Incepton Fic [Stranger]
Title: Stranger
Author: missy7280
Fandom: Inception
Pairing: Arthur/Ariadne; hints of Mal/Arthur or Arthur/Dom/Mal
Rating: hard R
Word count: 3,171
Warnings: This is a DARK fic. You have been warned. Mature themes, dub/non-con, potentially triggering emotional abuse.
Summary: There's a stranger in Ariadne's life, and she just happens to live with him.
Shortly after arriving in Los Angeles, Ariadne begins a tentative relationship with Arthur, despite her reservations. He seems to care for her enough, sticking close to her side at the airport. In a way she is grateful, appreciative of the distraction from her concern for Cobb and whether or not he makes it home safely to his children.
She watches intently as Cobb leaves with Miles, having half a mind to go with them but the more rational part of her brain is telling her that she can’t. She just can’t.
But then Arthur takes her hand, giving it a light squeeze. She’d been so entranced watching Cobb, a man who’d gone from being a complete stranger to her boss to someone she considered a friend, that she didn’t even notice Arthur coming up behind her.
His palm is slightly sweaty and it sort of sticks to hers, but otherwise it is nice feeling that bit of human contact again. When Ariadne looks up at him, he gives her a lopsided grin that wins her over, before pulling her slightly in the other direction.
“Where are we going?” she asks.
“Does it matter?”
You know where you hope this train will take you, but you can’t know for sure. Yet it doesn’t matter.
“No, I suppose not.”
Because they’ll be together? Perhaps. At least, that seems to be what Arthur has in mind. They end up at a pizza place only a few blocks down from the airport, the explanation for their destination being that Arthur is starved.
“Are you hungry?” he asks her, opening the door like a gentleman, yet he’d waited until after taking her to a restaurant before even asking her the question.
“A little,” she responds, though really she hadn’t even been thinking about eating. The smell of pizza sauce is thick in the air and Ariadne can practically taste the food when she breathes in. Usually it would make her mouth water, but after the long flight and layered dreams it just makes her feel nauseous.
Arthur grabs them a table and proceeds to ask her if she likes olives and peppers on her pizza. She doesn’t, but they are his favorites so he orders it anyway and tells her she can pick them off.
“What if I was allergic to olives? Or peppers?” she asks.
“But you’re not,” is his response.
For all of his intelligence and attention to detail, Arthur did not live in a hypothetical world. “Why don’t we just order two pizzas,” she suggests.
“Sure. What do you want on yours?”
Ariadne isn’t hungry and doesn’t plan to eat much anyway, so she shakes her head and says, “Never mind, it’s fine.”
He smiles again, and suddenly she really wishes he’d stop doing that. Because as attractive as he was when his face hid any emotion, he was dangerously beautiful when he showed a flash of white teeth. She’d been resisting, ignoring that underlying sensation of floating whenever he looked her direction, but resistance proves to be futile.
When the food does come, she only takes a couple bites before putting the slice back on her plate. Even if she was hungry, she really hates the peppers.
Arthur tells her, “You really should eat something. You’re almost tiny enough to fit inside the PASIV case.”
She sticks her tongue out at him, but otherwise doesn’t respond. But she does pick the peppers off and stuffs the pizza in her mouth in a few bites, just to show him she can.
“Better,” he says, smirking.
Ariadne needs to fly back to Paris at some point, but being that it’s the weekend she doesn’t need to leave immediately. It’s comforting knowing that, with Saito’s help, she could get a flight at whatever date and time she preferred. As it was, she was pretty tired of any mechanical vehicles and their inhuman qualities, so she decides to take her time and see how things progress in L.A. with Arthur.
He finds them a hotel room for the night. He promises double beds, but she insists on separate rooms. No reason to rush things. It’s not that she is a prude, but it’s that she doesn’t trust herself to stop if she begins to fall too hard.
Sitting in the hotel lobby, enjoying a late night cup of complimentary tea, she brings up the subject that remained silent between them up until that point.
“What are you going to do now that the job is over?”
He pauses, his cup up against his lips. He lowers it back to the table before speaking, not taking a drink. “I’m not sure, but I was thinking of moving to Paris.”
It should be flirtatious, but he says it in such a straightforward tone that she almost forgets the reason that must be behind his idea. After all, there wasn’t much in Paris for Arthur besides her. It’s probably the most romantic gesture anyone has made for her, not that there have been many to compare it to.
