You Can Fall if You Want To (Inception; Arthur/Ariadne)
She’d forgotten that it could rain in L.A.
The city looks like an aquarium when framed by the airport windows; gray and waterlogged and everyone swimming about looking for shelter. Ariadne sits in a lobby watching people around her being greeted by family members. She sees Eames pass her by, a stranger in the terminal, and they don’t spare each other a look (but she can see something in his face; just a little bit haunted, just a little bit dead). Sirens blare outside and her totem bites into her palm.
To have success and failure all in one moment doesn’t seem real at all.
She never planned ahead for this moment; finds herself waiting for an update she’ll never get. The most she can do is find the nearest ATM and buy herself a plane ticket back to France. First class - extravagant and useless because she has the money now and all her life she’s been told it makes thing easy to forget.
“Ariadne.”
She looks up at the sound of Arthur’s voice, at the young man laden down with expensive suitcases (including a silver one, and he carries it like it’s burning away his fingers). He sits down beside her, leans into her, and they don’t have to pretend anymore. Their shoulders press into each other - searching out warmth in a cold airport filled with cold people.
“Miles is going to the hospital.” His sentences are precise and clipped, and Ariadne can tell he’s fighting for every word. There is tension to his words, and they threaten to snap under the weight, crumble into bits and pieces of what he means to say.
“And where are you going?”
“On another plane.”
Neither of them question why she follows him (he seems surprised, but only for a second; relief is next, and she wonders how he can look so young). He buys her ticket for her and she entwines her hands without permission - but he holds on ever tighter, because this is reality, and he need something to make him want it.
The plane ride is too long, too dull. They grieve privately; Ariadne scribbles in a journal that has never seen any use and passes it to Arthur’s hands.
I’m sorry.
He hands it back; his handwriting is gorgeous.
Me too.
-------
“I know this house.”
Arthur stares at her, confused.
“I’ve been here - not in reality, but…” Ariadne looks up. Words sit on Arthur’s lips but he does not say them; will not question why she was brought here in dreams.
(And she will not tell that she was nothing but a burglar).
Arthur has a key; turns it in the lock and sends away the woman inside with all the charm he does not feel.
“The nanny,” he says.
Ariadne watches as Arthur navigates the house as if he were the one who built it; intimately familiar with every line and corner, as if the blueprints were written somewhere on his skin. She, on the other hand, is lost in the reality of it. Sees how vague and imperfect Cobb’s dreams of it were, unable to compare to the realness of the particular texture, particular smell that makes this building stand as a home (even if it’s now far, far emptier than it ever should have been).
She follows him into a room and sees a blonde girl sleeping soundly in a bed. She follows him into another and a blonde boy is curled up in a crib he is quickly outgrowing.
They go into the kitchen and Arthur starts making coffee, and Ariadne waits for him. He sips at the bitterness and sighs.
“James and Phillipa. I - I’m their godfather.”
It rushes out of him like a secret, as if it were bottled up forever within that wiry body of his. She sees how old he looks, again, and Ariadne wonders at the hint of fear that lingers in his face. Begging her, silently, not to run.
“Yeah,” she says, and there is a gentle, silent question along with it.
So?
Ariadne unplugs the coffee maker and starts boiling a pot of water. She can feel Arthur’s eyes on her and for the first time since their worlds ended she smiles.
“Well? It’s almost noon and I haven’t got one clue where Cobb kept his macaroni and cheese.” A beat. “Kids do like macaroni and cheese, right?”
Arthur laughs inside a cupboard.
------
“Merde!”
“Ariadne!”
“What?” Ariadne balances Phillipa on her hip whilst trying to nurse her cut finger - it’s a delicate process.
“Did you forget who their mom was? French is their first language!”
“Oh, shit.”
“Ariadne!”
She laughs at Arthur’s high strung indignation. He is sprawled out in the living room with James, trying to help the boy through some sort of puzzle that is far ahead of his age level. His hair is mussed and he wears a pair of casual slacks and a simple button down shirt - the word home is written in his clothes.
