post-movie team mission-fic.

He hadn't been stateside in a while. Working with someone who couldn't set foot on U.S. soil meant he stayed pretty internationally himself. But, after the Saito job, after a successful Inception, home was all any of them wanted.

Arthur hadn't seen his sister in over eight months. Being on the run, on the lam, didn't offer many opportunities for him to contact family. He often learned about events after the fact. He'd been on a job in Cairo. He was so focused on the mission, he neglected his email for three months. Within that time, he'd gotten a message from his sister that their father had died. Even if he'd wanted to get home, he'd already missed the funeral by six weeks.

While he felt bad about that, he had never been particularly close with the man.

Each message from Penelope was like a totem, a grounding moment. Some were just generic messages, talking about something that had happened that day that was out of the ordinary. Some were well wishes for him, congratulations on a job well done or happiness on his birthday.

He was fairly certain he was the only person in the world who sent belated thanks for an on-time birthday e-card. But, the timing, however odd, was just the way his life worked.

He climbed out of the car, a paper-wrapped bouquet of brightly colored Gerbera daisies in his hands. He hadn't told her he was coming home-he never did. He much preferred the genuine look of surprise on her face whenever he popped up in her world.

Leaning casually against the trunk, he watched the front door of the immaculate medical building across the street. His sister worked in a beautiful office, a place that was conducive to study and growth. She was one of the leading scientists who still believed that shared-dream technology could open the door to new ideas, new advancements. She had the potential to make his profession more legal.

The one thing he hated was how predictable she was. Penelope made it easy for him to find her, but, by the same token, for others to find her, too. She always left the office at the same time, took the same routes home, frequented the same stores, the same restaurants and coffee shops.

He'd tried to assure her the last time, that he could find her no matter what she did. The thought hadn't stuck.

The scientist in her found the quickest way from point a to point b. She liked the economical aspects of it, both for time and money.

He never would've imagined, as children, that they would've grown into the adults they'd become. It was a miracle either of them had survived their tender years. Their father had been an alcoholic, their mother, a depressed, abusive woman.

He was infinitely proud of his little sister. She'd worked her way through college the hard way, scraping by, going hungry. She'd fought for it.

He'd gone a different way. He'd joined the military. While he had to fight, too, their battlegrounds had been completely different.

Rubbing absently at his forehead, he glanced up just in time to see the brunette exit the building. "Right on time," he murmured, glancing at the silver watch on his wrist.

She wore a tailored oxford in a pale pink with a black pencil skirt, her feet encased in sensible heels. Her long dark hair had been pulled back but as she walked, she tugged the pins from the shoulder-length tresses, letting the loose curls spill around her neck.

He crossed the street, arriving on the sidewalk just in front of her as she absently slid the pins into her purse. "Penelope."

She glanced up in mid-step.

For a half a second, her eyes held startled disbelief. As that half-second passed, it was replaced with surprise and joy. Her entire face lit up. "Arthur!"

He accepted the warm hug she offered, careful to ensure her flowers didn't get crushed.

"I can't believe you're here," she whispered, closing her dark brown eyes.

"It's good to see you, too," he said. "I, uh... brought you something."

She pulled back. "You didn't have to."

"C'mon. You've had a breakthrough. We should celebrate. Dinner on me tonight," he said as he offered her the brightly-colored daisies.

She blinked, thoroughly confused. "Breakthrough?" She graciously accepted the bouquet, however.

"You said, the last time we spoke on the phone, that you'd figured it out. The dream-like state." How could she have forgotten her own life's work? Her discovery that was going to revolutionize shared-dreaming?

As he looked into her all-too-familiar eyes, he realized something was wrong. She had no idea what he was talking about. He could see the wheels in her head crank up to top gear as she struggled to remember.

Her smile was soft but almost sad. "Arthur... I haven't figured out anything spectacular. Certainly not the dream-like state. It's... it's a myth," she said. "It can't be proven." She rubbed a silky petal between her fingers. "Maybe you dreamt our conversation."

He knew better than that but he didn't want to upset her. "Maybe. But, I can take my little sister out to dinner anyway, right?"

Her gorgeous smile blossomed again. "You can definitely do that."

Arthur smiled slightly back, but it was a touch guarded this time. As he led her back across the street to his waiting car, he slipped his hand into his pocket, fingering the weighted red die, just to make sure.

He sat on the patio of the coffee shop the next morning, hidden beneath the table's large umbrella. The sunshine did little to lighten his mood, and the caffeine hadn't given his system a jump-start yet. It was still in his cup, untouched.