“Well if you happen to be in my part of town, then give me a call.”
“Oh, I intend to be in your neighborhood most of the time. You’ll have to try to get rid of me, I’m sure.”
A blush spreads across her cheeks and the hand she is using to hold her cup twinges just the slightest bit.
“Why would I want to do that?” She’d never tried doing the coy thing before, but it seems to be working on Arthur. She pointedly ignores the fact that he intimidates her, from his freshly-pressed suits to his brimming confidence.
It’s a rhetorical question, they both know it. So he doesn’t answer, but simply takes another sip of his tea. Reluctantly, she leaves him to go to her own room, but not before making plans to meet him back there in the morning for the hotel’s continental breakfast.
The next afternoon they fly out to Paris together, enjoying the luxuries of sitting next to each other in their own private first class cabin. Neither one wants to sleep.
+ ~ + ~ +
Upon their arrival, it soon becomes apparent that they’re not going to get away from each other any time soon. It’s as if a force field exists between them, bringing them together with its magnetic pull. A week after being back in Paris, they find an apartment to move into together.
Ariadne is not used to the whirlwind pace they are taking, but Arthur makes the transition easier. He’s a good conversationalist from the beginning, talking about his partnership with Cobb and how close he’d gotten to death over the years of being his point man. Lets her into his life as he reveals his past. But he also focuses the conversation on Ariadne just enough, asking her about her studies and seeming genuinely interested as she rattles on about the restricting architecture of the real world.
The only subject he won’t delve into his Mal. A dark expression and more clipped answers were the only thing he’d give Ariadne when she asked. Eventually she stopped trying to bring it up. Apparently that part of his and Cobb’s history is to remain unknown.
Everything else is satisfactory. At least, it’s as good as living with someone that you’ve barely known a month can be. They share private jokes, they share their space, and soon they share a bed. Ariadne was not a virgin, but she feels like she’s finally beginning to understand what Mal had meant.
Do you know what it means to be a lover?
But being half of a whole does not always mean that the whole is perfect. It’s only a few months into their living arrangement when things start to take a turn. Arthur begins to stay out for longer and longer amounts of time, never explaining where he is going. Eventually he’s barely around at all, and Ariadne starts to worry.
Most of the time he doesn’t get back until after she’s already asleep, or if she is still awake he goes straight to bed and passes out before she has the chance to talk to him.
Finally one day, she corners him in the doorway to their shared bedroom. “Where have you been?” she asks, trying to be nonchalant but the impatient tapping of her foot gives her away, her crossed arms held tightly to her body.
“Are you jealous?” he asks with a smirk, and she can smell the slight trace of alcohol on his breath.
“No, actually. I was worried about you. You didn’t call,” she says, as if he ever does.
“Don’t worry, I’m a big boy. I can take care of myself.” He walks past her and towards their bathroom, never once looking back.
He’d always been flippant like this to the other team members, but never to her. It was like time spent together had slowly pushed him towards being the monster that she would never expect. She’s not sure what to do about it.
She wraps herself in cold sheets and listens to the sound of running water from behind the bathroom door. Somehow she falls asleep before Arthur slips into the bed. She is too numb to feel as he strokes her in her sleep.
+ ~ + ~ +
“You will never be Mal,” he tells her one night, lying naked at her side. “You can try, but you never will.” They’d just finished having sex, him taking her from behind because he didn’t want to see her. She doesn’t even call what they do ‘making love’ anymore. She’s not that delusional to think that whatever they have between them now could be called love.
“Who said I was trying to be her?” She is somehow able to keep the sound of crying out of her voice, but tears form behind her eyes undeterred. Once upon a time her ears would perk up at the mention of Mal, but at this point she’d rather not have to hear that name ever again.
“You did. Every time you tried to see into Cobb. Do you know what I’ve been doing all the nights I’m not here?” The question throws her so much that she isn’t able to tell him that she doesn’t want to know. Ariadne can’t form the words, but all of a sudden Arthur is talking to her again.
“I’ve been out looking for a replacement. I thought you could fit the role, with the way you acted towards Cobb, but you’re just not good enough.”
“Nobody could replace Mal,” she squeaks, more than a little afraid and even more hurt.
He laughs a bitter laugh that chills her to the bone. “At least you understand one thing.”
