The French Drop 5/5 (An Inception Fanfiction)
Title: The French Drop 5/5
Author: Mel Wong, @ chn_breathmint on Livejournal and AO3.
Characters/Pairings: Eames, Arthur, Ariadne, OCs. Eames/Arthur flirting, Arthur/Eames attraction, Arthur/Ariadne attraction (and vice versa), Ariadne/Eames attraction (and vice versa).
Status: Complete
Rating: PG-13 for language and violence.
Disclaimer: I don’t own Inception or its characters.
Word Count: 5691
Summary: The Eames And Arthur Executive Protection Hour. Gen with mild slash and het overtones.
Warnings: Ariadne’s mum. If you’re wondering why Ariadne’s mum needs a warning, you haven’t met her yet, one hell of a sequel-bait ending. Some fluffiness, a tiny bit of schmoop. (I know, Mel is writing fluff in her gen fic, the sky is falling!)
Notes: This is a sequel to Parlor Tricks and may not make a whole lot of sense plotwise if you haven’t read that one. Major spoilers for the movie and, naturally, for Parlor Tricks. Dr. Gantt is in fact a real art historian, one whom I have had the honor of learning from, and the jokes about the Sun King’s gangrene are made in loving tribute to his awesome lectures on 19th Century European Art. Thank you to heronymus_waat for the beta.
It was obvious that Eames was in no shape to do any executive protection work. His cracked ribs bothered him a great deal, and the painkillers had dulled his alertness enough that he didn’t think he was capable of escorting Ariadne around Paris while she went on with her life. That meant that Arthur would have his hands full; he had not expected further attempts on Ariadne’s life, but he refused to assume that she was safe until she had left Paris.
“Won’t someone try to kidnap me in the US, like they did with Philippa?” she had asked Arthur Thursday morning as he stood at the stove in the safe house, stirring a pot of homemade chicken stock that had been in the process of being turned into chicken soup. It probably wasn’t going to be as good as her dad’s chicken soup, but then little else was.
“They could, yes,” he said. He scooped up a little broth in his ladle and blew on it until it was cool enough to taste, and then frowned a little as he sipped it. He added a little black pepper to the pot, stirred the broth again and then put the lid back on the pot cock-eyed so the steam could escape. “However, once you’re out of Europe Eames and I are going to head over to Helsinki, and then to St. Petersburg, and we’re going to create enough trouble that you and Cobb will be the least of their worries.” He had not said who “they” were, and she was frankly, getting a little tired of his attempts to protect her from what he knew. The way she saw it, she was neck-deep in trouble already, and attempting to shield her like that just left her feeling more helpless.
After a little discussion she decided to move temporarily into the safe house that Arthur had set up in Montmartre. It was roomier, closer to school, and the move allowed Arthur to keep an eye on Eames and guard her at the same time. He accompanied her back to her apartment to allow her to pack several changes of clothes, her laptop and a few books. She checked her email before she left with her suitcase, and that was when she found the bombshell in her inbox in between spam mail and notifications from social networking websites.
“Arthur,” she said after she had read the email, “My mother says she’s coming to Paris.”
“That’s nice, I guess,” he had said halfheartedly as he glanced out between the curtains. He had been worried that they had been followed, and his threat awareness routines were occupying enough of his attention span that he had failed to understand the ramifications of her statement.
“Arthur. You don’t understand. My mother is coming to Paris for an academic conference and she says she has enough time to visit me. How do I explain this?” she asked, waving at the suitcase she had packed, her backpack full of books and toiletries, the gun she had worn holstered behind her right hip, all of it shorthand for how her life had gone off the rails since Arthur had shown up in Paris over a month ago.
He stepped away from the window and let the curtains fall shut. “Simple answer: We don’t,” he said, and then cleared his throat. “Your thesis defense is in, what, a week?”
“A week, but she’ll be busy and can’t attend. She wants to meet me a couple days before, and then maybe fly back to the US with me after she’s done with the conference. I can’t bring either of you along to a dinner date with her - she’ll ask me all kinds of questions about my personal life that should never be asked in public.”
“She can’t be that bad,” Arthur said skeptically.
“This is my mother we’re talking about,” Ariadne said, “When my sister came out of the closet all she did was dig up a few back issues of On Our Backs and hand them to her like she’d put them away for the occasion.”
“On Our Backs?” he asked, confused.
“Lesbian periodical,” she explained.
“That doesn’t sound too bad.”
“Cassandra came out to her during dinner at an Olive Garden. Mom just happened to have lesbian magazines in her purse during dinner at a chain restaurant,” Ariadne said, blushing furiously at the memory.
“So, uh, just so I get this right, the background checks I performed on you for the Fischer job gave me the distinct impression that your parents were the stereotypical heterosexual middle-aged couple,” Arthur said carefully.
“They are, at least, as far as I know,” and she did not want to know any more than that, “but they’re both overeducated liberals with PhDs, and it means that I can’t take them anywhere because they start talking about the Sun King’s gangrene in the middle of a pleasant dinner or how the Popes had the penises hacked off of priceless statues so they could put fig leaves on in the middle of a Meijer’s.”
“The Sun King’s gangrene. That sounds a lot like an art history professor I once had at Duke,” Arthur said, a little thoughtfully, his lips pursed.
“Duke University? Was that where you went to school?” She felt as though she had grasped another piece of the puzzle that was Arthur’s past and identity; one of the many pieces that she had discovered one by one in the time he had spent with her.
“Yeah.”
“Well, neither Mom nor Dad has taught there, so I guess we’re safe,” she said, crossing her fingers as she did. In hindsight she realized that her mother had, as usual, defied her usual expectations.
Arthur had flatly refused to let her go out with her mother alone.
