(My entry for the 10/1/10 P.U.L.L. post, an anti-writer's block project invented by Bookaholic711.)

Disclaimer: Inception is mine only in my dreams, people. The day I come up with something that creative is the day I buy myself a sports car and say, "Congratulations, you genius." In this story, unlike "Islands in the Sky," my other Robert/Ariadne, Cobb is awake and kicking. Hard.

(Italics: memory. Regular: present)

Enjoy, if you will. =)

- Deify -

His eyes on her are piercing, analytical, curious and suspicious all at once, but she ignores his gaze for that of the gold-burnished totem toppled on the floor. This is how they stand: him safely behind his desk, and her with a hollow chess piece and one of her favorite scarves as her only defense.

"I'm sorry," Robert says coolly, as something dangerous enters his voice, "I believe you had a reason for visiting?"

Ariadne looks up, meets his eye. Her mouth falls open of its own accord, though not a word comes out. And God, she's so terrified, so afraid of what she has to do, but she knows that she can't run away now—it has to be done. She must repent for her sins.

"I..." Her voice trails off, swallowed up by the sound of his quiet breathing and the ticking of the clock over his head. She looks anywhere but at his face: at the blank walls of his office, the security camera stalking her from the ceiling, the bishop she tossed to the floor the instant she entered the room, just to make sure this isn't a dream, that she really is going to do this.

Ariadne closes her eyes, because she can't look at him. Because she can't look her victim in the eye and confess to him, and she wants to dive back into the safety of a dream, but she can't, because this is what she gets for mucking around someone else's mind.

Robert is just reaching for the phone, probably to call security on her, when she opens her eyes and looks at him with a sudden rush of resolve and guilt and stupidity.

"I broke into your mind."

Sometimes, she still doesn't believe she's not dreaming.

"You don't have to get up so early," he murmurs sleepily. He doesn't even have his eyes open yet, his normally-immaculate hair tousled across his handsome, sleep-rumpled face. Ariadne shifts in the curve of his arm and strokes his smooth cheek.

"I should get to work," she says quietly.

"It's a Saturday."

"Inception doesn't wait for anyone."

Finally, Robert opens his eyes. Blue, bright blue, the clearest and most untainted shade of sky she's ever seen. She still can't believe he married her. He's supposed to have a beautiful, rich, clueless wife who will love him even when he's stooped and gray. Not her, a tiny, honest-tongued, plain woman with her secrets and her mazes and her fascination with things that aren't real.

"Don't go," he says, but it's more of a half-hearted plea than a command. Once again, an image of him, bound and helpless as he flies off the side of the skyscraper into limbo, flashes through her head. Insecurities. Vulnerabilities. These make up their history.

"I have to," she replies. And because she can't ignore the spike of guilt that runs through her at the way his expression closes off, she plants a gentle kiss on his frowning mouth. "I love you," she promises. It falls flat around their bed. Maybe it was true, in the beginning—yet somehow it feels like a lie on her tongue, and not a particularly good one, either.

Something hot and angry flashes through Robert's gaze, and he pulls her down to his waiting mouth. By the time he lets her go, they're both gasping for breath.

"I love you too," he says, and it's the truth.

He married her, the woman who admitted to breaking apart his mind and sifting through his deepest secrets. Maybe it's because he was fascinated by something he couldn't understand. He became so obsessed he somehow managed to convince himself he loved her. Because how can he love her when her presence, the very memory of what she did to him, causes him so much pain?

Humans are a self-destructive race, after all. He's a masochist in true form, but he loves her anyway.

"I don't understand you."

"That must be frustrating." Robert pretends not to notice the dark look she shoots him and pays for the coffee. She accepts the steaming cup he hands her, but only because caffeine is the only thing keeping her going these days. Ariadne trails him as he takes his coffee and walks calmly out the door, into the bright sunshine that highlights the dark circles under his bright eyes in a way that convinces her she's not dreaming. The totem remains untouched around her neck as she follows him down the sidewalk.

"First, I go and tell you that I've helped incept you," Ariadne says. At least it's not hard to keep pace with him—he's only a little taller than she is. "And then you...invite me to coffee?"

Robert shoots her a look that's half smug, half amused. At this moment, he is so different from the trembling, shaken man she incepted that it nearly startles her into slipping up. Yet she manages to keep her defensive walls high around her, stacked up like playing cards. He's the same man. But they're in his world, now.