She wishes she could leave, but there isn’t any place for her to go. The only other option is to convince him to go somewhere else. She chokes on the words, but she manages to say, “Please leave.”
“I told you,” he says, “You’re going to have to try to get rid of me. But you told me you’d never want to do that.”
Has he memorized every word she’d ever said to him? Or is he just playing with her? Either way, hearing this repeated back to her in such a different context is haunting.
“I meant-”
“Shhh,” he says as he puts a quieting finger to her mouth. “You’re so much prettier when you don’t talk.”
She closes her eyes and forces herself not to be hurt by his words. She could fight back, but the strength leaves her and she decides to let him have his way. This time. If it happens again, there’s no way she’ll be able to sit back and take it.
“Let me prove it,” Arthur says. She has no clue what he’s talking about, having lost track of where the conversation was going. Arthur made less and less sense these days just in general.
His lips are on hers then, and although he isn’t very big or overly muscular he’s still able to press her small frame into the mattress.
She doesn’t struggle. She doesn’t feel a thing.
+ ~ + ~ +
Things change a bit after that night. Arthur is kinder to her than he’d been, showing flashes of the old Arthur that shared intimate dreams and paradoxes with her. When she is able to look into his eyes again, he looks almost apologetic and she even sees flashes of guilt. It doesn’t ease the pain, but she is a little less afraid.
He comes home a couple days later with two tickets in hand to an exclusive exhibit at the Louvre. It’s something for them to enjoy together, and although it won’t completely fix the shattered glass between them, it at least puts some of the pieces back in place.
She even allows him to hold her hand as they walk through the museum. Other couples look at them with approval, while some solitary people look at them with envy. Ariadne actually laughs at the ridiculousness of it all. If only they knew everything.
But then, people see what they want to see. Ariadne herself was the perfect example.
When they leave the architecture exhibit at the museum, he takes her out to dinner at a cafe in the heart of Paris. He orders for them in French, and while she could do this herself he insists on doing it for her anyway. Arthur even pulled out her chair for her when they arrived. She’s a little skeptical of the whole thing, but a part of her just wants to give him the benefit of the doubt.
Their conversation is back to normal; him asking her about her opinion on the paintings and sculptures they just saw, her asking him questions about himself. Does he even care for art? Architecture? Poetry and literature? Turns out he enjoys art, but only from a certain period. He knows next to nothing about architecture, but pretends to care about it for Cobb and Ariadne’s sake. And while he loves the classics, he could care less about the poetry that is published. Says he can write better poems himself.
She laughs despite herself. “I’ve never seen you write any poems. Can you prove it?”
He only waits for a beat before speaking. “She sits before me in quizzical beauty, her smile radiant but her eyes giving away a hidden depth of sorrow. It is enough to make me weep, if I was that kind of person. But she doesn’t know that my eyes hide the same pain, for she cannot see. And if I wept then there would be no doubt, for even she could trace the path of my tears.”
It’s the closest thing to an apology that she is going to get. The rest of the time they spend in silence, the water gathering around her eyes threatening to spill out.
But she will not cry. She cannot give him the satisfaction of further exposing her no longer hidden pain.
Ariadne places a mental bandage on the wound, forcing herself to not pick at the scab. Although the scab has been helping her to heal, a sadistic part of her desperately wants to make it bleed.
+ ~ + ~ +
Ariadne is convinced that Arthur is not a bad person, not really. Besides the fact that he's a bit self-centered, he just misses Mal and Dom too much to ever move on with somebody else. And unfortunately, she happened to be the one he picked to try to start something new with, but it was doomed from the start.
She lived for the moments when he showed flashes of the person she swore he could be.
Somehow, the sentimental value of a dozen roses by her bedside loses its value after the third or fourth time, as Arthur begins to slip into the version of himself that never comes home at night.
Ariadne tries calling Cobb one time, but there is no answer on the other line and she doesn’t bother leaving a message. He must be busy doing something with his kids, she supposes. Afterwards, Arthur scans the call history and berates her for trying to get in contact with Dom. Tells her he’s off limits and just to leave him alone.
When Ariadne fights back, yelling at him and saying that she can do whatever the hell she wants, it simply turns into a big argument that she’d rather avoid. Arthur doesn’t want to talk to her anymore after that, which is pretty fine by her. He storms out of the apartment, probably to buy more liquor, and she couldn’t care less what else he does.