“Even if you can defend yourself now,” he had said as he dished out bowls of chicken soup, “God knows what would happen if another attempt were made while you two were wandering Paris together. I trust you, but I’m not sure if your mother would be okay.”
“What am I going to do, then?” she asked him, glancing over at Eames for some help, “Have you show up and say ‘Hey, mom, I’ve been helping professional dream-thieves heist someone’s mind and now people are after my life, and this is my bodyguard, Arthur?’”
“No,” Arthur said, as he put one of the bowls in front of Eames, and the other beside her. “You tell her you have a date, and you’d love to introduce him to her.”
She frowned at him for a bit, and then at Eames. “You’re both a little old for this, you realize?” she said, stirring at her soup while she thought.
“Arthur could look your age if he dressed more casually,” Eames said, his voice faintly hoarse. He had complained all morning about the painkillers giving him a bad case of dry mouth. He broke a slice of baguette in half and dipped one of the pieces in his chicken soup.
She looked at Arthur and squinted a little. “Yeah. I guess you could look my age if you dressed more like a college student and didn’t keep putting all that stuff in your hair.”
“I am dressed like a college student,” he said, gesturing at the boots, the jeans and the open-collared shirt that he had been wearing.
“No college student looks like he uses a ruler to line his sleeves up when he rolls them up,” Ariadne said, a third of her way through her bowl of soup. It wasn’t nearly as good as her dad’s rainy-day recipe, but it wasn’t too bad.
Arthur ladled himself a bowl of soup and then sat down at the table between them. “I’ll have you know that I dressed like this when I was in university. At least, when I wasn’t in uniform.”
“I seriously doubt that you were ever the typical university student, Arthur,” Eames said as he put his spoon down and tore off another hunk of bread.
“Yeah, you were probably preppy as all hell,” Ariadne said with a slight smile.
“He even plays polo,” Eames said, “Number Four defense, weren’t you?”
“You play polo?” Ariadne asked. She was fairly sure the typical college student wasn’t even sure of the rules of the game. She wasn’t.
“Well, I played polo,” Arthur said, looking a little uncomfortable, “but I wasn’t ever very good at it.”
“Yeah. You’re completely and totally preppy,” she said with finality. “I guess Mom is going to be happy I’m dating someone who looks like New England old money.”
“He - “ Eames had started to say, but Arthur had kicked him under the table, hard, and he renewed his interest in the contents of his soup bowl.
Ariadne had known Arthur well enough to know that he never did anything halfway, and she probably shouldn’t have been surprised when she found working on his laptop in the kitchen, trawling databases while he performed background checks on her parents.
“What the hell are you doing?” she had asked, a little defensive on their behalf. “If you’re going to be my boyfriend of two months, why don’t you just ask me for the information you need to know?”
“Because,” he had explained, the monitor glow reflecting off his glasses, “I can’t expect you to compress into less than a week all the little details that a young couple in love would share with each other over two months of spooning.”
That made sense but it felt different when she was the subject of his research, she thought. “How much do you know?”
“Oh, enough. For example, I can see that your education here in Paris isn’t exactly hurting their finances that much, and I also have a decent idea of where you were conceived.”
She blinked. “How the hell did you know that, or do I not want to know?”
“It wasn’t anything too invasive,” he said, completely straight-faced, “I just cross-referenced the date of birth on your birth certificate and counted backwards. Hospital records said you were a week early, so that means -“
She cut him off with a quick gesture. “Dear God, enough, Arthur. I was hatched from a cabbage, okay? The stork brought me. I do not want to know when exactly my parents had to have had sex for me to exist right now. In fact, I don’t want to think of my parents having sex at all,” she had said, and she heard him chuckling gently as she retreated red-faced from the kitchen. It was a nice laugh, and she wondered why he didn’t laugh or smile more often.
Ariadne was fielding a pre-prandial phone call from her mother four days later when someone came downstairs into the living room. She had stared for a moment, trying to place the stranger she saw before she realized belatedly that it was Arthur.
“Hey, uh, mom?” she had said into her cell phone, “Arthur’s here to pick me up. I’ll see you at the restaurant, okay?”
“I’m looking forward to meeting your mystery boyfriend, dear,” her mother had said, before she hung up. She put her phone back in her purse and then continued staring at Arthur.
“Is something wrong?” he asked, his head tilted slightly, an eyebrow raised, and the distinctive gesture made this new Arthur mesh seamlessly with the one she used to know.
“You look - “ she had said, at a loss for words. He had, at her suggestion, not used any pomade on his hair. The Radiohead t-shirt and faded corduroys were completely uncharacteristic of him, as were the faded canvas sneakers. He had kept his usual cologne, though, and the notes of frankincense and black pepper were reassuringly familiar.
“Bad?” he asked, frowning a little after he had put his horn-rimmed glasses on.
“No, no, you look great,” she said, nibbling at her lip, “You look so young.”
“That was the point, wasn’t it?” he asked, tucking his hair behind his ears.
“Yeah, but now we’re going to have to convince my mother I’m not picking up jailbait. You’re not carrying, are you?” she asked, as an afterthought.
“Of course I am,” he said. He turned away from her and retrieved his leather jacket from the coat rack, and she saw that he had tucked the tail of his t-shirt in, hiding the sidearm in its holster tucked inside the waistband of his jeans. Experimentally she reached out and poked him in the middle of his back, finding something stiff and unresisting under her touch.
“You’re wearing a ballistic vest under that,” she said, sighing as she crossed most of the museums in Paris off of her mental itinerary. “I hope Mom’s too tired to go to any museums after dinner, because there’s no way we’re going to get in the Louvre with that and the guns.”
“You’re carrying too,” he said as he shrugged his jacket on, “so unless you were going to dump the Skyph in the Seine we aren’t getting past security anywhere, anyway.”
