When Regrets Take The Place of Dreams - Inception - Arthur/Cobb
Title: When Regrets Take The Place of Dreams
Pairing: Arthur/Cobb, Eames
Word Count: 3906
Rating: PG-13
A/N: This takes a few liberties with how the technology seems to work in the movie.
Summary: After the Inception job is over, Cobb retires. He is called out of that peaceful environment by a desperate appeal for help.
With dappled sunlight on his face, it's difficult to imagine turning back to the dream world. There is still the taste of ice-cream in his mouth, and he can see his kids playing in the park right in front of him. They're racing each other on the swings, smiles wide, and their laughter is the best kind of music. The bright colours of the play equipment should be harsh to the eye, overly jolly; for so long, Cobb had to avoid being within seeing or hearing distance of play-parks and fairgrounds. Too much joy. Seeing it had been like an overdose.
Yet he's back now, and he has his family, and they are happy. He had forgotten what that felt like.
"I can't do it," he says, and the words sound like a betrayal. He looks down at his hands, fingers interlocked, and wishes he knew how to say he was sorry. Wishes he knew how to mean it. "I quit - I told you that."
Beside him, Eames shifts position on the park bench. Cobb will only watch him out of his peripheral vision: if he looks at him head-on, he's sure he'll change his mind. He can't do that. For his kids' sake, he just can't.
"I wouldn't be here if we didn't need you," Eames says. "You're the best."
"I was the best," Cobb corrects - because it's different now. He hasn't walked in another person's dream for over a year. It needs to be this way. "I'm staying out of trouble now. I've got my kids to think about."
"Sounds dull," Eames points out. It's true, in its own way. Domestic life is nothing compared to the adrenaline rush of the job, but that's really not the point. "The bottom line is that we can't do this without you. Arthur is too proud to come and ask for help, but that doesn't mean that he doesn't need it. Our current employers are very demanding."
Eames must be desperate if he's willing to bring Arthur into play; he usually doesn't bother with the emotional blackmail this early on. Then again, in the past he's never needed to. Cobb hangs his head and listens to his children's laughter, listens to time ticking away. He's lost too much of their childhood already - he's not risking it again.
"If it's that desperate, tell Arthur to come and get me himself," he suggests - because, then, he couldn't say no. He's turned down Eames before, and he's turned Ariadne away when she's turned up on his doorstep with a bright new plan. Arthur hasn't tried, won't try. If he comes, it's serious.
"I told him to do it. He wouldn't," Eames says. The disapproval in his voice is impossible to mistake.
Cobb nods, mostly to himself, because he isn't surprised by that. Not one bit. Arthur is more than capable of being stubborn when he wants to, just for the sake of it. "How is he?" he asks, even if it burns his tongue.
In his peripheral vision, he sees Eames gesture in a way that tells him nothing at all. "Oh, you know..."
Cobb glances up, a smile with no humour on his face: "I don't know, actually. We're not speaking a lot lately."
Eames lounges on the bench, looking far more pleased with himself than the situation requires. "And I wonder whose fault that is."
"It's mine. I'm not hiding that." If he had tried a little harder, been a little more open, then Arthur might be here with him today. Might be here instead of running around Europe to prove a point. "But he's the one running. I'm right here."
The look that Eames shoots him is filled with disbelief, enough to make Cobb twinge with guilt. "Yes. Right here, with no intention of coming to help us. I'll let him know."
Cobb could argue more - they could argue all day, in fact - but then Philipa calls for him, wanting an extra push on the swing. "I'll be there in a minute, honey," he calls, standing up.
There's no way to say goodbye; there's no desire to say 'I'm sorry'.
*
Past midnight, Cobb's eyes snap open. Darkness hems him in, but the ringing of the phone pierces right through his brain like a shard of sunlight. Groaning, he clings to his bed, hand fisting in the sheets, but the ringing doesn't stop.
The cold air is like a physical attack as he stumbles along the hall to pick up the phone where it blares accusingly at him. Holding it against his ear, when he answers his voice is less than friendly: "This better be important."
A long, static pause.
"Hello? Who's there?" he says. If this is a prank call, he will personally hunt down the fucker behind it.
"It's me," Arthur says, and the irritation vanishes.
Standing in his boxers in his dark hallway, Cobb is already mapping out travel routes and flights and babysitters. "What's going on? Where are you?"
"We need your help," Arthur says.
His voice sounds as if he hasn't used it in days. Something isn't right. It is the middle of the night and he is planning to fly half way around the world if he has to - but it's the sound of Arthur's voice that unsettles him. Raw. Flayed. "Arthur?" he says warily.
There is more at stake here than a tricky job.
"I'm not as good as you." The seconds are trickling past too slowly, too quickly. They need more time. "Please, Dom. Say you'll come."
Something here is dangerous. Cobb's been out of the game for a long time, but his instincts are as sharp as ever: and they are all telling him to put the phone down. Walk away.
