every time she goes outside (she barely gets home alive) [inception]
Title: every time she goes outside (she barely gets home alive)
Fandom: Inception
Summary: One morning, Ariadne stopped looking him in the eye.
Pairing: Ariadne/Arthur
Rating: PG-13
Notes: Wow. Okay. This story is long. I am not kidding you. It's 5,964 words long. It started out as something short and sweet and just kept evolving. I change up the style I usually write in and everything. I mean really. I don't know where it came from. It's the longest one-shot I've ever written. I really, really hope you guys like it.
"I would like to ask you, in a strictly professional way, if you have done anything to Ariadne."
Arthur could not pretend he didn't know where the question had come from. The past two weeks had, in all honesty, been a blur. Another job, another mark to research. But there were days that were highlighted by the looks he received from the Architect each time he asked her a direct question, each time he mentioned her and she could hear, each time they had to be alone together. It had begun a month after the Fischer job.
One morning, Ariadne had simply stopped looking him in the eye.
He pretended not to notice, nor to be put off or upset by it. After all, she was just a girl, just another member of his team. He and Eames could harldly go a day without bickering about something, so tension between himself and Ariadne was not something he couldn't handle. He just hadn't expected it. And really, it did bother him. It bothered him a lot. So when Eames sprang the question on him one evening in their New York warehouse, Arthur found himself growing hot around the collar and defending himself much more harshly than he normally would have.
"What do you mean by 'done anything'?" he snapped, not looking up from his work. Eames looked amused.
"Well, she just has all the symptoms of a woman scorned if you ask me." Eames leaned back in his chair and Arthur had to fight the urge that was growing in him to knock it over. Eames must have noticed, because he planted all four legs firmly on the ground before asking, "So, did you do anything?"
"No." Arthur kept his response curt, still not looking up.
"She seems to be terrified of you. And she's awfully sensitive, in my opinion. You didn't drop her too hard, did you?"
"You'd know all about that, wouldn't you?" Eames gave a soft chuckle and shook his head. Finally, Arthur looked up. "I haven't done anything to her. I don't know what's wrong, I haven't even noticed." That, of course, was a lie. And Eames knew it. But instead of pressing the subject, he shook his head and wandered off to do his own work, leaving Arthur by himself. Suddenly finding himself in no state to concentrate, Arthur announced he was getting dinner ("Alone," he added hastily when Yusuf looked up, intrigued) and would be back in an hour.
"If you see her, do try and find out what's going on," Eames added at his retreating back. He thought he heard Yusuf ask what he was referring to, but chose to pretend that that had never happened and instead stepped out onto the street, hit by the sudden autumn wind that was beginning to stir up the city.
Not really concentrating as he rounded the corner, he stumbled headlong into another walker, cursing as he rubbed his knees and got up from the ground. Ariadne was there, trembling at the sight of him. As if she had suddenly realized what was going on, she vaulted herself off the sidewalk and forced a smile on her face. It was pained and made her look ill. The thought of what caused that smile made Arthur's stomach churn, but he chose not to press the issue.
"Sorry," he said quietly, picking up a book she'd been holding. "Really. I'm-"
"It's fine," she said dismissively, waving her hand. "I'm just going uptstairs and-"
"Are you hungry?" The question fell out of his mouth before he could stop it. Eames was right. It was getting worse and he had to fix this. Maybe over dinner. She could open up, she could talk to him and make him understand why, she-
"No, I already ate," she said lamely. It was a lie, and they were both aware of it, but Arthur couldn't really force her to tell the truth here. So he let her go back to the warehouse and leave him standing on the corner, feeling remarkably useless. After a moment, the echoing of her shoes hitting the stairs faded off and he was left alone, feeling considerably worse than before he'd seen her, and even more confused.
- -
Ariadne didn't want to go into the details of her brief meeting (or collision, rather) with Arthur when Eames asked if she'd seen him. He wasn't stupid. She'd arrived not two minutes after Arthur left - they had to have run into one another.
"No," she said, her second lie of the evening. "Didn't see him." Eames seemed to take this as a hint and didn't press the issue any further. Had it been Arthur, he would have interrogated his friend into the dawn, but Ariadne was different. And, afterall, she was the one who was seemingly scared senseless. Eames couldn't very well harrass her when she looked like she was going to crack at any moment.
Arthur returned an hour after he left, precisely, and went straight back to his desk. He didn't acknowledge Ariadne, nor she him. Eames pretended that this was normal. Yusuf had fallen asleep.
When midnight approached, Eames announced loudly that he was leaving and that if the rest of them wanted to spend the night in a bloody warehouse doing God knows what, well, he wasn't about to stop them. "Arthur-" He nodded a farewell. "Night, love," he added, pressing his hand on Ariadne's shoulder before departing. "Yusuf!" The chemist awoke with a start.
"If you're going to be useless," Arthur said, "you might as well do it at home." Yusuf muttered something that was extremely rude in a language Arthur understood perfectly well, but chose to pretend he could not. Smiling, he watched Yusuf grumble his way out of the warehouse, leaving him quite alone with Ariadne.
If she noticed that there was no one left but them, then she was doing of very good job of pretending the opposite. Her expression had not changed since Eames had announced he was leaving, but her face was taut with what Arthur could only call terror, plain and simple. When he approached her workbench, he thought she'd snap in half, a wire pulled tight on two straining ends. "It's late," he noted, making a show of looking at his watch. "I think I'll head off, too. You?" Ariadne made a great effort to smile and look only vaguely concerned with how late it was getting.
"No, I just want to finish this one section. It's tricky."
"Can I see?" Her hand instinctively moved the model out of his view and he nodded. "Right."
"It's...it's not done yet. And really, you shouldn't know, you know because-"
"Right. No, no, I get it. It's fine." Arthur forced a smile. "I just wanted to make sure you got home safe. If you need me, just call." He left before she could say anything further, but he doubted whether she would have spoken any more to him anyway.
At home, Arthur put into practice his well honed method of drinking after a particularly tense day. It was a method he'd been taught by his father, who learned it from his father, and so on. Having no particular affinity for any liquor, Arthur had found himself at a loss the first time he'd attempted this and had settled on a rather cheap red wine, which he continued to purchase even into his more wealthy years when he could have bought a winery if he'd wanted to. There was something subtly comforting about the peeling label and the smell of poorly fermented grapes that Arthur found relaxing for a few moments after opening to bottle.
However, he fell into a fitful sleep that night, as he always did after drinking, dreaming of clocks that stopped moving and a frozen look of terror and the things he might have done that caused it. He woke with a sharp intake of breath at the feeling of sunlight moving across his face, but he still felt as sick and tense as he had when he'd left the warehouse.
For the first time in his life, the tried and true method he'd learned from his father had failed him.
- -
Ariadne's dreams were no more peaceful than Arthur's. And if he could have known what she'd been dreaming the night he drank an entire bottle of cheap red wine, maybe he would have understood why she entered the warehouse the next morning and promptly dropped everything she was holding at the sight of him.
