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Mar. 29th, 2011 04:25 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sour_idealistTitle: Neurons of Murderous Dancers
Fandoms: Inception & Black Swan
Characters/Pairings: Lily, Nina, Beth, Thomas, Erica, Ariadne, Arthur, Eames, Yusuf
Rating/Warnings: R, violence, disturbing imagery, symbolic references to canonical sexual assault (there's a common warning), Black Swan spoilers
Written for:![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
book_las, prompt "[character] dreams about [character]." I am amazed that there weren't more Inception crossovers.
Wordcount: 750
A/N: I was going to build on this (hence the delay in posting) but I've gotten enough caught up in other projects that I don't think I will for a while. Also, it's been forever since I posted anything.
Sometimes Ariadne wonders if Lily can somehow sneak into dreams without a PASIV, without anything mechanical or any kind of effort at all.
It’s ridiculous, of course; impossible, insane. But still, the fact remains: Lily is there at Nina’s bedside every single time they drop into her dreams, and every single time, as they search and examine and try every trick in the book to figure out what happened to her, Lily shows up and slinks through the forests and skyscrapers to at the very least astonish them.
Investigating Nina started out as a pet project of Arthur’s, just a chance to look at an unusually arranged mind, but all of them are well and truly addicted to any kind of challenge. They will not stop sorting through her twisted strands until they work out her secrets or her coma ends. Nina’s dreams are, Arthur says, probably the strangest that Ariadne will ever see; Yusuf, once pried away from the endless reams of notes he’s making as he tries to fix the compounds, corroborates this analysis. Almost every last projection is a dancer; black, white, pink, blue, feathered and spangled and spiked, terrifying and lovely alike. And they never simply walk, never stay still, just trace leaps and lines and delicately curved arms without ever once glancing at anyone else. The dreamers stand out like sparrows amid butterflies, but the dancers have never turned on them except for the few times they’ve tried to blend in by sketching out brief clumsy steps.
Which isn’t to say they’re safe down there. Scarcely a week goes by without Ariadne shooting herself out after the director, Thomas Leroy, whirls her off into a twisted dance. It’s terrifying; it seems it’s meant to be visceral but she only trips and stumbles, yanked backwards and forwards and sideways by the fingers and the wrists. Tearing free, she’s discovered, gets her pulled back with bruising force; if she does manage to rip loose, the projections mob her without a moment’s pause, sprouting talons from their fingernails and clawing her to death. Eames, forging, gets the same treatment from Leroy. Immediately afterwards, he tells her quietly that she should never feel ashamed about escaping that as fast as possible. She has no idea what he says to Arthur about it, but the point man offers to let her stay out of the dreams if she prefers. She puts every obscenity in her vocabulary to carefully constructed use, throwing everything at Eames that she doesn’t spit at Arthur, and nobody brings it up again.
Ariadne isn’t the only one to have a rough time of it, nor is Leroy the only horror down there. Erica Sayers has smothered Arthur twenty-nine times by now; for some reason, he’s the favorite for her particular brand of attention. Sometimes it’s a drug-covered cloth over the face; sometimes it’s a pillow; occasionally she collapses the ceiling over him; once she kneecaps him, drags him off, and buries him alive. She’s terrifyingly strong; Ariadne and Eames have both been batted across the room like paper dolls when they try to pull her off of him.
Beth MacIntyre is probably the least violent of the killers; she drifts and dances half-attached, insubstantial even to the dreamworld’s unreality. Each flitter and step, vanishing around a corner, whispers delicately follow me; every several days, out of sheer desperation, they do. So far they’ve been lead off of ledges, across ice that snaps and plunges them into half-frozen oceans, onto ground that crumbles into landslides, and into yet more collapsing buildings. You’d think they’d learn, but Yusuf points out mercilessly that there’s a revelation in every way they die. Eames points out that Yusuf isn’t the one dying, barring the mornings when he’s without coffee.
There usually has been coffee lately - Lily, who spends at least an hour every day talking to the silent Nina and another hour in the corner with her headphones leaking tinny dance beats, has started coming by in the mornings and handing Starbucks cups around with wryly wistful whispers of good luck.
Lily has killed them more often than all the others put together.
Fandoms: Inception & Black Swan
Characters/Pairings: Lily, Nina, Beth, Thomas, Erica, Ariadne, Arthur, Eames, Yusuf
Rating/Warnings: R, violence, disturbing imagery, symbolic references to canonical sexual assault (there's a common warning), Black Swan spoilers
Written for:
book_las, prompt "[character] dreams about [character]." I am amazed that there weren't more Inception crossovers.Wordcount: 750
A/N: I was going to build on this (hence the delay in posting) but I've gotten enough caught up in other projects that I don't think I will for a while. Also, it's been forever since I posted anything.
Sometimes Ariadne wonders if Lily can somehow sneak into dreams without a PASIV, without anything mechanical or any kind of effort at all.
It’s ridiculous, of course; impossible, insane. But still, the fact remains: Lily is there at Nina’s bedside every single time they drop into her dreams, and every single time, as they search and examine and try every trick in the book to figure out what happened to her, Lily shows up and slinks through the forests and skyscrapers to at the very least astonish them.
