A Closed Circle

Chapter 1

He never said her name.

There was no reason for it. At least not at first. Since she was there in front of him, he had no reason to call out to her. To get her attention with anything other than a glance. When he trained her, it was only the two of them. Who else would he be talking to?

So he never said her name.

Then the others came. And there were enough people that it would make sense to point his words at her by using her name. But there weren't all that many. And anytime he worked with her, she knew when his words were for her and when they weren't.

It became almost like a jinx. A stupid thing. Jinx. He was rarely, if ever, a superstitious man. He hadn't even been superstitious when he was a boy, but especially after he learned of shared dreaming. When he discovered that dreams were what you made them. That the world was what you made it.

That nothing shaped your world without your awareness of it, in some way. If you were standing next to omega, you always knew there was an alpha there. Maybe not where or how, but you knew it was there. Cause and effect. Always logical. Always flawless. Even in its flaws.

But he still couldn't say it.

Though he always heard it when it was said. As if his ears were fine tuned to hear those specific syllables. The flow of the round and sharp vowels. The pause, like a fist in the gut, of the consonants.

But then none of them said her name much. Only Cobb. In a lecturing voice that he himself remembered. It was the father in him. The father and also the husband of a woman who lost herself. Someone who spent a lot of time trying to direct others to see the paths of their futures. Cobb used names in his lecturing voice so that they would know they were connected in some way to him and to the paths he created.

And Eames. In that flirtatious way he had.

Neither of which he could replicate. Wasn't something he wanted to replicate. He wasn't the sort of person that took risks with the impossible on only his own mind. Especially not when all evidence pointed to the contrary. That was Cobb.

And that was her.

And that could be the reason he didn't say her name. Or even think it. Even when he stood next to her, or offered a rare smirk of approval. Because she was too like Cobb. And absolutely nothing like him. By the time she hit her late thirties she might be as equally mad as the man who had been a partner and brother to him for years.

But Cobb had been his partner. They had worked together. And with him, they had made the impossible possible. Cobb made the impossible possible. He made the unlikely doable. The hard, workable. His margin of change was smaller than Cobb's.

Might her vision be greater too? Could she see in reality what he could only grasp at in dreaming?

It seemed impossible. It seemed unlikely.

Yet together they had seen the unlikely defeated and the impossible planted and grown into reality.

But he still never spoke her name.

She said his. Not often. Not always. And for some of the same reasons. It was unnecessary when it was just the two of them. She never yelled at him. Never lectured him as she occasionally did Cobb. Repeating that man's name so he would know without a doubt that he was the one in trouble.

And it had been past time that someone got to Cobb on that front. A fault of his, really. He knew the problem existed, and he had accepted it. But she saw the problem and made it her duty to fix it. Or at least mitigate the effects. Force Cobb to let go of what might hurt them.

She was … impressive. She carved the dreams up into patterns of her making, and she did the same thing for them. Not only their dreams. Somehow when she was near they all moved at her pace. Or a pace she could keep step with. With architects the dreamer had to direct the creation somewhat of the level. Do more than the tiny details. But not with her. Even outside the dream she was good at seeing into her subject.

Cobb was another good example of that. Within a few hours of meeting him, even before she knew very much of his history, she had a good grasp on his character. Which was exactly what you wanted in a good architect, but didn't always get. Intuition was often traded for imagination. And imagination was often called for before true comprehension of scope.

She managed to combine all three of those skills seamlessly. What she called 'pure creation' was actually that in her hands. She refused to be limited by the things that would hamper her in reality. Other architects thought it somehow more important to not stray as much from the real world when they played in the deeper levels of the mind.

She wasn't one of them.

God. When she smirked at him during their planning of his level and showed him the upper floors of the hotel. Which would probably never be used by the mark or the subject, and which might or might not trap projections. But was a complete and honest nod to his teachings. A ballroom of sorts, laid out as the devil's tuning fork. She also mentioned the Penrose staircase she added for him in the stairwell.

She laughed and started talking about all the other visual paradoxes she considered including. She told him his level should be more complex because it suited him. Straight lines on first glance, and depth on the second.

He didn't laugh. He did smile. But … but that was a day that stood out for him. When the whole team met in his hotel lobby later for a meeting he found it hard to stray from her. He looked where she looked. Because he knew there were other parts she created for him that he would probably never learn of. He saw a picture in her workspace once of the 2D cone of concentric circles. He wondered if she'd use it.

He wondered what those personal aspects were in the other two levels. For Yusuf and Eames. What she would have created for Saito. What she would have created for Cobb. What she was creating now.

He knew she was working for and with others. He hadn't seen her in a while. And the pressure of that weighed on him. The memory of all the times he never said her name. Of all those small glimpses. Returned and unknown.

