Little emotions chapter IV
It seems that the arson of the head office of IIoD was just the beginning of riots on street of Paris, the reporter says loudly, trying to yelled over the noise the protesting crowd is doing. People are demanding arrests of Dream criminals. Another popular slogan sounds: “Stop Dream experiments!”. The police forces with help of firemen are trying to break up the demonstration, but it extends…
Ariadne switches off the radio, feeling completely hopeless. All this information doesn’t help, making her feel just worse. She curls once again and closes her eyes, exhaustion of sleepless night and stress eventually fights over the anxiety and she drifts away to a restless dream.
***
“You’re not sleeping!”, exclaims the red-haired psychologist, Nathalie Pechalat, Arthur recalls immediately, who entered his room without a even a knock. “Pack yourself, we’re leaving.”, she commands. “And hurry.”
She pauses at the door frames, taking a long glance at Arthur, as if she wants to say something more, but Arthur isn’t looking at her, already busy with packing.
He knows it will be her and a dark-haired, muscled Frenchmen, Fabian Bourzat, waiting for him just outside his room. It’s a constant now, they’re always somewhere close to him, ready to react.
Sometimes he wonders how it would be to feel something toward them, a hatred maybe. Anything at all, just a little emotions.
But it won’t happen.
Arthur hisses, when a flash of pain goes through his leg, a joint screaming for better treatment.
“Lewis!”, a sharp voice of Bourzat hurries him and Arthur leaves the room, a single suitcase in his hand.
They go down by a lift, to the underground parking lot, where a dark blue van is waiting for them. Arthur takes a place on the back of it without a word.
He shifts himself to the most comfortable position, which is possible with handcuffs and shot-through, still uncured knee-cap. Strangely, the smell of car sooths him and Arthur feels his falling asleep.
He doesn’t try to fight it; the new destination doesn’t make any difference anyway.
***
Eames is dreaming. It happens rarely without being hooked to the Pasiv, at least last times. What is more, is a lucid dream, which is even more rare thing for him, he’d never been able to stay lucid while in normal REM stage.
Every conscious part of him is begging him to kill himself and wake up, because he shouldn’t have been dreaming about such things, not after what happened.
But Eames always preferred instinct to intelligence and it’s telling him right now not to wake up, to stay under with Arthur.
Because is Arthur, Eames is dreaming about.
With all the glory of the best point man in business, sharp line of his body in a beige suit, the outline of his Glock 17 in the holster.
Only his eyes are soft, so soft Eames saw only a couple of times. It’s like looking into two lakes of melted chocolate, a promise of delicious and forbidden feast and Eames lets himself sink in this gaze, just for a moment.
The projection of Arthur reaches a hand toward him and the forger takes it, the sensation of touching those slender, yet string fingers, making him shiver.
“Why did you do that?”, words escape Eames’s throat involuntary. “Why did you betray us?”
The look in Arthur’s eyes are sad, but calm. “I wouldn’t do that without a reason.”, he answers and Eames holds his breath, because he’s sure somehow he’ll find out what the reason is.
And then he wakes up.
Not by willingly, of course. It’s a cold touch of a gun barrel of his neck, what brings him back to the real world. His head is laying on the table top, one cheek pressed firmly to it and his whole body is protesting against such a strange position.
“Stand up.”, a cold voice orders and Eames obeys slowly, his legs feeling numb.
They lead him white corridors to the lift and there’s Ariadne, guarded by one man and she’s so small, so petite, no light in her usually bright eyes.
She tries to smile to him and Eames realizes he must looks like a shit; he forces himself to answer with smile, to reassure her that everything will be fine.
Even though he’s sure it won’t.
There’s a van waiting for them in underground parking lot, with four another armed men standing around it. One of them opens the slide doors, revealing the inside.
And the whole world seems to freeze.
At least Eames feels so, as inside the van, there’s Arthur sitting, clearly asleep, his usually sliced-back hair falling in free curls, the huge sunglasses still covering half of his face.
Eames wants to check the reality, the picture in front of him just fucking impossible.
Maybe he is dead, a ridiculous thought passes in Eames’s mind just to disappear a second later. It feels like eternity, Ariadne frozen beside him, Arthur breathing softly on the car seat and the forger vaguely wonders if they’ll stay like that forever.
And that’s when Ariadne reacts.
