A Dream Within A Dream

It was like a dream.

     He met her for the first time in the wind-down from a practice mission. It was the first time they would perform a two-level dream, the first time they had been commissioned a task that complex. Cobb’s star was rising meteorically in the game, his reputation as a star Extractor spreading. The truth of it was, Cobb was working maniacally, trying to bury Mal’s death under a blanket of exhaustion and an obsession with going deeper, trying harder, building more complex plans and more insidious attacks.

     Eanor was the architect they were currently working with. Not a star, not Cobb, but as good as they could get. Still, there were flaws in his build. He ran a finger critically across the stone of the fountain rim on which he sat. Not quite the right texture.

     But it would have minimal impact on this next job. The mark was not going to spend a lot of time out on the first level. The plan was to draw him quickly down to second, where Arthur himself would be the dreamer. It would afford him a little more control over the scene, a higher chance to cover any minute flaws or at least distract the mark from seeing. Closer proximity to Cobb, who would be using second to perform the extraction.

     He felt the world tremble on its foundations, like a small earthquake. What on earth was Eanor doing on first? Perhaps Cobb was putting him through his paces. It was interesting that gravity from the first level carried over into second, something they had discovered in the first practice run by nearly bashing his brains out when that idiot Eanor had almost lost control of the car and ran down an embankment. They were definitely minimising the movement Eanor had to make in the real mission. Definitely.

     It was then, out of the corner of his eye that he saw her. A flash of white gauze, the reflection off a mirror. It had caught his attention because it didn’t belong. He was sitting in the middle of a gray stone courtyard, it’s only feature the fountain at which he sat and tall fluted columns in the manner of old Rome that encircled the space. What manner of projection then, was this? That a young woman with short flame hair was suddenly sitting cross-legged behind a column, studying herself in a curiously ornate standing mirror? She touched her face in the mirror and her features altered subtly, eyes becoming a little more cat-like and lightening into the clear green of young leaves.

     He was instantly alert. Control like that did not occur in projections. In fact, it looked like the control Eames…

     He was across the courtyard and had her by the throat before he completed that thought. They had a watcher back in the real world for this job, when they were to perform a dream within the dream for the first time. He was to protect them whilst they were vulnerable, and also to time and ensure their return. Would he have let an intruder into the dream? And how had the intruder gotten past the first level into second? There was just too much they didn’t yet know about the mechanics of a dream within a dream. It was worrisome. He didn’t like not knowing all the details of an engagement. Not at all.

     “Speak, who are you?” He said calmly, almost gently, utterly at odds with the bruising grip he had on her throat.

     When she went wild, thrashing in his grip and her appearance began to change, he knew it wasn’t Eames returned to tease him with the newest character in his arsenal. Nor was it any other practised Forger, who would never lose control over his copy even in undue stress. She couldn’t possibly be a projection of his own mind, so that left… what?


Cirque struggled to breathe, much less speak against the crushing grip on her neck that brought her to her feet. She panicked immediately, lashing out with her limbs, trying to pry the fingers away from her throat. Her eyes were blind with fear. She could feel control slipping from her changes, hair returning to black, her height reducing from the tall lanky proportions she had fashioned for herself.

     It was only when darkness began to flicker at the edges of consciousness that the hand loosened its hold marginally. Able to breathe, she concentrated on gulping air back into her lungs in long sobbing breaths.

     It was a while before the whiteness receded from her vision and she realised she had fallen to her knees. Her hands were still clinging desperately to the wrist attached to the hand at her throat, creasing the perfectly ironed white cuff. She followed the line of the arm up to the face of the man that still held her helpless.

     It was a beautifully chiselled face, sharp and defined, with a brooding brow that even now was wrinkled with an intense concentration directed at her. Perfectly combed hair accentuated the meticulous neatness of his sharp dark blue suit. She felt a strange urge to release his wrist and apologise for wrinkling his shirt cuff. What she should be doing was screaming and fleeing for her life, probably. But this was a dream, wasn’t it? She was quite sure she was dreaming; she’d even been able to change her appearance and produce items from thin air. Like the mirror. Remembering that calmed her.

