Anabasis: Part Four: 10
Title: Anabasis
Author: coldthermistor
Artist: ellegen
Rating: R just in case, mostly for violence. There is no porn.
Word count: 80,617 words
Warnings: A little violence (possibly graphic), implied torture, and swearing.
Pairings: Cobb/Mal, Arthur/Cobb
Summary: Dominic Cobb is a man on the run. He's on the run from a marriage slowly falling apart, from being framed for a crime he didn't commit...and on the run from the memories of a betrayal that haunts him still. He remembers little of the night except for one thing, burned into his mind: Arthur betrayed him. Arthur cannot be trusted. Now, a business man, Saito has come forward: with what seems to be Cobb's best hope of learning the truth about that night so many years ago...and with Cobb's best hope of clearing his name. In return, he only wants an impossible job performed. Inception. There is no room for failure. The stakes are too high. But there is an enemy haunting Cobb's footsteps...an enemy wearing the face of a man that Cobb knows only too well: Cobb's former point man, Arthur...
-
Part IV: Apocalypse
Cobb looked up. The skies were now an angry, threatening grey. It felt like a storm was on the horizon. The breeze brought hints of distant rain. Forks of lightning arced between the clouds, burning themselves onto his retinas, bright and vivid.
He breathed and inhaled sharp ozone.
The kick, he realised. It was almost time.
“You always wondered, didn’t you?” Arthur said. “If I really did it. If I really was Algol.”
“Yes,” Cobb said, quietly. There was no lying. “The more I thought about it…the more I…the more I realised there were so many gaps. So many things that didn’t quite make sense. Nothing could explain the sudden conviction that it was you. You were Algol.”
“Dreams feel real enough while we’re in them. It’s only after we wake up,” Arthur said, taking a step closer, “That we realise that something was actually strange.”
He’d said that before, a long time ago, to Ariadne in a café in a dream. Hearing it from Arthur, here and now, felt like a kick in the ribs.
“I woke up.”
Arthur shook his head slightly, his expression almost too kind. Too knowing. “That isn’t the only thing, is it? You still wonder, sometimes. Mess around with my totem. Wonder if this world is real. Or if you’ve never really quite woken up. All these things, these memories that don’t quite fit in place, and you think that maybe there’s something wrong with your world but you can’t quite find the words for it. Like a splinter, in the corner of your eye. You can’t quite feel it, but it’s there. It’s uncomfortable, and the more you think about it…the more it drives you mad.”
Cobb said nothing. Arthur took another step, closer, so they were almost face-to-face, almost within striking distance. Almost close enough for contact.
“What do you call a dream that’s out of your control, Cobb?” he asked, softly.
“A nightmare,” Cobb whispered. “It felt real. As all dreams do.”
“What do you remember, Cobb?” Arthur asked, gently.
“Nothing,” Cobb replied. Except it wasn’t true. It stirred at the edges of his mind, another of the pieces he’d never quite dared to remember, another of those things he was too afraid to recall. Another section of the labyrinth he had run from, run from the ghoul at the heart of the labyrinth… “I was here before,” he said, and Arthur nodded. “I remember…the maze. The labyrinth. I tried extraction on myself. I reached the safe…and then nothing.” He laughed, the sound sharp, harsh, and a little mocking. “I can’t remember what I tried to retrieve from my own mind. But I remember this. It began here, didn’t it? It all started here.”
“Yes,” Arthur said. “It always begins here.”
“I was here before.” Cobb closed his eyes for a moment, trying to remember. He took a deep breath. He knew what he needed to do. What he had to do. He always came back, in the end. Back to the deepest level of his mind. Back to the labyrinth, and back to Limbo.
Back to the ghoul haunting the labyrinth.
“You think?” Arthur asked. Painfully familiar. It was the almost-sardonic, dubious way he questioned some of Cobb’s wilder plans. The way he forced clarity, detail, specificity into their set-ups. The way he kept Cobb on his feet, always thinking, the way they worked off each other to construct brilliant ideas that usually succeeded.
The Cobb-and-Arthur game wasn’t enough this time.
“I don’t know.” Cobb hesitated, and then said, “Yes.” He was certain of it.
“If you don’t know, how’d you expect me to?”
“Because…that’s what you are,” Cobb said slowly. He didn’t meet Arthur’s eyes, with this admission. “My subconscious. Everything I wanted, dreamed…”
“Everything you needed,” Arthur continued, “Guilt, deception, memory, guardian, traitor…”
“I faced you before.”
“Nemesis.”
Cobb glanced up. He met Arthur’s eyes squarely. “I’ve come for Fischer,” he said. “It started here. It’ll end here. Just the two of us. Fischer’s not a part of this.”
Arthur considered this, and nodded slowly. “Done,” he said.
Cobb tapped Saito on the shoulder. “Take Fischer,” he said, his voice low and urgent, “And get him out of here. Ride the kick up, and go.”
Saito hesitated. “And you?”
“It’s time,” Cobb said quietly, “To end this.”
-
Fischer was up by the second time Ariadne shocked him with the defibrillator. “Go,” she told him, urging him in the direction of the strongroom. He needed no second prompting, heading right for it.
Behind them, Saito’s eyes blinked open. He coughed, weakly. “He’s down there,” he said, in response to Arthur’s question. Ariadne hadn’t caught the question. “He’s…facing him. You.”
Arthur closed his eyes. He looked pained, almost saddened, Ariadne thought, and then he nodded, his expression straightening out and becoming all but unreadable. The corners of his mouth were turned downwards, giving him a serious and almost unhappy aspect. “He’ll be lost,” Arthur said, simply.
“No, he won’t,” Ariadne said, willing herself to believe it. “He’ll make it back.”
Arthur said nothing.
-
“So it’s come back to this,” Arthur said.
“Yes,” Cobb said, almost-apologetically. “Looks like it.”
“Winner takes all?”
“It’s always been that way,” Cobb replied, “Hasn’t it?”
It didn’t have to be this way, he thought, studying Arthur’s features. Arthur glanced back at him steadily, waiting. He didn’t have to. He could walk away, like he did - like he always did. If he closed his eyes, if he pretended - he could lose himself here. He could almost believe that it was true. And that was the last trap, the last turn of the labyrinth.
Arthur wasn’t real. Arthur was real.
He was both. He was neither.
If he wanted to, Cobb could keep believing. Could keep losing himself, in what wasn’t real. Could keep running away. Except running away didn’t work, and never had. Arthur always came back. Cobb had always come back, they had always met at the heart of the labyrinth, at the heart of Limbo, back here where it had all begun.
Back here where it had to end.
The sky rumbled.
“So, what is it now, Cobb?” Arthur asked, raising his eyebrows. “Do you know your conditions of victory?”
“This has to end,” Cobb said quietly. This. The endless circling path they took, the path that brought him back to the flaming apartment, time and again. The guilt. The betrayal. The hatred.
Nemesis.
The path that brought both of them back to Limbo, no matter how much Cobb tried to run, no matter how many times he’d forced Arthur back down.
“How?” Arthur wanted to know.
Cobb felt his lips peel back against his teeth, in a brief approximation of a smile. “We’ll find out as we go along,” he offered.
“What do you want, Cobb?” Arthur asked softly. “Do you even know, this time?”
Saito’s words changed nothing.
They changed everything.
There were so many reasons to go back, to know why, to demand why, to say he was sorry, to forgive, to win, to lose - and in the end, it all led to only a single reason. Arthur. Arthur was alive.