Over the course of the next week, everyone learned that Ariadne was not to be trusted with anything fragile. Her hands were a trembling mess when Arthur was near, to the point that he began doing all of his work shut up in his tiny excuse for an office in the back of the warehouse, having little contact with anyone else. Ariadne's voice floated in from time to time, and she sounded normal, and happy. Eames still seemed convinced that something had transpired between the two of them and was determined to get it out of at least one of them. When Arthur yielded nothing, he turned his sights on Ariadne, who was growing happier each day she was not near Arthur or could not see him.
"You know, love, if anything's troubling you, you can just whisper it, right here, in my ear, and I won't tell a soul." He made a spectacular show of lowering his voice and grinning like an idiot. A dark look crossed her face for such a brief moment, Eames couldn't be sure if it had even been there. Then she smiled.
"I appreciate the gesture," she told him, patting him gently on the hand. "But I'm fine."
Eames was so impressed with how good of a liar she was, he almost told her then she could have been a Forger. But instead, he simply nodded and went back to making fun of Yusuf's rather ugly shoes he'd worn to work that morning, succeeding in getting another good and honest laugh from her before the day was through.
"She's gone," Eames said that evening, poking his head into Arthur office. "My god, Arthur. This is a bird cage. Can you even stand?" Arthur rubbed his eyes and balanced his elbows on his knees. "She's perfect normal when you're not around."
"I've told you, Eames. I haven't done anything."
"Well, maybe we're using the wrong word. Have you said anything to upset her?" He narrowly dodged a heavy paperweight that Arthur suddenly flung at him, laughing the whole time. "I'm joking. For Christ's sake Arthur, you've got to put a stop to this. The woman is positively terrified of you. And you can't spend the rest of your life in here. You'll shrink, I'm sure of it." Arthur finally broke into a smile. Eames felt pleased with himself. "Look. I know you and I don't see eye to eye on much-" He cleared his throat while Arthur raised a reproachful eyebrow. "Well, anything, really. But I think we can both agree that this-" He gestured to the warehouse outside, in the general direction of Ariadne's workbench. "This has got to stop."
For once, Arthur couldn't agree with Eames more.
- -
Everyone thought that Cobb's visit would make things right again. Eames was certain of it. Cobb was a dominating force of stability these days. His children were growing up well, his mother-in-law had taken to smiling at him once more, and he was even dating a nice British woman he'd met in a coffee shop. It seemed to be the answer to their problems, and Eames felt good about his arrival.
For a moment, it seemed like it might work.
Cobb was never one to miss a beat or ignore tension. He could feel it the minute he walked into the warehouse and saw that Arthur had taken to brooding over his work in an office while Ariadne was unusually quiet.
"You're too thin," he noted. "You need to be in better shape to do this job."
"If you're just here to tell me I'm not cut out for it, then I'll get back to my work," Ariadne said, scowling and looking violent. Cobb held up his hands in defeat and watched her get up and head back to her corner, her bony body hunched over yet another maze.
"Something's wrong," he said, the moment he managed to talk to Arthur alone. They were shut up in the tiny office and Cobb noticed for the first time that Arthur as fairing no better than his Architect. "What the hell is going on here?" Arthur shook his head, taking up his usual spot against the wall and commencing the pacing he'd begun several weeks ago while he contemplated all the things he could have done wrong. Every mistake. Every word out of place.
"Thank you for pointing that out. I hadn't been aware before." Cobb tilted his head. Arthur had a slightly deflated look about him, a little warn around the edges. He was thinner, too, and pale. His hair didn't seem to lay right on his head and there was something just not right about everything that was happening. Even Eames seemed a bit on edge. The only person who was acting normal was Yusuf, and that, Arthur was quick to point out, was because no one had told him what was going on.
"What is going on?" For a moment, Arthur wondered if Cobb really understood what asking that question meant. But he took a breath and he let it go. He told him everything, from Ariadne's initial reluctance to be in the same room to her slowly evolved terror of simply knowing she was in the same building as him. Everything he was feeling about it - the impatience and the anger and the anguish, all the confusing nights laying in bed, awake and staring at the cieling, wondering - it all came spilling out of him. He felt weak and drained. When Cobb pushed a metal folding chair his way, he sank into it happily.
"And that's it?"
"What?" Cobb did not repeat the question. He knew Arthur had heard him. What he didn't understand was the tone in his voice. The clear-as-day inflection that told Arthur his former boss did not find this issue troubling at all. He was a bit taken aback.
Cobb was supposed to have answers. Everyone had thought he would.
Arthur suddenly felt like they were being crushed in the tiny office, so he opened the door and walked them both out onto the main floor of the warehouse. Cobb knew he was no longer welcome. Arthur's back was tense and his footsteps firm and loud on the ground. Anger resounded in every echo. He said goodbye and promised a final visit before leaving down the winding steps to the exit. Arthur did not wait to hear him leave. He was shut in his office before anyone could ask what had happened.
In the end, no one ever did.
- -
It was Eames who broke Ariadne. And in the worst way possible.
She was dreaming. Hooked up to a machine and stirring fitfully in her sleep. Eames couldn't help but be intrigued and, he suddenly realized, he'd never shared a dream with her. Quickly throwing a glance toward Arthur's shut (and more recently locked) office, he settled in an arm chair and slid the needle carefully into his arm.
"Splendid," he murmured, taking in the nearly impossible architecture that surrounded him. The buildings weren't tall - they were eternal. Something about did not reach to the sky, but seemed to extend forever, while never towering. The walls he saw in his peripheral shimmered and he thought he saw the sea, but when he turned around, it was all gone. The road was spectacular and there was a smell that sent him reeling from a bakery on the corner. Only a foreigner who had spent too long in Paris could fully appreciate it all, he noted, and this was something he and Ariadne had in common.
At the end of the road, there was a vast cathedral. Not a single projection, however, seemed to be interested in it. Indeed, it looked abandoned. Naturally, Eames felt his curiousity peak and his legs began moving quickly toward it. For some reason, he knew he'd find Ariadne there. And the answer.
He'd never wanted to know something so badly in his life.
It wasn't that he cared much for Arthur's feelings. He did, he supposed. Arthur had never been too horrible to him. He simply lacked the creativity that Eames felt this sort of field required, and thus put himself at odds with the researcher from the moment he met him. But he could not get the sight of Arthur's shoulders tensing each time Ariadne fled from him. He couldn't forget the way she watched him, like he would lash out at her like a twisted thief. And Eames was well versed in all things twisted. Arthur, he had concluded long ago, posed no real threat to anyone unless provoked.
The image of Ariadne's trembling hands in his mind, he pushed open the rotting wooden door of the church and stepped inside. It was eerily real. The sound of his feet echoing along the stone floor sent the dark birds roosting in the rafters flying through the whole in the cieling. The stained-glass windows were broken and seemed to be muted. Everything had the feeling of being formerly grand, but was now broken down beyond all repair. And there, sitting in a pew, was Ariadne. A man in dark clothes sat with her, and Eames could make out only a few words he said in a high, cold voice. The girl gave a visible shiver and the man put an arm around her, but she only stiffened even more.