“Fine, you win,” she had grumbled, and he had smiled and taken her hand as they stepped out into the street and the evening air. She twined her fingers in his and wondered as they walked, if he had done so because he was supposed to be playing the part of her boyfriend, or if it was because he had really wanted to.
They met her mother at Chez Toinette, her favorite restaurant in Paris, and probably, Ariadne thought, her favorite restaurant in all of France. She had raved endlessly in email about the duck in sage and honey in the four years since Ariadne had started her graduate studies in Paris. She had arrived before them and had already been seated, and she waved to them as they made their way towards her. She looked much the same as she had in the last round of family photographs Ariadne had received in her email, but her salt-and-pepper hair had a little more salt in it now, and she had gotten a new pair of glasses that exaggerated her usual deadly stare to impressive effect.
“Hey, Mom. This is my date, Arthur.” Ariadne had said as they took their places at the table opposite her.
“It’s a pleasure to meet you. Dr. Kritzer-Mitchell,” Arthur said smoothly as he got Ariadne’s chair for her, a gesture that he had never used around her before.
“Please, call me Helen,” she said, her smile one of pleasant surprise and approval. “You’ve got a charming one there, Ari dear. Why have I not heard about him until last week?”
“We were seeing each other on and off for a bit, but we weren’t really a going concern until recently,” she had said. None of that was strictly untrue if one squinted a little when looking at the facts.
“Well, I’m sure you two were busy,” Helen said. The tone of her voice implied that she was referring to more than schoolwork, and Ariadne felt herself blushing a fiery red as the import of that comment hit her.
“Mom!” she had wanted to say, but the waiter brought the menus and wine list just then and she busied herself with staring at her menu until her blush went away.
“I’ll never get another word out of her now,” Helen said, smiling indulgently at the menu Ariadne held over her face, and then at Arthur. “Your accent is obviously American. New England, I think. How did you two meet, and what are you doing in Paris?”
Ariadne glanced over to Arthur from behind the menu, wondering what he would do faced with her mother’s interrogation, but he simply smiled reassuringly at her. “You have a good ear. I was born in Old Greenwich, Connecticut and grew up there. As for your other question, we met while she was doing a work placement - I believe she’s told you about it, the one with the nondisclosure agreement. I was working as a consultant for the same client, and that’s how we met. We parted ways after the project, and didn’t meet again until I attended a talk given by Professor Miles. We started seeing each other then.”
The waiter took their orders then, and Helen ordered the duck filet in sage and honey again. She raised her eyebrows in mild surprise as Arthur ordered the roebuck and a bottle of the ’96 Château Lafon-Roche in his perfect French.
“So, you work as a business consultant?” Helen asked after the waiter had withdrawn from the table.
“Security consultation, actually, although I do have degrees in Business Management and Art History.”
“Where from?”
“Duke University in Durham.”
“I used to work with an art historian who taught at Duke, but I don’t think you’re old enough to be one of his students.”
“Dr. Gantt? He’s teaching in the UNC college system now, I believe” Arthur said after a moment of thought.
“Well, if you were one of Vincent’s students from Duke you must be older than you look,” Helen said after a sip of iced water.
“I’m thirty-four, actually,” Arthur said easily.
Ariadne watched her mother carefully at that revelation, but if she was surprised she did not show it. “So you went straight from Duke into the business world?”
“Mom, you’re interrogating my date again,” Ariadne warned, glancing away from her mother to Arthur, who seemed to be taking the grilling in stride.
“No, it’s okay,” he said, taking Ariadne’s hand as in his he did so. “I took a little bit of a detour on the way to a corporate career. I enrolled in ROTC and served with the USAF after I graduated in ‘99.”
“My nephew Cameron serves in the Air Force,” Helen said with a faint smile.
“I probably would have stayed career military,” Arthur said a little pensively, “but things didn’t work out that way.”
“What happened, if I may ask?”
“DADT, really. I’d never done anything ‘unbecoming to the uniform’ while I was an officer, but when one of Dick Cheney’s golf buddies tells the brass that you kissed your best friend in high school, they listen.”
“That is dreadful, Arthur,” Helen said, all sympathy. Both of Ariadne’s parents were so liberal they considered the Democrats right wing.
“Well, at least I’ll never have to eat another MRE again,” he said, and it sounded as though he meant it.
Things went as well as could be expected, for the most part, and Ariadne’s mother was sufficiently distracted by Arthur’s clever conversation that she did not launch into the toddler stories. She did, however, warn Arthur never to eat écrevisse - the freshwater crayfish from the Seine, as she heard that they included the occasional John Doe in their diet.
“That was just something you read in a murder mystery novel,” Ariadne had protested as she glared at her mother.
“Actually,” Arthur said after he swallowed another bite of his venison, “I’m afraid to say that crayfish don’t really care what they eat, and if a body were dumped in the Seine they’d probably take bites out of it, too.”
“I am never eating anything a la Nantua again,” Ariadne said after that, washing the imagined taste out of her mouth with a sip of the excellent Bordeaux.
“So, I’ve talked all about myself,” her mother said, “but I have hardly heard anything about you, Arthur, besides your qualifications, impressive as they are.” Arthur saluted her politely with his wineglass, and cut himself another morsel of venison.
“Well, there really isn’t much to say,” he said after he had chewed and swallowed. “I’m actually kind of a boring man.” That was the most blatant lie he had told tonight.
“Well, what about your family?” she asked, despite Ariadne’s warning glance.
“I don’t really have one,” Arthur said. He put his fork down and sipped at his wine again. “Well, no, I lied. Biologically I do have a family, but we don’t get along, and we haven’t for a long time.” An awkward silence fell over the table then, and Ariadne glanced up at Arthur’s face, worried. His composure seemed a little rumpled, hastily tucked over a flicker of something that had looked like bitterness in his eyes. Instinctively she reached for his hand and was a little surprised when he returned the gesture and squeezed her fingers tightly.