Cobb breathed and felt a bit of the guilt crack off and roll off his back. He straightened a little more. He breathed and couldn’t explain how for the first time, in a strange way, he felt truly free. And yet part of the guilt remained, and he looked at it, thought about it, and bent over and accepted it. It would never really go away, he knew. He didn’t expect it to. And yet he felt better, just a little better.
“Do you really think you can just go home?” Arthur wanted to know. “That you can just walk through that door and Mal will welcome you home, maybe kiss you, tell you how much she’s missed you? Do you really think it’s that simple?”
Mal, Cobb thought, and the guilt came back, heavy and crushing and he slipped a little to the side but the load pressed against his shoulders. “No,” he said aloud.
“Then why?”
“Because I’ve nowhere left to go,” Cobb replied. “Some things are worth finding. Worth coming home for.” He didn’t need to cock the hammer and try the Beretta.
He knew it was empty, knew it with the sureness of instinct, a flash of understanding about his subconscious, and the burdens he’d been carrying.
In the end, there was only one answer for all of them.
He let them go. Let the Beretta go, listened to the sound of it dropping. Listened to the sound of the click as Arthur tried his Glock, and realised he was unarmed.
He faced them.
“No tricks,” Cobb said, softly. His eyes didn’t leave Arthur’s. “Just you and me.”
Almost at the same time, they moved. Thunder rumbled, and for a moment, Cobb thought the smell of ash and fire lingered in the air.
-
This is the true crux of the Fischer job:
It’s not the white-clad figure with startlingly pale blue eyes, speaking with a man he thinks is his father. It’s not the white-clad figure speaking to what is really a projection, an answer to his desires, his fears, his hopes, his wishes -
It’s two figures, brawling in the plaza.
The success of the Fischer job hinges on the successful inception of Robert Fischer.
The true crux of the Fischer job hinges on Dominic Cobb, and the abyss he peers into. This is the nature of dreamsharing: the abyss has eyes, dark brown eyes that stare into Cobb’s light blue from the face of a man he knows almost as well as himself, almost as instinctively as breathing.
And in the end, the true crux of the Fischer job is personal.
It isn’t the extractor against his demon, the best extractor against the best point man. It isn’t even a clash of opposites, of opposing forces, of opposing ideals so powerful that the sky snarls with thunder, and loops of arcing electricity.
It’s personal. Friend against friend, brother against brother.
It’s personal: just Cobb, Arthur, and the damage they’ve done to each other. The damage that only they could do to each other. It doesn’t matter that in truth, Arthur’s part of Cobb, part of his subconscious. Right here and right now, Arthur’s real enough, and that’s all that matters.
Here, in the deepest recesses of Cobb’s subconscious, the Fischer job hits its critical point -
And poises, tantalisingly, on the brink.
-
This is a fight neither of them is going to win.
Arthur is a projection of Cobb’s subconscious. He knows what Cobb is going to do, even before he does it. Cobb knows Arthur too well, knows how Arthur’s going to move, and his knife-hand block turns away the overhand even before it land.
Arthur is moving then, gripping Cobb’s arm and pulling him into a throw and Cobb arches back, leaning into the curve of Arthur’s arm to deny him the leverage, foot scything out -
Reap blocked -
And then he breaks out of the aborted throw and they are both watching each other warily again, and then both darting in again.
Punches are blocked, kicks are dodged, sometimes blocked and throws are countered. Holds are broken and in the end, neither of them is winning. Both of them are losing. And as Cobb blocks a punch and turns it aside, fist sweeping in low towards Arthur’s solar plexus -
Strike blocked -
He starts to realise he still doesn’t have it.
This is the turning point of the fight between Cobb and Arthur, Arthur and Cobb, when Cobb first starts to realise he might be wrong. He might not be able to win this. He can’t win this. He doesn’t have what it takes.
How do you kill a part of your own mind? How do you defeat someone who knows your moves so intimately that he can’t fail to catch your punch anymore than he can fail to know where his own right hand is?
How do you kill someone you’ve come to care about, so deeply, even if he isn’t real?
Cobb accepted the right cross with a grunt of pain, turned and flipped Arthur into a throw. Arthur landed heavily but snapped out a kick that caught Cobb - hard - in the ribs.
Cobb staggered backwards.
This is what Cobb realises, in this moment.
He doesn’t have it. He can’t defeat a part of himself, someone who is essentially a part of his mind, a part of himself -
And who’s more than that at the same time. This is Arthur. This isn’t Arthur. This is Arthur, and because Cobb cares, it hurts, and fighting him’s the hardest thing Cobb’s done. It doesn’t matter that he knows this isn’t really Arthur, because what his mind knows and what his gut tells him are two different things, and after all those years in Limbo, Cobb isn’t too sure anymore.
He just wants to stop. To stop fighting, to go home.
Arthur’s elbow strike smashes him on the chin, and although Cobb’s already turning, blood fills his mouth. His vision floods black for a moment and blurs and then comes back.
And then Cobb sees the flash of silver. The flash of a combat knife.
Too late.
The knife takes him in the side with a line of sharp fire.
-
As Arthur closed in on him, Cobb retreated, giving ground. The slash didn’t feel too bad, but he had no real way of knowing. He didn’t need to glance behind him to know where he was heading. He took a deep breath. He remembered the feel of the ocean, being suspended in perfect stillness.
It felt that way now.
They were almost completely silent, except for the harsh sounds of their breathing and their footsteps against the concrete.
A distant, clinical sort of calm flooded Cobb, along with an acute sense of familiarity. He’d been here before, been down this path so many times that he knew it, could move down the street without even having to look.
He’d walked this road too many times in his dreams. Towards the apartment. Towards the heart of the labyrinth, towards the safe in the labyrinth that he’d never quite opened, never quite dared to remember.
He’d never quite made it there. He’d been too busy running.
He could all but smell it as he breathed, the phantom smoke stubbornly stuck in his lungs, long before he was close enough to do so. He could feel the heat of the flames, painfully tight against his skin and the old fear rose, the old guilt, the old pain and sense of betrayal that he never quite knew how to live with.
For almost all his life, Cobb had been running away. Running away from a marriage that seemed doomed to fail and that he didn’t know what to do about. Running away from having to let Mal in. Running away from the idea of having to live on, to let go of his guilt, to move past the long shadow Algol had cast on his life. It was who Cobb was. It seemed easier to run, to hide, to keep running than to face everything that pursued him, that threatened to overwhelm him.
It seemed easier to run than to turn, to stop, to face the ghoul hiding behind the next turn in the labyrinth.
As he moved down the street, here, deep within his mind, at the very edges of his subconscious, Cobb felt an end to trying. An end to running. A distant, calm resolve settled over him, making everything seem abnormally clear and sharp. The smell of smoke in his lungs. The heat of the flames. Bright orange, edged with yellow and the exact quality of the sparks. The dark grey-black of the smoke.
There was nowhere left to go. It didn’t matter. Cobb let himself be driven back, let Arthur follow him. It was, he thought, a place they should reach together.
Their positions were reversed now. Flames rose around his back, crackling, casting an unsteady light on his features as Cobb slowed to a halt and turned around. Arthur was there, pausing, and Cobb couldn’t make out the expression on his face. If there was any.
Cobb breathed. His breath was coming out in gasps, but he felt strangely calm. Cool and detached. The world tightened around him: guilt, betrayal, fear, they all coalesced in his chest, and hardened into a kind of resolve. It had to end. One way or another, it had to end.