That almost suicidal curiosity. Not everyone was a father like Cobb. Not every employer she had was nonviolent like Saito. If she had been on the Cobol job. Any other job they'd done in the previous five years...

He worried. And that was unnecessary. And distracting.

His reaction to her when they worked together was understandable. Eames and projections notwithstanding, jobs didn't often put him in the way of women his age. Not many women at all actually.

Eames had seen her recently. He found out when he and Eames did a job in Taiwan together. A busy place. Fantastic with detail to enliven a dream. Eames had told him she seemed well. Better than before. That her clothes were more expensive. That she was eating more. He had said the last with an odd quirk of his lips. An innuendo, and he could guess what, but it stuck with him.

Eames had also said she worked with Yusuf. Or had dealt with Yusuf for some unknown reason right before the job they had together. She told Eames that Yusuf was doing as good as he ever did. And that he'd developed some sort of new compound, which had netted him a bit more attention than he desired for a bit. But currently – three months ago at least – Yusuf was well.

It was inevitable, he supposed, that they would work together again in the future. There were only so many people who did what they did. And only so many people who were as good at it. But he hadn't seen her yet.

He still had no reason to say her name.

Cobb had left their world all together, and Saito wouldn't have run into her. Saito's world and her's were too far apart for them to come into contact.

At least that's what he thought. When he got the call from Saito he wasn't exactly surprised. Three years was a long time, but extractors weren't the sort of people you needed on call every single day. They were a special service reserved as a final effort for a goal.

But he wasn't needed for the same job as before, not exactly, Saito told him. He was needed as a researcher.

It intrigued him enough to agree to the offer. Researchers were a dime a dozen. In some way the request had to involve shared dreaming or else Saito would have found someone else. Someone cheaper. He might be one of the best researchers out there, and excellent when running point for a con, but he was hardly the only one. And for normal jobs there were plenty of others to choose from.

Saito gave him an address. Different from the corporate building he knew Saito used before. Not even close to it, if he was recalling correctly the location of Saito's offices. And he was. But Saito told him it was his main office. And that he could use any name he wished as long as he told the receptionist he came with the research proposal.

It wasn't until he arrived at the building that he began to understand why he might have been chosen. As he approached the building from two blocks away, where he left his car, he recognized it immediately. Not the building itself, but the design. The impression. The idea of the place.

The building was hers. And he was at once confused and enlightened by the revelation.

Inside the effect was even more pronounced. He could see her in the clean lines. In the colors. In the flow and moment of traffic on the floor. The elegant efficiency. Minimalism without losing heart. A well executed mold of her design and Saito's style.

His eyes wandered as the concierge directed him to the correct floor and the receptionist took his name and business with the director. Where the main lobby was slightly more generic, Saito's office was a vision of personality.

The outside was modern: hard angles, sharp curves. This space retained the clean lines but with a more traditional coloring and décor. Outside the light fixtures were their own tiny, illuminated pieces of art. Inside they blended in; light came from inside the walls, and in a few places underneath the floor.

Outside the walls were vast windows broken by swooping lines. Inside there were no windows at all. Only the light. And the art.

Saito caught him staring as he directed him into the office. "She does good work."

"Yeah, she does."

"Have you spoken with her?"

"No. It's safer not to meet unless we have to."

"Ah," Saito's face folded into lines of confusion, "but she mentioned to me some of the others..."

He lifted his chin in comprehension, "We'll come together on jobs. Our names get around, and we'll turn to others we trust if offered a choice in the team, but only then. I haven't been on the same jobs. I haven't contacted her.

"You have seen her." It wasn't a question. The building made it an unquestionable fact.

"Yes, indeed. She is under contract with me."

"For the building."

"As an architect. I work with no others." The older man smiled. "She does very good work."

"Some of the best I've ever seen," he agreed without showing his confusion. Saito had hired her on as a full-time architect on an extraction team. Why would he even need such a thing, and why would he pick her? Talent aside.

"A building of your own. You seem to be doing well. Better than when we first met."

Saito chuckled at that. Their first meeting hadn't been the best. "Yes. Our market share has increased. Competition in the industry is … vigorous. A pleasant change from the past."

He allowed the corner of his lips to twitch. Pleasant change... nicely said. But Saito was moving on to the job at hand. What he should have asked about first if he weren't distracted by her ephemeral presence around him.

But his attention snapped back in an instant when he heard it. When he realized what the job was.

" … dne disappeared."

"Disappeared." He managed to contain the feelings the word stirred up in him.

"It was only a day, but it was an important one. She informed me that she cannot recall the day. This concerns me. As someone contracted to me, she knows a great deal about this company. Enough to destroy what I built."