     But his grip tightened again, just enough to cut off her air supply in a brief squeeze. “Who are you?” he asked, tone gentle, almost loving. She could feel his fingers pressing against her windpipe, a threat.

     “Cirque,” she half-whispered, hoarse.

     “That doesn’t tell me anything. Who sent you? How did you get here? Did you kill the watcher?”
Watcher? She obviously had an overactive imagination, Cirque decided. Perhaps less TV before bed… maybe Buffy was the culprit. She did remember the term Watcher cropping up there.

     Additional pressure against her throat made her hurry to reply. “I don’t know what you mean. This is my dream you’re in.”

     “Though I must be sadistic to dream up this particular scene,” she muttered under her breath.

     “That won’t work on me. I am the Dreamer for this scene. A very poor attempt at confuscation, in fact. Your employers must be very foolish.”

     “The podiatry clinic?” Cirque winced. Knowing you were dreaming didn’t eliminate feelings of embarrassment, apparently. She sounded absolutely retarded. Of course, she was being held by the jugular, literally on her knees, by a masochistic hot stranger. This was going to deteriorate into a Mills & Boons novel, wasn’t it? Perhaps it would be better to stop reading erotica as a sleeping aid as well.

     Just then the world tilted and they slid sideways across the courtyard, fetching up against the side of a fountain. She gasped in pain at the impact; her left thigh was on fire from scraping over the rough stone of the floor, her dress shredded and spotted with blood from the scratches. Fire ran down her spine as well; she had hit the curve of the fountain wall with quite a crack. She thought she heard a muttered curse to her right, as the world righted. A hand snaked behind her shoulders and levered her to a semi-seated position.


“Alright?” Arthur asked, maintaining a deceptively secure hold on the back of her neck just in case.
She seemed so new to this, like a person brought into the dream state for the first time. But he could not think of another reason for her presence here, in his dream, other than thievery or assassination. And they had made enemies, of course, him and Cobb, after working the scene for so long.

     He watched her draw her skirt away from the torn flesh of her left thigh, heard her hiss in pain. Her eyes were glassy from it. It wasn’t severe, just a few shallow flesh wounds that speckled her virgin dress with blood.

     “It hurts,” she said in disbelief.

     “Of course it does. Pain in the dream is just as real as pain in real life.”

     “Dreams aren’t supposed to hurt,” she said, dabbing at a cut gingerly. “Perhaps I should wash this before it gets infected.”

     He almost laughed. Instead he solemnly dipped a handful of water from the fountain behind them and dribbled it over her thigh. She jerked and hissed again, holding up her hands to ward him off.

     “That’s dirty! It’ll get infected!”

     “Oh it’s clean enough. It’s a dream, remember?”

     She scowled at him, then tried to turn her head to peer over the low wall at the water in the fountain. His hand, still at the nape of her neck, stopped her.

     “What?” she said crankily. Her hands still fluttered like helpless butterflies around the wound. He let go his hold very carefully, ready to retaliate should the need arise.

     “Just wash it, the cold water should ease your pain a little. And then bind it up. You’ll have to bear with it until time for the Jump back to first.”

     “Jump? First? This dream continues not to make any sense whatsoever,” she grumbled. “I guess I should have expected as much from my stupid, fragmented, frazzled brain.” She gingerly climbed onto the low wall and dipped her feet into the water, drawing up her skirts so she could bathe the wounds. He watched her cup the water in her hands and let it trickle over the furious red scratches, wincing at each contact.

     If she was a Forger, she should have had enough field experience that getting hurt in the dream was not new. It wasn’t bad enough to cripple motion, he had continued physically demanding missions with wounds far worse. She seemed even less aware than a Tourist. Also, she appeared to think this was her own dream. There didn’t seem to be an explanation for her presence here without her knowing that she was intruding on his. Was she just a very convincing liar? Or… was there another way into the dream? Perhaps this, whatever this was, was merely a side-effect of the second-level dream? That thought brought a chuckle to his lips. Arthur the point man, wrestling with his own subconscious? Was it trying to tell him he would like inducting a little freshie to the business? Make a little Eames? One would think he was getting bored. Or missed Eames.