His head felt clearer it had since - he couldn’t even remember when. He was too tired to keep running. The wound in his side, where Arthur had caught him with the knife, wept sluggish fire.
“You can’t run forever, Cobb,” Arthur said, quietly. Blood - Cobb’s blood dripped from the edge of the blade still. Cobb glanced at it. For a moment, the drops of blood seemed almost perfectly suspended at the edge of the knife, and then they fell.
“I know,” Cobb said. He wanted to close his eyes briefly, but any pause here was going to be fatal. He turned and fled into the heart of the inferno, hearing Arthur’s footsteps behind him.
-
The fire had begun in the small kitchen, Cobb remembered. The flames took most of the building but had yet to curl into much of the living room. He waited, breathing, feeling the calm steal over him, damping the edges of his fear.
A few moments later, Arthur emerged from the doorway. Cobb’s eyes moved, momentarily, to the knife in his hand. Both of them were already beginning to sweat from the heat. “You or me,” Arthur said quietly, “Winner takes all.”
“Yeah,” Cobb managed. “I know.”
He was amazed - and amused to find he had enough left in him for a little fight after all. Arthur was more measured, more methodical. Cobb tackled him, trying for the knife in Arthur’s hand with a knife-hand strike but his stiffened fingers struck nothing but air as Arthur anticipated him. Cobb winced as Arthur’s knife drew a line of pain across his biceps, but he’d already been twisting away and the wound was shallow.
This was long past the point of first blood. They didn’t quite circle, but moved cautiously, giving each other a respectful berth and glancing at each other and then their surroundings. Cobb hurled a vase at Arthur, only for Arthur to dodge - it was too easy. The vase shattered against the wall, giving Cobb fragments he could have used to get a sharp shiv. Arthur was aware of that, and now he moved to keep Cobb away from the fragments.
Cobb made no move for them. He felt sweat - or maybe blood - trickle down the side of his face. Salt stung the cut just below his eye, along his cheekbone. Arthur frowned. Cobb moved again.
Soon, now. He felt the heat of the flames on his back.
-
“Here goes,” Eames said aloud, and slipped the headphones over Ariadne’s head. He waited, counting down the seconds until the thirty second mark was reached, and then switched on the mains. Using his improvised hand protection, he carefully slipped the last connector into place, between the battery socket and the base plate.
-
Ariadne heard the music cue, and triggered the charges. Fischer was in the strongroom, and everything was in place. It was time to go.
Arthur had been good for his word, and she felt the facility tremble and buckle beneath their feet as the supports gave way and then they were falling, falling…
-
“What the hell was that?” Arthur winced, ripping out the needle and shaking his hand vigorously. Ariadne couldn’t blame him - the muscles were cramping violently and it hurt so badly. And then she realised, although it must have been a minor detail - they were floating, which meant that Eames couldn’t have dropped them so what had he -
Eames winked and quickly yanked the connecting wires away. She noticed he was holding what looked suspiciously like a tie and that Arthur was missing his tie.
“I’ve had to improvise,” he said.
“You’re lucky we weren’t grounded,” Arthur muttered, shaking his head -
-
With a sudden, cold, shock, Ariadne opened her eyes. They’d hit the water - the van had hit the water and was slowly sinking. She freed herself from the seatbelt with fumbling fingers, and then reached for where the diving regulator was.
She passed it to Arthur who nodded, took a steady breath and then passed it back to her. His eyes moved to Cobb’s motionless form with a frown and he swam over. He hit Cobb, once, a hard slap across the face. No response. He shook Cobb, hard.
Her lungs were starting to burn and Ariadne knew it was no use. It was too late. She motioned to Arthur, tapped him on the shoulder and pointed upwards. They had to get out of the sinking van before it dragged them down with it. And then they’d be dumped in Limbo too and they’d be of no help to Cobb.
Arthur nodded tightly, and they swam upwards, heading for the surface.
They broke the surface of the river and Ariadne let out a gasp. She was content to just paddle there and breathe air into her oxygen-starved lungs but Arthur was already guiding her towards the rocky embankment, where they pulled themselves up onto the rocks, still dripping and soaking wet.
“He hasn’t made it out,” Arthur said at last, frowning.
“Are you going to go in after him?” she asked.
Arthur shrugged. “Yeah,” he said, slowly, glancing at where Eames and Fischer sat, together.
“But he’s…in the river.”
“Your dreamer should be able to get me access to a PASIV,” Arthur mentioned briefly, looking around for any sign of Yusuf.
“How?”
His mouth twisted in a wry smile. “This is a dream, right? So it doesn’t matter if I’m not directly connected to Cobb on this level. I’m connected up to all of you in reality, and that’s what matters.”
“And Saito,” she said. She realised that the stern businessman hadn’t emerged from the river either. “I think Cobb’s trying to get Saito.”
Arthur acknowledged that with a nod. “Could be,” he accepted, neutrally. “Still, I’m going to find the dreamer here…”
“Yusuf,” Ariadne told him.
“Yusuf,” he corrected himself. “And head back down there to take a look for myself.”
“Arthur?” she asked, then. There was a question that nagged at her, tugged at the back of her mind. It was the only part of this all that still didn’t make sense.
He waited.
“Why didn’t you contact Cobb earlier?”
Arthur’s mouth twisted. He said nothing, just gave her a tight shrug, and left.
-
In the end, there was only one answer.
Cobb blocked Arthur’s blow with his raised forearm, felt the blade sink in deep and gritted his teeth, pulling away. His entire left arm went numb; he could barely feel his fingers. He backed away, took one or two slow steps back. Arthur did not stop him.
“It’s over, Cobb,” Arthur said, his eyes glancing at the still-bleeding wound in Cobb’s side, at the deep slash on Cobb’s left forearm.
Cobb almost closed his eyes. “Yes,” he replied, his voice soft. “It is.”
This time, he allowed the thrust. As the knife buried itself into his midsection, Cobb grabbed Arthur, pivoted so as to place his forearm squarely across Arthur’s throat, all but screamed as the knife dug deep into his abdomen. He breathed heavily, willing himself not to let go. This was nothing compared to all the wounds he’d received, and he knew that this wound was going to kill him.
It didn’t matter. Not now.
In the end, there was only one answer. No more running away. Arthur might not have been real, Arthur might have been Algol, might have betrayed him, and lived to tell the tale but at the end of it all, he was still Arthur. Cobb couldn’t kill him, couldn’t strike him down. Ariadne had been right, all those layers up, when she’d said he needed to let go of his guilt. It was destroying him, bit by bit. It was destroying Arthur, warping his projection, twisting it, and in that moment, as Cobb looked Arthur straight in the eyes, he realised he couldn’t find anything, except traces of the man he’d once known. All of that was there, but distorted so far that Cobb realised, in a sudden lucid flash, the resemblance was deceptive.
Maybe, a long time ago, his projection had been Arthur. Arthur as Cobb remembered him. But seen through vague layers of hazy memories of pain, betrayal - which his own projection had only fed back to him - he’d stopped being Arthur and started being something less, something twisted. Cobb’s own depiction of his guilt, and his need to punish himself. And he realised it then, in that sudden illuminating flash of clarity that had laid it all open to the bone, like the knife that stuck almost hilt-deep in his gut, that it’d been a lot less about Arthur’s betrayal (Arthur would never betray him, surely) and more about how he’d betrayed Arthur, how he’d left him and sent him back in there to die and watched.