Yet it is Arthur.
"Tell me where," he says, knowing that this is something he's going to regret, "and I'll be there. I'll help. I promise."
*
Men in dark glasses and suits meet him off of the airplane and frogmarch him towards a car with tinted windows. Menacing, but he's had worse. He's met Saito, after all.
They blindfold him and bind his wrists behind his back and he lets them, because it's a moot point anyway. Wherever they're taking him it is where he wants to be going. The car smells new and his kidnappers smell like mint. Chewing gum. He can hear them, the wet smack of their mouths even if they don't say a word. Strapped in with a tight belt, he doesn't jerk or shake during the ride, even with its sharp turns and sudden stops.
Eternity passes.
An hour, maybe.
The door opens and cold air rushes into the car, followed by firm hands grabbing his arms. Rougher than they need to be, they push and guide him, stumbling, along a path. The ground in uneven and Cobb can't make sense of anything that's going on: the sound of footsteps alongside him are the only accompaniment. "You could just tell me where we're going," he points out - but they haven't replied to anything that he's said so far. Why start now? "I'm here by choice."
Push, shove. The grating of a door opening. He can tell they've gone inside by the slight increase in temperature, and the way that the slight amount of light creeping through his blindfold vanishes. Down a set of stairs, into a basement, and there are noises, now - voices he recognises and wishes that he didn't. Arthur. Eames. Both of them sounding extraordinarily annoyed to see him.
Thrust onto a wooden chair, uncomfortable and hard, he has his hands untied then retied tightly to the arm-rests, so tight that he can barely twitch.
The blindfold is pulled off, finally, and as he blinks and tries to get used to the dim light the men accompanying him leave.
"Cobb, you idiot," Eames says, and Cobb turns his head to the side in order to see him: Eames is in a predicament rather similar to his own, tied down to an old chair. Arms and legs tied for Eames: Cobb guesses that he's caused enough trouble to need extra restraint. No surprise there.
To the other side, Arthur is bound on a chair of his own, turned to face Cobb's. There is a graze of stubble on his jaw, and Cobb doesn't think he's ever seen him looking so unmaintained and dishevelled before. His hair is an absolute mess. "You shouldn't have come," he says, and it sounds like he's breaking from the inside out.
"You asked me to."
"I had a gun to my head." Arthur's chair squeaks unhappily as he moves in it. "You should've been able to tell something wasn't right."
"I could," Cobb snaps. "I dropped my kids off with their grandparents in the middle of the night, got the first flight out here, allowed myself to get kidnapped, all because I thought 'something wasn't right'. You needed me here."
"No, we didn't. Your children need you."
Eames clears his throat. "I'd actually wager that we need him too. I don't fancy dying here because of your pride, Arthur."
"It isn't pride," Arthur corrects, but he shakes his head and looks down at his lap. Doesn't argue further, as if something in him has deflated. It's odd to see the downturn of his shoulders; Cobb doesn't like it. Not one bit.
"Eames," he says - because he doesn't think that he's going to get much out of Arthur right now. He'll focus on getting them out of this situation alive. Patching up the holes can come later. "What's going on? Why am I here?"
"Remember the job I came to you about earlier this week?" Cobb nods. "We tried it. We failed - and our employers were not best pleased about this. I imagine you've been brought in to do it right."
Cobb tries to fight off the first angry stirrings of guilt; the knowledge that he should have listened to Eames in the first place, that they wouldn't be in this situation if he had come when he had been asked. This isn't the kind of profession a person can turn their back on. Reputations linger; jobs chase you down. The kind of people that want these things done aren't going to take 'no' for an answer.
"What's the job?" he asks.
"Simple enough. There's a girl who witnessed a crime."
"They want to know what happened?"
"They want to change what happened," Eames corrects, with a dry bark of laughter that Cobb has never heard from him before. "Rich family. Apparently the darling son was at the scene of the crime, and they would rather that the star witness didn't recall that detail."
Shit.
"It can't be done," Arthur says. "We tried. It didn't work."
"It can be done," Cobb insists. It's never been tried before, tampering with genuine memories, but it's close enough to inception that they could try it. Cutting edge. That's what he used to be good at. "It's just altering what's already there. Like painting a wall that's already been put up. All we have to do is confuse what is reality versus what comes from her mind."
"It's nothing like that," Arthur protests.
He's kind of got a point.
"We can do it," Cobb says. "It's not like we've got much of a choice."
Despite the dark, despite the danger, and despite the glowers that he is receiving from Arthur, Cobb has to fight back a smile - heart racing, mind plotting, he feels more alive than he has done in months.
*
Two layers deep in the subject's mind, and Cobb is wishing for home. There is blood on the carpet and screams in the air and the shattered, broken whispers of a girl's breathing. Sounds simple on paper: replay the memories, over and over. Remove the required details piece by piece. Repeat as necessary until the idea takes and she changes the details for them.