“Did that have something to do with your discharge from the Air Force?” Helen asked him gently. Ariadne rarely saw her mother looking this sad.
“Yeah,” he nodded, “My dad was the one who outed me.”
“Your father plays golf with the former Vice-President of the US?” Ariadne asked, all delicacy forgotten as she put two and two together.
“Sometimes, yeah,” Arthur said. He squeezed her fingers again and then let go to refill his wineglass. “Sorry I didn’t tell you earlier, but I don’t really have a reason to talk about my family most of the time.”
Arthur had insisted on paying for dinner, a gesture that Ariadne knew her mother considered sexist at times. He had, however, charmed her enough that she had let him pay for the meal without protesting, which would have been a very good sign if Arthur had really been her date.
“You must come and visit us some day,” Helen had said as they left the restaurant. “I’m sure everyone would love to meet you.”
“I’d love that,” Arthur said, and she kissed him chastely on the cheek before she got in her taxicab. “He’s a nice boy. Take care of him, Ari dear,” she said, before the door shut.
“I’m doomed,” Ariadne said as they watched the taxi vanish into the distance.
“Why?” Arthur asked. He took his horn-rimmed glasses off and tucked the earpiece into his jacket pocket.
“She likes you a lot, and in case you’re still in-character, we aren’t really dating, which could make things interesting for me if I show up back home without you,” Ariadne said as they turned around and headed back to the safe house.
“Just tell her I left you for Eames,” Arthur said with a wicked smile, one that provoked an absurd burp of laughter from her.
They finished the rest of the walk in silence, hand-in-hand, and were standing on the front step of the safe house when Ariadne spoke again.
“Hey, Arthur,” she said, letting go of his hand so he could get his keys.
“Hm?” He stopped and turned to look at her, keys in his hand.
“All that stuff you told my mom during dinner, the DADT, the New England old money, your dad playing golf with Cheney. Was it the truth?” she asked.
“Most of it, yeah, except for the part about how I met you. Please don’t tell anyone else about it.” He unlocked the door and held it open for her, and she stepped inside. Eames was nowhere to be seen, but he had left the downstairs light on for them. Arthur stepped into the hallway next and took his glasses out of his pocket before he put his jacket back on the coat rack.
Ariadne gathered her courage for a moment, and then barreled on before she lost her nerve. “You’re not boring, you know, Arthur? You’re one of the most interesting people I’ve ever known.”
“Thank you,” he had said with his usual slight detachment, handing the words over to her like he would a long-stemmed rose. She stepped up to him rashly, in an odd fury that she could not place, and kissed him, her fingers tangling in his fine, messy hair. She missed his mouth at first, caught him on the chin, and then pulled his face down to hers. He did not resist and his mouth was as soft and hot as it had been in the dream, his tongue velvety and slick, faint ghosts of the wine lingering in his breath.
“Mm,” he murmured as he pulled away from her, a faint surprise and wistfulness in his dark eyes. “What was that about?”
“The typical post-date kiss,” she said, letting go of his neck. The warmth of his skin lingered on her fingers, and she resisted the urge to reach out and touch her hand to the pulse on his neck. “Now we’re even.”
“Even? What for?” he asked, running his hand through his unruly hair.
“That kiss you stole from me on the Fischer job.”
“Hm,” he said, tilting his head a little as he thought. “I still think I got the better end of the deal there,” and she couldn’t help laughing as she climbed the stairs upstairs and walked back to her room.
Ariadne lay awake in bed, unable to sleep. She told herself that it was nerves over her thesis defense, but after a frustrated half-hour tossing and turning in bed she admitted to herself that it was more than that. She knew that once she went home they would be going on what Arthur had implied would be a suicide mission, and she was furious at her uselessness in the situation. They had kept her safe and alive for nearly two months, taught her to fight and defend herself, and now they were going off to get themselves killed. She made a small growl of annoyance and frustration, crawled out of bed, and shuffled downstairs to the kitchen for a cup of chamomile tea.
The kitchen light was on, and she found Eames and Arthur seated at their usual places at the table, talking quietly over the contents of a manila folder and a large map. Arthur glanced up at her as she entered and gathered the papers up, ostensibly to clear her some space at the table. She knew better. He was trying to protect her from learning too much about what they would be doing in Russia.
“Can’t sleep?” he asked, and she nodded mutely while she tried to articulate, mentally, what she had wanted to say. In the end she gave up and filled the kettle for some tea, and then sat down at her end of the table on Arthur’s left.
“I’m worried about you two,” she said after a few moments of awkward silence, as Eames folded the map. She noticed that he folded it up the same way it had come, along the pre-creased lines so nobody could look at it and tell where he had been planning on going.
“You don’t have to be, love,” Eames said as he put the map back down. He had dark circles around his eyes from lack of sleep, but his gaze was bright and alert, which made her suspect that he was flushing his painkillers again.
She bit her lip, and then looked at the both of them as the kettle seethed quietly in the background. “You know what they say, right? ‘Before you embark on a journey of revenge, dig two graves.’”
Arthur looked as though he wanted to say something, to contradict her, but Eames shook his head and warned him off. “This isn’t about revenge,” he said, after Arthur leaned back in his chair and let him speak. “Not for the both of us anyway. This is about how the business works.”
“You don’t want to survive any kind of assassination attempt without punitive payback,” Arthur explained, “Otherwise people will start thinking you’re too weak to fight back and this leads to individuals trying to take advantage of you.”
“So like the mutually-assured destruction of the Cold War,” Ariadne said, glancing back and forth between them.
