Like most things, it started with a bang.

That's how Lizzie remembers it. The first time she went under, she felt like her bones had turned to molasses, and she couldn't move. It was agony, and when she heard the explosion go off, she heard the sound of salvation.

She woke up screaming, and Charlie wound the cord around his fingers and said, "Welcome back."

Charlie was the leader of the team. Will was the point man, Fitz provided the sedation, and Jane was the architect.

Lizzie was the forger.

"I don't know if this will work," she warned Will one day when they were under. The dreamscape, as provided by him, was a stark building in Paris that someone (probably one of their own) had bombed out. Inside the building was a maze of mirrors.

He glanced at her and watched silently as she began pulling mirrors from the walls and surrounding them around her body, making a circle. "Just try it."

She nodded and faced the mirrors. At least ten different Lizzie's blinked back at her, and Will frowned when he saw that she was shuddering.

"Lizzie-"

The figure in front of him turned and said, "Well, do I pass?"

Will gulped. Standing in front of him was his sister Giana. He hadn't seen her in four years, and then he woke up.

Charlie was kneeling beside him, fiddling with the PASIV. When he saw that Will was awake, he smiled. "Told you she was good."

With a start Will jumped up and walked over to Lizzie. "I told you not to base it on anyone in your past."

"I didn't," she replied, rubbing her eyes. "I've never met your sister."

Charlie abruptly stopped his work with the PASIV. "You forged Giana?"

"Yeah. Is that a bad thing?"

"No," Charlie replied, his eyes on Will, "Just unusual."

"Unprofessional," Will spat at her. He cursed and yanked his tie off. "Jesus Christ, Bennet, you're supposed to follow orders. Didn't they teach you anything at school?"

"I believe its something called independence?" She smirked and waved to Charlie on her way out of the warehouse.

Will collapsed onto the chair and ran his shaking hands through his hair. Charlie handed him a cup of tea and muttered, "I'd say something, but it's you, so…"

Will ignored him and stared down at his tea.

Charlie and Will were roommates during college, and it was Charlie that recruited Will as his point man. Everyone thought that it was the other way around, that Will had asked Charlie to join him, but it was Charlie who handed Will a packet and said, "It's like nothing you've ever dreamed of," without telling him that he was basically signing his life away.

If Charlie hadn't been his best friend, Will probably would have shredded the packet and gone home to talk to Giana without a second thought.

But that was impossible now. Will didn't dream unless he was drugged, and he didn't want to be the one to take away his sister's dreams, too.

Back at their apartment, Lizzie told Jane about what had happened at the warehouse. Jane stopped her sketches and frowned. "I think you might have pushed things a little too far, Lizzie."

Lizzie rolled her eyes and dumped her bags on the couch. "We've been a team for what, a month? It's time we started testing them."

"Not everyone is going to betray you," Jane said.

Lizzie picked up the newspaper and scanned the headlines, looking for arrests, deaths, something, anything. "Nothing."

Jane shook her head and laughed. "It's Cobol Engineering, honey. They're the best."

"They screwed us over."

"So we moved on." Jane handed her one of the sketches and pointed to the maze she'd just drawn. "A new level for the Northern job. What do you think?"

"I think Cobol Engineering is a fucking bitch," she said, "And the last level was stronger; this one is too easy to get out of."

Jane was recruited by her employer at the firm she worked at. Initially the jobs had been pretty safe: a park here, a river there. But then it was bank vaults, embassies, military strongholds. Jane was hooked. She even joked to Lizzie that this was the teenage rebellion that she'd never had.

Lizzie came into the picture because one of Jane's jobs had gone horribly, horribly wrong. Lizzie was a terrible architect but a decent forger, and she'd joined the team to keep Jane safe.

In retrospect, it was one of her stupider decisions, right up there with quitting her job, and a little bit below meeting Will Darcy.

"Where did you meet this girl?" Fitz asked Charlie and Will as they stumbled in for the usual post-work night at the bar. Jack waved them over to their usual seats and Will immediately ordered a bottle of vodka. Straight.