"Consider it my way of thanking you for everything you've done for me," he says ambiguously. Ariadne frowns in confusion, but he only takes a sip of coffee and stops in the middle of the street. She notices that they've paused in front of the headquarters for Fischer Enterprises. Robert's slight shoulders droop under the weight of the building's shadow.

"Disbanding my father's company was the best thing I ever did for myself," he says sincerely. "Maybe you were actually helping me. You just didn't know it." She feels his gaze on her, earnest and open, and it's all she can do not to throw her coffee in his face. How dare he smirk at her? How dare he thank her for hacking into his head when it's been eating at her for four months?

"Was it really that good for you? Even with all the bad publicity?" Ariadne challenges. He tips his head in acknowledgment.

"There's no such thing as bad publicity."

Frustration boils up in her, hot and compelling. Why won't he leave her alone? Why won't he stop torturing her—wasn't her apology enough for him? "What are you doing, Robert?"

He blinks at her openly, surprised at her confrontational tone, but takes a casual sip of his coffee to hide his unbalance. "Forgive me if I want to get to know the woman who knows me better than I do."

She answers without thinking. Doesn't budge. "You don't want to know me. I'm a terrible person."

"We've all done terrible things, Ariadne," Robert tells her.

Ariadne's murmured "Not like I have" isn't exactly meant to be heard, but she knows he's caught her by the way his lips turn up at the corners.

She resurfaces from a dream like a drowning person from a merciless tide. The armrests of the lawn chair creak under her fingers as she clutches them, gasping for breath as the image of Robert dying on the sidewalk begins to fade from sight. An exasperated noise rising in the back of her throat, she pushes the heels of her hands against her eyes and wills the nightmares away.

"Ariadne?" Arthur and Eames appear on either side of her. Both men stare at her with varying degrees of concern, the Point-man's brow wrinkled just the slightest bit, and the Forger's constant, good-natured smirk nowhere in sight.

"It was nothing," she says quickly, even as she sees Cobb stirring, coming up out of the dream in the chair next to her. He sits up the instant he's awake and levels a stern glare at her.

"It wasn't nothing, Ariadne," he says strictly. "That's the fourth time this week your husband's shade has shown up in your dreams."

Eames leaned back with a saucy grin, but something darker flickers in the depths of his playful eyes. "Something wrong with the hubby?"

No, there's nothing wrong with Robert—she's the one to blame—but damn him for being so close to the truth, anyway. "No," Ariadne says, rubbing her eyes tiredly. "Things have been...tense at home."

Silence descends over the warehouse. Funny, that three years after Ariadne's first inception, the team is still using the same meeting place.

Cobb stirs and clasps his hands together with a brisk, dry sound. "Well. If there are problems that need taking care of, maybe you should focus on those first before you endanger the team."

Ariadne ignores the barbed side of the Extractor's comment in favor of staring at him outright. "You want me to leave," she says flatly.

"Until you fix things at home, you won't be able to focus on your work." Cobb gives her a sympathetic look, his lined face heavy with regret. "I'm sorry. We won't have a new job for at least a couple weeks, anyway."

"We can wait," Yusuf adds, his comment backed up by a nod from Eames and a faint, friendly smile from Arthur.

Ariadne leans back, and nods silently. "Alright." Perhaps it's for the best.

This is unhealthy. Snuggling into his shoulder, brushing his hand with hers, letting him make her laugh. Holding, hugging, kissing in quiet corners. Loving him because she doesn't know what else to feel for the Mark.

All unhealthy. Yet she's never been very good at stepping away from the forbidden.

"I'm starting to think you like being around me," Robert teases. Ariadne only smiles and leans comfortably into his shoulder. The grass is soft beneath her feet when she slips off her heels and digs her toes into the earth. Something about the sunlight filtering quietly through the leaves of the tree protecting them from the heat of a harsh summer day puts her at ease. The lake sparkles, a navy mass of glittering jewels spreading out before the hill they perch on. She can feel moisture sinking from the grass into the seat of her jeans.

Yet Ariadne can't resist reaching for the hollowed bishop around her neck. It's so perfect here, sitting on the hill with Robert, so what can it be but a dream?

Robert's hand closes over hers as she makes to toss the bishop. She looks up to see his eyes, bluer than the lake they have come to visit, silently pleading with her not to test this moment.

