More Precious Than a Pot of Gold

A Juno/Inception crossover

By Vifetoile

A/N: The reference to Mitch and Mickey is from the film 'A Mighty Wind,' because I can see them existing in the 'Juno' universe, and if so, why not a little 'Inception' as well? But you don't need to know any of those to get this story. And I don't own any of these films. Obviously.

Also, I have absolutely nothing against Kalamazoo College. My first online friend attended there, so it has a soft spot in my heart.

The only thing, seriously, the only thing that Ariadne had in common with her cousin Juno was the fact that their names were obscure and peculiar and drawn from mythology, but even that comparison fell apart. 'Ariadne' was Greek, with all the grace and elegance and hard-won knowledge that that civilization implied. 'Juno' was not only the name of a city in Alaska, but it was Roman – and the Romans learned everything they knew from the Greeks, and then tried to pass it off as their own invention.

Jerks.

Just so, Ariadne worked hard all her life to get the best grades, go to the best schools, and then to study in Paris, and now to be a professional dream extractor – not that that was the kind of thing you could brag about to the family at the dinner table – point was, she'd applied herself entirely. And Juno? She puttered with her guitar. Sure, she was doing fine at Kalamazoo College (in Michigan – wow, way to go expanding your horizons there, Juno), but come on, she'd had a baby in high school, and somehow her parents were okay with that? She was a dissolute slacker where Ariadne was, had always been, a dedicated perfectionist, but people opened up when Juno was around. They brightened, they laughed at her jokes, they told her more of their stories. It simply didn't compute.

So in short, Ariadne was not envious of Juno, not resentful, and not in a permanent state of cousin rivalry. Their relationship was merely on less friendly terms than with the rest of the family.

This was what Arthur gathered from talking to Ariadne on the phone. She was heading to Minnesota that day, and wanted to vent to someone.

Arthur wasn't joining her, not this time. Just like if you spent too long in dreams your own dreams and your personal life would be wrecked, even spending too long with the same people, awake and asleep, would become a drain. You needed a break.

"Oh, yeah," Ariadne added on the phone, "And people always say that we look alike – Juno and I. And we don't. I don't see it at all. I don't know what they're talking about."

"Uh-huh."

Ariadne's mother and father had chosen to spend Thanksgiving with a family friend who was going through a personal crisis, but of course someone had to go to Minnesota to visit the MacGuffs. Ariadne, being an only child, was elected.

Her Uncle Mac picked her up from the airport, ruffling her hair like he always did. "Bonjour!" he said cheerily. "Laissez roulez les bons temps! How's Paris treating you?"

"Pretty well," she answered, resisting the urge to correct his French like mad. They made small talk on their way back to the house – he was telling her about the family's affairs – "Did you know Juno's declared a major in psychology?"

"Oh, no, I didn't." ('It took her long enough…')

And Ariadne told him a bit about life in Paris, and studying architecture. Soon they were at the MacGuff's house – just as small-town as ever. Arthur had a word for places like this. It was "Dinky." Ariadne internally applied the word "dinky" to everything she saw, and that made her feel a bit better, like Arthur was there right beside her. The (dinky) futon in the den had been pulled out, just like usual (Ariadne had packed extra socks for sleeping because she knew she would be freezing.)

Her Auntie Bren had welcomed her with a hug and a kiss and had loudly admired her Parisian manicure (which was, to be frank, pretty darn nice.) Liberty Bell had bestowed an obligatory kiss on her cous, and Juno had met Ariadne in pretty much the exact same humor as ever.

"Adne!" she called, pronouncing it like "Aud-ney," a childhood nickname. "How're you doing? How's Paris treating you? The city of lights, city of l'amour?"

"Pretty well, can't complain," Ariadne said shortly. "And how's Kalamazoo?"

"Same as ever, which is totally radical." Juno grinned.

Ariadne hated all things "totally radical." She got herself established, including her (non-dinky) laptop. All of them went out to a (dinky) local Cuban joint for dinner. After that, Ariadne pleaded a long day of flying, and went to bed early.