------
“I’ve talked to Miles. He’ll be here in a couple of weeks. He’s… tying up some loose ends.”
“Until then?”
“I’ll be here.”
“Then so will I.”
------
“Phillipa? Do you want to go play with your brother so I can finish cutting this up?”
It’s an almost laughable request - Phillipa hasn’t left Ariadne’s side since Arthur introduced them (she won’t think about why that is - ignores her own dark hair and the sound of her own voice when she sings lullabies in French). But Phillipa manages to wriggle her way out of Ariadne’s grasp and jumps on her brother in a Cobb family kitten pile.
“You didn’t have to stay, you know.”
Ariadne nearly leaps out of her own skin; Arthur’s breath snakes down her neck and strokes each vertebrae in her spine.
“Don’t sneak up on me like that! I could’ve cut you instead of the carrot.”
She turns to face him, tilts her face up so she can see his eyes and not his ribs. “And I’ve got at least two months left on my leave of absence from school. Might as well use it for something.”
His hands grip the counter on either side of her, and it’s a cage of his arms, and she likes it so much more than she should. “I didn’t mean to drag you here. I wasn’t thinking clearly. I just… I just needed someone.”
Ariadne smiles, just a small bit, and she’s about to say something when Arthur begins again. She can see all sorts of things fighting for a chance at his voice.
“You could be back in school, building again. It’s where you should be.”
She catches something in his expression and frowns. “You don’t want me here.”
“It isn’t what you want.”
Ariadne puts a hand on Arthur’s chest (and his ribs dwarf her fingers, reminders of how small she is to this world) and pushes him back, and he folds under the nonexistent pressure. “Don’t tell me what I want.”
------
“Thanks for all your help, but I can get you a job if you really don’t want to go back to school yet. Legal, even.”
“Stop trying to get rid of me, Arthur.”
No matter how many times he tells her to go, he always seems a little relieved when she doesn’t.
It’s what makes her stay.
------
They get a call from Miles. He’ll be on the next flight out and Arthur had better not have done anything to Ariadne or he’ll bloody well wish he was in limbo right now and he may be an old man but don’t think he’s forgotten how to completely fuck with a person’s subconscious, Arthur.
“He’s been under a lot of stress,” Ariadne offers as she tries not to laugh and end up waking James, who’s fallen asleep against her chest. Arthur sits across from them, stares as if he’s trying to imprint this image in his memory.
(He is.)
“Ariadne. I never thanked you.”
“You don’t need to.” She strokes James’ head, brushing flaxen hair out of his eyes. “I just don’t understand something.”
“What?”
“What are you so afraid of?”
Arthur is silent for so long Ariadne assumes she will not get an answer. When he does speak, it’s with quiet words that are more breath than language. “I’ve had to leave them so many times. After Mal died, Cobb was run out of the country. When I wasn’t on a job I came here.” He sighs. “One day, I’ll stay. Miles can’t take care of them forever.
“When that day comes, it’ll be no more dreams, no more extraction.” He looks down at folded hands. “I didn’t want to drag you into that.”
Now, she understands - understands what Arthur is willing to give in order to do this for Cobb.
“That day isn’t here yet.”
But I’ll be there when it comes.
------
Later, Arthur plants a line of kisses down her neck, his lips leaving spots of warmth on perfect lily skin. Ariadne traces cities that don’t exist on his forearms.
They both think of dark haired children who live in the distant future and say nothing about it.
------
Miles arrives and they all hug and talk and Arthur and Ariadne find it nearly impossible to tear themselves from the children. They stand outside of the house for an entire hour, staring at its personal construction, the way Dominic and Mallorie Cobb are in every piece of woodwork and every piece of roof tile.
Arthur’s fingers drum a funeral song into her lower back.
“Dom should be here,” she says quietly.
“Yeah.” Arthur sighs, and grasps her hand in his own. Tomorrow will be planes and Paris and work. And there will be another tomorrow, soon or far away, when it will be homework, children’s parties, and beating off potential boyfriends with a stick. He isn’t sure which one he looks forward to more. “I know.”