The man, Eames suddenly realized, was Arthur.
Or his projection. Because the real Arthur, he knew, was locked up in his little room, running through the facts again and again while repairing one of the machines and falling into small, fitful bouts of sleep. Eames had watched. He had worried. And then he had come here.
There was a shard of glass on the floor which broke with an audible crack when he stepped on it and echoed painfully through the room. Ariadne turned and gasped. The projection gave a crooked smile that did not belong to Arthur. The sight of him gave Eames a chill, and he knew why she'd been so reluctant to have the real Arthur look at her.
"Cute. You brought a friend." Ariadne began stammering, shaking her head and crawling over the pews. Eames saw a flash of metal in her hands. "No, no, Ariadne. I'm sure he means no harm." The projection moved fast, quickly pinning her to the end of a pew and running a hand down her back, suddenly wrenching the gun from her fingers. It made a disapproving noise and let her go. "Silly girl. Very silly." Outside, the other projections were beginning to make noise. There were scuffles on the street and Eames began to feel very, very nervous.
"I'll leave, I think," he said stiffly. But the projection just laughed that unearthly and so very unArthur laugh again and looked Eames right in the eyes.
"No, I don't think you will." Eames felt odd. Arthur did not boss him around. Arthur did not tell him what to do.
But Arthur did not laugh like that. Or talk like that. Or look down at Ariadne like she was a piece of meat. Grinning, the projection dropped the gun at her feet and took another step toward Eames, something silver flashing in its pocket. Whatever was said next, Eames did not hear. Ariadne gave a sharp cry and picked up the gun, firing one shot at Eames and hitting him between the eyes. With a start, he was awake, sitting in the chair and taking in shallow breaths. Ariadne awoke slowly as Eames heard the timer beep.
"You," she breathed, stumbling off her chair and tugging at the needle in her arm. "You can't-" Her body was trembling with such force Eames didn't know how she was standing. "Don't you ever do that again!" she screamed suddenly, tears in her eyes. Eames righted himself quickly as Arthur burst from his office and Yusuf meandered up the stairs, carrying coffee. She rounded on him again, fists flailing.
"That was mine. That was mine and you weren't supposed to be there. If you ever - if you ever do that again-" She was beating him harder now. Eames made a quick grab for her wrists and stopped her from doing any more damage. An apology seemed in order, but he didn't have it in him to say it.
She was torturing herself from the inside out.
Eames felt very sick.
- -
No one talked about that day again. Whatever peace had been between Eames and Ariadne had gone. They spoke only once about the dream, in a tight corner of a room no one was using.
"That wasn't Arthur and you know that," he said sternly.
"Fuck off, Eames."
He didn't mention it again.
Nor did he mention it to Arthur, whose curiousity about the day in question was not nearly has great as Eames had thought it would be. It seemed that Arthur had resigned himself to a life where Ariadne would forever shrink from his touch and he wasn't going to go on pretending it didn't bother him anymore. He told Eames quietly that he was considering taking off after the next job, or canceling it entirely. For once, Eames was inclined to agree with him, but the latter suggestion was impossible. As if sensing that things were coming to a close, Ariadne sat the next job out and was not anywhere to be found for several days afterward.
Eames knew she hadn't left town. And if Eames knew, well, Arthur knew, too.
"You need to know what I saw," he said quietly one day while they were out to lunch. Arthur pretended he hadn't heard. "Arthur, I'm serious. When I-"
"When you what? Invaded her privacy? Her nightmares? It doesn't matter what happened in there, Eames."
"That doesn't sound like the Arthur I know at all," he said flatly. Arthur stopped eating for a moment, then continued. The rest of the day passed quietly. Arthur went home. Eames got roaring drunk and had very terrible sex with an unattractive fake blonde and woke up at one in the morning in her bed, feeling stupid and still wasted.
He blamed this for his late-night visit to Ariadne.
"It's almost two," she hissed violently, looking up and down the hall after him. He stumbled into the living room and sat on the sofa roughly, feeling very ill for a moment. "If you vomit on my couch, I will murder you."
"Fair enough," he muttered, taking the box of crackers and the bottle of water she gave him gladly. "I can't stand waking up in a bed that isn't mine."
"It's a terrible habit to get into." Eames nodded his agreement, feeling the bubbling nausea slowly begin to subside. He felt braver. Taking a swing from his water bottled, he suddenly asked - "Where did he come from?"
Ariadne froze. They both know who he meant. But Eames went on. "The projection of Arthur. Where did he come from?" She didn't answer for a long time. Both of them were staring at one point on the floor, not moving and not daring to speak. Each time she shifted, Eames glanced up, hoping she would say something. After a while, she finally cleared her throat and said quietly, "A nightmare."
In a very dead-like voice, she told him of the recurring nightmare. Of a man who became Arthur without her really knowing how it happened or even wanting it in the first place. She shivered when she recalled the first time it had happened. How the face had always been blank until, one night, it was suddenly Arthur's. Eames shook his head.
"You know it's not his fault."
"Doesn't matter," she said stiffly. "I can't...look at him the same way. Everything he did..." She shuddered and touched her side, fingering a wound that had never existed, but had left a scar nonetheless. When he finally fell asleep on her sofa, Eames felt no closer to the truth than when he had tumbled into her apartment.
He thought he heard her crying in the night, but was too exhausted to see about it.
Really, he couldn't blame her. The Arthur she had projected made his stomach weak still, and there was no mistaking the silve shine of a knife in his pocket, or the murderous stare he'd held in his eyes.
In truth, Eames thought, he was much more sane than he had any right to be.
- -
Three months had passed since the Fischer job. Three long and grueling months that Arthur had had to endure. Ariadne's presence was as revolting to him as his was to her. He could no longer stand the narrowed eyes that darted across his back as he retreated into his office. Nor could he bear the small gasp she gave each time he made himself known. They were not without work to do, and though Arthur thought the tension between himself, Eames, and Ariadne would prove to be difficult to work around, the jobs went smoother than he could have imagined.
It was reality, he was realizing, that was so difficult.
And though he had been angry with Eames for invading Ariadne's dream several weeks ago, he found that he couldn't resist the urge to do so one early morning when he arrived at the warehouse to find her sleeping with the needle in her arm, relaxed in an arm chair, brows knit as if in deep concentration. It was not a relaxed dream, he could tell. And he warned himself against that as he slid into a seat next to her. This is a bad idea, a very bad idea.
He did it anyway.
There was a certain decay to everything. He had been here before, with permission, and he wondered if that changed anything. Immediately, he headed to the church, knowing she'd be there. All signs pointed to it. And he remembered what she'd told him when he first saw it, how much it meant to her. He stepped into it and smelled rotting wood and the sour of the cloth seats on the pews. Arthur looked around, but didn't see her. He didn't see anything, really. The only light came from the widening hole in the cieling and every once in a while the shadow of a bird would pass through the muted light that fell on the floor.