Investigating Nina started out as a pet project of Arthur’s, just a chance to look at an unusually arranged mind, but all of them are well and truly addicted to any kind of challenge. They will not stop sorting through her twisted strands until they work out her secrets or her coma ends. Nina’s dreams are, Arthur says, probably the strangest that Ariadne will ever see; Yusuf, once pried away from the endless reams of notes he’s making as he tries to fix the compounds, corroborates this analysis. Almost every last projection is a dancer; black, white, pink, blue, feathered and spangled and spiked, terrifying and lovely alike. And they never simply walk, never stay still, just trace leaps and lines and delicately curved arms without ever once glancing at anyone else. The dreamers stand out like sparrows amid butterflies, but the dancers have never turned on them except for the few times they’ve tried to blend in by sketching out brief clumsy steps.
Which isn’t to say they’re safe down there. Scarcely a week goes by without Ariadne shooting herself out after the director, Thomas Leroy, whirls her off into a twisted dance. It’s terrifying; it seems it’s meant to be visceral but she only trips and stumbles, yanked backwards and forwards and sideways by the fingers and the wrists. Tearing free, she’s discovered, gets her pulled back with bruising force; if she does manage to rip loose, the projections mob her without a moment’s pause, sprouting talons from their fingernails and clawing her to death. Eames, forging, gets the same treatment from Leroy. Immediately afterwards, he tells her quietly that she should never feel ashamed about escaping that as fast as possible. She has no idea what he says to Arthur about it, but the point man offers to let her stay out of the dreams if she prefers. She puts every obscenity in her vocabulary to carefully constructed use, throwing everything at Eames that she doesn’t spit at Arthur, and nobody brings it up again.
Ariadne isn’t the only one to have a rough time of it, nor is Leroy the only horror down there. Erica Sayers has smothered Arthur twenty-nine times by now; for some reason, he’s the favorite for her particular brand of attention. Sometimes it’s a drug-covered cloth over the face; sometimes it’s a pillow; occasionally she collapses the ceiling over him; once she kneecaps him, drags him off, and buries him alive. She’s terrifyingly strong; Ariadne and Eames have both been batted across the room like paper dolls when they try to pull her off of him.
Beth MacIntyre is probably the least violent of the killers; she drifts and dances half-attached, insubstantial even to the dreamworld’s unreality. Each flitter and step, vanishing around a corner, whispers delicately follow me; every several days, out of sheer desperation, they do. So far they’ve been lead off of ledges, across ice that snaps and plunges them into half-frozen oceans, onto ground that crumbles into landslides, and into yet more collapsing buildings. You’d think they’d learn, but Yusuf points out mercilessly that there’s a revelation in every way they die. Eames points out that Yusuf isn’t the one dying, barring the mornings when he’s without coffee.
There usually has been coffee lately - Lily, who spends at least an hour every day talking to the silent Nina and another hour in the corner with her headphones leaking tinny dance beats, has started coming by in the mornings and handing Starbucks cups around with wryly wistful whispers of good luck.
Lily has killed them more often than all the others put together.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2011-04-01 10:07 pm (UTC)Marvelous job! I adore this.
no subject
Date: 2011-04-01 10:20 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-04-01 11:29 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-04-01 11:49 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-04-02 12:56 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-04-02 02:16 am (UTC)And I do want to build on it, but there's a ton of other things I want to do as well, so I'm not sure. If only I could just... write all day.
no subject
Date: 2011-04-02 07:58 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-04-02 08:27 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-04-03 01:22 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-04-03 08:32 pm (UTC)Can I just ask how much of the story of Black Swan you already know about? I'm really curious about how much sense this makes without knowing what all of Nina's projections are about.
And I do have hopes for continuing it at some point. Hopefully I can dig out my notes for where I was going to go with it.
no subject
Date: 2011-04-04 02:36 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-04-04 03:07 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-04-04 03:09 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-04-04 03:40 am (UTC)(And I really hope Inception doesn't disappoint! It's well-made, I think, and somewhat similar to Black Swan in tone; too many guys, though.)
no subject
Date: 2011-04-05 01:20 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-04-04 01:19 am (UTC)I'd love to read it if you'd expand on it. it would be an amazing fanfic, I'm sure.
no subject
Date: 2011-04-04 02:04 am (UTC)A continuation is looking more and more appealing, and if I do get it written I'll definitely link it around. I'm thrilled that you think the idea has more potential.
no subject
Date: 2011-12-18 08:58 am (UTC)The dance instructor who pushes her into sexualty becomes a dance-rapist. Her overbearing mother who shoved her own broken dreams down Nina's throat enjoys smothering people. Beth whose path Nina follows almost exactly to the letter, from being to the lead ballerina to a suicide attmept (though, really, Nina didn't attempt suicide. She attempted murder, and it just didn't quite work out...) and in the dream, those that follow her die.
And, ah, Lily. Lily who has killed them all more than any other. How to interpret that lovely tiddley bit. Obviously, Lily has played a major role in Nina's rapid descent into madness. She was in fact, the focal point of Nina's paranoia. Lily who was sabotaging her, was trying to steal her role, was sleeping with Thomas, and tried to kill her there at the end. But the shipper in me wants to believe that Lily is there for a more subtle and, to be quite honest, gay reason. I just haven't got the logistics worked out yet....lol.
And this turned out much larger than I'd intended. I just really wanted to tell you how amazing I thought this fic was and that I really hope you find the time/inspiration to continue it. It is simply lovely. Absolutely lovely.