Another day, Arthur is gone again to who knows where, and she decides to go snooping through some of his things. Just to get a deeper sense of what makes him tick. She starts with the still unpacked boxes in the closet, but the only things she finds in the first two are books and notes from old jobs.
But then she gets to the last box, pushed towards the back of the closet and almost going unseen. She pulls it closer, expecting to find more books or other uninformative items inside. Instead, when she opens the box her eyes go wide with something close to surprise.
The PASIV device is inside. Silver metal gleams back at her, shiny and pristine. Ariadne eyes the apparatus, but she doesn’t take it out. Not yet.
For the next few days, she keeps thinking about that damn instrument and all it has to offer. Soon enough she’s returning to the closet for it, and hooking herself up to an IV.
+ ~ + ~ +
In her dreams, her version of Arthur is much kinder than the other. He looks pitiful every time she insists that she has to leave him. He actually needs and wants her completely all the time, not just when it suits his own purposes. He may be only a product of her imagination, but Ariadne is his entire world.
He only exists between the times when she falls asleep and then wakes up again. Incidentally, he never wants her to wake up. A part of her doesn’t want to wake up either.
The prospect of facing the cold eyes of the real Arthur frightens her every time.
+ ~ + ~ +
Soon she realizes that the only way to be woken up from the nightmare is to sleep.
You betrayed me? You infected my mind?
Ariadne takes the strong sedative, the same one that Yusuf gave them for inception. She is thankful she had some extra pills tucked away, never able to fully convince herself to get rid of them. She swallows it straight down without using any water; no sense in making herself need the bathroom any sooner than necessary. She hooks herself up to the PASIV device, not even feeling the prick of the tube entering her arm. She doesn’t have any plans of returning after her eyes close shut.
She just wants to forget.
Author's Note: So this fic was born from listening to Hilary Duff's "Stranger," and thinking about Ariadne and Arthur's potential relationship at the same time. I decided I wanted to explore a potentially darker side of Arthur. After all, from the movie we barely know anything about him. Maybe Ariadne or any of the other characters don't really know him either.
I have no personal belief that this is how Arthur would really act behind closed doors. But you just never really know a person, do you?
Author: missy7280
Fandom: Inception
Pairing: Arthur/Ariadne; hints of Mal/Arthur or Arthur/Dom/Mal
Rating: hard R
Word count: 3,171
Warnings: This is a DARK fic. You have been warned. Mature themes, dub/non-con, potentially triggering emotional abuse.
Summary: There's a stranger in Ariadne's life, and she just happens to live with him.
Shortly after arriving in Los Angeles, Ariadne begins a tentative relationship with Arthur, despite her reservations. He seems to care for her enough, sticking close to her side at the airport. In a way she is grateful, appreciative of the distraction from her concern for Cobb and whether or not he makes it home safely to his children.
She watches intently as Cobb leaves with Miles, having half a mind to go with them but the more rational part of her brain is telling her that she can’t. She just can’t.
But then Arthur takes her hand, giving it a light squeeze. She’d been so entranced watching Cobb, a man who’d gone from being a complete stranger to her boss to someone she considered a friend, that she didn’t even notice Arthur coming up behind her.
His palm is slightly sweaty and it sort of sticks to hers, but otherwise it is nice feeling that bit of human contact again. When Ariadne looks up at him, he gives her a lopsided grin that wins her over, before pulling her slightly in the other direction.
“Where are we going?” she asks.
“Does it matter?”
You know where you hope this train will take you, but you can’t know for sure. Yet it doesn’t matter.
“No, I suppose not.”
Because they’ll be together? Perhaps. At least, that seems to be what Arthur has in mind. They end up at a pizza place only a few blocks down from the airport, the explanation for their destination being that Arthur is starved.
“Are you hungry?” he asks her, opening the door like a gentleman, yet he’d waited until after taking her to a restaurant before even asking her the question.
“A little,” she responds, though really she hadn’t even been thinking about eating. The smell of pizza sauce is thick in the air and Ariadne can practically taste the food when she breathes in. Usually it would make her mouth water, but after the long flight and layered dreams it just makes her feel nauseous.
Arthur grabs them a table and proceeds to ask her if she likes olives and peppers on her pizza. She doesn’t, but they are his favorites so he orders it anyway and tells her she can pick them off.