She didn't count on jet lag.

She woke up at three in the morning, unable to go back to sleep, and to the sounds of a guitar somewhere in the house. Ariadne pricked up her ears. It sounded like Juno was singing.

'Well, why not.' She got up and tried to track down the noise. She passed the kitchen, where the smell of stuffing already hung in the air, and went upstairs.

She knocked gently on Juno's door.

The guitar stopped, and the door opened. Juno looked surprised to see her cousin. "Hey, Adne, what's up? Did I wake you up or sumthing? I'm sorry."

"Nah, I woke up anyway." Ariadne folded her arms and shrugged. "I heard you playing and wanted to listen."

"Really?" Juno grinned. "Thanks! Come on in. I know it's kind of crowded… Haven't really got the time to put my college stuff away…"

"Eh." Ariadne sat on the opposite end of Juno's bed as the other girl set up her guitar. "Now, for my opening number… at least, opening number with an audience… you know how it is…"

Why had Ariadne even showed up?

"… This is a little piece by Mitch & Mickey, ever hear of them?"

"Yeah."

"It's called 'A Kiss At the End of the Rainbow.' A-hem." She played a light little chord, and began to sing,

"Oh when the veil of dreams has lifted,

"And the fairy tales have all been told,

"There's a kiss at the end of the rainbow,

"More precious than a pot of gold.

"And that's all that I have learned so far," she said, finishing bluntly.

Ariadne tapped her hands together, quietly, so as not to wake up anyone else. "That was really nice. You have a pretty voice."

"Thank you – my friends have much better voices than me." But Juno was beaming.

Ariadne thought for a bit, her brown eyes narrowed. "But I mean – the song itself. The melody. It sounds like there's something incomplete about it."

"Oh, yeah, that'll be the harmony."

"The what?"

"The counterpoint. Here, it goes like this…" again she strummed the guitar, and Juno sang the same words, only with a different tune, that sounded like the inversion of the first one.

"You really have to hear them together," she said after she finished. "Then it really melds. We sound great."

"We?"

Juno frowned, and looked down. "Paulie Bleeker and me. He sings harmony – he's a tenor. He can sing that, you know…"

Ariadne could see that her cousin was uncomfortable, so she said, "That's an interesting trick, stylistically speaking, I mean."

"What is?"

"To have the harmony and the melody be inseparable."

"Well, yeah. You hear counterpoint all over the place – the Beatles, Simon n' Garfunkel – but you only ever pay attention to the melody. It's kind of genius."

"And it works for the story." In response to Juno's quizzical look, Ariadne quickly clarified, "the story that the song is telling."

"Oh. Yeah, that one. For a moment I thought you knew more about this song than me."

"It's a song about being in love, and when you're in love, you feel kind of incomplete without… you know." Ariadne gave a little sigh, thinking of Arthur.

"Yeah, but that can be a bad thing, too."

"Hey – you're right. This guy I know – " she stopped.

"Yeah?"

"Well," Ariadne hesitated.

"Come on. Someone you know from college?"

"No, not really…" Why not tell, she decided. "He had this wife, and he was really, really in love with her, but then she died. Committed suicide."

"Oh, man."

"Yeah. And he blamed himself. It took him years to get over it." Ariadne added, "I'm not sure he'll ever really get over it."

"Yeah. I don't think you ever do – get over stuff like that, I mean." Juno curled her arms closer around her guitar. "Silly little songs about the end of the rainbow and stuff seem kind of dinky compared to that."

Ariadne started up. "How do you know the word dinky?"

Juno looked confused. "Um, it's a free word, not like it's copyrighted or anything. I just picked it up. What's the big deal?"

She shook her head. "Nothing. Just – well, it reminds me of my boyfriend."

"I didn't know you had a boyfriend."

"Well, yeah, we're taking it kind of slow. How about you and yours?"