"Jane told us about her," Charlie answered, much to Will's amusement. "Bullshit," he snapped. "Lizzie is Jane's sister. Who brings their siblings in on a job?"

Fitz slipped his watch off and started cleaning off the smudges, saying, "Should I be hurt by that?"

Will rolled his eyes. "Just be grateful we're not more closely related."

"Oh, I know," Fitz grinned. "I thank God for that everyday."

Charlie took a sip from his beer. "Will, Lizzie is the best we've got. She's only been with us for a month and already she's better than Jools was."

"Personality issues come up everywhere," Fitz added and reached across Will for a bowl of nuts. "Man up, Darcy."

Charlie clapped Will on his back and said, "Try not to think about it so much, okay?"

"You try that," he said, hating the way he sounded.

At first Lizzie hadn't believed Jane when she'd told her about what she did.

"I build dreamscapes, Lizzie."

"Like soundscapes, but more pretentious?"

"No. I build dreams and levels so that people can invade other people's minds."

"…that's twisted, Jane."

"It's true."

She thought that Jane was joking, making an elaborate prank the way they used to do when they were younger. They would swap sugar and salt on their father, only to switch it again on their mother, and then once more, and finally their parents would scream at them to stop, please, you're driving us crazy.

"Lizzie, it's true."

Lizzie had ignored Jane for two weeks, because the incessant phone calls were just too much. It was one thing to stage a prank like this, but it was quite another thing entirely to put so much energy into it.

"Lizzie, you have to believe. I need you. I'm in trouble."

If Lizzie really wanted to be honest, she would admit that she only believed Jane once Jane came home with blood on her arms. The job had gone horribly, horribly wrong, and Lizzie hates that it took the sight of her sister's blood for her to understand.

After that, Lizzie kept a bottle of Motrin stashed in her purse, and she looked both ways before crossing every street. Her parents prided her on being so healthy and aware, two words that Lizzie found highly ironic given that she and her sister were invading people's minds.

She chose not to mention that.

The next day at the warehouse, Lizzie pulled Will aside and apologized. He stared at his hands and muttered, "Forget about it. Could have happened to anyone."

Lizzie tucked a strand of hair behind her ear and nodded. "I appreciate your understanding."

They went back to work preparing for their upcoming job. An investor for an old maritime company needed some help with his rival's business plans.

"Textbook case," Charlie said to Jane, who rolled her eyes.

They had been quietly flirting for a while now, but both of them knew the dangers of getting involved. For them, the farthest they would ever go in confessing any feelings would be ordering an extra cappuccino for the other without being told to. Sometimes he wanted to reach out and grab hold of her hand, just to see what it would feel like. But he'd never done it.

If ordering an extra cappuccino was equivalent to saying "Hey, I think like you," then holding hands was like an invitation to move in together. So whenever that particular desire flared up, he would step back from her under the pretense of having forgotten something and run to bathroom, spinning his totem wildly on the palm of his hand, trying not to hope that this was all a dream.

It never toppled. This was his reality, and he would just have to accept that.

Charlie shook himself out of his thoughts and said to the rest of the team, "Fitz has given us the sedation, not too strong, just enough for about an hour's training work today." With a slight grin, he added, "I hope that your schedules are clear. It's going to be a busy afternoon."

A day at the warehouse wasn't complete without one of Charlie's bad jokes. It was just one of those things.

Will rolled his eyes as they all settled down next to the PASIV machines. Fitz smirked at them and said, "Sweet dreams," and then they were under.

Author's Note:

An Inception and Pride & Prejudice crossover? Blasphemous!

I was watching Inception the other day when this idea floated into my head, and boom. There went my sanity.

The title comes from Bon Iver's fantastic song Creature Fear:

The so many territories

Ready to reform

Don't let it form us

Don't let it form us

The creature fear

I thought it was appropriate for our little gang of misfits.

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