atrium 〣 001 〣 video
[ This is not the first time Ariadne's found herself in a city and, looking back, can't quite remember how she's gotten there. Which means only one assumption: dream. The question then becomes whose dream. When she clicks the video stream on her oh-so-conveniently provided device, her expression is a very speculative shade of bemused.Alright, so
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Ariadne.
[ There's no use pretending they don't know each other, suspicious nature of this particular dream or no - she's already uttered both his name and Arthur's, the former being relatively uncommon. ]
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I can draw you a diagram if you want. Took a seminar last summer on visualization that I'm sure would've made your toes curl with boredom. [ A beat, then she flickers a smile. Understated. ] Eames.
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Maybe at a later date, yeah?
We ought to catch up. [ On several things. ] Where are you now?
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Feel like cluing me in on what's going on?
[ This is, of course, non-negotiable. And she doesn't seem to want to wait. ]
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[ Pause, in which Arthur decides that if there was one last harpy hanging around just for a punch line, things would be a lot noisier on Ariadne's end of things and discards the concern. The network has been quiet today, which to Arthur is some indication that there's no...curse, or whatever, running around today. ]
Ariadne. How'd you know it wasn't mine?
[ In fact, it's obvious, considering how much time she spent in his subconscious during the lead-up to the Fischer job's actual run, but he asks anyway, looking perhaps for a few more specifics. As if to prove to him that she's who she sounds and seems like; it's not a nice thing, Arthur's distrust, but it's a strangely transparent thing too once you know him a little. Of course, that's almost no one so that may be a moot subject matter.
That said, this is still probably the most relaxed Arthur has sounded in...okay let's just call it a While. By all rights this should be alarming but maybe some of Ariadne's fresh-eyed, ( ... )
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She shrugs, standing from where she'd dropped herself down on the lip of the fountain. They haven't given her a place to go yet, but this is Arthur and if there's one thing he doesn't do, it's dawdle.
The question, though, sounds a bit like dawdling. Or paranoia. Thieves loved the stuff, she's learned, having not spent enough time around them to adopt it herself. ]
Kind of obvious, isn't it? [ Ariadne gestures with her hand through the air, drawing a vague curve. ] There are too many joints. I can see where things stop and start up again.
Your dreams are seamless. [ Because they needed to be. ] And you like glass.
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That he does.
[ Pause. ]
Shall I come to fetch you or will you be able to make the walk here yourself? [ Another pause, but this time, more bemused. ] You've gotten yourself a bit of a Tom-Tom with us, with this video function.
[ At least all the harpies seem to have been dried out. ]
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In this case, it'll be much easier to explain things when Ariadne is here in front of them, Arthur's blindness included and the state of their living arrangements - why, in the first place, they have living arrangements to begin with because it suggests a certain amount of agreement in staying when they should be able to come and go. He wonders, too, what Ariadne was last doing to make this appear to be normal, to keep her from her worry - some inexperience, maybe, a certain naivete. As far as Eames is concerned, Ariadne had coming into dreamshare rather easy. There are much more unscrupulous folk to go under with. ]
I wonder if I should be offended by the suggestion that we ever do.
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[ Arthur says flatly to Eames - audible for Ariadne - and too bypasses the grit of the explanations for now. In the first place, they're not exactly veterans here, even Eames who by his own acknowledgment has been here. There are other - he hesitates to call them still - citizens, who have had much longer stays, continuous ones from what Arthur can gather, or could. He hasn't bothered trying at the device since his new development or rather, loss, for obvious reasons. The last thing he needs is to accidentally hit the video function and display the impairment to whoever he's talking to without even knowing it. Better to learn his way around the apartment.
With Ariadne's arrival however, everything is fast rearranging in his head. The only have two bedrooms. Should they move? Well first they have to explain the staying part. Maybe she'll think they're projections, or not. At present it doesn't seem like it, but believing them as they are now and believing them with the addendum of by the way we're stuck as fuck ( ... )
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Good luck. With your assignments, I mean - though, all the same, I rarely check my messages as-is.
[ He's not one much attached to his cellular, any more - half the time he keeps answering services, some recorded in this language or that mostly for the benefit of dodginess, sometimes as inlain messages to be better found by those who need him. The code's always changing, though he supposes it serves as some sort of test for endurance, of drive, of importance of the call. ]
Were you so bored?
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And I have a bad habit of changing my number.
[ He says it like a thing of lightness, but it's actually just the truth, especially after a big job, or a job that seems like it could be a problem later on should someone decide to contact him. It can be said that this should make it nearly impossible to find him at all, but Arthur has learned the particular ways to make himself available, alongside with Dom before and now not, and reachable with it, even when changing addresses and numbers as other people change socks ( ... )
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The picture goes black as Ariadne steps into the wide shadow of the apartment complex standing at 11. Then the aperture of the camera adjusts itself and out of the dissolving darkness she appears, followed by the rest of the world around her. ] Is there a buzzer or anything? [ she asks, tucking a stray strand of hair behind one ear as she winds her way up the path leading to what appears to be a side door ( ... )
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[ A curious lack of guardedness - were this a lucid dream of Eames' creation, there would be gates to pass through, buzzers, keycards. It says much of his psyche, perhaps, even more-so of his paranoia. But once you come to know that your mind can be broken into and properly used against you, you take the extra measures regardless of whether or not you end up a bit of a hermit on the inside of your brain. There are things Eames' keeps to himself - his first and middle name, which out of the team members only Arthur and Cobb know; the type of man he was two-almost-three years ago; cities compiled with aspirations; all of his forgeries, all of his accomplishments, the best way to pickpocket and pick locks.
Obviously, the lack of it bothers him. Still, he doesn't have a safe here - whether by lack of lucidity or simply just not wanting to slide himself in any particular nook ( ... )
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