He was far more interested with the number of times the five rolled on the die. In dreams, his die could hit any number. In reality, only the five appeared. It had been one half of a weighted set, a pair. He knew exactly the number of rough scuff marks on the ruby-red skin, which pips were slightly discolored, and which corners were less than square. He was intimately familiar with it.

He'd made a lot of money with it and its mate once upon a time.

"What's wrong?"

He had just let the die fly, and it rolled across the table, the five still showing. He cleared his throat, grabbing his totem again and sliding it into his pocket in one smooth motion as he stood. "Ariadne."

"Arthur," she returned with a hint of a smile on her lips. It faded, however, when she asked again. "What's wrong?"

He gestured for her to have a seat. Only when she was settled did he ease back down. "I have a proposition."

"Um... okay..."

"It's... it's a job," he said, glancing at her.

"Another Inception?"

He shook his head.

"An Extraction, then?"

"It's not either," he said, looking up at her. "I'm not entirely sure how feasible it is, to be honest."

"What's the job?" she asked.

He reached into his jacket, pulling a photo from the interior pocket. He looked at his sister's smiling face for a moment before showing it to her.

For a moment, Ariadne felt like she'd been punched in the stomach. "She's stunning. Who is she?"

He avoided the question somewhat. "She's a shared-dreaming analyst, a researcher. I have reason to believe she's been subjected to a questionable procedure."

She arched an eyebrow. "Reason to believe?" she repeated.

"She'd made a breakthrough. She'd discovered a way to access and open a portion of the brain through the shared-dream that would allow more of the brain to function during normal waking hours. They call it the dream-like state. It was her life's work. She has since forgotten all about it."

"How do you just forget something like that?"

"There's a process, a procedure that can be done in a deep sleep, through several layers of dreams. It takes a portion of your knowledge, something you know to be true, and it locks it away. It doesn't erase it, it just hides it deep within the subconscious."

"That sounds... wrong," Ariadne said, stealing his cup of coffee and taking a sip.

"It's a lot more questionable than either Extraction or Inception. But there are those out there who are exceptionally good at Encapsulation. So, my..." He caught himself before saying sister. "My proposal," he said, "would be to go into the analyst's mind, to try to seek out where they've Encapsulated her ideas, and give them back to her."

She sat back in her chair, pondering. "Can it even be done?"

"I didn't think Inception could be done, but Fischer-Morrow is no more," he said, referring to the energy conglomerate that they'd helped destroy through planting the seed of an idea in the magnate's mind.

She took another sip of coffee. Casually, she picked up the photo, watching as Arthur seemed especially on edge now that she was holding it again. "You're much more like Cobb than I realized," she said.

He narrowed his eyes slightly.

"I'm not going back under with you or him or anybody until I know the whole story," she said, setting the photo and cup down. She stood and started to walk off.

He caught her hand roughly, startling her.

Her breath caught in her throat, however, when she heard his quiet plea. She'd misread his pain as annoyance, his emotion as his prickly demeanor. She'd had him all wrong.

"I need your help, Ariadne. You're the only one who can design the levels."

"Who is she, Arthur?"

He looked up at her, slowly releasing her hand. "She's my sister."

Ariadne sat back down.

"The only way that much of her memory could be gone is through Encapsulation," he said. "She has long-term memory, short-term memory. She remembers the last time I called her, the last time she saw me. She remembers what she had to eat yesterday and what her favorite foods are. She knows where she works, what she does. She just doesn't remember her discovery."

"How do you know about it?"

"She'd been on the verge of a breakthrough for six months. When she finally cracked it, she called me, told me. Trust me. She knew."

"Well, maybe it didn't work."

"If it didn't work, she would've told me it didn't work. Yesterday, she told me it wasn't possible at all, it was a myth, that nobody could prove the theory."

"She didn't say she didn't remember," she pointed out.

"She didn't have to. It was clear on her face. Somebody stole that from her, Ariadne. I intend to get it back for her."

"She's just going to let you waltz into her dreams? To find it?"

He hesitated.

In that moment, another thought entered her head. "How do you know she wants it back?"

"How can she know what's missing if she doesn't know it's gone?"

She opened her mouth but closed it.

"I can't do this without you," he said.

Reluctantly, finally, she nodded. "But, we won't be able to do it, just the two of us, will we?"

He shook his head soberly.

Eames watched, mildly amused, as Arthur made laps in front of the assembled group. It was, for the most part, the group who had accomplished the Fischer Inception. Cobb, the extractor, Yusuf, the chemist, Ariadne, the architect, Arthur, the point man, and himself, the forger. All they were missing was Saito, the tourist and client. He nudged Yusuf with his elbow. "It's Old Home week."