In practice, they have spent hour after hour watching the murder as the girl remembers it. Each replay soaks their clothes with blood. Cobb's socks are soggy in his shoes.
"How much longer do we have?" Arthur asks, crouched in their hiding spot.
Cobb shakes his head: it's difficult to read the time, here. "Another few run-throughs. I think we're finally getting it."
"Slow work," Eames complains, wearing the murderer's face.
"It's all about repetition," Cobb insists - as if he knows what he's talking about, as if he knows that this will work out. It will. It has to, because out in the real world their bodies are in a whole lot of danger. If she wakes up and she still remembers correctly, they aren't going to live long enough to try again. Their employers have made that much perfectly clear.
"Let's get on with it then," Eames says.
The blood seeps back into the fallen body and the victim rewinds out of the room; the knife cleans itself. Furniture mends and they start again.
The projection of the victim enters, already crying. Their subject is falling apart in the corner. Traumatised. Her mind is more unstable than it had been when they first entered. Cobb tries not to feel guilty: this isn't his concern. He's here to do a job and keep Eames and Arthur safe. Someone else is going to have to pick up the pieces.
Eames enters next, knife in hand, shouting. Replaying the real situation: but clearer, this time. No room for ambiguity in this dream. "You deserve to die for this, do you understand?" he yells.
The forgery isn't perfect - there hasn't been the time to study. Yet it'll do. In the corner, the girl watches from her hiding space, hands pressed to her temples, rocking back and forth. "Not again not again not again," she whispers.
She's barely out of her teens.
This is making Cobb's skin itch.
"This isn't right," Arthur hisses. "We can't do this."
Cobb blocks him out as thoroughly as he blocks out the girl. "You got us into this mess," he whispers back. The shouting is intensifying: the first drops of blood have begun to fall. "I'm getting us out."
Right on cue, the projection of their employer's son tries to run into the room - and Cobb knows what happens once he's in there, joining in on the fun. Their quaint little kidnappers had never bothered to mention the fact that he is fucking guilty. Vicious. Blood-thirsty. It's not their problem. He grabs him by the wrist before he can enter and pulls him back, away from the door, away from the crime scene.
"What are you doing?" the boy asks. Early twenties. If this is what he's up to at this stage in his life, Cobb hates to think about where the future is going to lead him. "I've got some place I need to be."
"No, you don't," Cobb insists. Talking to the projection of a broken girl's subconscious makes him feel like he's bashing his head against a brick wall: this isn't going to work. They can repeat and repeat and repeat and go deeper and deeper and deeper, but it's not going to work. This isn't inception; this is fucking magic. "Listen to me: you're not here. You were never here."
"What are you talking about?" He struggles against Cobb as the screams echo out of the room behind them - but Arthur is there, stoic and steady, to grasp on tight and anchor him. "I've got somewhere to be."
"No, you don't," Cobb insists. He looks down and tries to catch the projection's eyes, all too aware that one wrong move could end up with the pair of them attracting the worst kind of attention. He's made it out of limbo twice; he doesn't think he'll be able to keep his sanity a third time around. "Remember? You're far away from here. Busy."
"I am?"
"Yeah. You don't even know these people. C'mon, you're partying tonight. Why would you be in a beat-up place like this? You're better than that."
Playing up to the girl's assumptions about the boy makes this easier: they don't need to come up with an air-tight alibi, just need to play into her own doubts. Smudge her memories. Arthur's arms stay snug around the projection's chest, refusing to budge even if he isn't struggling half as much any more. "This is nothing to do with you," Arthur says, speaking right into the projection's ear. "You're not here."
Behind them, screams are echoing in that blood-soaked room. Cobb thinks that they are breaking Eames's psyche down second by dreaming second: he's going to disappear for a long while after this job, fading into the map of the world without leaving a single pin-point behind.
"You aren't anything to with this," Cobb insists.
The screaming stops.
There is a thump as Eames drops the knife.
It's time to take it from the top, again.
*
When their eyes open to reality, Cobb blinks in the dimness of the court-house bathroom. Bodyguards stand like black shadows around them, arms crossed, eyes narrowed.
"Well?" one of them asks. "Is it done?"
"We'll find out," Cobb says. She's testifying in an hour. He looks down at her slumbering body, beginning to rouse itself. "We've got to get out of here. Now."
They are packed away and hustled out of the room before her eyes have even opened. She will find herself in an empty public bathroom, the tap still running at the sink. Like ghosts, they will never have been there.
*
Her testimony is dazed and confused, with blotted holes of logic burning through it like acid. Nothing makes sense, and from her scrunched, unhappy face as she is cross-examined it is clear that she knows this.
Cobb watches the reports of the trial on the television in his hotel room, rubbing at his wrists with his hands. They are aching; by now, he should know better than to struggle when he gets tied up, but it's been a while. Maybe too long. He's not as used as he once was to dealing with employers who have no moral issues with leaving him dead.