“Rather like it, yes,” Eames said, “‘Honor among thieves’ only really happens if it’s enforced by overwhelming force. Otherwise, it’s survival of the fittest, and the extraction world, like Nature, is red in tooth and claw”
She felt her internal balance tip for a moment, and then looked fiercely up at Arthur, and at Eames. “You’re going to need a good architect for this. I’m coming along with you.”
“It’s dangerous. I can’t let you do that,” Arthur said, his tone a little sharper than before.
“More dangerous than the past two months?” she asked, staring him down.
“It could be,” Eames said. “We are dealing with rather nasty individuals here.”
“I still think I’d rather take my chances with the both of you than go back to the US and be murdered by the people you’re after,” she said, as the kettle started whistling. She pushed her chair back and got up to take it off the burner.
Arthur let out a long, tired sigh and reached up to rub at his face with his hands. “I know I’m not going to dissuade you if you have your mind set on this,” he said, his voice slightly muffled. “Even Cobb couldn’t resist you when you wanted to come along on the Fischer job. But what’s to stop us from just packing up and leaving without you?”
“I don’t think you should do that, Arthur,” Eames said. “You’d just be treating her like a child again, and I think she has the right to make this choice.”
Arthur sighed again and then turned in his chair to look at her. “If you do this, and come along with us, you’re never going to be free of the extraction world, you understand? You might never be able to return to a normal life. Is that what you really want?”
“No,” she said, and stilled her trembling hands with an effort of will. “That isn’t what I want, but it’s better than turning my back on the both of you as you go into some kind of suicide mission.”
“We’ll talk about this more later,” Eames said, “but before you go to bed I want you to remember your Milton.”
“John Milton? Paradise Lost?” she asked, unsure of the point he was driving at.
“‘Innocence, once lost, can never be regained. Darkness, once gazed upon, can never be lost’,” he said, softly and simply, the slight hoarseness in his voice underscoring the line better than any theatrical flair could.
“I’ll take that under advisement,” she said, her face set and hard, her hands curled into fists at her sides.
“I hope to God you don’t come to regret this later,” Arthur said, pride, frustration and worry warring in his eyes and the tone of his voice.
Ariadne was back at her own apartment in Kléber, packing her bags several days after a successful thesis defense. She had already boxed up the majority of her stuff and sent it ahead of her to her parents’ house, and she guessed she’d collect it when she found her own place to live. A soft scratching at her window made her look up, and she saw her landlady’s large orange cat sticking its head through the drapes. It mewed softly when it saw her, and then leapt onto her bed and onto the floor and butted its head against her ankles.
“Hey, you,” she said affectionately before she picked it up like a baby. The cat purred loudly as she did so and settled down in her arms with its paws on her shoulder, and she patted it for a few moments as she looked around at the empty strangeness of her apartment. She had spent four years of her life here, a time that felt rather dreamlike to her now that it was drawing to a close. She did not reach for her totem, however. She knew enough to know that this was reality, and if it was a dream, it was probably her own.
“I’m going to miss you when I’m gone, you know, you big orange lardball?” she whispered to the cat, who mewed softly in reply, as though it understood English (which it didn’t.)
There was a soft tap at the door and she put the cat down gently and dusted the fur off her blouse before she went to the door and checked the peephole, mindful of the Skyph holstered behind her right hip. Arthur was standing outside on the landing with a manila envelope in his hands, and she turned the bolt and opened the door to let him in.
“Hey,” he said, glancing a little suspiciously at the cat, which in accordance with the instincts of its kind, went immediately to demand caresses from the one person in the room who was in fact allergic to cats.
“I’m ready,” she told him as she shut the door behind him. “Everything’s packed.”
“Yeah,” he said, looking around at the empty bookshelf and wardrobe and the bare hardwood floor. He handed the manila envelope to her, and she opened it up and took a look inside. Resting within it was a plane ticket to Helsinki, booked in her own name, and a brand-new American passport. The photograph in it was hers, but the name and address were not. She knew enough about Arthur’s connections to know that this was a legitimate passport, and that it would likely stand up to the biometric checks performed at most airports. “There’s still enough time to turn around and go back to the US,” he told her. “Once you do this, there’s no turning back.”
She flipped through the pages of the passport, looked at the stamps in it, a fictitious travel history for a fictitious woman. England, Andorra, Spain. Luxembourg, France, Finland. “I’m ready,” she said, tucking her new passport in the money belt she wore around her waist, under her shirt.
Arthur bit his lip, as though he were about to say something more, but did not. He took her suitcase instead and opened the apartment door for her. “Let’s go, Ms. Elliot,” he said, using the name on her new passport, “We have a flight to catch.”
Ariadne picked up her backpack and overnight bag and stepped out of her apartment. As she did so she paused on the threshold and turned back to glance at the cat grooming itself in the middle of the room, and then shut the door behind her with a soft click.
Author: Mel Wong, @ chn_breathmint on Livejournal and AO3.
Characters/Pairings: Eames, Arthur, Ariadne, OCs. Eames/Arthur flirting, Arthur/Eames attraction, Arthur/Ariadne attraction (and vice versa), Ariadne/Eames attraction (and vice versa).
Status: Complete
Rating: PG-13 for language and violence.
Disclaimer: I don’t own Inception or its characters.
Word Count: 5691
Summary: The Eames And Arthur Executive Protection Hour. Gen with mild slash and het overtones.
Warnings: Ariadne’s mum. If you’re wondering why Ariadne’s mum needs a warning, you haven’t met her yet, one hell of a sequel-bait ending. Some fluffiness, a tiny bit of schmoop. (I know, Mel is writing fluff in her gen fic, the sky is falling!)