He’d tried fighting. But fighting wasn’t the answer, in the end. He couldn’t prevail. He never would have. There was only one answer to his guilt, to his pain, to all those uncertain memories. He had to let them go. But here, at the end of all things, it was the one thing he could not do. Cobb had lived with the guilt for so long that he didn’t even know where to begin to let go. Instead, he let go of his fear, his doubts, his lingering sense of self-preservation. His hopes. The gut-deep pain of betrayal. He welcomed the guilt, welcomed the pain.
There was molten fire in his stomach, and he sank to his knees, keeping his grip over Arthur’s throat, forcing Arthur down with him. Arthur tried to break free but Cobb had the advantage and he wasn’t letting go. His other hand caught Arthur’s elbow in a grip of steel so Arthur couldn’t try to break free. He applied a little more pressure across Arthur’s throat, and the resistance broke. Arthur cursed as he realised he’d been suckered.
Cobb hadn’t fought back to save himself. Cobb had fought back to buy time, to delay Arthur until it was impossible for either of them to escape from the blaze. By now, his hold didn’t matter either, and Arthur knew it. There was nowhere to run.
Cobb collapsed onto the ground, and let go of Arthur as well. He didn’t pull the knife free or he’d have been a goner. Not that it mattered, now.
“Damn you,” Arthur breathed, crawling to his feet. He glanced all around them. There was no running, now. Not anymore. There was nowhere else to go.
“I should have died here,” Cobb said quietly, watching the flames cut off all hope of escape. Arthur sat back, knees drawn up to his chest. The bruise where Cobb’s fist had caught him in the eye was beginning to darken, and the eye looked hollow and sunken in the unsteady light of the hungry flames.
He closed his eyes then, and let the fire consume him.
-
This is the crux of the Fischer job:
Not the moment when Robert Fischer sees his father, hears the words he’s been longing to hear. The words they want him to hear.
This is the crux of the Fischer job:
The Fischer job has never been about incepting Robert Fischer. It’s what the job appears to be out, but the true purpose, the crux of the Fischer job has always been something else.
This is the true purpose of the Fischer job:
Cobb’s search for redemption, the journey back to where it all began. Cobb’s need for salvation, for an end to his guilt.
This is the crux of the Fischer job:
When Cobb learns he can come home, decides he wants to come home, but has to lay his guilt at the door. Guilt doesn’t disappear. Like any burden, it must be set aside, a piece at a time. And so this is the crux of the Fischer job, when Cobb learns he can’t run away from his guilt. He can’t beat his guilt, can’t defeat it. The only thing he can do is to accept it, to set it aside. To find something worth giving up his guilt for.
This is the crux of the Fischer job:
When Cobb stops fighting, and gives in. When Cobb turns, faces his guilt, and learns that he has to stop fighting. Because fighting only empowers his guilt, only makes him stronger.
So this is the true crux of the Fischer job:
When Cobb takes his first step on the long road home.
-
Cobb wasn’t sure for how long he lay there, raw, burned, and aching. He was only aware of the numerous cuts and bruises he had sustained when the saltwater tide came in, washing up the rocks of the beach and setting fire to his cuts one by one.
What do you remember?
He wasn’t sure why the question was so important. Fire, he thought, briefly. A lot of fire. He closed his eyes again, and sank into a pleasantly warm daze. He was so tired that a bit of rest wouldn’t hurt. Sand. Sun. Sky. Ocean. He didn’t know how long he’d spent in the ocean, before the waves had chewed and spat him out onto the rocks. Exhaustion seemed to sink into him, as deep as bone and muscle, and he caught himself nodding off several times.
It wasn’t important, he decided. His clothes were thoroughly soaked and clinging to his skin, but his shirt was dry around the shoulders and a little unpleasantly tight, maybe a little hard from the salt, and packed with a crust of wet sand. His head ached, and a small movement of it brought his arm into sight. The sunburned skin was reddened, peeling a little.
He should move, Cobb thought distantly, get out of the sun, find some shade and clean water, but he was just too tired and it seemed like too much effort.
He’d dozed off again when he heard the voice. “Get up,” someone said, and Cobb blinked through bleary, almost-swollen eyes and peered up. The mask of wet sand half-cracked and he thought that there was something very familiar about whoever it was.
He made a sound, probably a moan, and just let his head drop again. Getting up was too much effort. The sand shifted beneath his weight, and he couldn’t find enough purchase to even try. “Damn you, Cobb, get up!”
Then, someone knelt before him: very clean, and most definitely not crusted in sand. That’s strange, Cobb thought, because the sand gets everywhere. Hands reached out under his armpits, and then he was hauled him to his feet. Cobb blinked, clearing the droplets of seawater from his eyes. In the bright sunlight, the water sparkled, sending spots of light dancing across his blurred vision. He blinked again, and then focused and decided he was hallucinating.
Arthur, Cobb remembered. That was Arthur. Funny, he thought, frowning. He thought he’d shot the projection, a long time ago. Or it seemed like a long time ago. Memory was worse than the sand, shifting and constantly unstable, fogged by sun and sea spray and he gave up on it. Arthur wouldn’t kill him, he decided. Arthur wouldn’t -
Arthur shook him, hard. “Come on,” Arthur urged. “Don’t pass out on me now.”
Okay, Cobb said. He thought he said that. His throat worked, hoarse and raspy. Nothing came out. He tried again. “Okay.” Strange sort of hallucination, really, because who the hell wore a brown canvas jacket on a beach?
Arthur made a sound, half exasperation and half impatience. He bent, accepting Cobb’s left arm across his shoulder. “I don’t suppose you can stand?” he asked wryly, then answered his own question. “Evidently not.”
Dry sense of humour, check.
“You should be dead,” Cobb mumbled, sagging against Arthur. His knees threatened to give up on him. His legs were shaky. He remembered the sound of the gun discharging, sharp against his skull. Arthur braced him, steady, dependable, solid and very real. They always felt real in dreams.
“Yeah,” Arthur said, after a heavy pause. “I should be.”
“But you always come back,” Cobb managed, through lips cracked and bleeding sluggishly from sun and salt. He thought he was raving, maybe delirious and dehydrated. It was an effort to keep his eyes open. “No matter what I do. You always come back.”
Arthur said nothing, evidently choosing to ignore his words. Cobb only realised he’d drifted off when he heard Arthur’s voice, more distant than before, and clawed his way back towards it through the fog of heat, sun flare and cold saltwater tides pounding at his brain, eroding layers and layers of memory. Arthur was looking at him, frowning in concern. He looked a bit older and more tired than Cobb remembered, and there was something about the grave set to his face that Cobb - didn’t know what to make of.
He remembered a man. Saito. Saying…something. Cobb thought it was important and tried for it, but the voices danced within his skull and his head pounded too hard. He gave up.
He was too tired to make much sense out of any of these. Too tired to do anything except to hang limp and let Arthur support him. Too tired to wonder. Too tired to believe that Arthur was going to kill him, in short order.
“Come on,” Arthur prodded, “Stay with me, Cobb. Keep going. We’re almost there.” He kept saying that, taking another step forward, urging him to stay awake. Cobb all but collapsed against Arthur. Then his arm slipped free of Arthur’s shoulders as his abused body finally gave in. He slid downwards, towards the sand.
“Sorry,” he mumbled.
Maybe Arthur caught him, even before he fell.
-
Prologue
Part I: Extraction
1 | 2 | 3
Part II: Inception
4 | 5 | 6
Part III: Eidolon
7 | 8 | 9
Part IV: Apocalypse
10 | 11
Author: coldthermistor
Artist: ellegen
Rating: R just in case, mostly for violence. There is no porn.