"Ariadne?" he said her name gently, not wanting to send her into a fright. There was movement in a pew far to his left, but nothing was there when he looked. He said her name again. A faint whisper sounded from behind him, but again, he was alone. One last time he said her name, louder and with more urgency.
"She's here. She's just frightened."
Arthur turned around and looked himself in the face.
She had done something awful to him, twisted his lips into a curling sneer. His hair was the same, but his clothes much darker, and his eyes a muted grey. Behind them, there was only malice. And his voice was cold and alien. It was a projection and nothing more. It could hurt him, yes. But it wasn't real. Arthur struggled with this thought, turning it over and over again in his mind.
Denying its existence felt like denying his own, though he knew without a doubt neither of them were connect by anything but Ariadne's twisted nightmare.
"Arthur?"
Her voice came out of the shadows near the altar, but he didn't move his gaze away from the projection. "Stay back."
"I've been wanting to meet you," the projection sneered. Its lips curved into an unpleasant grin, fingering the hilt of a short-blade knife in its pocket. "She's told me so much about you."
Arthur continued to reason with himself. This is not real. He is not real. This is not real. He is not real. There was a gun in his belt. The projection could die. It could come back in another dream, but for now, his unsettling reflection could die.
"Don't!" His fingers had barely touched the handle of the gun when Ariadne's voice came sharp through his senses, breaking off his mantra. The projection scowled, having been hoping for a bit of a battle. Her gaze wasn't quite focused and she had to sit down in a pew to collect herself.
"Poor thing. She has trouble, you see, telling us apart." Arthur looked down at her trembling form. Something like a ripple passed over them, and when Arthur glanced back up, his strange doppelganger was gone, replaced by a pefect replica, right down to the look on his face that was a mixture of fear, worry, and disgust.
"It's been getting worse. She even doubts her totem some days." Ariadne gave an involuntary shudder. "Don't you want to know what you did to make her this way?" The projection was decipherable now that it was grinning again. Arthur could not recognize any of himself in that smile.
"I didn't do anything," he said, reminded vividly of his discussions with Eames. "Ariadne. It's time to go." The projection looked a bit crestfallen, then perked up.
"Yes. It's time to go." And once again, Arthur could not tell the difference between himself and the thing standing across from him. "But I wonder - which of us is the real you?"
"How stupid do-"
"Oh it's not a question of stupidity, really. Or you. It's a question of sanity. Can she tell the difference?" The projection stood back and said her name, sounding nothing like he did before. "Ariadne." She looked up and gave a small gasp, moaning and shaking her head, burying her face in her hands. She would not let either of them touch her. "It's me," the projection cooed. "It's Arthur. Come on, let's get out of here."
"No," she croaked, muffling a sob.
"Listen," it said with urgency. "He's trying to confuse you. Come on, and we'll get out of here. We'll wake up."
"You're..."
"That's enough," Arthur said, shoving him out of the way. "Ariadne, take the gun and wake up. Now." Arthur was well aware the gun would no longer be there after she left. But then, they wouldn't be in her dream anymore, and he was certain the time would run out soon. They'd both be awake and she still wouldn't trust him, but he wouldn't have to look at her like this anymore. The projection gave a very Arthur-like sigh and shook his head.
"It's what he wants, Ariadne. He wants to keep torturing you like this. But you need accept that I'm here and I'm real. That he's just a fake."
"Ariadne. Don't listen to him."
"I'm the real one. You know me."
It was as if those words unlocked something. Her eyes drifted back into focus quickly and she was staring at the projection with great concentration. Arthur could see the gears whirring in her head, but said nothing as she stood, staring at the gun he'd handed to her.
"Yes...I know you." She gave a small smile, the first one Arthur had seen in months. "And you know me." She stepped out from the pew and held the gun tightly by her side. "Which of you can tell me the name of Robert Fischer's father?"
"Maurice," they both said. Arthur felt a small ray of realization begin to pass over him, but said nothing.
"Which of you can tell me what Cobb's totem is?"
"Top."
"What is Arthur's totem?"
"A loaded die."
"And what number faces up when it's rolled?"
"Three," the projection said quickly. But Arthur didn't answer. Ariadne smiled. She moved to his side and leaned up on tops of her feet, pressing her lips to his temple.
"I've missed you," she murmured, before cocking the gun and firing it into the side of his head.
- -
Arthur awoke with a yell, rolling off of his chair and panting, trying to collect what had happened. She'd spoken to him. She'd touched him. She'd kissed him, however briefly. The timer beeped and her eyes fluttered open. For a long while they were like that, Arthur sitting on the floor, gathering his thoughts; Ariadne staring at the cieling, sometimes closing her eyes. Eventually, she sat up and looked at him. Warmth spread over his body.
"Hey."
"Morning." They both laughed. "That was good. Very clever." She blushed and untangled herself from the tubes of the machine, standing and stretching. Arthur suddenly found that he was very, very tired.
"It's like you said. Only you know the weight. Even a fake you couldn't get it right, hmm?"
"That wasn't me," Arthur said darkly, staring at the ground. Ariadne looked sheepish.
"I...I know. But he kept crawling into my dreams and then I'd come here to build and he started showing up. I couldn't...get rid of him. I'd be working and he'd be there. He was this...this...thing that was growing and feeding off of every nightmare I had. I don't know how it happened. He was faceless for so long and one night, he became you. And when I came to work, I was building and he was there and he was really you again. And he...he-"
Arthur didn't want to hear anymore. He wrapped his arms around her and held her close, kissing her forehead. They sunk into a chair, Arthur's lips trailing down her face, Ariadne looked pleased and relaxed for the first time in a while. He nuzzled her neck, sending a proper shiver down her spine, trying to ignore the shrill singing of the bird in his chest, concentrating instead on her fingers trailing down his stomach and his hips, lingering too long at his belt.
He wanted her. God how he wanted her. And she was there and she was willing - but he held back, his breath already shallow as he kissed her deeper and his fingers became less gentle on her sides.
"I want to know everything," he said, tilting her head up by her chin. "Will you tell me?" She nodded, moving closer to kiss him again, hooking her leg over his, feeling warm and comforted.
"Now this is more like it." Eames's drawl carried across the room. Arthur didn't bother untangling his arms and Eames looked much too pleased. "I can't wait to catch you fucking." Arthur balked and sat straight up, feeling his face flush at all the possible embarassment. Eames roared with laughter, but Ariadne's voice came through.
"Look at me." Arthur did as he was told. "That's better," she murmured, and he realized she must have felt even more tired than he did. He liked that she could look at him now, and felt great relief when he moved his things out of this tiny office and back to his work bench. Eames nodded his approval.
At the end of the day, he felt her thin fingers grip his hand on the way out of the warehouse. Arthur reached for his totem, and then thought better of it.