Notes: This is a sequel to Parlor Tricks and may not make a whole lot of sense plotwise if you haven’t read that one. Major spoilers for the movie and, naturally, for Parlor Tricks. Dr. Gantt is in fact a real art historian, one whom I have had the honor of learning from, and the jokes about the Sun King’s gangrene are made in loving tribute to his awesome lectures on 19th Century European Art. Thank you to heronymus_waat for the beta.
It was obvious that Eames was in no shape to do any executive protection work. His cracked ribs bothered him a great deal, and the painkillers had dulled his alertness enough that he didn’t think he was capable of escorting Ariadne around Paris while she went on with her life. That meant that Arthur would have his hands full; he had not expected further attempts on Ariadne’s life, but he refused to assume that she was safe until she had left Paris.
“Won’t someone try to kidnap me in the US, like they did with Philippa?” she had asked Arthur Thursday morning as he stood at the stove in the safe house, stirring a pot of homemade chicken stock that had been in the process of being turned into chicken soup. It probably wasn’t going to be as good as her dad’s chicken soup, but then little else was.
“They could, yes,” he said. He scooped up a little broth in his ladle and blew on it until it was cool enough to taste, and then frowned a little as he sipped it. He added a little black pepper to the pot, stirred the broth again and then put the lid back on the pot cock-eyed so the steam could escape. “However, once you’re out of Europe Eames and I are going to head over to Helsinki, and then to St. Petersburg, and we’re going to create enough trouble that you and Cobb will be the least of their worries.” He had not said who “they” were, and she was frankly, getting a little tired of his attempts to protect her from what he knew. The way she saw it, she was neck-deep in trouble already, and attempting to shield her like that just left her feeling more helpless.
After a little discussion she decided to move temporarily into the safe house that Arthur had set up in Montmartre. It was roomier, closer to school, and the move allowed Arthur to keep an eye on Eames and guard her at the same time. He accompanied her back to her apartment to allow her to pack several changes of clothes, her laptop and a few books. She checked her email before she left with her suitcase, and that was when she found the bombshell in her inbox in between spam mail and notifications from social networking websites.
“Arthur,” she said after she had read the email, “My mother says she’s coming to Paris.”
“That’s nice, I guess,” he had said halfheartedly as he glanced out between the curtains. He had been worried that they had been followed, and his threat awareness routines were occupying enough of his attention span that he had failed to understand the ramifications of her statement.
“Arthur. You don’t understand. My mother is coming to Paris for an academic conference and she says she has enough time to visit me. How do I explain this?” she asked, waving at the suitcase she had packed, her backpack full of books and toiletries, the gun she had worn holstered behind her right hip, all of it shorthand for how her life had gone off the rails since Arthur had shown up in Paris over a month ago.
He stepped away from the window and let the curtains fall shut. “Simple answer: We don’t,” he said, and then cleared his throat. “Your thesis defense is in, what, a week?”
“A week, but she’ll be busy and can’t attend. She wants to meet me a couple days before, and then maybe fly back to the US with me after she’s done with the conference. I can’t bring either of you along to a dinner date with her - she’ll ask me all kinds of questions about my personal life that should never be asked in public.”
“She can’t be that bad,” Arthur said skeptically.
“This is my mother we’re talking about,” Ariadne said, “When my sister came out of the closet all she did was dig up a few back issues of On Our Backs and hand them to her like she’d put them away for the occasion.”
“On Our Backs?” he asked, confused.
“Lesbian periodical,” she explained.
“That doesn’t sound too bad.”
“Cassandra came out to her during dinner at an Olive Garden. Mom just happened to have lesbian magazines in her purse during dinner at a chain restaurant,” Ariadne said, blushing furiously at the memory.
“So, uh, just so I get this right, the background checks I performed on you for the Fischer job gave me the distinct impression that your parents were the stereotypical heterosexual middle-aged couple,” Arthur said carefully.
“They are, at least, as far as I know,” and she did not want to know any more than that, “but they’re both overeducated liberals with PhDs, and it means that I can’t take them anywhere because they start talking about the Sun King’s gangrene in the middle of a pleasant dinner or how the Popes had the penises hacked off of priceless statues so they could put fig leaves on in the middle of a Meijer’s.”
“The Sun King’s gangrene. That sounds a lot like an art history professor I once had at Duke,” Arthur said, a little thoughtfully, his lips pursed.
“Duke University? Was that where you went to school?” She felt as though she had grasped another piece of the puzzle that was Arthur’s past and identity; one of the many pieces that she had discovered one by one in the time he had spent with her.
“Yeah.”
“Well, neither Mom nor Dad has taught there, so I guess we’re safe,” she said, crossing her fingers as she did. In hindsight she realized that her mother had, as usual, defied her usual expectations.
Arthur had flatly refused to let her go out with her mother alone.
“Even if you can defend yourself now,” he had said as he dished out bowls of chicken soup, “God knows what would happen if another attempt were made while you two were wandering Paris together. I trust you, but I’m not sure if your mother would be okay.”
“What am I going to do, then?” she asked him, glancing over at Eames for some help, “Have you show up and say ‘Hey, mom, I’ve been helping professional dream-thieves heist someone’s mind and now people are after my life, and this is my bodyguard, Arthur?’”
“No,” Arthur said, as he put one of the bowls in front of Eames, and the other beside her. “You tell her you have a date, and you’d love to introduce him to her.”
She frowned at him for a bit, and then at Eames. “You’re both a little old for this, you realize?” she said, stirring at her soup while she thought.
“Arthur could look your age if he dressed more casually,” Eames said, his voice faintly hoarse. He had complained all morning about the painkillers giving him a bad case of dry mouth. He broke a slice of baguette in half and dipped one of the pieces in his chicken soup.
She looked at Arthur and squinted a little. “Yeah. I guess you could look my age if you dressed more like a college student and didn’t keep putting all that stuff in your hair.”
“I am dressed like a college student,” he said, gesturing at the boots, the jeans and the open-collared shirt that he had been wearing.