Word count: 80,617 words
Warnings: A little violence (possibly graphic), implied torture, and swearing.
Pairings: Cobb/Mal, Arthur/Cobb
Summary: Dominic Cobb is a man on the run. He's on the run from a marriage slowly falling apart, from being framed for a crime he didn't commit...and on the run from the memories of a betrayal that haunts him still. He remembers little of the night except for one thing, burned into his mind: Arthur betrayed him. Arthur cannot be trusted. Now, a business man, Saito has come forward: with what seems to be Cobb's best hope of learning the truth about that night so many years ago...and with Cobb's best hope of clearing his name. In return, he only wants an impossible job performed. Inception. There is no room for failure. The stakes are too high. But there is an enemy haunting Cobb's footsteps...an enemy wearing the face of a man that Cobb knows only too well: Cobb's former point man, Arthur...
-
Part IV: Apocalypse
Cobb looked up. The skies were now an angry, threatening grey. It felt like a storm was on the horizon. The breeze brought hints of distant rain. Forks of lightning arced between the clouds, burning themselves onto his retinas, bright and vivid.
He breathed and inhaled sharp ozone.
The kick, he realised. It was almost time.
“You always wondered, didn’t you?” Arthur said. “If I really did it. If I really was Algol.”
“Yes,” Cobb said, quietly. There was no lying. “The more I thought about it…the more I…the more I realised there were so many gaps. So many things that didn’t quite make sense. Nothing could explain the sudden conviction that it was you. You were Algol.”
“Dreams feel real enough while we’re in them. It’s only after we wake up,” Arthur said, taking a step closer, “That we realise that something was actually strange.”
He’d said that before, a long time ago, to Ariadne in a café in a dream. Hearing it from Arthur, here and now, felt like a kick in the ribs.
“I woke up.”
Arthur shook his head slightly, his expression almost too kind. Too knowing. “That isn’t the only thing, is it? You still wonder, sometimes. Mess around with my totem. Wonder if this world is real. Or if you’ve never really quite woken up. All these things, these memories that don’t quite fit in place, and you think that maybe there’s something wrong with your world but you can’t quite find the words for it. Like a splinter, in the corner of your eye. You can’t quite feel it, but it’s there. It’s uncomfortable, and the more you think about it…the more it drives you mad.”
Cobb said nothing. Arthur took another step, closer, so they were almost face-to-face, almost within striking distance. Almost close enough for contact.
“What do you call a dream that’s out of your control, Cobb?” he asked, softly.
“A nightmare,” Cobb whispered. “It felt real. As all dreams do.”
“What do you remember, Cobb?” Arthur asked, gently.
“Nothing,” Cobb replied. Except it wasn’t true. It stirred at the edges of his mind, another of the pieces he’d never quite dared to remember, another of those things he was too afraid to recall. Another section of the labyrinth he had run from, run from the ghoul at the heart of the labyrinth… “I was here before,” he said, and Arthur nodded. “I remember…the maze. The labyrinth. I tried extraction on myself. I reached the safe…and then nothing.” He laughed, the sound sharp, harsh, and a little mocking. “I can’t remember what I tried to retrieve from my own mind. But I remember this. It began here, didn’t it? It all started here.”
“Yes,” Arthur said. “It always begins here.”
“I was here before.” Cobb closed his eyes for a moment, trying to remember. He took a deep breath. He knew what he needed to do. What he had to do. He always came back, in the end. Back to the deepest level of his mind. Back to the labyrinth, and back to Limbo.
Back to the ghoul haunting the labyrinth.
“You think?” Arthur asked. Painfully familiar. It was the almost-sardonic, dubious way he questioned some of Cobb’s wilder plans. The way he forced clarity, detail, specificity into their set-ups. The way he kept Cobb on his feet, always thinking, the way they worked off each other to construct brilliant ideas that usually succeeded.
The Cobb-and-Arthur game wasn’t enough this time.
“I don’t know.” Cobb hesitated, and then said, “Yes.” He was certain of it.
“If you don’t know, how’d you expect me to?”
“Because…that’s what you are,” Cobb said slowly. He didn’t meet Arthur’s eyes, with this admission. “My subconscious. Everything I wanted, dreamed…”
“Everything you needed,” Arthur continued, “Guilt, deception, memory, guardian, traitor…”
“I faced you before.”
“Nemesis.”
Cobb glanced up. He met Arthur’s eyes squarely. “I’ve come for Fischer,” he said. “It started here. It’ll end here. Just the two of us. Fischer’s not a part of this.”
Arthur considered this, and nodded slowly. “Done,” he said.
Cobb tapped Saito on the shoulder. “Take Fischer,” he said, his voice low and urgent, “And get him out of here. Ride the kick up, and go.”
Saito hesitated. “And you?”
“It’s time,” Cobb said quietly, “To end this.”
-
Fischer was up by the second time Ariadne shocked him with the defibrillator. “Go,” she told him, urging him in the direction of the strongroom. He needed no second prompting, heading right for it.
Behind them, Saito’s eyes blinked open. He coughed, weakly. “He’s down there,” he said, in response to Arthur’s question. Ariadne hadn’t caught the question. “He’s…facing him. You.”
Arthur closed his eyes. He looked pained, almost saddened, Ariadne thought, and then he nodded, his expression straightening out and becoming all but unreadable. The corners of his mouth were turned downwards, giving him a serious and almost unhappy aspect. “He’ll be lost,” Arthur said, simply.
“No, he won’t,” Ariadne said, willing herself to believe it. “He’ll make it back.”
Arthur said nothing.
-
“So it’s come back to this,” Arthur said.
“Yes,” Cobb said, almost-apologetically. “Looks like it.”
“Winner takes all?”
“It’s always been that way,” Cobb replied, “Hasn’t it?”
It didn’t have to be this way, he thought, studying Arthur’s features. Arthur glanced back at him steadily, waiting. He didn’t have to. He could walk away, like he did - like he always did. If he closed his eyes, if he pretended - he could lose himself here. He could almost believe that it was true. And that was the last trap, the last turn of the labyrinth.
Arthur wasn’t real. Arthur was real.
He was both. He was neither.
If he wanted to, Cobb could keep believing. Could keep losing himself, in what wasn’t real. Could keep running away. Except running away didn’t work, and never had. Arthur always came back. Cobb had always come back, they had always met at the heart of the labyrinth, at the heart of Limbo, back here where it had all begun.
Back here where it had to end.
The sky rumbled.
“So, what is it now, Cobb?” Arthur asked, raising his eyebrows. “Do you know your conditions of victory?”
“This has to end,” Cobb said quietly. This. The endless circling path they took, the path that brought him back to the flaming apartment, time and again. The guilt. The betrayal. The hatred.
Nemesis.
The path that brought both of them back to Limbo, no matter how much Cobb tried to run, no matter how many times he’d forced Arthur back down.
“How?” Arthur wanted to know.
Cobb felt his lips peel back against his teeth, in a brief approximation of a smile. “We’ll find out as we go along,” he offered.
“What do you want, Cobb?” Arthur asked softly. “Do you even know, this time?”
Saito’s words changed nothing.
They changed everything.
There were so many reasons to go back, to know why, to demand why, to say he was sorry, to forgive, to win, to lose - and in the end, it all led to only a single reason. Arthur. Arthur was alive.