If this was a dream, he didn't want to wake up any time soon.
Fandom: Inception
Summary: One morning, Ariadne stopped looking him in the eye.
Pairing: Ariadne/Arthur
Rating: PG-13
Notes: Wow. Okay. This story is long. I am not kidding you. It's 5,964 words long. It started out as something short and sweet and just kept evolving. I change up the style I usually write in and everything. I mean really. I don't know where it came from. It's the longest one-shot I've ever written. I really, really hope you guys like it.
"I would like to ask you, in a strictly professional way, if you have done anything to Ariadne."
Arthur could not pretend he didn't know where the question had come from. The past two weeks had, in all honesty, been a blur. Another job, another mark to research. But there were days that were highlighted by the looks he received from the Architect each time he asked her a direct question, each time he mentioned her and she could hear, each time they had to be alone together. It had begun a month after the Fischer job.
One morning, Ariadne had simply stopped looking him in the eye.
He pretended not to notice, nor to be put off or upset by it. After all, she was just a girl, just another member of his team. He and Eames could harldly go a day without bickering about something, so tension between himself and Ariadne was not something he couldn't handle. He just hadn't expected it. And really, it did bother him. It bothered him a lot. So when Eames sprang the question on him one evening in their New York warehouse, Arthur found himself growing hot around the collar and defending himself much more harshly than he normally would have.
"What do you mean by 'done anything'?" he snapped, not looking up from his work. Eames looked amused.
"Well, she just has all the symptoms of a woman scorned if you ask me." Eames leaned back in his chair and Arthur had to fight the urge that was growing in him to knock it over. Eames must have noticed, because he planted all four legs firmly on the ground before asking, "So, did you do anything?"
"No." Arthur kept his response curt, still not looking up.
"She seems to be terrified of you. And she's awfully sensitive, in my opinion. You didn't drop her too hard, did you?"
"You'd know all about that, wouldn't you?" Eames gave a soft chuckle and shook his head. Finally, Arthur looked up. "I haven't done anything to her. I don't know what's wrong, I haven't even noticed." That, of course, was a lie. And Eames knew it. But instead of pressing the subject, he shook his head and wandered off to do his own work, leaving Arthur by himself. Suddenly finding himself in no state to concentrate, Arthur announced he was getting dinner ("Alone," he added hastily when Yusuf looked up, intrigued) and would be back in an hour.
"If you see her, do try and find out what's going on," Eames added at his retreating back. He thought he heard Yusuf ask what he was referring to, but chose to pretend that that had never happened and instead stepped out onto the street, hit by the sudden autumn wind that was beginning to stir up the city.
Not really concentrating as he rounded the corner, he stumbled headlong into another walker, cursing as he rubbed his knees and got up from the ground. Ariadne was there, trembling at the sight of him. As if she had suddenly realized what was going on, she vaulted herself off the sidewalk and forced a smile on her face. It was pained and made her look ill. The thought of what caused that smile made Arthur's stomach churn, but he chose not to press the issue.
"Sorry," he said quietly, picking up a book she'd been holding. "Really. I'm-"
"It's fine," she said dismissively, waving her hand. "I'm just going uptstairs and-"
"Are you hungry?" The question fell out of his mouth before he could stop it. Eames was right. It was getting worse and he had to fix this. Maybe over dinner. She could open up, she could talk to him and make him understand why, she-
"No, I already ate," she said lamely. It was a lie, and they were both aware of it, but Arthur couldn't really force her to tell the truth here. So he let her go back to the warehouse and leave him standing on the corner, feeling remarkably useless. After a moment, the echoing of her shoes hitting the stairs faded off and he was left alone, feeling considerably worse than before he'd seen her, and even more confused.
- -
Ariadne didn't want to go into the details of her brief meeting (or collision, rather) with Arthur when Eames asked if she'd seen him. He wasn't stupid. She'd arrived not two minutes after Arthur left - they had to have run into one another.
"No," she said, her second lie of the evening. "Didn't see him." Eames seemed to take this as a hint and didn't press the issue any further. Had it been Arthur, he would have interrogated his friend into the dawn, but Ariadne was different. And, afterall, she was the one who was seemingly scared senseless. Eames couldn't very well harrass her when she looked like she was going to crack at any moment.
Arthur returned an hour after he left, precisely, and went straight back to his desk. He didn't acknowledge Ariadne, nor she him. Eames pretended that this was normal. Yusuf had fallen asleep.
When midnight approached, Eames announced loudly that he was leaving and that if the rest of them wanted to spend the night in a bloody warehouse doing God knows what, well, he wasn't about to stop them. "Arthur-" He nodded a farewell. "Night, love," he added, pressing his hand on Ariadne's shoulder before departing. "Yusuf!" The chemist awoke with a start.
"If you're going to be useless," Arthur said, "you might as well do it at home." Yusuf muttered something that was extremely rude in a language Arthur understood perfectly well, but chose to pretend he could not. Smiling, he watched Yusuf grumble his way out of the warehouse, leaving him quite alone with Ariadne.
If she noticed that there was no one left but them, then she was doing of very good job of pretending the opposite. Her expression had not changed since Eames had announced he was leaving, but her face was taut with what Arthur could only call terror, plain and simple. When he approached her workbench, he thought she'd snap in half, a wire pulled tight on two straining ends. "It's late," he noted, making a show of looking at his watch. "I think I'll head off, too. You?" Ariadne made a great effort to smile and look only vaguely concerned with how late it was getting.
"No, I just want to finish this one section. It's tricky."
"Can I see?" Her hand instinctively moved the model out of his view and he nodded. "Right."
"It's...it's not done yet. And really, you shouldn't know, you know because-"
"Right. No, no, I get it. It's fine." Arthur forced a smile. "I just wanted to make sure you got home safe. If you need me, just call." He left before she could say anything further, but he doubted whether she would have spoken any more to him anyway.
At home, Arthur put into practice his well honed method of drinking after a particularly tense day. It was a method he'd been taught by his father, who learned it from his father, and so on. Having no particular affinity for any liquor, Arthur had found himself at a loss the first time he'd attempted this and had settled on a rather cheap red wine, which he continued to purchase even into his more wealthy years when he could have bought a winery if he'd wanted to. There was something subtly comforting about the peeling label and the smell of poorly fermented grapes that Arthur found relaxing for a few moments after opening to bottle.
However, he fell into a fitful sleep that night, as he always did after drinking, dreaming of clocks that stopped moving and a frozen look of terror and the things he might have done that caused it. He woke with a sharp intake of breath at the feeling of sunlight moving across his face, but he still felt as sick and tense as he had when he'd left the warehouse.
For the first time in his life, the tried and true method he'd learned from his father had failed him.
- -
Ariadne's dreams were no more peaceful than Arthur's. And if he could have known what she'd been dreaming the night he drank an entire bottle of cheap red wine, maybe he would have understood why she entered the warehouse the next morning and promptly dropped everything she was holding at the sight of him.