He looks up from the newsreader as the door to his hotel room opens. Arthur - the bloodied layers of his suit have been lost, leaving him in a cheap t-shirt bought from a supermarket. Ten dollar jeans. Cobb is in more or less the same attire himself, but shopping hadn't been high on their agenda after being released. Getting the fuck out of town? That had seemed way more important.
"Eames is gone," Arthur says. He dumps a paper bag smelling of Chinese take-out onto the bed, and Cobb falls on it. It's been a long time since he last ate - probably longer for Arthur. "His room's empty, anyway."
Arthur went to Eames before he went to Cobb.
Everything has changed.
"Didn't think he'd stick around," Cobb confesses. "Not after that." With a blood-soaked mind, he's not surprised if Eames will run and run and run until he isn't sure where he is any more: until his legs hurt and his lungs ache and his mind swirls.
Arthur sits with him and, for a while, they don't talk. They eat and they watch the television, which is reporting on other stories by now: depressing, big stories. Floods and earthquakes. It isn't long before Cobb has to turn it off, stabbing at the remote. It mutes the entire room. He can hear the sound of Arthur breathing, chewing, swallowing. He can hear his own heartbeat.
He remembers when this used to be companionable; they didn't talk because they didn't want to, not because there was no way to start.
They finish and Arthur clears empty cartons away while Cobb wishes he had a book - something to take his mind far away from this place. He'll be back home within twenty hour hours. Back to normality.
The thought doesn't please him half as much as it should.
"I want to say thank you," Arthur says, coming back to sit with him on the bed. He pulls one leg up onto the mattress, arms looping around it. Cobb watches him cautiously, thinking how odd it is to see Arthur without his shoes on - and that's not what he should be thinking about right now. Focus. "You didn't need to come."
"Yeah, I did," Cobb insists. This isn't something that they need to argue about; not everything needs to be put into words. "You were in trouble."
You needed me.
Now the job is done and he isn't needed any more. Time to retreat and leave Arthur to discover the sleeping world on his own. Looking down at his hands, Cobb can feel the weight of phantom years upon his shoulders. He feels old, several times over.
Arthur's hand slides into his palms, warm and soft against Cobb's skin. His grip is gentle, as if he expects Cobb to flinch away, but the only thing that he can do is look up in surprise. "Do you have to go?" Arthur asks, holding onto his gaze with the calm bravery that only he is capable of: never flustered, never losing control. Cobb can't help but envy that.
"My flight's in the morning," Cobb says. The sentiment floats out on a whisper.
"Yeah," Arthur agrees, "but do you have to go?"
Cobb should know what to say. He makes decisions and formulates plans; he thinks on his feet, but now he's sitting on his ass in a hotel room with a blank mind and a racing heart. He's fucking terrified and he doesn't know why.
Arthur's hand slides up his arm, light and intimate in a way that Cobb hasn't known since he lost Mal. It makes his breath stab at his chest, and then Arthur's hand is on the side of his face and he's hardly breathing at all. "Arthur..."
The rest of his thought is lost, swallowed by the caution press of Arthur's mouth. Arthur's fingertips skim against Cobb's face, and his lips offer a quiet plea; begging him to open up, to relax, to let him in. Cobb can't refuse - wouldn't want to. When Arthur's tongue pushes against his lips, he gives in, gives up, and happily gives himself over.
*
His flight is in two hours: if he wants to make it in time, he needs to go. Now. Turn his back on this job and wipe it from his mind; pretend to be the good guy again.
Yet Arthur's hands are still on him, his lips are still against Cobb's neck, claiming without leaving marks. There's a ferocity in his gentleness, something overpowering and alarming. Cobb's hand curls around the nape of Arthur's neck, and he feels washed away by this, as if every exploratory brush of Arthur's lips is enough to wipe away another second of those blood-soaked dreams. Arthur's hands rest on his chest, holding him down with no force at all; it feels like the most powerful thing in the world.
Looking up at the ceiling, Cobb's breath shivers. "Come home with me," he whispers - and Arthur stops, frozen in place. The offer is out there now.
"You've got the kids," Arthur whispers back. "You've got a whole life there."
"Yeah." He's not saying that Arthur should move in, should give everything up for Cobb, should settle down. He's saying - "I miss you."
The admission burns his tongue, because he doesn't do this. They don't talk about feelings and they don't have heart-to-hearts - and just look how that has been working out for them. Arthur shifts and rests his head against Cobb's shoulder, his body sagging with no tension at all. He's a welcome weight, something to hold Cobb down. Cobb thinks that, with Arthur's help, he might be able to hold his own tattered mind together.
"I'll call the airline," Arthur says. "See if they have any seats left on your flight."
Cobb relaxes against the bed, even if they have a plane to catch and one hell of a lot of issues to work through. Arthur is with him again; he feels like he has nothing else to worry about.