“You fucking bastard!”, she yells and before anyone can stop her manages to climb into the car and hit Arthur hard in face. The sunglasses falls down and his right cheek starts to bleed, as the skin is cut with metal of handcuffs, and Eames can’t stop but admire the fragile architect, who managed to make bleed the best point man in business. Thoughts soon disappear, though, when Arthur doesn’t react, merely opens his eyes.
It’s fucking unhealthy, Eames thinks, staring and those eyes. Too many shocks in limited amount of time can be the cause of heart attack..
The clarity of Arthur’s eyes isn’t there; they are extremely redden, but it’s not what shocks Eames the most. Both pupils are extremely dilated, they’re the size of a pin, but it’s also not what scares the forger.
The most terrifying is the emptiness of Arthur’s look, the complete emotionlesness of his gaze, like he isn’t looking at people, who he’s known for a long time and who he betrayed.
“Move!”, a barked order tears Eames from the dark thoughts and the forger takes a seat, his eyes fixed on Arthur’s.
They must hurt like a hell, Eames realizes, when Arthur first squints and then covers his eyes with the hand. Apparently Ariadne notices that too, because she suddenly leans closer to the point man and gently brushes his cheek.
“Arthur…”, she says quietly, but hard a “Stop it.” put together with an aimed gun silences her.
They are forced to take seats in front of Arthur, so Eames can’t look at him, can’t check if there’ll be any kind of emotion on his handsome face.
“Just try to move”, one of men warns him, when he wants to look back. The gun is pointed at Ariadne and even though Eames knows they can’t and won’t hurt them, Ariadne’s terrified gaze it’s enough to makes him still.
“I know what you are thinking right now.”, hearing Arthur’s voice is so surprising that Eames doesn’t believe own ears for a moment.
“Quietude!”, yells one of men and Eames hears Arthur taking a sharp inhale and become silence.
They drive them to the airport, where a small private plane is awaiting and Eames has to admit that the efficiency of movements of their captors is amazing. Nor him, neither Ariadne have a chance to take a further look on the outside, the plane, or, what’s the most important, on Arthur.
“The flight will be long.”, a red-haired woman tells them, as soon as they are placed in the plane. She looks carefully at Ariadne and something flickers in her brown eyes. “Try to rest.”, she adds, her tone gentler and leans toward the petite architect, as she want to embrace her. Instead of that she brushes away the disheveled hairs and whispers something, so softly that Eames can’t catch a single word.
And then they are left alone.
It could be stupid behavior, but they’re in the plane right now, handcuffed and exhausted and Eames blesses silently the opportunity to speak with Ariadne without someone glaring at them suspiciously.
“What did she say.”, he demands, watching puzzled Ariadne carefully.
“She said we shouldn’t have blamed Arthur.”, she answers quietly and raises her eyes to look at Eames. There’s an unspoken question in them, mixed with hope and Eames feels his composure finally cracks.
“Damn it.”, he says equally quietly, but it doesn’t help calming his nerves. “For fanden! Porkadus!”, he yells and hits the back of his seat.
“Stop it!”, Ariadne reacts, her eyes wide and to her huge surprise Eames does stop, breathing unevenly and rapidly.
“Swearing in any language won’t help.”, she says firmly and the forger is once again astonished with the force of fragile architect. “Do you think they…”, this time Ariadne stumbles at words, the unfinished sentence hovering in the air.
“I don’t know.”, he answers to the floor, unable to take even a short glance at Ariadne. He knows she would see hope in his eyes and he doesn’t want her to notice that.
Because he can be wrong and maybe, maybe, Arthur betrayed them coldheartedly, maybe he has never cared of either of them.
But something is telling Eames that isn’t true and this “something” isn’t just his feeling toward Arthur, however they are.
The ability to read people through is the base of being a forger; Eames is the best one, so he’s more than capable to read almost everybody. Arthur was always a tough case, especially at the beginning, but during the years of working together Eames learned to catch even the slightest signs of emotions, the little twitch of mouth, a soft change of pupils size, anything.
It always made him feel proud of himself, as even Mal wasn’t able to see through Arthur’s mask, not when he didn’t want it.
But today…
There was nothing.
Absolute zero, both in his face and his voice, like he doesn’t feel anything at all.
***
The phone ring startles Cobb, who is watching TV news, with anxiety listening dispatches about situation in Paris.