“No college student looks like he uses a ruler to line his sleeves up when he rolls them up,” Ariadne said, a third of her way through her bowl of soup. It wasn’t nearly as good as her dad’s rainy-day recipe, but it wasn’t too bad.
Arthur ladled himself a bowl of soup and then sat down at the table between them. “I’ll have you know that I dressed like this when I was in university. At least, when I wasn’t in uniform.”
“I seriously doubt that you were ever the typical university student, Arthur,” Eames said as he put his spoon down and tore off another hunk of bread.
“Yeah, you were probably preppy as all hell,” Ariadne said with a slight smile.
“He even plays polo,” Eames said, “Number Four defense, weren’t you?”
“You play polo?” Ariadne asked. She was fairly sure the typical college student wasn’t even sure of the rules of the game. She wasn’t.
“Well, I played polo,” Arthur said, looking a little uncomfortable, “but I wasn’t ever very good at it.”
“Yeah. You’re completely and totally preppy,” she said with finality. “I guess Mom is going to be happy I’m dating someone who looks like New England old money.”
“He - “ Eames had started to say, but Arthur had kicked him under the table, hard, and he renewed his interest in the contents of his soup bowl.
Ariadne had known Arthur well enough to know that he never did anything halfway, and she probably shouldn’t have been surprised when she found working on his laptop in the kitchen, trawling databases while he performed background checks on her parents.
“What the hell are you doing?” she had asked, a little defensive on their behalf. “If you’re going to be my boyfriend of two months, why don’t you just ask me for the information you need to know?”
“Because,” he had explained, the monitor glow reflecting off his glasses, “I can’t expect you to compress into less than a week all the little details that a young couple in love would share with each other over two months of spooning.”
That made sense but it felt different when she was the subject of his research, she thought. “How much do you know?”
“Oh, enough. For example, I can see that your education here in Paris isn’t exactly hurting their finances that much, and I also have a decent idea of where you were conceived.”
She blinked. “How the hell did you know that, or do I not want to know?”
“It wasn’t anything too invasive,” he said, completely straight-faced, “I just cross-referenced the date of birth on your birth certificate and counted backwards. Hospital records said you were a week early, so that means -“
She cut him off with a quick gesture. “Dear God, enough, Arthur. I was hatched from a cabbage, okay? The stork brought me. I do not want to know when exactly my parents had to have had sex for me to exist right now. In fact, I don’t want to think of my parents having sex at all,” she had said, and she heard him chuckling gently as she retreated red-faced from the kitchen. It was a nice laugh, and she wondered why he didn’t laugh or smile more often.
Ariadne was fielding a pre-prandial phone call from her mother four days later when someone came downstairs into the living room. She had stared for a moment, trying to place the stranger she saw before she realized belatedly that it was Arthur.
“Hey, uh, mom?” she had said into her cell phone, “Arthur’s here to pick me up. I’ll see you at the restaurant, okay?”
“I’m looking forward to meeting your mystery boyfriend, dear,” her mother had said, before she hung up. She put her phone back in her purse and then continued staring at Arthur.
“Is something wrong?” he asked, his head tilted slightly, an eyebrow raised, and the distinctive gesture made this new Arthur mesh seamlessly with the one she used to know.
“You look - “ she had said, at a loss for words. He had, at her suggestion, not used any pomade on his hair. The Radiohead t-shirt and faded corduroys were completely uncharacteristic of him, as were the faded canvas sneakers. He had kept his usual cologne, though, and the notes of frankincense and black pepper were reassuringly familiar.
“Bad?” he asked, frowning a little after he had put his horn-rimmed glasses on.
“No, no, you look great,” she said, nibbling at her lip, “You look so young.”
“That was the point, wasn’t it?” he asked, tucking his hair behind his ears.
“Yeah, but now we’re going to have to convince my mother I’m not picking up jailbait. You’re not carrying, are you?” she asked, as an afterthought.
“Of course I am,” he said. He turned away from her and retrieved his leather jacket from the coat rack, and she saw that he had tucked the tail of his t-shirt in, hiding the sidearm in its holster tucked inside the waistband of his jeans. Experimentally she reached out and poked him in the middle of his back, finding something stiff and unresisting under her touch.
“You’re wearing a ballistic vest under that,” she said, sighing as she crossed most of the museums in Paris off of her mental itinerary. “I hope Mom’s too tired to go to any museums after dinner, because there’s no way we’re going to get in the Louvre with that and the guns.”
“You’re carrying too,” he said as he shrugged his jacket on, “so unless you were going to dump the Skyph in the Seine we aren’t getting past security anywhere, anyway.”
“Fine, you win,” she had grumbled, and he had smiled and taken her hand as they stepped out into the street and the evening air. She twined her fingers in his and wondered as they walked, if he had done so because he was supposed to be playing the part of her boyfriend, or if it was because he had really wanted to.
They met her mother at Chez Toinette, her favorite restaurant in Paris, and probably, Ariadne thought, her favorite restaurant in all of France. She had raved endlessly in email about the duck in sage and honey in the four years since Ariadne had started her graduate studies in Paris. She had arrived before them and had already been seated, and she waved to them as they made their way towards her. She looked much the same as she had in the last round of family photographs Ariadne had received in her email, but her salt-and-pepper hair had a little more salt in it now, and she had gotten a new pair of glasses that exaggerated her usual deadly stare to impressive effect.
“Hey, Mom. This is my date, Arthur.” Ariadne had said as they took their places at the table opposite her.
“It’s a pleasure to meet you. Dr. Kritzer-Mitchell,” Arthur said smoothly as he got Ariadne’s chair for her, a gesture that he had never used around her before.