Over the course of the next week, everyone learned that Ariadne was not to be trusted with anything fragile. Her hands were a trembling mess when Arthur was near, to the point that he began doing all of his work shut up in his tiny excuse for an office in the back of the warehouse, having little contact with anyone else. Ariadne's voice floated in from time to time, and she sounded normal, and happy. Eames still seemed convinced that something had transpired between the two of them and was determined to get it out of at least one of them. When Arthur yielded nothing, he turned his sights on Ariadne, who was growing happier each day she was not near Arthur or could not see him.
"You know, love, if anything's troubling you, you can just whisper it, right here, in my ear, and I won't tell a soul." He made a spectacular show of lowering his voice and grinning like an idiot. A dark look crossed her face for such a brief moment, Eames couldn't be sure if it had even been there. Then she smiled.
"I appreciate the gesture," she told him, patting him gently on the hand. "But I'm fine."
Eames was so impressed with how good of a liar she was, he almost told her then she could have been a Forger. But instead, he simply nodded and went back to making fun of Yusuf's rather ugly shoes he'd worn to work that morning, succeeding in getting another good and honest laugh from her before the day was through.
"She's gone," Eames said that evening, poking his head into Arthur office. "My god, Arthur. This is a bird cage. Can you even stand?" Arthur rubbed his eyes and balanced his elbows on his knees. "She's perfect normal when you're not around."
"I've told you, Eames. I haven't done anything."
"Well, maybe we're using the wrong word. Have you said anything to upset her?" He narrowly dodged a heavy paperweight that Arthur suddenly flung at him, laughing the whole time. "I'm joking. For Christ's sake Arthur, you've got to put a stop to this. The woman is positively terrified of you. And you can't spend the rest of your life in here. You'll shrink, I'm sure of it." Arthur finally broke into a smile. Eames felt pleased with himself. "Look. I know you and I don't see eye to eye on much-" He cleared his throat while Arthur raised a reproachful eyebrow. "Well, anything, really. But I think we can both agree that this-" He gestured to the warehouse outside, in the general direction of Ariadne's workbench. "This has got to stop."
For once, Arthur couldn't agree with Eames more.
- -
Everyone thought that Cobb's visit would make things right again. Eames was certain of it. Cobb was a dominating force of stability these days. His children were growing up well, his mother-in-law had taken to smiling at him once more, and he was even dating a nice British woman he'd met in a coffee shop. It seemed to be the answer to their problems, and Eames felt good about his arrival.
For a moment, it seemed like it might work.
Cobb was never one to miss a beat or ignore tension. He could feel it the minute he walked into the warehouse and saw that Arthur had taken to brooding over his work in an office while Ariadne was unusually quiet.
"You're too thin," he noted. "You need to be in better shape to do this job."
"If you're just here to tell me I'm not cut out for it, then I'll get back to my work," Ariadne said, scowling and looking violent. Cobb held up his hands in defeat and watched her get up and head back to her corner, her bony body hunched over yet another maze.
"Something's wrong," he said, the moment he managed to talk to Arthur alone. They were shut up in the tiny office and Cobb noticed for the first time that Arthur as fairing no better than his Architect. "What the hell is going on here?" Arthur shook his head, taking up his usual spot against the wall and commencing the pacing he'd begun several weeks ago while he contemplated all the things he could have done wrong. Every mistake. Every word out of place.
"Thank you for pointing that out. I hadn't been aware before." Cobb tilted his head. Arthur had a slightly deflated look about him, a little warn around the edges. He was thinner, too, and pale. His hair didn't seem to lay right on his head and there was something just not right about everything that was happening. Even Eames seemed a bit on edge. The only person who was acting normal was Yusuf, and that, Arthur was quick to point out, was because no one had told him what was going on.
"What is going on?" For a moment, Arthur wondered if Cobb really understood what asking that question meant. But he took a breath and he let it go. He told him everything, from Ariadne's initial reluctance to be in the same room to her slowly evolved terror of simply knowing she was in the same building as him. Everything he was feeling about it - the impatience and the anger and the anguish, all the confusing nights laying in bed, awake and staring at the cieling, wondering - it all came spilling out of him. He felt weak and drained. When Cobb pushed a metal folding chair his way, he sank into it happily.
"And that's it?"
"What?" Cobb did not repeat the question. He knew Arthur had heard him. What he didn't understand was the tone in his voice. The clear-as-day inflection that told Arthur his former boss did not find this issue troubling at all. He was a bit taken aback.
Cobb was supposed to have answers. Everyone had thought he would.
Arthur suddenly felt like they were being crushed in the tiny office, so he opened the door and walked them both out onto the main floor of the warehouse. Cobb knew he was no longer welcome. Arthur's back was tense and his footsteps firm and loud on the ground. Anger resounded in every echo. He said goodbye and promised a final visit before leaving down the winding steps to the exit. Arthur did not wait to hear him leave. He was shut in his office before anyone could ask what had happened.
In the end, no one ever did.
- -
It was Eames who broke Ariadne. And in the worst way possible.
She was dreaming. Hooked up to a machine and stirring fitfully in her sleep. Eames couldn't help but be intrigued and, he suddenly realized, he'd never shared a dream with her. Quickly throwing a glance toward Arthur's shut (and more recently locked) office, he settled in an arm chair and slid the needle carefully into his arm.
"Splendid," he murmured, taking in the nearly impossible architecture that surrounded him. The buildings weren't tall - they were eternal. Something about did not reach to the sky, but seemed to extend forever, while never towering. The walls he saw in his peripheral shimmered and he thought he saw the sea, but when he turned around, it was all gone. The road was spectacular and there was a smell that sent him reeling from a bakery on the corner. Only a foreigner who had spent too long in Paris could fully appreciate it all, he noted, and this was something he and Ariadne had in common.
At the end of the road, there was a vast cathedral. Not a single projection, however, seemed to be interested in it. Indeed, it looked abandoned. Naturally, Eames felt his curiousity peak and his legs began moving quickly toward it. For some reason, he knew he'd find Ariadne there. And the answer.
He'd never wanted to know something so badly in his life.
It wasn't that he cared much for Arthur's feelings. He did, he supposed. Arthur had never been too horrible to him. He simply lacked the creativity that Eames felt this sort of field required, and thus put himself at odds with the researcher from the moment he met him. But he could not get the sight of Arthur's shoulders tensing each time Ariadne fled from him. He couldn't forget the way she watched him, like he would lash out at her like a twisted thief. And Eames was well versed in all things twisted. Arthur, he had concluded long ago, posed no real threat to anyone unless provoked.
The image of Ariadne's trembling hands in his mind, he pushed open the rotting wooden door of the church and stepped inside. It was eerily real. The sound of his feet echoing along the stone floor sent the dark birds roosting in the rafters flying through the whole in the cieling. The stained-glass windows were broken and seemed to be muted. Everything had the feeling of being formerly grand, but was now broken down beyond all repair. And there, sitting in a pew, was Ariadne. A man in dark clothes sat with her, and Eames could make out only a few words he said in a high, cold voice. The girl gave a visible shiver and the man put an arm around her, but she only stiffened even more.