Cobb breathed and felt a bit of the guilt crack off and roll off his back. He straightened a little more. He breathed and couldn’t explain how for the first time, in a strange way, he felt truly free. And yet part of the guilt remained, and he looked at it, thought about it, and bent over and accepted it. It would never really go away, he knew. He didn’t expect it to. And yet he felt better, just a little better.
“Do you really think you can just go home?” Arthur wanted to know. “That you can just walk through that door and Mal will welcome you home, maybe kiss you, tell you how much she’s missed you? Do you really think it’s that simple?”
Mal, Cobb thought, and the guilt came back, heavy and crushing and he slipped a little to the side but the load pressed against his shoulders. “No,” he said aloud.
“Then why?”
“Because I’ve nowhere left to go,” Cobb replied. “Some things are worth finding. Worth coming home for.” He didn’t need to cock the hammer and try the Beretta.
He knew it was empty, knew it with the sureness of instinct, a flash of understanding about his subconscious, and the burdens he’d been carrying.
In the end, there was only one answer for all of them.
He let them go. Let the Beretta go, listened to the sound of it dropping. Listened to the sound of the click as Arthur tried his Glock, and realised he was unarmed.
He faced them.
“No tricks,” Cobb said, softly. His eyes didn’t leave Arthur’s. “Just you and me.”
Almost at the same time, they moved. Thunder rumbled, and for a moment, Cobb thought the smell of ash and fire lingered in the air.
-
This is the true crux of the Fischer job:
It’s not the white-clad figure with startlingly pale blue eyes, speaking with a man he thinks is his father. It’s not the white-clad figure speaking to what is really a projection, an answer to his desires, his fears, his hopes, his wishes -
It’s two figures, brawling in the plaza.
The success of the Fischer job hinges on the successful inception of Robert Fischer.
The true crux of the Fischer job hinges on Dominic Cobb, and the abyss he peers into. This is the nature of dreamsharing: the abyss has eyes, dark brown eyes that stare into Cobb’s light blue from the face of a man he knows almost as well as himself, almost as instinctively as breathing.
And in the end, the true crux of the Fischer job is personal.
It isn’t the extractor against his demon, the best extractor against the best point man. It isn’t even a clash of opposites, of opposing forces, of opposing ideals so powerful that the sky snarls with thunder, and loops of arcing electricity.
It’s personal. Friend against friend, brother against brother.
It’s personal: just Cobb, Arthur, and the damage they’ve done to each other. The damage that only they could do to each other. It doesn’t matter that in truth, Arthur’s part of Cobb, part of his subconscious. Right here and right now, Arthur’s real enough, and that’s all that matters.
Here, in the deepest recesses of Cobb’s subconscious, the Fischer job hits its critical point -
And poises, tantalisingly, on the brink.
-
This is a fight neither of them is going to win.
Arthur is a projection of Cobb’s subconscious. He knows what Cobb is going to do, even before he does it. Cobb knows Arthur too well, knows how Arthur’s going to move, and his knife-hand block turns away the overhand even before it land.
Arthur is moving then, gripping Cobb’s arm and pulling him into a throw and Cobb arches back, leaning into the curve of Arthur’s arm to deny him the leverage, foot scything out -
Reap blocked -
And then he breaks out of the aborted throw and they are both watching each other warily again, and then both darting in again.
Punches are blocked, kicks are dodged, sometimes blocked and throws are countered. Holds are broken and in the end, neither of them is winning. Both of them are losing. And as Cobb blocks a punch and turns it aside, fist sweeping in low towards Arthur’s solar plexus -
Strike blocked -
He starts to realise he still doesn’t have it.
This is the turning point of the fight between Cobb and Arthur, Arthur and Cobb, when Cobb first starts to realise he might be wrong. He might not be able to win this. He can’t win this. He doesn’t have what it takes.
How do you kill a part of your own mind? How do you defeat someone who knows your moves so intimately that he can’t fail to catch your punch anymore than he can fail to know where his own right hand is?
How do you kill someone you’ve come to care about, so deeply, even if he isn’t real?
Cobb accepted the right cross with a grunt of pain, turned and flipped Arthur into a throw. Arthur landed heavily but snapped out a kick that caught Cobb - hard - in the ribs.
Cobb staggered backwards.
This is what Cobb realises, in this moment.
He doesn’t have it. He can’t defeat a part of himself, someone who is essentially a part of his mind, a part of himself -
And who’s more than that at the same time. This is Arthur. This isn’t Arthur. This is Arthur, and because Cobb cares, it hurts, and fighting him’s the hardest thing Cobb’s done. It doesn’t matter that he knows this isn’t really Arthur, because what his mind knows and what his gut tells him are two different things, and after all those years in Limbo, Cobb isn’t too sure anymore.
He just wants to stop. To stop fighting, to go home.
Arthur’s elbow strike smashes him on the chin, and although Cobb’s already turning, blood fills his mouth. His vision floods black for a moment and blurs and then comes back.
And then Cobb sees the flash of silver. The flash of a combat knife.
Too late.
The knife takes him in the side with a line of sharp fire.
-
As Arthur closed in on him, Cobb retreated, giving ground. The slash didn’t feel too bad, but he had no real way of knowing. He didn’t need to glance behind him to know where he was heading. He took a deep breath. He remembered the feel of the ocean, being suspended in perfect stillness.
It felt that way now.
They were almost completely silent, except for the harsh sounds of their breathing and their footsteps against the concrete.
A distant, clinical sort of calm flooded Cobb, along with an acute sense of familiarity. He’d been here before, been down this path so many times that he knew it, could move down the street without even having to look.
He’d walked this road too many times in his dreams. Towards the apartment. Towards the heart of the labyrinth, towards the safe in the labyrinth that he’d never quite opened, never quite dared to remember.
He’d never quite made it there. He’d been too busy running.
He could all but smell it as he breathed, the phantom smoke stubbornly stuck in his lungs, long before he was close enough to do so. He could feel the heat of the flames, painfully tight against his skin and the old fear rose, the old guilt, the old pain and sense of betrayal that he never quite knew how to live with.
For almost all his life, Cobb had been running away. Running away from a marriage that seemed doomed to fail and that he didn’t know what to do about. Running away from having to let Mal in. Running away from the idea of having to live on, to let go of his guilt, to move past the long shadow Algol had cast on his life. It was who Cobb was. It seemed easier to run, to hide, to keep running than to face everything that pursued him, that threatened to overwhelm him.
It seemed easier to run than to turn, to stop, to face the ghoul hiding behind the next turn in the labyrinth.
As he moved down the street, here, deep within his mind, at the very edges of his subconscious, Cobb felt an end to trying. An end to running. A distant, calm resolve settled over him, making everything seem abnormally clear and sharp. The smell of smoke in his lungs. The heat of the flames. Bright orange, edged with yellow and the exact quality of the sparks. The dark grey-black of the smoke.
There was nowhere left to go. It didn’t matter. Cobb let himself be driven back, let Arthur follow him. It was, he thought, a place they should reach together.
Their positions were reversed now. Flames rose around his back, crackling, casting an unsteady light on his features as Cobb slowed to a halt and turned around. Arthur was there, pausing, and Cobb couldn’t make out the expression on his face. If there was any.
Cobb breathed. His breath was coming out in gasps, but he felt strangely calm. Cool and detached. The world tightened around him: guilt, betrayal, fear, they all coalesced in his chest, and hardened into a kind of resolve. It had to end. One way or another, it had to end.