"You mean Paulie Bleeker? Well…" She cradled her guitar again. "We kind of had a fight." Ariadne nodded. Juno went on, "You know that baby I had?"

"I know of it."

"Him, Adne. Him. His name's Tristan Loring. And his mom is Vanessa. And Paulie Bleeker wanted us to visit them for Thanskgiving."

"And that's a… bad thing?"

"Look, I made this policy. At first I wanted it to be a closed adoption, you know, Moses-in-the-bulrushes – what are bulrushes, anyway?"

"I'm not really sure."

"Okay. Anyway, I wanted her to just have the baby, here go you, signed, sealed, done. But after I met her, I figured I'd like to keep in touch. And she wanted to keep in touch with me. And so now we have this policy. Three times a year – Fourth of July, Christmas, and Tristan's birthday – we meet up and all go out to dinner, Paulie Bleeker, Tristan, Vanessa, and me. And it works. But Paulie Bleeker wanted to visit Tristan some more."

"Why is this such a bad thing?"

"Look, it's the policy I made! It's the policy that we all agreed on!" Juno burst out. "Where does he get off thinking he can change things just because he wants to?"

"Well, if the policy isn't working for him, maybe he should talk to you about changing it," Ariadne hinted.

"The policy works," Juno stated flatly. "But we fought about it. He says…" her voice became bitter, "that if I'm so casual about losing contact with my own son, then do I really care about Tristan that much? Do I even care about Paulie Bleeker that much? I mean, what kind of a dumb, dumb, shitty-ass question is that to ask someone?"

"That's pretty mean." Ariadne admitted.

"I mean – I mean, because I do care about Tristan, a lot. I still have nightmares about losing him. It's not always him – sometimes it's, you know, a little tree or a doll or something – but I dream about losing things and sacrificing things all the time and I know they're about my baby. But he's not my son, he's Vanessa's son. He was always her son, right from the day I saw her in the mall. You weren't here – it was me and Leah, we were in the mall, y'see?"

"Yeah, I know the place."

"And I'm pregnant with the baby, and we see Vanessa on the lower level, she's hanging out with her girlfriends, and she's playing with some kids. She is really into it – she's a natural with those little guys! And I run into her later, right, and I ask her to feel the baby kicking. It was perfect, he started kicking right then. I swear he knew she was nearby. And she just said, 'I can't wait to meet you,' to him – not like, out of the blue, that'd be weird, I asked her to talk to him. Just a bit. And he knew it was her. That's when I knew: she's his real mom. No ifs, ands, or buts."

Ariadne nodded. "I didn't know any of this about you before."

Juno shrugged, looking a bit sheepish. "Well, I've never told anyone about that thing at the mall before. Not even Paulie Bleeker. You know how sometimes you encounter things, options, and they make sense?"

"Like what?"

"You just know, deep inside, this is the right way to go."

"Yeah." She nodded. "Boy, do I know that."

"The baby and Vanessa were like that. And me and Paulie Bleeker were like that. But now – now I don't know. Since we fought… I don't know. I'm sad and I miss him, but I don't want to apologize because he started it."

"I'm sorry." Ariadne said, because she couldn't think of anything else. Juno gloomily contemplated her lava lamp.

Time ticked by. Ariadne was starting to wonder, again, why had she come?

"Did I tell you I've declared for a psych major?" Juno said suddenly.

"Um – your dad told me."

"Yeah. I'm really excited." Juno nodded as she looked at her cousin. "I read about this new technology the other day – a breakthrough in psychological research."

"What's that?"

"Entering dreams, and changing them, and stuff."

Juno had an ancient stuffed unicorn on her bed, which had come from Aunt Sheryl. Ariadne grabbed the unicorn now and squeezed it to her so that her face wouldn't betray any emotion. "You don't say?"

"Yeah. It was when I heard about that that I was like, Man, I want to be a part of that! I mean, I've always loved dreaming and writing down my dreams, and talking about dreams with others, it would be so amazing to actually use dreaming as a psychological tool."