"I have something for you," he says finally, releasing her hand. Ariadne keeps the bishop cupped firmly in her hand, but she doesn't toss it— she knows Robert trusts her not to. Nowadays, there are so many things she knows about him, so many little details she can pick out about the way he is feeling, the way he thinks, the way he loves her despite all her secrets.

So when he pulls a glittering diamond ring from the cusp of his pocket, she doesn't need to look at him to know that in his eyes are love, veiled excitement, and the all-too-familiar fear that she will say no.

"I've thought a lot about this," he says quietly, soft voice rolling over her like silk. But silk never stirred up this intoxicating warmth, this need to be near him, and hear his voice first thing in the morning, and roll over in her—their—bed to find him looking at her with those pure, pure eyes.

"I know what you've done," Robert says. "And I know you'll say that I shouldn't love you because of what you've done, what you will do, but I do."

Ariadne's heart skips like a tiny, eager child in her chest as he takes her hand in his and soothes the bishop from her fingers. The totem falls to the ground and topples. Not a dream. Reality. This is real.

"Ariadne," Robert says, "will you marry me?"

Of course she said yes. Of course she agreed to spend the rest of her life with him. She loved him. He loved her. Ariadne has never liked to overcomplicate things.

Then why am I here?

She knows she's not supposed to create dreams from her memories, but this is different. This is necessary. Ariadne stands from a distance, watching in silence as her past self accepts Robert's proposal and burrows into his embrace, his kisses.

What happened? She loved him so much that it hurt—she still does. But she can't say it. She's become so tangled up inside, confused and frustrated, convinced—even after a year of loyalty—that Robert had ulterior motives in taking her as his wife. She isn't naturally a suspicious or mistrustful person, but she is the type to worry, and the insecurity creeps up, winding its way around her thin, breakable neck, until she's choking for air in a relationship she can't bear to lose.

Ariadne closes her eyes. It's just another maze, she tells herself. Go back to the beginning. Go back to when you realized you couldn't say it anymore.

And just like that, there is a rush of sound and light, and she is in a cathedral.

The veil shifts across her face, soft and fleeting like his touch. He smiles at her with his lips and his eyes, warmth reaching high into the blue depths, his hands cool and gentle on hers as she joins him at the altar. She is in her own world. The priest's words flow over her like waves of water, unheeded. Robert is everything.

Ariadne's lips fall open of their own accord when the priest asks her the question.

"I do," she says, and bursts into a smile. "I do."

Husband and wife. Soul and soul. Robert and Ariadne Fischer.

Robert leans forward and cups her chin, gentle as ever as he kisses her. Applause surrounds them like a cloud. When he pulls back, his eyes are glowing, his lips smiling.

"I love you," he whispers, for her ears and her ears only.

She smiles and opens her mouth. "I love you too," she says. But the diamond ring on her finger does nothing to make the words ring true.

Ariadne knows why. She's known why since the day she approached him for the first time since the inception. She's known because it's been weighing down her soul, tangling her in its iron threads, strangling those three words from her throat.

Even after a year of marriage, she doesn't feel she deserves Robert. She hasn't forgiven herself. She has deified this guilt until it has taken over her love, her relationship, her mind. And yet she knows Robert has already absolved her, at least in his mind, of her sins. She knows he loves her unconditionally.

She loves him back. She just can't say it. Not until she forgives herself. It will take her time, maybe more time than it took Cobb to let go of Mal. But she hopes he'll wait for her.

Ariadne rises from the dream like smoke, and when she sits up in bed, Robert is sleeping beside her. The open blinds of their window say it is late, much later than she thought it was. She rolls over and brushes Robert's bangs from his forehead, watching as he stirs, eyelids fluttering in sleep.

"Ariadne?" he murmurs sleepily.

"Yes," she says, and presses a kiss to his temple, just because she can. "I'm here."

Robert opens his eyes and blinks up at her. In the moonlight pouring through the window, he is beautiful.

"Ariadne," he says, touching her cheek. Somehow, looking into her, he knows. Just knows. She supposes it's because he loves her. Or maybe it's because she loves him. "We've all done terrible things. Don't leave because of them."

The tears start up in her eyes and trickle over her cheekbones like rain.

"I'm here," she promises him, and buries her face in his shoulder. "I'm here."

This, at least, is true.

A/N: This was impossibly difficult to write. I have a bad feeling that the ending was unsatisfying, but I couldn't come up with a way to bring Ariadne to absolve herself of her guilt before the ending. Bittersweet, then.

In any account, reviews are always cherished. :)

-Kimsa