The man, Eames suddenly realized, was Arthur.
Or his projection. Because the real Arthur, he knew, was locked up in his little room, running through the facts again and again while repairing one of the machines and falling into small, fitful bouts of sleep. Eames had watched. He had worried. And then he had come here.
There was a shard of glass on the floor which broke with an audible crack when he stepped on it and echoed painfully through the room. Ariadne turned and gasped. The projection gave a crooked smile that did not belong to Arthur. The sight of him gave Eames a chill, and he knew why she'd been so reluctant to have the real Arthur look at her.
"Cute. You brought a friend." Ariadne began stammering, shaking her head and crawling over the pews. Eames saw a flash of metal in her hands. "No, no, Ariadne. I'm sure he means no harm." The projection moved fast, quickly pinning her to the end of a pew and running a hand down her back, suddenly wrenching the gun from her fingers. It made a disapproving noise and let her go. "Silly girl. Very silly." Outside, the other projections were beginning to make noise. There were scuffles on the street and Eames began to feel very, very nervous.
"I'll leave, I think," he said stiffly. But the projection just laughed that unearthly and so very unArthur laugh again and looked Eames right in the eyes.
"No, I don't think you will." Eames felt odd. Arthur did not boss him around. Arthur did not tell him what to do.
But Arthur did not laugh like that. Or talk like that. Or look down at Ariadne like she was a piece of meat. Grinning, the projection dropped the gun at her feet and took another step toward Eames, something silver flashing in its pocket. Whatever was said next, Eames did not hear. Ariadne gave a sharp cry and picked up the gun, firing one shot at Eames and hitting him between the eyes. With a start, he was awake, sitting in the chair and taking in shallow breaths. Ariadne awoke slowly as Eames heard the timer beep.
"You," she breathed, stumbling off her chair and tugging at the needle in her arm. "You can't-" Her body was trembling with such force Eames didn't know how she was standing. "Don't you ever do that again!" she screamed suddenly, tears in her eyes. Eames righted himself quickly as Arthur burst from his office and Yusuf meandered up the stairs, carrying coffee. She rounded on him again, fists flailing.
"That was mine. That was mine and you weren't supposed to be there. If you ever - if you ever do that again-" She was beating him harder now. Eames made a quick grab for her wrists and stopped her from doing any more damage. An apology seemed in order, but he didn't have it in him to say it.
She was torturing herself from the inside out.
Eames felt very sick.
- -
No one talked about that day again. Whatever peace had been between Eames and Ariadne had gone. They spoke only once about the dream, in a tight corner of a room no one was using.
"That wasn't Arthur and you know that," he said sternly.
"Fuck off, Eames."
He didn't mention it again.
Nor did he mention it to Arthur, whose curiousity about the day in question was not nearly has great as Eames had thought it would be. It seemed that Arthur had resigned himself to a life where Ariadne would forever shrink from his touch and he wasn't going to go on pretending it didn't bother him anymore. He told Eames quietly that he was considering taking off after the next job, or canceling it entirely. For once, Eames was inclined to agree with him, but the latter suggestion was impossible. As if sensing that things were coming to a close, Ariadne sat the next job out and was not anywhere to be found for several days afterward.
Eames knew she hadn't left town. And if Eames knew, well, Arthur knew, too.
"You need to know what I saw," he said quietly one day while they were out to lunch. Arthur pretended he hadn't heard. "Arthur, I'm serious. When I-"
"When you what? Invaded her privacy? Her nightmares? It doesn't matter what happened in there, Eames."
"That doesn't sound like the Arthur I know at all," he said flatly. Arthur stopped eating for a moment, then continued. The rest of the day passed quietly. Arthur went home. Eames got roaring drunk and had very terrible sex with an unattractive fake blonde and woke up at one in the morning in her bed, feeling stupid and still wasted.
He blamed this for his late-night visit to Ariadne.
"It's almost two," she hissed violently, looking up and down the hall after him. He stumbled into the living room and sat on the sofa roughly, feeling very ill for a moment. "If you vomit on my couch, I will murder you."
"Fair enough," he muttered, taking the box of crackers and the bottle of water she gave him gladly. "I can't stand waking up in a bed that isn't mine."
"It's a terrible habit to get into." Eames nodded his agreement, feeling the bubbling nausea slowly begin to subside. He felt braver. Taking a swing from his water bottled, he suddenly asked - "Where did he come from?"
Ariadne froze. They both know who he meant. But Eames went on. "The projection of Arthur. Where did he come from?" She didn't answer for a long time. Both of them were staring at one point on the floor, not moving and not daring to speak. Each time she shifted, Eames glanced up, hoping she would say something. After a while, she finally cleared her throat and said quietly, "A nightmare."
In a very dead-like voice, she told him of the recurring nightmare. Of a man who became Arthur without her really knowing how it happened or even wanting it in the first place. She shivered when she recalled the first time it had happened. How the face had always been blank until, one night, it was suddenly Arthur's. Eames shook his head.
"You know it's not his fault."
"Doesn't matter," she said stiffly. "I can't...look at him the same way. Everything he did..." She shuddered and touched her side, fingering a wound that had never existed, but had left a scar nonetheless. When he finally fell asleep on her sofa, Eames felt no closer to the truth than when he had tumbled into her apartment.
He thought he heard her crying in the night, but was too exhausted to see about it.
Really, he couldn't blame her. The Arthur she had projected made his stomach weak still, and there was no mistaking the silve shine of a knife in his pocket, or the murderous stare he'd held in his eyes.
In truth, Eames thought, he was much more sane than he had any right to be.
- -
Three months had passed since the Fischer job. Three long and grueling months that Arthur had had to endure. Ariadne's presence was as revolting to him as his was to her. He could no longer stand the narrowed eyes that darted across his back as he retreated into his office. Nor could he bear the small gasp she gave each time he made himself known. They were not without work to do, and though Arthur thought the tension between himself, Eames, and Ariadne would prove to be difficult to work around, the jobs went smoother than he could have imagined.
It was reality, he was realizing, that was so difficult.
And though he had been angry with Eames for invading Ariadne's dream several weeks ago, he found that he couldn't resist the urge to do so one early morning when he arrived at the warehouse to find her sleeping with the needle in her arm, relaxed in an arm chair, brows knit as if in deep concentration. It was not a relaxed dream, he could tell. And he warned himself against that as he slid into a seat next to her. This is a bad idea, a very bad idea.
He did it anyway.
There was a certain decay to everything. He had been here before, with permission, and he wondered if that changed anything. Immediately, he headed to the church, knowing she'd be there. All signs pointed to it. And he remembered what she'd told him when he first saw it, how much it meant to her. He stepped into it and smelled rotting wood and the sour of the cloth seats on the pews. Arthur looked around, but didn't see her. He didn't see anything, really. The only light came from the widening hole in the cieling and every once in a while the shadow of a bird would pass through the muted light that fell on the floor.