“What if I was allergic to olives? Or peppers?” she asks.
“But you’re not,” is his response.
For all of his intelligence and attention to detail, Arthur did not live in a hypothetical world. “Why don’t we just order two pizzas,” she suggests.
“Sure. What do you want on yours?”
Ariadne isn’t hungry and doesn’t plan to eat much anyway, so she shakes her head and says, “Never mind, it’s fine.”
He smiles again, and suddenly she really wishes he’d stop doing that. Because as attractive as he was when his face hid any emotion, he was dangerously beautiful when he showed a flash of white teeth. She’d been resisting, ignoring that underlying sensation of floating whenever he looked her direction, but resistance proves to be futile.
When the food does come, she only takes a couple bites before putting the slice back on her plate. Even if she was hungry, she really hates the peppers.
Arthur tells her, “You really should eat something. You’re almost tiny enough to fit inside the PASIV case.”
She sticks her tongue out at him, but otherwise doesn’t respond. But she does pick the peppers off and stuffs the pizza in her mouth in a few bites, just to show him she can.
“Better,” he says, smirking.
Ariadne needs to fly back to Paris at some point, but being that it’s the weekend she doesn’t need to leave immediately. It’s comforting knowing that, with Saito’s help, she could get a flight at whatever date and time she preferred. As it was, she was pretty tired of any mechanical vehicles and their inhuman qualities, so she decides to take her time and see how things progress in L.A. with Arthur.
He finds them a hotel room for the night. He promises double beds, but she insists on separate rooms. No reason to rush things. It’s not that she is a prude, but it’s that she doesn’t trust herself to stop if she begins to fall too hard.
Sitting in the hotel lobby, enjoying a late night cup of complimentary tea, she brings up the subject that remained silent between them up until that point.
“What are you going to do now that the job is over?”
He pauses, his cup up against his lips. He lowers it back to the table before speaking, not taking a drink. “I’m not sure, but I was thinking of moving to Paris.”
It should be flirtatious, but he says it in such a straightforward tone that she almost forgets the reason that must be behind his idea. After all, there wasn’t much in Paris for Arthur besides her. It’s probably the most romantic gesture anyone has made for her, not that there have been many to compare it to.
“Well if you happen to be in my part of town, then give me a call.”
“Oh, I intend to be in your neighborhood most of the time. You’ll have to try to get rid of me, I’m sure.”
A blush spreads across her cheeks and the hand she is using to hold her cup twinges just the slightest bit.
“Why would I want to do that?” She’d never tried doing the coy thing before, but it seems to be working on Arthur. She pointedly ignores the fact that he intimidates her, from his freshly-pressed suits to his brimming confidence.
It’s a rhetorical question, they both know it. So he doesn’t answer, but simply takes another sip of his tea. Reluctantly, she leaves him to go to her own room, but not before making plans to meet him back there in the morning for the hotel’s continental breakfast.
The next afternoon they fly out to Paris together, enjoying the luxuries of sitting next to each other in their own private first class cabin. Neither one wants to sleep.
+ ~ + ~ +
Upon their arrival, it soon becomes apparent that they’re not going to get away from each other any time soon. It’s as if a force field exists between them, bringing them together with its magnetic pull. A week after being back in Paris, they find an apartment to move into together.
Ariadne is not used to the whirlwind pace they are taking, but Arthur makes the transition easier. He’s a good conversationalist from the beginning, talking about his partnership with Cobb and how close he’d gotten to death over the years of being his point man. Lets her into his life as he reveals his past. But he also focuses the conversation on Ariadne just enough, asking her about her studies and seeming genuinely interested as she rattles on about the restricting architecture of the real world.
The only subject he won’t delve into his Mal. A dark expression and more clipped answers were the only thing he’d give Ariadne when she asked. Eventually she stopped trying to bring it up. Apparently that part of his and Cobb’s history is to remain unknown.
Everything else is satisfactory. At least, it’s as good as living with someone that you’ve barely known a month can be. They share private jokes, they share their space, and soon they share a bed. Ariadne was not a virgin, but she feels like she’s finally beginning to understand what Mal had meant.
Do you know what it means to be a lover?
But being half of a whole does not always mean that the whole is perfect. It’s only a few months into their living arrangement when things start to take a turn. Arthur begins to stay out for longer and longer amounts of time, never explaining where he is going. Eventually he’s barely around at all, and Ariadne starts to worry.