There are at least three casualties of riots by now and the situation is getting worse.
“Hello”, he answers immediately.
“Mr. Cobb, how fast will you be able to come at work?”, Meryl Davis, his boss, on the other side of the line asks in the way of greeting.
“It depends how fast I can find someone to take care of kids.”, he answers carefully.
“Fine. We’ve got a couple of hours before we have a subject, so take your time.”, Meryl says and finishes the conversation before Cobb can ask about anything.
It takes about three hours to find someone to take care of children and get to the Institute. As soon as Cobb enters his workplace he knows something is different than usual.
It’s gonna be interesting, he thinks, when he enters the room, where Meryl is already wanting for him.
“Take a seat.”, she almost commands, without looking up from some paperwork.
“Have you heard AE?, Meryl’s sudden question takes Cobb aback and he’s silent for a moment, thinking what he should say.
Of course he has heard about this substation, even though he shouldn’t have, at least not from any legal source of information. Still lying seems strangely improper, so he decides to a careful:
“I’ve heard rumors.”
Meryl finally stops flipping through pages and looks at him with a hint of interest. “I should have known no secret is really safe. So what exactly did rumors say?”
“That it can somehow turn off emotions, making from a person a perfect killer, without remorse, fearless and highly efficient.”, Cobb speaks hesitantly. “And that creation of it was a complete accident, the chemist who created it wanted to make a new Dream compound.”
“Is that everything?”, Meryl asks.
“No. I’ve heard also it was created in our lab.”, Cobb says carefully, observing every movement of his boss. She shifts her position, placing elbows on the top of her desk and sighs.
“The second part is true.”, she admits slowly. “The first one though…”, she pauses for a moment as if for a thought. “The truth is this it can eradicate all emotions a human being can feel, both the most basic one like fear and the most complicated, like love or hate. But it doesn’t turn a person to a perfect killer.”
The certainty in her voice makes Cobb realizes something. “It means someone took it.”, he says quietly.
“Rather got it.”, Meryl amends him in disgust and shakes her head. “Nevertheless, right now he’s on plane, which is flying to Los Angeles. We’ll get him to run a couple of test, we need to check how the inability to feel affects Dreams. Here’re basic information about him.”
She passes him files she was looking through a minute ago. They are open on the first page and Cobb’s eyes immediately catches a photo.
It shows Arthur.
Ariadne switches off the radio, feeling completely hopeless. All this information doesn’t help, making her feel just worse. She curls once again and closes her eyes, exhaustion of sleepless night and stress eventually fights over the anxiety and she drifts away to a restless dream.
***
“You’re not sleeping!”, exclaims the red-haired psychologist, Nathalie Pechalat, Arthur recalls immediately, who entered his room without a even a knock. “Pack yourself, we’re leaving.”, she commands. “And hurry.”
She pauses at the door frames, taking a long glance at Arthur, as if she wants to say something more, but Arthur isn’t looking at her, already busy with packing.
He knows it will be her and a dark-haired, muscled Frenchmen, Fabian Bourzat, waiting for him just outside his room. It’s a constant now, they’re always somewhere close to him, ready to react.
Sometimes he wonders how it would be to feel something toward them, a hatred maybe. Anything at all, just a little emotions.
But it won’t happen.
Arthur hisses, when a flash of pain goes through his leg, a joint screaming for better treatment.
“Lewis!”, a sharp voice of Bourzat hurries him and Arthur leaves the room, a single suitcase in his hand.
They go down by a lift, to the underground parking lot, where a dark blue van is waiting for them. Arthur takes a place on the back of it without a word.
He shifts himself to the most comfortable position, which is possible with handcuffs and shot-through, still uncured knee-cap. Strangely, the smell of car sooths him and Arthur feels his falling asleep.
He doesn’t try to fight it; the new destination doesn’t make any difference anyway.
***
Eames is dreaming. It happens rarely without being hooked to the Pasiv, at least last times. What is more, is a lucid dream, which is even more rare thing for him, he’d never been able to stay lucid while in normal REM stage.
Every conscious part of him is begging him to kill himself and wake up, because he shouldn’t have been dreaming about such things, not after what happened.
But Eames always preferred instinct to intelligence and it’s telling him right now not to wake up, to stay under with Arthur.
Because is Arthur, Eames is dreaming about.