He put a wall around his memories. A wall between the past and the possibility of what this job would entail. "What do you need." His words, again, were not a question, but a statement.

"I need you to find who took her and what was done. If she truly does not remember, or if she lies." Saito lowered a shoulder and straightened his spine. "She suspects a watcher. Before she was taken, she saw a man near her more than once. Her contract is an expensive one, and it will not benefit me to lose her. I also had her watched, and my men also saw someone following her. I had her moved. Gave her protection.

"But I believe she evaded her protection. Slipped away to her own desires. It is during then that she was taken. You will tell me if it was against her will. You will find out who ordered her capture. And you will take care of the problem."

The bottoms of his feet went numb. His vest felt tight.

"You are, I was told, the best at your work."

"I am." The best at finding. The best at facts. The best at the certain things. The definite things. At hiding. At death.

Saito was asking him to kill the person who defied him by taking her. A job he would do with pleasure. Saito was asking him to kill her if she betrayed him. A job he he couldn't do at all.

Saito stood, and he did likewise. "Where is she? I'll have to talk to her. Get her impressions and what memories she has concerning the event."

"She is here."

"Here? As in this building here? Or in Tokyo?"

"She owns a suite in this building. It was part of her compensation for the design."

"It's lovely work," he couldn't help but point out.

"Yes. I am very pleased."

"Why, if you don't mind me asking, did you pick someone so young to do this for you? She couldn't have been out of school for very long."

"She was not. I staged a competition for young architects. Invited her to join. I would not have picked her if she was not the best, but I provided the opportunity. She created reality in a dream. I wanted to see her create a dream in reality."

"Yeah. She did that."

"Yes she did." Saito directed him to the elevator. Indicated the buttons for the floors. "The top two floors are keyed. I am the top. She is the suit directly below me."

"And you have a key for her floor." Again, not a question. He could see the key in Saito's hand.

"Yes. For emergencies only. As she has one for my floor as well."

Emergencies. He felt his jaw tighten. No way to forget their first meeting. No way not to remember at that moment the dream that copied one of Saito's own properties. The building. The love-nest he and Cobb had trapped him in.

This was a far more elegant solution. She was contracted to the man. If the bastard …

He eliminated the thought. As of yet there was no clear evidence. No need to jump to conclusions before he had any true information.

Saito slid the keycard into the correct reader – second from the top – and the elevator began its ascent. Chimed when it reached the correct floor. Whooshed with the change in air pressure as the doors opened onto a hall. A hall that looked even more like her than anything he'd seen so far.

Saito pressed a new button. This one sang out to alert her of their presence in her home. And then Saito called her name to tell her who was there, waiting.

His attention, as always, caught on the name. He rarely ever heard it. Almost never thought it. He thought instead of the color of her eyes. The expressions on her lips. The changing tones of her voice. The sound of her steps …

No. That was happening now.

"Saito?" that voice called through the wood as he heard the tumble of a lock. "What's wrong?"

The door opened, and it was no longer a memory that he saw. But her.

"Arthur?" Surprise with only the slightest hint of warmth. "Ah. So you're the one brought in to fix my little difficulty."

"Yeah. I am."

"He must be seen to leave," Saito told her. And him. "But he will come back tonight. Through the private entrance. And he will work here. So as not to be seen."

"And to make sure I stay here, right. I get it. Guess I won't be ordering food up. Enough portions for two people would stand out." Her frustration was clear. She wasn't yelling like she had with Cobb, but he recognized the tone in her voice. Her obvious disdain amused him, as always.

"So that would be what … my invitation to leave?"

She smiled. "Your invitation to come back. Leaving was clearly an order."

Saito passed him the key card and walked back to the elevator. He would go down alone. Visiting Saito's office was already enough to connect him if someone was watching her. The old man was right; better to leave and come back than to stay and lead to uncomfortable questions.

"I'll be back in eight hours. Where's the private entrance?"

Her smile altered in a subtle way. Not in the lips, but in the eyes. "You already know where."

His forehead creased and an eyebrow went up. "Are you serious?"

"Of course. I'll see you at 9." She took the card from his fingers and gave him a different one, which had been resting in a small cupboard beside the door. "That card will get you in the doors."

"Which doors?"

"All of them." And her smile changed again. In a way that made all the hair on the back of his neck stand on end.

He left her suite. Left her floor. Left her building.

He had still not said her name.

Author's Note: My first leap into this fandom. I usually write for manga, but a comment on another story led me to playing here. I hope you've enjoyed. Next chapter will hopefully be up soon. Please leave any comments or reviews. I will accept any valid critique of my work, and feel free to flame as well if you feel that's necessary. Thank you.