"Wasn't sure I'd see any of you again," the chemist admitted.

"Leave it to the brain trust over there," Eames said, glancing up as Cobb tried to settle Arthur to no avail. "Shall we get this show on the road?" he asked loudly. "Or is the flight from Tokyo running behind? Our man Saito stuck in a holding pattern some thirty-thousand feet up? Some of us have exciting job offers to contend with."

Eames took special delight in annoying the by-the-book point man. There was no humor around the younger man. Everything he said could only be taken one way, at face value. He was an easy target. Eames thought a former Marine should've handled himself better.

Cobb glanced up at Arthur. "Are we waiting for someone?"

Arthur shook his head.

Ariadne offered the point man a stack of file folders.

"Encapsulation," Arthur began, handing them out.

"If that's the job, you can count me out right now," Eames said, disgusted.

Cobb took a moment from reviewing his folder to shoot the forger a look.

"Hey, even scoundrels have lines they don't cross. Very nice knowing you all, but if anyone asks if I've ever met you, the answer I'll give is no and I ask that you kindly return the favor," he said, buttoning his suit jacket as he stood.

Arthur held a folder out to him. "Our client wants us to undo one."

"Un..." He drifted off, shaking his head. "Undo an Encapsulation? And you vetted this client, did you?" he said, still unwilling to take the mission information. "You didn't even think we could perform an Inception, and here you are, upping the ante considerably, darling."

Annoyed, Arthur hit Eames in the chest with the folder. "Hear what I have to say first, and then decide. Or are you that unreliable?"

Eames cleared his throat, glancing around the rest of the room. Yusuf was smiling behind his hand. Cobb's blue eyes were cool. Ariadne was far more concerned with the pulsing vein in Arthur's forehead than anything about him. "Well, guess I can hear a fairytale before I go, Arthur." He sat down. "Do tell."

"Encapsulation is still a relatively new idea. Instead of walking into a shared dream and removing secrets, or planting them, this requires a team to remove every memory, every emotion ever tied to a certain event or person or thing, and to lock it deep within the subconscious. Not only does the victim forget what's been Encapsulated, they don't even remember the process, or what was left in its wake."

"Oh, the good part," muttered Eames.

Arthur ignored the forger as best he could. His anger was seething just beneath the surface. "In the aftermath of an Encapsulation, the subconscious is trained to keep even the victim at bay within the dreams. If we get remotely close to where the information is being held, the subconscious, in an attempt to protect the mark as well as the Encapsulated memories, is worse than any subconscious ever trained by mere Extractors."

"How deeply do we have to go to discover the Encapsulated memories?" Yusuf asked, already considering concoctions to brew.

"Nobody bloody knows," Eames said idly, flipping through his file folder. He stopped when he reached the photograph of the scientist. The easy smile, the dark hair and mesmerizing eyes. She might be worth meeting at the very least.

"It could be three levels... it could be more," Cobb answered.

"More than three levels...?" Yusuf shook his head. "It was tricky enough with Fischer's Inception. I can't imagine going deeper."

"It's the same principal, isn't it?" Ariadne asked. "Build a maze, create the safe location, and that's where the subconscious stores the secrets?"

"In theory, sure," Cobb said. "In practice? Not with an Encapsulation. The conscious part, the dreamer part... she won't know what's missing. She won't know what to fill the safe with. It's the overactive subconscious that knows where the bodies are buried. And they will be protecting that place violently."

"So, in other words... we go deeper than three levels, we're sedated... we have the potential of dying in Limbo again. As I said before, this is delightful, whoever thought this up." Eames stood, closing the dossier on the mission. "I'll hand it to you, Arthur, you picked a pretty girl, but I don't think she's worth it."

The point man snapped, rushing at the forger, who hadn't expected that kind of a reaction. Eames was caught flatfooted as Arthur tackled him against the concrete floor.

"Arthur!" Ariadne called, moving to help.

Yusuf caught her, holding her back, as Cobb stepped in to try to break up the fight.

It was a struggle, pulling Arthur off of Eames, but eventually Cobb managed.

"What... I always thought you were a little off, Arthur, but I really wouldn't have expected you to go quite so damned insane over my refusing to take a job."

"She is worth it," Arthur growled, his face still red.

"Well, give her my regards," Eames said, forcing himself to stand up straight. He didn't want to admit that the point man had done damage to him, but his back was sore, and his mouth was bleeding. He didn't want to think about the fact that he might have a black eye, either. He offered a half-salute to Cobb before turning to leave.

"Eames," Ariadne called.

Against his better judgment, Eames hesitated.