Pairing: Arthur/Cobb, Eames
Word Count: 3906
Rating: PG-13
A/N: This takes a few liberties with how the technology seems to work in the movie.
Summary: After the Inception job is over, Cobb retires. He is called out of that peaceful environment by a desperate appeal for help.
With dappled sunlight on his face, it's difficult to imagine turning back to the dream world. There is still the taste of ice-cream in his mouth, and he can see his kids playing in the park right in front of him. They're racing each other on the swings, smiles wide, and their laughter is the best kind of music. The bright colours of the play equipment should be harsh to the eye, overly jolly; for so long, Cobb had to avoid being within seeing or hearing distance of play-parks and fairgrounds. Too much joy. Seeing it had been like an overdose.
Yet he's back now, and he has his family, and they are happy. He had forgotten what that felt like.
"I can't do it," he says, and the words sound like a betrayal. He looks down at his hands, fingers interlocked, and wishes he knew how to say he was sorry. Wishes he knew how to mean it. "I quit - I told you that."
Beside him, Eames shifts position on the park bench. Cobb will only watch him out of his peripheral vision: if he looks at him head-on, he's sure he'll change his mind. He can't do that. For his kids' sake, he just can't.
"I wouldn't be here if we didn't need you," Eames says. "You're the best."
"I was the best," Cobb corrects - because it's different now. He hasn't walked in another person's dream for over a year. It needs to be this way. "I'm staying out of trouble now. I've got my kids to think about."
"Sounds dull," Eames points out. It's true, in its own way. Domestic life is nothing compared to the adrenaline rush of the job, but that's really not the point. "The bottom line is that we can't do this without you. Arthur is too proud to come and ask for help, but that doesn't mean that he doesn't need it. Our current employers are very demanding."
Eames must be desperate if he's willing to bring Arthur into play; he usually doesn't bother with the emotional blackmail this early on. Then again, in the past he's never needed to. Cobb hangs his head and listens to his children's laughter, listens to time ticking away. He's lost too much of their childhood already - he's not risking it again.
"If it's that desperate, tell Arthur to come and get me himself," he suggests - because, then, he couldn't say no. He's turned down Eames before, and he's turned Ariadne away when she's turned up on his doorstep with a bright new plan. Arthur hasn't tried, won't try. If he comes, it's serious.
"I told him to do it. He wouldn't," Eames says. The disapproval in his voice is impossible to mistake.
Cobb nods, mostly to himself, because he isn't surprised by that. Not one bit. Arthur is more than capable of being stubborn when he wants to, just for the sake of it. "How is he?" he asks, even if it burns his tongue.
In his peripheral vision, he sees Eames gesture in a way that tells him nothing at all. "Oh, you know..."
Cobb glances up, a smile with no humour on his face: "I don't know, actually. We're not speaking a lot lately."
Eames lounges on the bench, looking far more pleased with himself than the situation requires. "And I wonder whose fault that is."
"It's mine. I'm not hiding that." If he had tried a little harder, been a little more open, then Arthur might be here with him today. Might be here instead of running around Europe to prove a point. "But he's the one running. I'm right here."
The look that Eames shoots him is filled with disbelief, enough to make Cobb twinge with guilt. "Yes. Right here, with no intention of coming to help us. I'll let him know."
Cobb could argue more - they could argue all day, in fact - but then Philipa calls for him, wanting an extra push on the swing. "I'll be there in a minute, honey," he calls, standing up.
There's no way to say goodbye; there's no desire to say 'I'm sorry'.
*
Past midnight, Cobb's eyes snap open. Darkness hems him in, but the ringing of the phone pierces right through his brain like a shard of sunlight. Groaning, he clings to his bed, hand fisting in the sheets, but the ringing doesn't stop.
The cold air is like a physical attack as he stumbles along the hall to pick up the phone where it blares accusingly at him. Holding it against his ear, when he answers his voice is less than friendly: "This better be important."
A long, static pause.
"Hello? Who's there?" he says. If this is a prank call, he will personally hunt down the fucker behind it.
"It's me," Arthur says, and the irritation vanishes.
Standing in his boxers in his dark hallway, Cobb is already mapping out travel routes and flights and babysitters. "What's going on? Where are you?"
"We need your help," Arthur says.
His voice sounds as if he hasn't used it in days. Something isn't right. It is the middle of the night and he is planning to fly half way around the world if he has to - but it's the sound of Arthur's voice that unsettles him. Raw. Flayed. "Arthur?" he says warily.
There is more at stake here than a tricky job.
"I'm not as good as you." The seconds are trickling past too slowly, too quickly. They need more time. "Please, Dom. Say you'll come."
Something here is dangerous. Cobb's been out of the game for a long time, but his instincts are as sharp as ever: and they are all telling him to put the phone down. Walk away.
Yet it is Arthur.