His head felt clearer it had since - he couldn’t even remember when. He was too tired to keep running. The wound in his side, where Arthur had caught him with the knife, wept sluggish fire.
“You can’t run forever, Cobb,” Arthur said, quietly. Blood - Cobb’s blood dripped from the edge of the blade still. Cobb glanced at it. For a moment, the drops of blood seemed almost perfectly suspended at the edge of the knife, and then they fell.
“I know,” Cobb said. He wanted to close his eyes briefly, but any pause here was going to be fatal. He turned and fled into the heart of the inferno, hearing Arthur’s footsteps behind him.
-
The fire had begun in the small kitchen, Cobb remembered. The flames took most of the building but had yet to curl into much of the living room. He waited, breathing, feeling the calm steal over him, damping the edges of his fear.
A few moments later, Arthur emerged from the doorway. Cobb’s eyes moved, momentarily, to the knife in his hand. Both of them were already beginning to sweat from the heat. “You or me,” Arthur said quietly, “Winner takes all.”
“Yeah,” Cobb managed. “I know.”
He was amazed - and amused to find he had enough left in him for a little fight after all. Arthur was more measured, more methodical. Cobb tackled him, trying for the knife in Arthur’s hand with a knife-hand strike but his stiffened fingers struck nothing but air as Arthur anticipated him. Cobb winced as Arthur’s knife drew a line of pain across his biceps, but he’d already been twisting away and the wound was shallow.
This was long past the point of first blood. They didn’t quite circle, but moved cautiously, giving each other a respectful berth and glancing at each other and then their surroundings. Cobb hurled a vase at Arthur, only for Arthur to dodge - it was too easy. The vase shattered against the wall, giving Cobb fragments he could have used to get a sharp shiv. Arthur was aware of that, and now he moved to keep Cobb away from the fragments.
Cobb made no move for them. He felt sweat - or maybe blood - trickle down the side of his face. Salt stung the cut just below his eye, along his cheekbone. Arthur frowned. Cobb moved again.
Soon, now. He felt the heat of the flames on his back.
-
“Here goes,” Eames said aloud, and slipped the headphones over Ariadne’s head. He waited, counting down the seconds until the thirty second mark was reached, and then switched on the mains. Using his improvised hand protection, he carefully slipped the last connector into place, between the battery socket and the base plate.
-
Ariadne heard the music cue, and triggered the charges. Fischer was in the strongroom, and everything was in place. It was time to go.
Arthur had been good for his word, and she felt the facility tremble and buckle beneath their feet as the supports gave way and then they were falling, falling…
-
“What the hell was that?” Arthur winced, ripping out the needle and shaking his hand vigorously. Ariadne couldn’t blame him - the muscles were cramping violently and it hurt so badly. And then she realised, although it must have been a minor detail - they were floating, which meant that Eames couldn’t have dropped them so what had he -
Eames winked and quickly yanked the connecting wires away. She noticed he was holding what looked suspiciously like a tie and that Arthur was missing his tie.
“I’ve had to improvise,” he said.
“You’re lucky we weren’t grounded,” Arthur muttered, shaking his head -
-
With a sudden, cold, shock, Ariadne opened her eyes. They’d hit the water - the van had hit the water and was slowly sinking. She freed herself from the seatbelt with fumbling fingers, and then reached for where the diving regulator was.
She passed it to Arthur who nodded, took a steady breath and then passed it back to her. His eyes moved to Cobb’s motionless form with a frown and he swam over. He hit Cobb, once, a hard slap across the face. No response. He shook Cobb, hard.
Her lungs were starting to burn and Ariadne knew it was no use. It was too late. She motioned to Arthur, tapped him on the shoulder and pointed upwards. They had to get out of the sinking van before it dragged them down with it. And then they’d be dumped in Limbo too and they’d be of no help to Cobb.
Arthur nodded tightly, and they swam upwards, heading for the surface.
They broke the surface of the river and Ariadne let out a gasp. She was content to just paddle there and breathe air into her oxygen-starved lungs but Arthur was already guiding her towards the rocky embankment, where they pulled themselves up onto the rocks, still dripping and soaking wet.
“He hasn’t made it out,” Arthur said at last, frowning.
“Are you going to go in after him?” she asked.
Arthur shrugged. “Yeah,” he said, slowly, glancing at where Eames and Fischer sat, together.
“But he’s…in the river.”
“Your dreamer should be able to get me access to a PASIV,” Arthur mentioned briefly, looking around for any sign of Yusuf.
“How?”
His mouth twisted in a wry smile. “This is a dream, right? So it doesn’t matter if I’m not directly connected to Cobb on this level. I’m connected up to all of you in reality, and that’s what matters.”
“And Saito,” she said. She realised that the stern businessman hadn’t emerged from the river either. “I think Cobb’s trying to get Saito.”
Arthur acknowledged that with a nod. “Could be,” he accepted, neutrally. “Still, I’m going to find the dreamer here…”
“Yusuf,” Ariadne told him.
“Yusuf,” he corrected himself. “And head back down there to take a look for myself.”
“Arthur?” she asked, then. There was a question that nagged at her, tugged at the back of her mind. It was the only part of this all that still didn’t make sense.
He waited.
“Why didn’t you contact Cobb earlier?”
Arthur’s mouth twisted. He said nothing, just gave her a tight shrug, and left.
-
In the end, there was only one answer.
Cobb blocked Arthur’s blow with his raised forearm, felt the blade sink in deep and gritted his teeth, pulling away. His entire left arm went numb; he could barely feel his fingers. He backed away, took one or two slow steps back. Arthur did not stop him.
“It’s over, Cobb,” Arthur said, his eyes glancing at the still-bleeding wound in Cobb’s side, at the deep slash on Cobb’s left forearm.
Cobb almost closed his eyes. “Yes,” he replied, his voice soft. “It is.”
This time, he allowed the thrust. As the knife buried itself into his midsection, Cobb grabbed Arthur, pivoted so as to place his forearm squarely across Arthur’s throat, all but screamed as the knife dug deep into his abdomen. He breathed heavily, willing himself not to let go. This was nothing compared to all the wounds he’d received, and he knew that this wound was going to kill him.
It didn’t matter. Not now.
In the end, there was only one answer. No more running away. Arthur might not have been real, Arthur might have been Algol, might have betrayed him, and lived to tell the tale but at the end of it all, he was still Arthur. Cobb couldn’t kill him, couldn’t strike him down. Ariadne had been right, all those layers up, when she’d said he needed to let go of his guilt. It was destroying him, bit by bit. It was destroying Arthur, warping his projection, twisting it, and in that moment, as Cobb looked Arthur straight in the eyes, he realised he couldn’t find anything, except traces of the man he’d once known. All of that was there, but distorted so far that Cobb realised, in a sudden lucid flash, the resemblance was deceptive.
Maybe, a long time ago, his projection had been Arthur. Arthur as Cobb remembered him. But seen through vague layers of hazy memories of pain, betrayal - which his own projection had only fed back to him - he’d stopped being Arthur and started being something less, something twisted. Cobb’s own depiction of his guilt, and his need to punish himself. And he realised it then, in that sudden illuminating flash of clarity that had laid it all open to the bone, like the knife that stuck almost hilt-deep in his gut, that it’d been a lot less about Arthur’s betrayal (Arthur would never betray him, surely) and more about how he’d betrayed Arthur, how he’d left him and sent him back in there to die and watched.