Most of the time he doesn’t get back until after she’s already asleep, or if she is still awake he goes straight to bed and passes out before she has the chance to talk to him.
Finally one day, she corners him in the doorway to their shared bedroom. “Where have you been?” she asks, trying to be nonchalant but the impatient tapping of her foot gives her away, her crossed arms held tightly to her body.
“Are you jealous?” he asks with a smirk, and she can smell the slight trace of alcohol on his breath.
“No, actually. I was worried about you. You didn’t call,” she says, as if he ever does.
“Don’t worry, I’m a big boy. I can take care of myself.” He walks past her and towards their bathroom, never once looking back.
He’d always been flippant like this to the other team members, but never to her. It was like time spent together had slowly pushed him towards being the monster that she would never expect. She’s not sure what to do about it.
She wraps herself in cold sheets and listens to the sound of running water from behind the bathroom door. Somehow she falls asleep before Arthur slips into the bed. She is too numb to feel as he strokes her in her sleep.
+ ~ + ~ +
“You will never be Mal,” he tells her one night, lying naked at her side. “You can try, but you never will.” They’d just finished having sex, him taking her from behind because he didn’t want to see her. She doesn’t even call what they do ‘making love’ anymore. She’s not that delusional to think that whatever they have between them now could be called love.
“Who said I was trying to be her?” She is somehow able to keep the sound of crying out of her voice, but tears form behind her eyes undeterred. Once upon a time her ears would perk up at the mention of Mal, but at this point she’d rather not have to hear that name ever again.
“You did. Every time you tried to see into Cobb. Do you know what I’ve been doing all the nights I’m not here?” The question throws her so much that she isn’t able to tell him that she doesn’t want to know. Ariadne can’t form the words, but all of a sudden Arthur is talking to her again.
“I’ve been out looking for a replacement. I thought you could fit the role, with the way you acted towards Cobb, but you’re just not good enough.”
“Nobody could replace Mal,” she squeaks, more than a little afraid and even more hurt.
He laughs a bitter laugh that chills her to the bone. “At least you understand one thing.”
She wishes she could leave, but there isn’t any place for her to go. The only other option is to convince him to go somewhere else. She chokes on the words, but she manages to say, “Please leave.”
“I told you,” he says, “You’re going to have to try to get rid of me. But you told me you’d never want to do that.”
Has he memorized every word she’d ever said to him? Or is he just playing with her? Either way, hearing this repeated back to her in such a different context is haunting.
“I meant-”
“Shhh,” he says as he puts a quieting finger to her mouth. “You’re so much prettier when you don’t talk.”
She closes her eyes and forces herself not to be hurt by his words. She could fight back, but the strength leaves her and she decides to let him have his way. This time. If it happens again, there’s no way she’ll be able to sit back and take it.
“Let me prove it,” Arthur says. She has no clue what he’s talking about, having lost track of where the conversation was going. Arthur made less and less sense these days just in general.
His lips are on hers then, and although he isn’t very big or overly muscular he’s still able to press her small frame into the mattress.
She doesn’t struggle. She doesn’t feel a thing.
+ ~ + ~ +
Things change a bit after that night. Arthur is kinder to her than he’d been, showing flashes of the old Arthur that shared intimate dreams and paradoxes with her. When she is able to look into his eyes again, he looks almost apologetic and she even sees flashes of guilt. It doesn’t ease the pain, but she is a little less afraid.
He comes home a couple days later with two tickets in hand to an exclusive exhibit at the Louvre. It’s something for them to enjoy together, and although it won’t completely fix the shattered glass between them, it at least puts some of the pieces back in place.
She even allows him to hold her hand as they walk through the museum. Other couples look at them with approval, while some solitary people look at them with envy. Ariadne actually laughs at the ridiculousness of it all. If only they knew everything.
But then, people see what they want to see. Ariadne herself was the perfect example.
When they leave the architecture exhibit at the museum, he takes her out to dinner at a cafe in the heart of Paris. He orders for them in French, and while she could do this herself he insists on doing it for her anyway. Arthur even pulled out her chair for her when they arrived. She’s a little skeptical of the whole thing, but a part of her just wants to give him the benefit of the doubt.