"Tell me where," he says, knowing that this is something he's going to regret, "and I'll be there. I'll help. I promise."
*
Men in dark glasses and suits meet him off of the airplane and frogmarch him towards a car with tinted windows. Menacing, but he's had worse. He's met Saito, after all.
They blindfold him and bind his wrists behind his back and he lets them, because it's a moot point anyway. Wherever they're taking him it is where he wants to be going. The car smells new and his kidnappers smell like mint. Chewing gum. He can hear them, the wet smack of their mouths even if they don't say a word. Strapped in with a tight belt, he doesn't jerk or shake during the ride, even with its sharp turns and sudden stops.
Eternity passes.
An hour, maybe.
The door opens and cold air rushes into the car, followed by firm hands grabbing his arms. Rougher than they need to be, they push and guide him, stumbling, along a path. The ground in uneven and Cobb can't make sense of anything that's going on: the sound of footsteps alongside him are the only accompaniment. "You could just tell me where we're going," he points out - but they haven't replied to anything that he's said so far. Why start now? "I'm here by choice."
Push, shove. The grating of a door opening. He can tell they've gone inside by the slight increase in temperature, and the way that the slight amount of light creeping through his blindfold vanishes. Down a set of stairs, into a basement, and there are noises, now - voices he recognises and wishes that he didn't. Arthur. Eames. Both of them sounding extraordinarily annoyed to see him.
Thrust onto a wooden chair, uncomfortable and hard, he has his hands untied then retied tightly to the arm-rests, so tight that he can barely twitch.
The blindfold is pulled off, finally, and as he blinks and tries to get used to the dim light the men accompanying him leave.
"Cobb, you idiot," Eames says, and Cobb turns his head to the side in order to see him: Eames is in a predicament rather similar to his own, tied down to an old chair. Arms and legs tied for Eames: Cobb guesses that he's caused enough trouble to need extra restraint. No surprise there.
To the other side, Arthur is bound on a chair of his own, turned to face Cobb's. There is a graze of stubble on his jaw, and Cobb doesn't think he's ever seen him looking so unmaintained and dishevelled before. His hair is an absolute mess. "You shouldn't have come," he says, and it sounds like he's breaking from the inside out.
"You asked me to."
"I had a gun to my head." Arthur's chair squeaks unhappily as he moves in it. "You should've been able to tell something wasn't right."
"I could," Cobb snaps. "I dropped my kids off with their grandparents in the middle of the night, got the first flight out here, allowed myself to get kidnapped, all because I thought 'something wasn't right'. You needed me here."
"No, we didn't. Your children need you."
Eames clears his throat. "I'd actually wager that we need him too. I don't fancy dying here because of your pride, Arthur."
"It isn't pride," Arthur corrects, but he shakes his head and looks down at his lap. Doesn't argue further, as if something in him has deflated. It's odd to see the downturn of his shoulders; Cobb doesn't like it. Not one bit.
"Eames," he says - because he doesn't think that he's going to get much out of Arthur right now. He'll focus on getting them out of this situation alive. Patching up the holes can come later. "What's going on? Why am I here?"
"Remember the job I came to you about earlier this week?" Cobb nods. "We tried it. We failed - and our employers were not best pleased about this. I imagine you've been brought in to do it right."
Cobb tries to fight off the first angry stirrings of guilt; the knowledge that he should have listened to Eames in the first place, that they wouldn't be in this situation if he had come when he had been asked. This isn't the kind of profession a person can turn their back on. Reputations linger; jobs chase you down. The kind of people that want these things done aren't going to take 'no' for an answer.
"What's the job?" he asks.
"Simple enough. There's a girl who witnessed a crime."
"They want to know what happened?"
"They want to change what happened," Eames corrects, with a dry bark of laughter that Cobb has never heard from him before. "Rich family. Apparently the darling son was at the scene of the crime, and they would rather that the star witness didn't recall that detail."
Shit.
"It can't be done," Arthur says. "We tried. It didn't work."
"It can be done," Cobb insists. It's never been tried before, tampering with genuine memories, but it's close enough to inception that they could try it. Cutting edge. That's what he used to be good at. "It's just altering what's already there. Like painting a wall that's already been put up. All we have to do is confuse what is reality versus what comes from her mind."
"It's nothing like that," Arthur protests.
He's kind of got a point.
"We can do it," Cobb says. "It's not like we've got much of a choice."
Despite the dark, despite the danger, and despite the glowers that he is receiving from Arthur, Cobb has to fight back a smile - heart racing, mind plotting, he feels more alive than he has done in months.
*
Two layers deep in the subject's mind, and Cobb is wishing for home. There is blood on the carpet and screams in the air and the shattered, broken whispers of a girl's breathing. Sounds simple on paper: replay the memories, over and over. Remove the required details piece by piece. Repeat as necessary until the idea takes and she changes the details for them.