"Ariadne?" he said her name gently, not wanting to send her into a fright. There was movement in a pew far to his left, but nothing was there when he looked. He said her name again. A faint whisper sounded from behind him, but again, he was alone. One last time he said her name, louder and with more urgency.
"She's here. She's just frightened."
Arthur turned around and looked himself in the face.
She had done something awful to him, twisted his lips into a curling sneer. His hair was the same, but his clothes much darker, and his eyes a muted grey. Behind them, there was only malice. And his voice was cold and alien. It was a projection and nothing more. It could hurt him, yes. But it wasn't real. Arthur struggled with this thought, turning it over and over again in his mind.
Denying its existence felt like denying his own, though he knew without a doubt neither of them were connect by anything but Ariadne's twisted nightmare.
"Arthur?"
Her voice came out of the shadows near the altar, but he didn't move his gaze away from the projection. "Stay back."
"I've been wanting to meet you," the projection sneered. Its lips curved into an unpleasant grin, fingering the hilt of a short-blade knife in its pocket. "She's told me so much about you."
Arthur continued to reason with himself. This is not real. He is not real. This is not real. He is not real. There was a gun in his belt. The projection could die. It could come back in another dream, but for now, his unsettling reflection could die.
"Don't!" His fingers had barely touched the handle of the gun when Ariadne's voice came sharp through his senses, breaking off his mantra. The projection scowled, having been hoping for a bit of a battle. Her gaze wasn't quite focused and she had to sit down in a pew to collect herself.
"Poor thing. She has trouble, you see, telling us apart." Arthur looked down at her trembling form. Something like a ripple passed over them, and when Arthur glanced back up, his strange doppelganger was gone, replaced by a pefect replica, right down to the look on his face that was a mixture of fear, worry, and disgust.
"It's been getting worse. She even doubts her totem some days." Ariadne gave an involuntary shudder. "Don't you want to know what you did to make her this way?" The projection was decipherable now that it was grinning again. Arthur could not recognize any of himself in that smile.
"I didn't do anything," he said, reminded vividly of his discussions with Eames. "Ariadne. It's time to go." The projection looked a bit crestfallen, then perked up.
"Yes. It's time to go." And once again, Arthur could not tell the difference between himself and the thing standing across from him. "But I wonder - which of us is the real you?"
"How stupid do-"
"Oh it's not a question of stupidity, really. Or you. It's a question of sanity. Can she tell the difference?" The projection stood back and said her name, sounding nothing like he did before. "Ariadne." She looked up and gave a small gasp, moaning and shaking her head, burying her face in her hands. She would not let either of them touch her. "It's me," the projection cooed. "It's Arthur. Come on, let's get out of here."
"No," she croaked, muffling a sob.
"Listen," it said with urgency. "He's trying to confuse you. Come on, and we'll get out of here. We'll wake up."
"You're..."
"That's enough," Arthur said, shoving him out of the way. "Ariadne, take the gun and wake up. Now." Arthur was well aware the gun would no longer be there after she left. But then, they wouldn't be in her dream anymore, and he was certain the time would run out soon. They'd both be awake and she still wouldn't trust him, but he wouldn't have to look at her like this anymore. The projection gave a very Arthur-like sigh and shook his head.
"It's what he wants, Ariadne. He wants to keep torturing you like this. But you need accept that I'm here and I'm real. That he's just a fake."
"Ariadne. Don't listen to him."
"I'm the real one. You know me."
It was as if those words unlocked something. Her eyes drifted back into focus quickly and she was staring at the projection with great concentration. Arthur could see the gears whirring in her head, but said nothing as she stood, staring at the gun he'd handed to her.
"Yes...I know you." She gave a small smile, the first one Arthur had seen in months. "And you know me." She stepped out from the pew and held the gun tightly by her side. "Which of you can tell me the name of Robert Fischer's father?"
"Maurice," they both said. Arthur felt a small ray of realization begin to pass over him, but said nothing.
"Which of you can tell me what Cobb's totem is?"
"Top."
"What is Arthur's totem?"
"A loaded die."
"And what number faces up when it's rolled?"
"Three," the projection said quickly. But Arthur didn't answer. Ariadne smiled. She moved to his side and leaned up on tops of her feet, pressing her lips to his temple.
"I've missed you," she murmured, before cocking the gun and firing it into the side of his head.
- -
Arthur awoke with a yell, rolling off of his chair and panting, trying to collect what had happened. She'd spoken to him. She'd touched him. She'd kissed him, however briefly. The timer beeped and her eyes fluttered open. For a long while they were like that, Arthur sitting on the floor, gathering his thoughts; Ariadne staring at the cieling, sometimes closing her eyes. Eventually, she sat up and looked at him. Warmth spread over his body.
"Hey."
"Morning." They both laughed. "That was good. Very clever." She blushed and untangled herself from the tubes of the machine, standing and stretching. Arthur suddenly found that he was very, very tired.
"It's like you said. Only you know the weight. Even a fake you couldn't get it right, hmm?"
"That wasn't me," Arthur said darkly, staring at the ground. Ariadne looked sheepish.
"I...I know. But he kept crawling into my dreams and then I'd come here to build and he started showing up. I couldn't...get rid of him. I'd be working and he'd be there. He was this...this...thing that was growing and feeding off of every nightmare I had. I don't know how it happened. He was faceless for so long and one night, he became you. And when I came to work, I was building and he was there and he was really you again. And he...he-"
Arthur didn't want to hear anymore. He wrapped his arms around her and held her close, kissing her forehead. They sunk into a chair, Arthur's lips trailing down her face, Ariadne looked pleased and relaxed for the first time in a while. He nuzzled her neck, sending a proper shiver down her spine, trying to ignore the shrill singing of the bird in his chest, concentrating instead on her fingers trailing down his stomach and his hips, lingering too long at his belt.
He wanted her. God how he wanted her. And she was there and she was willing - but he held back, his breath already shallow as he kissed her deeper and his fingers became less gentle on her sides.
"I want to know everything," he said, tilting her head up by her chin. "Will you tell me?" She nodded, moving closer to kiss him again, hooking her leg over his, feeling warm and comforted.
"Now this is more like it." Eames's drawl carried across the room. Arthur didn't bother untangling his arms and Eames looked much too pleased. "I can't wait to catch you fucking." Arthur balked and sat straight up, feeling his face flush at all the possible embarassment. Eames roared with laughter, but Ariadne's voice came through.
"Look at me." Arthur did as he was told. "That's better," she murmured, and he realized she must have felt even more tired than he did. He liked that she could look at him now, and felt great relief when he moved his things out of this tiny office and back to his work bench. Eames nodded his approval.
At the end of the day, he felt her thin fingers grip his hand on the way out of the warehouse. Arthur reached for his totem, and then thought better of it.
If this was a dream, he didn't want to wake up any time soon.