"Don't you have family? Someone you'd do anything for?" she asked.

He turned, glancing back at her. "The scientist..." He looked at Arthur. "Your wife?" he guessed.

"My sister."

He actually cracked a smile. "Your sister? Well... why didn't you say so?"

"Sis... sister?" Yusuf asked.

"I'm the client," Arthur said, brushing himself off. He straightened his suit and ran his fingers through his dark hair. "My sister needs help."

"How do we do this?" Eames asked, looking at Cobb.

"We're going to have to trick her. While she might come into a shared-dream willingly, it wouldn't be to access her own Encapsulated memories. She's going to have to think she's helping us on a job," Cobb explained.

"Lies within lies, dreams within dreams... what a tangled web we weave." Eames spat a mouthful of blood onto the ground. "When do we start?"

Cobb looked at the architect. "We need four levels of mazes at least. And these have to be spectacular."

Ariadne nodded.

"There's one thing, Cobb," Arthur said. "She knows me, she knows you. I made the mistake of telling her about Ariadne last night. And, I can't leave her, no matter how many levels."

Cobb sighed, nodding.

"That sounds like that was more than one thing," Eames commented.

"You know what this means, don't you?" Cobb asked, looking at Eames.

"Arthur can't count?"

"Your job in this deception," Cobb said, clapping the forger on the shoulder harder than was necessary, "means that you and Arthur will be descending all the levels together."

Eames winced at the contact and that realization. "Wait, wait... me? Didn't I get punished enough already for speaking out of turn?" he asked, gently probing the tender skin around his left eye.

"Penelope is a smart girl. Considering the only two members of our team she doesn't know anything about are you and Yusuf, it's got to be you," Cobb said simply.

"Penelope? Were your parents sadists with names like Arthur and Penelope? Could they have been any more old-fashioned?" Eames asked.

Arthur closed his eyes and mentally counted to ten.

"Please tell me there's a nickname somewhere. Art and Penny, perhaps?" Still not getting the rise he'd hoped for, Eames decided to move on. He couldn't resist one brief parting shot before switching tactics. "Well, she is a pretty Penny..." He cleared his throat. "I'm not entirely sure this is your brightest bulb ever, Cobb. I mean, how do we know what we're looking for? Encapsulation is not an art in which I have dabbled."

Cobb and Arthur exchanged a long look.

"Oh, but you two have. Well, that's lovely," he said. "And here I thought I was a lowlife. How silly of me."

"It probably would be best," Cobb began, "for you and Ariadne to get a field demonstration, so that you know what you're looking for and she knows what design issues might arise."

"Whose mind do we go into?" Arthur asked.

"Not mine, mate," Eames said quickly. "I don't trust you two enough to go scrambling in my memories."

"It shouldn't be Ariadne either," said Cobb, processing. He looked expectantly at Arthur.

The point man sighed. "If that's what it takes."

"Oh, excellent," grinned Eames. "What shall we have you forget, hmm? Might we erase the like he has of that hairstyle? Garish, really. Makes him look like a hoodlum."

Cobb wondered if it was such a good idea, letting Arthur and Eames descend all levels of Penelope's dreams together. "Ariadne! Yusuf! Get the equipment together. We're going under." He headed over, to pull the chairs closer together, to help them get ready for a shared dream.

Arthur and Eames regarded each other for a long moment.

"Thank you," Arthur managed, the words only getting stuck in his throat a little.

Eames shrugged. "Don't mention it."

There was another awkward moment as Ariadne unfastened the case, as Yusuf set about unwinding the IV tubes.

"Sorry about what I said," Eames muttered, looking anywhere but at the point man. "About Penny."

"Penelope," Arthur corrected automatically.

"Come now, that is a mouthful."

"Just try calling her something shorter," he said sharply, crossing toward the center grouping.

"She looks like a Penny," Eames whispered to himself before joining the rest of the group.

"Five minutes, Yusuf," Cobb said, stretching out and closing his eyes.

"On the clock," announced the chemist.

Coming Attractions...

Lines from the next installment:

Cobb smiled, pulling a handgun from the back waistband of his pants. He held the gun to his own head, looking squarely at Eames. "Give me one minute."

"Give-" Eames sighed as the extractor vanished from view. "Bloody hell," he muttered, looking at Ariadne. "Do you know what that was all about?"

Ariadne shrugged.

Eames looked at his watch. Only twenty seconds had elapsed. He pulled a gun from a holster on his hip, resting his finger on the trigger. He counted slowly another ten seconds, then decided he was done waiting. He aimed it at Ariadne. "No hard feelings," he said before firing a shot.