In practice, they have spent hour after hour watching the murder as the girl remembers it. Each replay soaks their clothes with blood. Cobb's socks are soggy in his shoes.
"How much longer do we have?" Arthur asks, crouched in their hiding spot.
Cobb shakes his head: it's difficult to read the time, here. "Another few run-throughs. I think we're finally getting it."
"Slow work," Eames complains, wearing the murderer's face.
"It's all about repetition," Cobb insists - as if he knows what he's talking about, as if he knows that this will work out. It will. It has to, because out in the real world their bodies are in a whole lot of danger. If she wakes up and she still remembers correctly, they aren't going to live long enough to try again. Their employers have made that much perfectly clear.
"Let's get on with it then," Eames says.
The blood seeps back into the fallen body and the victim rewinds out of the room; the knife cleans itself. Furniture mends and they start again.
The projection of the victim enters, already crying. Their subject is falling apart in the corner. Traumatised. Her mind is more unstable than it had been when they first entered. Cobb tries not to feel guilty: this isn't his concern. He's here to do a job and keep Eames and Arthur safe. Someone else is going to have to pick up the pieces.
Eames enters next, knife in hand, shouting. Replaying the real situation: but clearer, this time. No room for ambiguity in this dream. "You deserve to die for this, do you understand?" he yells.
The forgery isn't perfect - there hasn't been the time to study. Yet it'll do. In the corner, the girl watches from her hiding space, hands pressed to her temples, rocking back and forth. "Not again not again not again," she whispers.
She's barely out of her teens.
This is making Cobb's skin itch.
"This isn't right," Arthur hisses. "We can't do this."
Cobb blocks him out as thoroughly as he blocks out the girl. "You got us into this mess," he whispers back. The shouting is intensifying: the first drops of blood have begun to fall. "I'm getting us out."
Right on cue, the projection of their employer's son tries to run into the room - and Cobb knows what happens once he's in there, joining in on the fun. Their quaint little kidnappers had never bothered to mention the fact that he is fucking guilty. Vicious. Blood-thirsty. It's not their problem. He grabs him by the wrist before he can enter and pulls him back, away from the door, away from the crime scene.
"What are you doing?" the boy asks. Early twenties. If this is what he's up to at this stage in his life, Cobb hates to think about where the future is going to lead him. "I've got some place I need to be."
"No, you don't," Cobb insists. Talking to the projection of a broken girl's subconscious makes him feel like he's bashing his head against a brick wall: this isn't going to work. They can repeat and repeat and repeat and go deeper and deeper and deeper, but it's not going to work. This isn't inception; this is fucking magic. "Listen to me: you're not here. You were never here."
"What are you talking about?" He struggles against Cobb as the screams echo out of the room behind them - but Arthur is there, stoic and steady, to grasp on tight and anchor him. "I've got somewhere to be."
"No, you don't," Cobb insists. He looks down and tries to catch the projection's eyes, all too aware that one wrong move could end up with the pair of them attracting the worst kind of attention. He's made it out of limbo twice; he doesn't think he'll be able to keep his sanity a third time around. "Remember? You're far away from here. Busy."
"I am?"
"Yeah. You don't even know these people. C'mon, you're partying tonight. Why would you be in a beat-up place like this? You're better than that."
Playing up to the girl's assumptions about the boy makes this easier: they don't need to come up with an air-tight alibi, just need to play into her own doubts. Smudge her memories. Arthur's arms stay snug around the projection's chest, refusing to budge even if he isn't struggling half as much any more. "This is nothing to do with you," Arthur says, speaking right into the projection's ear. "You're not here."
Behind them, screams are echoing in that blood-soaked room. Cobb thinks that they are breaking Eames's psyche down second by dreaming second: he's going to disappear for a long while after this job, fading into the map of the world without leaving a single pin-point behind.
"You aren't anything to with this," Cobb insists.
The screaming stops.
There is a thump as Eames drops the knife.
It's time to take it from the top, again.
*
When their eyes open to reality, Cobb blinks in the dimness of the court-house bathroom. Bodyguards stand like black shadows around them, arms crossed, eyes narrowed.
"Well?" one of them asks. "Is it done?"
"We'll find out," Cobb says. She's testifying in an hour. He looks down at her slumbering body, beginning to rouse itself. "We've got to get out of here. Now."
They are packed away and hustled out of the room before her eyes have even opened. She will find herself in an empty public bathroom, the tap still running at the sink. Like ghosts, they will never have been there.
*
Her testimony is dazed and confused, with blotted holes of logic burning through it like acid. Nothing makes sense, and from her scrunched, unhappy face as she is cross-examined it is clear that she knows this.
Cobb watches the reports of the trial on the television in his hotel room, rubbing at his wrists with his hands. They are aching; by now, he should know better than to struggle when he gets tied up, but it's been a while. Maybe too long. He's not as used as he once was to dealing with employers who have no moral issues with leaving him dead.