"Yeah – yeah, that'd be cool. Do you want to help people?"

"Well, kind of. But I don't have that much patience with a lot of people. I would rather just research and study the mind, how it works, what makes people tick, more than deal with people like a psychologist." She grinned. "I'd probably be the 'stop whining and get a life!' kind of therapist more than anything else."

"Some people really need that," Ariadne pointed out. "But – yeah, I've heard of that dream-entering technology."

"I would absolutely love to do that. I mean, can you imagine?"

"Yeah, I can imagine all right."

"I mean, you know the Harry Potter books?"

"Of course."

"Yeah, I've always felt like I just know what Hogwarts is like. I've imagined what it looks like, room by room, I feel like I know the place. Imagine crafting a dream like that, and being able to remember it!"

"Well… theoretically, you wouldn't want to do that."

"Why? In a dream, why shouldn't you do whatever you wanna?"

"Just because the main application for dream-entering technology, so far, is to steal ideas from people, without making them aware of the intrusion, or even the fact that they're dreaming. You know that, right?"

"But, come on, you know what dreams are like. You could hang-glide into a snowstorm over the Bahamas, passing pterodactyls on the way, and then have a nice talk with William Shatner and you wouldn't notice a thing until you wake up!"

"But you can't even take that chance. It's got to be as believable as possible."

"Why not make it as ludicrous as possible, so that the dreamer doesn't think back, go, 'Wait a minute, did I really say that, or was it a dream?' and then they conclude, 'It was a dream, I don't have to worry,' and then we all go…"

"Look, it just doesn't work like that! It's very complicated, especially as more and more people learn about the risks and start taking protection –" Ariadne ground to a halt. "I mean, just… theoretically…"

"Of course," Juno said, nodding like a Bobblehead doll. "Theoretically."

She returned to casually strumming on her guitar, trying out the opening notes of Silent Night, and Ariadne let out a breath of relief.

Juno stuck her head up again. "That's your summer job, isn't it?"

Ariadne jumped.

"How on earth did you land a gig like that?"

"Ssh! Please, you won't tell anyone, will you?"

"You're keeping it secret?"

"Yes… it's not exactly a legal activity." Ariadne swallowed. "If people found out what I've done, I could have some pretty nasty enemies…"

"Wow." Juno was wide-eyed with admiration. "So you actually do that stuff. That's amazing! How did you get involved with it?"

"My History of Architecture teacher got me involved. They require architects to build the … well, the dreamscapes."

"That's the coolest thing I've ever heard in my entire life." And by her tone, Juno meant it. "Can you tell me more? Please?"

Ariadne paused. This was ridiculous; her and her hippie cousin, at midnight, talking about Ariadne the dream thief. She hadn't told anyone at all about her double life, and Juno was nowhere near being her friend – but then again, she may have to reevaluate their relationship.

"Okay," she said at last, "But you have to absolutely promise to never, ever, ever tell anyone else."

"Oh, I promise. I'll close the door," she added, like it was a super-exclusive slumber party. "I can keep secrets like you have no idea."

"Well…" Ariadne was thinking on two levels (like dreaming); one, trying to keep up the fun, not-quite-committed spirit they had going, and two, trying to organize how she would talk about this ultra-top-secret-she-shouldn't-be-talking-about-it, but it-would-feel-so-good-to-share-it-with-someone-else… "Maybe, we should do a trade-off."

Juno's eyebrows lifted. "What, you mean I tell you some of my secrets?"

"Yeah, I mean, tit for tat."

"Maybe I'll make you fight for 'em."

Now it was Ariadne's turn to be shocked. "What, you mean look through your dreams for them?"

"Sh'yeah."

"Sh'no!"

"Sh'maybe?"

Ariadne thought, then said, "Let me explain how I got involved in the first place, and what the process is like, and then, maybe."

"So sh'maybe, then."

"Yeah. Sh'maybe."