He’d tried fighting. But fighting wasn’t the answer, in the end. He couldn’t prevail. He never would have. There was only one answer to his guilt, to his pain, to all those uncertain memories. He had to let them go. But here, at the end of all things, it was the one thing he could not do. Cobb had lived with the guilt for so long that he didn’t even know where to begin to let go. Instead, he let go of his fear, his doubts, his lingering sense of self-preservation. His hopes. The gut-deep pain of betrayal. He welcomed the guilt, welcomed the pain.
There was molten fire in his stomach, and he sank to his knees, keeping his grip over Arthur’s throat, forcing Arthur down with him. Arthur tried to break free but Cobb had the advantage and he wasn’t letting go. His other hand caught Arthur’s elbow in a grip of steel so Arthur couldn’t try to break free. He applied a little more pressure across Arthur’s throat, and the resistance broke. Arthur cursed as he realised he’d been suckered.
Cobb hadn’t fought back to save himself. Cobb had fought back to buy time, to delay Arthur until it was impossible for either of them to escape from the blaze. By now, his hold didn’t matter either, and Arthur knew it. There was nowhere to run.
Cobb collapsed onto the ground, and let go of Arthur as well. He didn’t pull the knife free or he’d have been a goner. Not that it mattered, now.
“Damn you,” Arthur breathed, crawling to his feet. He glanced all around them. There was no running, now. Not anymore. There was nowhere else to go.
“I should have died here,” Cobb said quietly, watching the flames cut off all hope of escape. Arthur sat back, knees drawn up to his chest. The bruise where Cobb’s fist had caught him in the eye was beginning to darken, and the eye looked hollow and sunken in the unsteady light of the hungry flames.
He closed his eyes then, and let the fire consume him.
-
This is the crux of the Fischer job:
Not the moment when Robert Fischer sees his father, hears the words he’s been longing to hear. The words they want him to hear.
This is the crux of the Fischer job:
The Fischer job has never been about incepting Robert Fischer. It’s what the job appears to be out, but the true purpose, the crux of the Fischer job has always been something else.
This is the true purpose of the Fischer job:
Cobb’s search for redemption, the journey back to where it all began. Cobb’s need for salvation, for an end to his guilt.
This is the crux of the Fischer job:
When Cobb learns he can come home, decides he wants to come home, but has to lay his guilt at the door. Guilt doesn’t disappear. Like any burden, it must be set aside, a piece at a time. And so this is the crux of the Fischer job, when Cobb learns he can’t run away from his guilt. He can’t beat his guilt, can’t defeat it. The only thing he can do is to accept it, to set it aside. To find something worth giving up his guilt for.
This is the crux of the Fischer job:
When Cobb stops fighting, and gives in. When Cobb turns, faces his guilt, and learns that he has to stop fighting. Because fighting only empowers his guilt, only makes him stronger.
So this is the true crux of the Fischer job:
When Cobb takes his first step on the long road home.
-
Cobb wasn’t sure for how long he lay there, raw, burned, and aching. He was only aware of the numerous cuts and bruises he had sustained when the saltwater tide came in, washing up the rocks of the beach and setting fire to his cuts one by one.
What do you remember?
He wasn’t sure why the question was so important. Fire, he thought, briefly. A lot of fire. He closed his eyes again, and sank into a pleasantly warm daze. He was so tired that a bit of rest wouldn’t hurt. Sand. Sun. Sky. Ocean. He didn’t know how long he’d spent in the ocean, before the waves had chewed and spat him out onto the rocks. Exhaustion seemed to sink into him, as deep as bone and muscle, and he caught himself nodding off several times.
It wasn’t important, he decided. His clothes were thoroughly soaked and clinging to his skin, but his shirt was dry around the shoulders and a little unpleasantly tight, maybe a little hard from the salt, and packed with a crust of wet sand. His head ached, and a small movement of it brought his arm into sight. The sunburned skin was reddened, peeling a little.
He should move, Cobb thought distantly, get out of the sun, find some shade and clean water, but he was just too tired and it seemed like too much effort.
He’d dozed off again when he heard the voice. “Get up,” someone said, and Cobb blinked through bleary, almost-swollen eyes and peered up. The mask of wet sand half-cracked and he thought that there was something very familiar about whoever it was.
He made a sound, probably a moan, and just let his head drop again. Getting up was too much effort. The sand shifted beneath his weight, and he couldn’t find enough purchase to even try. “Damn you, Cobb, get up!”
Then, someone knelt before him: very clean, and most definitely not crusted in sand. That’s strange, Cobb thought, because the sand gets everywhere. Hands reached out under his armpits, and then he was hauled him to his feet. Cobb blinked, clearing the droplets of seawater from his eyes. In the bright sunlight, the water sparkled, sending spots of light dancing across his blurred vision. He blinked again, and then focused and decided he was hallucinating.
Arthur, Cobb remembered. That was Arthur. Funny, he thought, frowning. He thought he’d shot the projection, a long time ago. Or it seemed like a long time ago. Memory was worse than the sand, shifting and constantly unstable, fogged by sun and sea spray and he gave up on it. Arthur wouldn’t kill him, he decided. Arthur wouldn’t -
Arthur shook him, hard. “Come on,” Arthur urged. “Don’t pass out on me now.”
Okay, Cobb said. He thought he said that. His throat worked, hoarse and raspy. Nothing came out. He tried again. “Okay.” Strange sort of hallucination, really, because who the hell wore a brown canvas jacket on a beach?
Arthur made a sound, half exasperation and half impatience. He bent, accepting Cobb’s left arm across his shoulder. “I don’t suppose you can stand?” he asked wryly, then answered his own question. “Evidently not.”
Dry sense of humour, check.
“You should be dead,” Cobb mumbled, sagging against Arthur. His knees threatened to give up on him. His legs were shaky. He remembered the sound of the gun discharging, sharp against his skull. Arthur braced him, steady, dependable, solid and very real. They always felt real in dreams.
“Yeah,” Arthur said, after a heavy pause. “I should be.”
“But you always come back,” Cobb managed, through lips cracked and bleeding sluggishly from sun and salt. He thought he was raving, maybe delirious and dehydrated. It was an effort to keep his eyes open. “No matter what I do. You always come back.”
Arthur said nothing, evidently choosing to ignore his words. Cobb only realised he’d drifted off when he heard Arthur’s voice, more distant than before, and clawed his way back towards it through the fog of heat, sun flare and cold saltwater tides pounding at his brain, eroding layers and layers of memory. Arthur was looking at him, frowning in concern. He looked a bit older and more tired than Cobb remembered, and there was something about the grave set to his face that Cobb - didn’t know what to make of.
He remembered a man. Saito. Saying…something. Cobb thought it was important and tried for it, but the voices danced within his skull and his head pounded too hard. He gave up.
He was too tired to make much sense out of any of these. Too tired to do anything except to hang limp and let Arthur support him. Too tired to wonder. Too tired to believe that Arthur was going to kill him, in short order.
“Come on,” Arthur prodded, “Stay with me, Cobb. Keep going. We’re almost there.” He kept saying that, taking another step forward, urging him to stay awake. Cobb all but collapsed against Arthur. Then his arm slipped free of Arthur’s shoulders as his abused body finally gave in. He slid downwards, towards the sand.
“Sorry,” he mumbled.
Maybe Arthur caught him, even before he fell.
-
Prologue
Part I: Extraction
1 | 2 | 3
Part II: Inception
4 | 5 | 6
Part III: Eidolon
7 | 8 | 9
Part IV: Apocalypse
10 | 11