With all the glory of the best point man in business, sharp line of his body in a beige suit, the outline of his Glock 17 in the holster.
Only his eyes are soft, so soft Eames saw only a couple of times. It’s like looking into two lakes of melted chocolate, a promise of delicious and forbidden feast and Eames lets himself sink in this gaze, just for a moment.
The projection of Arthur reaches a hand toward him and the forger takes it, the sensation of touching those slender, yet string fingers, making him shiver.
“Why did you do that?”, words escape Eames’s throat involuntary. “Why did you betray us?”
The look in Arthur’s eyes are sad, but calm. “I wouldn’t do that without a reason.”, he answers and Eames holds his breath, because he’s sure somehow he’ll find out what the reason is.
And then he wakes up.
Not by willingly, of course. It’s a cold touch of a gun barrel of his neck, what brings him back to the real world. His head is laying on the table top, one cheek pressed firmly to it and his whole body is protesting against such a strange position.
“Stand up.”, a cold voice orders and Eames obeys slowly, his legs feeling numb.
They lead him white corridors to the lift and there’s Ariadne, guarded by one man and she’s so small, so petite, no light in her usually bright eyes.
She tries to smile to him and Eames realizes he must looks like a shit; he forces himself to answer with smile, to reassure her that everything will be fine.
Even though he’s sure it won’t.
There’s a van waiting for them in underground parking lot, with four another armed men standing around it. One of them opens the slide doors, revealing the inside.
And the whole world seems to freeze.
At least Eames feels so, as inside the van, there’s Arthur sitting, clearly asleep, his usually sliced-back hair falling in free curls, the huge sunglasses still covering half of his face.
Eames wants to check the reality, the picture in front of him just fucking impossible.
Maybe he is dead, a ridiculous thought passes in Eames’s mind just to disappear a second later. It feels like eternity, Ariadne frozen beside him, Arthur breathing softly on the car seat and the forger vaguely wonders if they’ll stay like that forever.
And that’s when Ariadne reacts.
“You fucking bastard!”, she yells and before anyone can stop her manages to climb into the car and hit Arthur hard in face. The sunglasses falls down and his right cheek starts to bleed, as the skin is cut with metal of handcuffs, and Eames can’t stop but admire the fragile architect, who managed to make bleed the best point man in business. Thoughts soon disappear, though, when Arthur doesn’t react, merely opens his eyes.
It’s fucking unhealthy, Eames thinks, staring and those eyes. Too many shocks in limited amount of time can be the cause of heart attack..
The clarity of Arthur’s eyes isn’t there; they are extremely redden, but it’s not what shocks Eames the most. Both pupils are extremely dilated, they’re the size of a pin, but it’s also not what scares the forger.
The most terrifying is the emptiness of Arthur’s look, the complete emotionlesness of his gaze, like he isn’t looking at people, who he’s known for a long time and who he betrayed.
“Move!”, a barked order tears Eames from the dark thoughts and the forger takes a seat, his eyes fixed on Arthur’s.
They must hurt like a hell, Eames realizes, when Arthur first squints and then covers his eyes with the hand. Apparently Ariadne notices that too, because she suddenly leans closer to the point man and gently brushes his cheek.
“Arthur…”, she says quietly, but hard a “Stop it.” put together with an aimed gun silences her.
They are forced to take seats in front of Arthur, so Eames can’t look at him, can’t check if there’ll be any kind of emotion on his handsome face.
“Just try to move”, one of men warns him, when he wants to look back. The gun is pointed at Ariadne and even though Eames knows they can’t and won’t hurt them, Ariadne’s terrified gaze it’s enough to makes him still.
“I know what you are thinking right now.”, hearing Arthur’s voice is so surprising that Eames doesn’t believe own ears for a moment.
“Quietude!”, yells one of men and Eames hears Arthur taking a sharp inhale and become silence.
They drive them to the airport, where a small private plane is awaiting and Eames has to admit that the efficiency of movements of their captors is amazing. Nor him, neither Ariadne have a chance to take a further look on the outside, the plane, or, what’s the most important, on Arthur.
“The flight will be long.”, a red-haired woman tells them, as soon as they are placed in the plane. She looks carefully at Ariadne and something flickers in her brown eyes. “Try to rest.”, she adds, her tone gentler and leans toward the petite architect, as she want to embrace her. Instead of that she brushes away the disheveled hairs and whispers something, so softly that Eames can’t catch a single word.