He looks up from the newsreader as the door to his hotel room opens. Arthur - the bloodied layers of his suit have been lost, leaving him in a cheap t-shirt bought from a supermarket. Ten dollar jeans. Cobb is in more or less the same attire himself, but shopping hadn't been high on their agenda after being released. Getting the fuck out of town? That had seemed way more important.
"Eames is gone," Arthur says. He dumps a paper bag smelling of Chinese take-out onto the bed, and Cobb falls on it. It's been a long time since he last ate - probably longer for Arthur. "His room's empty, anyway."
Arthur went to Eames before he went to Cobb.
Everything has changed.
"Didn't think he'd stick around," Cobb confesses. "Not after that." With a blood-soaked mind, he's not surprised if Eames will run and run and run until he isn't sure where he is any more: until his legs hurt and his lungs ache and his mind swirls.
Arthur sits with him and, for a while, they don't talk. They eat and they watch the television, which is reporting on other stories by now: depressing, big stories. Floods and earthquakes. It isn't long before Cobb has to turn it off, stabbing at the remote. It mutes the entire room. He can hear the sound of Arthur breathing, chewing, swallowing. He can hear his own heartbeat.
He remembers when this used to be companionable; they didn't talk because they didn't want to, not because there was no way to start.
They finish and Arthur clears empty cartons away while Cobb wishes he had a book - something to take his mind far away from this place. He'll be back home within twenty hour hours. Back to normality.
The thought doesn't please him half as much as it should.
"I want to say thank you," Arthur says, coming back to sit with him on the bed. He pulls one leg up onto the mattress, arms looping around it. Cobb watches him cautiously, thinking how odd it is to see Arthur without his shoes on - and that's not what he should be thinking about right now. Focus. "You didn't need to come."
"Yeah, I did," Cobb insists. This isn't something that they need to argue about; not everything needs to be put into words. "You were in trouble."
You needed me.
Now the job is done and he isn't needed any more. Time to retreat and leave Arthur to discover the sleeping world on his own. Looking down at his hands, Cobb can feel the weight of phantom years upon his shoulders. He feels old, several times over.
Arthur's hand slides into his palms, warm and soft against Cobb's skin. His grip is gentle, as if he expects Cobb to flinch away, but the only thing that he can do is look up in surprise. "Do you have to go?" Arthur asks, holding onto his gaze with the calm bravery that only he is capable of: never flustered, never losing control. Cobb can't help but envy that.
"My flight's in the morning," Cobb says. The sentiment floats out on a whisper.
"Yeah," Arthur agrees, "but do you have to go?"
Cobb should know what to say. He makes decisions and formulates plans; he thinks on his feet, but now he's sitting on his ass in a hotel room with a blank mind and a racing heart. He's fucking terrified and he doesn't know why.
Arthur's hand slides up his arm, light and intimate in a way that Cobb hasn't known since he lost Mal. It makes his breath stab at his chest, and then Arthur's hand is on the side of his face and he's hardly breathing at all. "Arthur..."
The rest of his thought is lost, swallowed by the caution press of Arthur's mouth. Arthur's fingertips skim against Cobb's face, and his lips offer a quiet plea; begging him to open up, to relax, to let him in. Cobb can't refuse - wouldn't want to. When Arthur's tongue pushes against his lips, he gives in, gives up, and happily gives himself over.
*
His flight is in two hours: if he wants to make it in time, he needs to go. Now. Turn his back on this job and wipe it from his mind; pretend to be the good guy again.
Yet Arthur's hands are still on him, his lips are still against Cobb's neck, claiming without leaving marks. There's a ferocity in his gentleness, something overpowering and alarming. Cobb's hand curls around the nape of Arthur's neck, and he feels washed away by this, as if every exploratory brush of Arthur's lips is enough to wipe away another second of those blood-soaked dreams. Arthur's hands rest on his chest, holding him down with no force at all; it feels like the most powerful thing in the world.
Looking up at the ceiling, Cobb's breath shivers. "Come home with me," he whispers - and Arthur stops, frozen in place. The offer is out there now.
"You've got the kids," Arthur whispers back. "You've got a whole life there."
"Yeah." He's not saying that Arthur should move in, should give everything up for Cobb, should settle down. He's saying - "I miss you."
The admission burns his tongue, because he doesn't do this. They don't talk about feelings and they don't have heart-to-hearts - and just look how that has been working out for them. Arthur shifts and rests his head against Cobb's shoulder, his body sagging with no tension at all. He's a welcome weight, something to hold Cobb down. Cobb thinks that, with Arthur's help, he might be able to hold his own tattered mind together.
"I'll call the airline," Arthur says. "See if they have any seats left on your flight."
Cobb relaxes against the bed, even if they have a plane to catch and one hell of a lot of issues to work through. Arthur is with him again; he feels like he has nothing else to worry about.