Ariadne x Robert - join the love :)

P.U.L.L. post 2/18/2011 for Bookaholic711's anti-writer's block project.

Disclaimer: Inception isn't mine, though God knows I wish it was - oh, there's so much potential there. Christopher Nolan's a genius.

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Ice and Lightning

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This is what they want.

His knuckles had turned white with strain long ago. The world stretched out beneath his rigid form, steel grey as the clouds in his dreams—bound and gagged on the edge of a skyscraper, imprisoned by a blue-eyed woman with a knife, fear and uncertainty and the emptiness of space at his back—clouds he was about to throw himself into in the hopes that they would drown out the chants of the crowds that surrounded him, hated him.

The shouts of the security officers behind him fought the screaming wind for possession of his eardrums. "Sir," they shouted, "sir, we need you to step away from the edge—Mr. Fischer—"

This is what they're calling for. Robert turned away from the railing between him and the endless drop from the skyscraper's edge. His heart pounded in his ribcage like something just trying to survive, against his will.

Facing him was a mixed crowd of goggling people. They had been simple tourists before, come to see one of the city's most famous works of modern architecture. Now they stared at him, their cellphones out, like he was some kind of spectacle instead of someone in need of a hand.

It only reinforced his decision.

At the forefront of the crowd, a team of security guards stretched their hands out toward him, as if they were trying to put out a fire with their bare palms.

"No!" Robert shouted. He felt crazy, weightless, like he could simply tip himself the slightest bit over the railing and be whisked away by the wind. "This is what you want, isn't it?" he called to the men. "This is what you've all been calling for! How many of you lost your jobs when I shut down my father's company? How many of you have been outside the office day after day, chanting for this?"

The crowd was silent. As he'd expected. Robert leaned his back against the railing. The sound of metal creaking brought memories of a storming sky, a blinding line of lightning, the feel of someone's foot connecting with his chest and sending him toppling over the edge…

The wind ripped through his hair as if it was trying to tear it from his head. He wished it would tear the dream-images away, too.

"Hey!"

A tiny, brown-haired woman had pushed her way past the hulking security guards and stood with her feet planted shoulder-width apart. She glared at him as if he had insulted her by coming to the top of this skyscraper, filled with the frustration and despair of months and months of being hounded wherever he went.

Her eyes…they reminded him of…of rain and gentle hands on his cheeks…

"Are you gonna jump or not?"

The rude, curt question startled Robert out of his memories. "Wh-what?" he said, staring at the small woman in confusion. She crossed her arms over her chest.

"Are you going to jump?" she repeated in an irritated tone, as if annoyed with him for making her repeat herself. "Or are we just wasting our time standing around here?"

His mouth opened in ill-veiled shock. One of the security guards stepped forward, saying, "Miss, what the hell are you doing?"

The woman shrugged the man's hand off as if she hadn't heard him. "Look," she said, reaching her hands out to Robert, "are you really going to jump just because these people are angry with you?"

Robert tightened his grip on the railing. "This is what they want," he shouted.

The woman tilted her head. The wind whipped her hair across her pale cheeks. "Is it what you want?"

Something small and fragile in him wavered, like his resolve had when his dream-father had told him he was disappointed because Robert had tried to be like—no. He wasn't going to listen to her. He was going to jump, and that would be the end of it, the end of everything…

But that woman was talking again, and he couldn't seem to shut her voice out of his head.

"Is it what your father would want?"

Robert's head snapped up. She was a petite woman with brown hair and brown eyes; nothing stood out about her in any way, except for the determined glint in her eyes and the fact that she was taunting a man about to jump off the edge of a skyscraper.

"Who are you?" he demanded.

Instead of replying, she tucked her hands into her pockets and walked towards him as if she was meeting him on a sunny sidewalk. "I'm Ariadne," she said, and something in the name sounded like…like losing himself beneath the waves, like wandering in an empty city with his voice echoing back to him, endlessly.

"I'm an architect," Ariadne said blithely. "I came over here to study the structure for a big project. And then you have to go and sidetrack me, so if you're gonna jump, could you make it fast?"

He didn't realize his mouth was hanging open until his jaw clicked shut. Ariadne didn't miss a beat. She approached with confident, measured steps, maintaining eye contact all the way. Robert was caught somewhere between tipping over the railing and being drawn away from the edge.

"Let me ask you something, Robert," Ariadne said. Her voice was like spring on his lips, clear and sweet, silver-gold sunshine after the storm. "Do you know what it feels like to fall to your death? It's not as easy as you think. All you can hear is the wind screaming in your ears. You're falling so fast it feels like you're about to be torn a hundred ways. And maybe halfway to the ground you'll change your mind, maybe you'll decide there's someone you really care about, maybe you don't want to land on some innocent bystander and kill them. Maybe this bystander is a parent, with a family who loves them, and you don't want to ruin that. But by then it's too late; there's nothing to grab onto."

Right now. Right now, he could spread his arms, lean back on his heels, let the wind and rain carry him off into lightning-streaked oblivion. But he understood the words slipping out of her mouth, too close to him—how did she get so close without him noticing?

He knew the feeling of falling, and it is terrifying. He remembered being kicked off the edge, hurtling toward the ground, and all he could feel was the concrete rushing up to meet his spine with crushing force…

The cold touch of Ariadne's fingers around his wrist brought him back. "Come on," she said, a small woman with towering force behind her familiar voice. "It's easy. Just take a step away. Just move your feet away from the edge, Robert. You'll walk away and go get a coffee and act like nothing just happened."

The world was at his back. Everything would be gone with a simple adjustment of his weight, the wind screeched in his ears, her fingers were like tendrils of ice burning against his skin, and all he could think to say was, "You know my name?"

Something bright and knowing slipped into her gaze. Robert had the displaced feeling of being left out on a joke.

"You're Robert Fischer Jr.," Ariadne said with a shrewd smile. "Who doesn't know your name?"

A smile warmed his numb lips for the first time since he'd broken up his father's empire. When Ariadne pulled him from the edge, her movements were impossibly gentle, out of place in comparison to her burning determination.

Before he was surrounded by the security guards and drowned in the flashing of the tourists' cameras, Robert twined his fingers through Ariadne's and asked, "Who are you?"

She gave him a tiny smile, a simple twitch of soft red lips, and said simply, "You're gonna be okay."

Then the air was flooded with worried shouts and the white light of flashing cameras, and all he was left was the lingering feeling of an icy touch against his bloodless hands.

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That night, he dreamt of a tiny brown-haired woman and the endless string she looped around him in tangled coils, her smile bright, her eyes glowing, beckoning him forward, off the edge of a skyscraper into lightning and clouds.

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End.