And then they are left alone.
It could be stupid behavior, but they’re in the plane right now, handcuffed and exhausted and Eames blesses silently the opportunity to speak with Ariadne without someone glaring at them suspiciously.
“What did she say.”, he demands, watching puzzled Ariadne carefully.
“She said we shouldn’t have blamed Arthur.”, she answers quietly and raises her eyes to look at Eames. There’s an unspoken question in them, mixed with hope and Eames feels his composure finally cracks.
“Damn it.”, he says equally quietly, but it doesn’t help calming his nerves. “For fanden! Porkadus!”, he yells and hits the back of his seat.
“Stop it!”, Ariadne reacts, her eyes wide and to her huge surprise Eames does stop, breathing unevenly and rapidly.
“Swearing in any language won’t help.”, she says firmly and the forger is once again astonished with the force of fragile architect. “Do you think they…”, this time Ariadne stumbles at words, the unfinished sentence hovering in the air.
“I don’t know.”, he answers to the floor, unable to take even a short glance at Ariadne. He knows she would see hope in his eyes and he doesn’t want her to notice that.
Because he can be wrong and maybe, maybe, Arthur betrayed them coldheartedly, maybe he has never cared of either of them.
But something is telling Eames that isn’t true and this “something” isn’t just his feeling toward Arthur, however they are.
The ability to read people through is the base of being a forger; Eames is the best one, so he’s more than capable to read almost everybody. Arthur was always a tough case, especially at the beginning, but during the years of working together Eames learned to catch even the slightest signs of emotions, the little twitch of mouth, a soft change of pupils size, anything.
It always made him feel proud of himself, as even Mal wasn’t able to see through Arthur’s mask, not when he didn’t want it.
But today…
There was nothing.
Absolute zero, both in his face and his voice, like he doesn’t feel anything at all.
***
The phone ring startles Cobb, who is watching TV news, with anxiety listening dispatches about situation in Paris.
There are at least three casualties of riots by now and the situation is getting worse.
“Hello”, he answers immediately.
“Mr. Cobb, how fast will you be able to come at work?”, Meryl Davis, his boss, on the other side of the line asks in the way of greeting.
“It depends how fast I can find someone to take care of kids.”, he answers carefully.
“Fine. We’ve got a couple of hours before we have a subject, so take your time.”, Meryl says and finishes the conversation before Cobb can ask about anything.
It takes about three hours to find someone to take care of children and get to the Institute. As soon as Cobb enters his workplace he knows something is different than usual.
It’s gonna be interesting, he thinks, when he enters the room, where Meryl is already wanting for him.
“Take a seat.”, she almost commands, without looking up from some paperwork.
“Have you heard AE?, Meryl’s sudden question takes Cobb aback and he’s silent for a moment, thinking what he should say.
Of course he has heard about this substation, even though he shouldn’t have, at least not from any legal source of information. Still lying seems strangely improper, so he decides to a careful:
“I’ve heard rumors.”
Meryl finally stops flipping through pages and looks at him with a hint of interest. “I should have known no secret is really safe. So what exactly did rumors say?”
“That it can somehow turn off emotions, making from a person a perfect killer, without remorse, fearless and highly efficient.”, Cobb speaks hesitantly. “And that creation of it was a complete accident, the chemist who created it wanted to make a new Dream compound.”
“Is that everything?”, Meryl asks.
“No. I’ve heard also it was created in our lab.”, Cobb says carefully, observing every movement of his boss. She shifts her position, placing elbows on the top of her desk and sighs.
“The second part is true.”, she admits slowly. “The first one though…”, she pauses for a moment as if for a thought. “The truth is this it can eradicate all emotions a human being can feel, both the most basic one like fear and the most complicated, like love or hate. But it doesn’t turn a person to a perfect killer.”
The certainty in her voice makes Cobb realizes something. “It means someone took it.”, he says quietly.
“Rather got it.”, Meryl amends him in disgust and shakes her head. “Nevertheless, right now he’s on plane, which is flying to Los Angeles. We’ll get him to run a couple of test, we need to check how the inability to feel affects Dreams. Here’re basic information about him.”
She passes him files she was looking through a minute ago. They are open on the first page and Cobb’s eyes immediately catches a photo.
It shows Arthur.