Their conversation is back to normal; him asking her about her opinion on the paintings and sculptures they just saw, her asking him questions about himself. Does he even care for art? Architecture? Poetry and literature? Turns out he enjoys art, but only from a certain period. He knows next to nothing about architecture, but pretends to care about it for Cobb and Ariadne’s sake. And while he loves the classics, he could care less about the poetry that is published. Says he can write better poems himself.
She laughs despite herself. “I’ve never seen you write any poems. Can you prove it?”
He only waits for a beat before speaking. “She sits before me in quizzical beauty, her smile radiant but her eyes giving away a hidden depth of sorrow. It is enough to make me weep, if I was that kind of person. But she doesn’t know that my eyes hide the same pain, for she cannot see. And if I wept then there would be no doubt, for even she could trace the path of my tears.”
It’s the closest thing to an apology that she is going to get. The rest of the time they spend in silence, the water gathering around her eyes threatening to spill out.
But she will not cry. She cannot give him the satisfaction of further exposing her no longer hidden pain.
Ariadne places a mental bandage on the wound, forcing herself to not pick at the scab. Although the scab has been helping her to heal, a sadistic part of her desperately wants to make it bleed.
+ ~ + ~ +
Ariadne is convinced that Arthur is not a bad person, not really. Besides the fact that he's a bit self-centered, he just misses Mal and Dom too much to ever move on with somebody else. And unfortunately, she happened to be the one he picked to try to start something new with, but it was doomed from the start.
She lived for the moments when he showed flashes of the person she swore he could be.
Somehow, the sentimental value of a dozen roses by her bedside loses its value after the third or fourth time, as Arthur begins to slip into the version of himself that never comes home at night.
Ariadne tries calling Cobb one time, but there is no answer on the other line and she doesn’t bother leaving a message. He must be busy doing something with his kids, she supposes. Afterwards, Arthur scans the call history and berates her for trying to get in contact with Dom. Tells her he’s off limits and just to leave him alone.
When Ariadne fights back, yelling at him and saying that she can do whatever the hell she wants, it simply turns into a big argument that she’d rather avoid. Arthur doesn’t want to talk to her anymore after that, which is pretty fine by her. He storms out of the apartment, probably to buy more liquor, and she couldn’t care less what else he does.
Another day, Arthur is gone again to who knows where, and she decides to go snooping through some of his things. Just to get a deeper sense of what makes him tick. She starts with the still unpacked boxes in the closet, but the only things she finds in the first two are books and notes from old jobs.
But then she gets to the last box, pushed towards the back of the closet and almost going unseen. She pulls it closer, expecting to find more books or other uninformative items inside. Instead, when she opens the box her eyes go wide with something close to surprise.
The PASIV device is inside. Silver metal gleams back at her, shiny and pristine. Ariadne eyes the apparatus, but she doesn’t take it out. Not yet.
For the next few days, she keeps thinking about that damn instrument and all it has to offer. Soon enough she’s returning to the closet for it, and hooking herself up to an IV.
+ ~ + ~ +
In her dreams, her version of Arthur is much kinder than the other. He looks pitiful every time she insists that she has to leave him. He actually needs and wants her completely all the time, not just when it suits his own purposes. He may be only a product of her imagination, but Ariadne is his entire world.
He only exists between the times when she falls asleep and then wakes up again. Incidentally, he never wants her to wake up. A part of her doesn’t want to wake up either.
The prospect of facing the cold eyes of the real Arthur frightens her every time.
+ ~ + ~ +
Soon she realizes that the only way to be woken up from the nightmare is to sleep.
You betrayed me? You infected my mind?
Ariadne takes the strong sedative, the same one that Yusuf gave them for inception. She is thankful she had some extra pills tucked away, never able to fully convince herself to get rid of them. She swallows it straight down without using any water; no sense in making herself need the bathroom any sooner than necessary. She hooks herself up to the PASIV device, not even feeling the prick of the tube entering her arm. She doesn’t have any plans of returning after her eyes close shut.
She just wants to forget.
Author's Note: So this fic was born from listening to Hilary Duff's "Stranger," and thinking about Ariadne and Arthur's potential relationship at the same time. I decided I wanted to explore a potentially darker side of Arthur. After all, from the movie we barely know anything about him. Maybe Ariadne or any of the other characters don't really know him either.
I have no personal belief that this is how Arthur would really act behind closed doors. But you just never really know a person, do you?