“Please, call me Helen,” she said, her smile one of pleasant surprise and approval. “You’ve got a charming one there, Ari dear. Why have I not heard about him until last week?”
“We were seeing each other on and off for a bit, but we weren’t really a going concern until recently,” she had said. None of that was strictly untrue if one squinted a little when looking at the facts.
“Well, I’m sure you two were busy,” Helen said. The tone of her voice implied that she was referring to more than schoolwork, and Ariadne felt herself blushing a fiery red as the import of that comment hit her.
“Mom!” she had wanted to say, but the waiter brought the menus and wine list just then and she busied herself with staring at her menu until her blush went away.
“I’ll never get another word out of her now,” Helen said, smiling indulgently at the menu Ariadne held over her face, and then at Arthur. “Your accent is obviously American. New England, I think. How did you two meet, and what are you doing in Paris?”
Ariadne glanced over to Arthur from behind the menu, wondering what he would do faced with her mother’s interrogation, but he simply smiled reassuringly at her. “You have a good ear. I was born in Old Greenwich, Connecticut and grew up there. As for your other question, we met while she was doing a work placement - I believe she’s told you about it, the one with the nondisclosure agreement. I was working as a consultant for the same client, and that’s how we met. We parted ways after the project, and didn’t meet again until I attended a talk given by Professor Miles. We started seeing each other then.”
The waiter took their orders then, and Helen ordered the duck filet in sage and honey again. She raised her eyebrows in mild surprise as Arthur ordered the roebuck and a bottle of the ’96 Château Lafon-Roche in his perfect French.
“So, you work as a business consultant?” Helen asked after the waiter had withdrawn from the table.
“Security consultation, actually, although I do have degrees in Business Management and Art History.”
“Where from?”
“Duke University in Durham.”
“I used to work with an art historian who taught at Duke, but I don’t think you’re old enough to be one of his students.”
“Dr. Gantt? He’s teaching in the UNC college system now, I believe” Arthur said after a moment of thought.
“Well, if you were one of Vincent’s students from Duke you must be older than you look,” Helen said after a sip of iced water.
“I’m thirty-four, actually,” Arthur said easily.
Ariadne watched her mother carefully at that revelation, but if she was surprised she did not show it. “So you went straight from Duke into the business world?”
“Mom, you’re interrogating my date again,” Ariadne warned, glancing away from her mother to Arthur, who seemed to be taking the grilling in stride.
“No, it’s okay,” he said, taking Ariadne’s hand as in his he did so. “I took a little bit of a detour on the way to a corporate career. I enrolled in ROTC and served with the USAF after I graduated in ‘99.”
“My nephew Cameron serves in the Air Force,” Helen said with a faint smile.
“I probably would have stayed career military,” Arthur said a little pensively, “but things didn’t work out that way.”
“What happened, if I may ask?”
“DADT, really. I’d never done anything ‘unbecoming to the uniform’ while I was an officer, but when one of Dick Cheney’s golf buddies tells the brass that you kissed your best friend in high school, they listen.”
“That is dreadful, Arthur,” Helen said, all sympathy. Both of Ariadne’s parents were so liberal they considered the Democrats right wing.
“Well, at least I’ll never have to eat another MRE again,” he said, and it sounded as though he meant it.
Things went as well as could be expected, for the most part, and Ariadne’s mother was sufficiently distracted by Arthur’s clever conversation that she did not launch into the toddler stories. She did, however, warn Arthur never to eat écrevisse - the freshwater crayfish from the Seine, as she heard that they included the occasional John Doe in their diet.
“That was just something you read in a murder mystery novel,” Ariadne had protested as she glared at her mother.
“Actually,” Arthur said after he swallowed another bite of his venison, “I’m afraid to say that crayfish don’t really care what they eat, and if a body were dumped in the Seine they’d probably take bites out of it, too.”
“I am never eating anything a la Nantua again,” Ariadne said after that, washing the imagined taste out of her mouth with a sip of the excellent Bordeaux.
“So, I’ve talked all about myself,” her mother said, “but I have hardly heard anything about you, Arthur, besides your qualifications, impressive as they are.” Arthur saluted her politely with his wineglass, and cut himself another morsel of venison.
“Well, there really isn’t much to say,” he said after he had chewed and swallowed. “I’m actually kind of a boring man.” That was the most blatant lie he had told tonight.
“Well, what about your family?” she asked, despite Ariadne’s warning glance.
“I don’t really have one,” Arthur said. He put his fork down and sipped at his wine again. “Well, no, I lied. Biologically I do have a family, but we don’t get along, and we haven’t for a long time.” An awkward silence fell over the table then, and Ariadne glanced up at Arthur’s face, worried. His composure seemed a little rumpled, hastily tucked over a flicker of something that had looked like bitterness in his eyes. Instinctively she reached for his hand and was a little surprised when he returned the gesture and squeezed her fingers tightly.
“Did that have something to do with your discharge from the Air Force?” Helen asked him gently. Ariadne rarely saw her mother looking this sad.
“Yeah,” he nodded, “My dad was the one who outed me.”
“Your father plays golf with the former Vice-President of the US?” Ariadne asked, all delicacy forgotten as she put two and two together.
“Sometimes, yeah,” Arthur said. He squeezed her fingers again and then let go to refill his wineglass. “Sorry I didn’t tell you earlier, but I don’t really have a reason to talk about my family most of the time.”
Arthur had insisted on paying for dinner, a gesture that Ariadne knew her mother considered sexist at times. He had, however, charmed her enough that she had let him pay for the meal without protesting, which would have been a very good sign if Arthur had really been her date.
“You must come and visit us some day,” Helen had said as they left the restaurant. “I’m sure everyone would love to meet you.”
“I’d love that,” Arthur said, and she kissed him chastely on the cheek before she got in her taxicab. “He’s a nice boy. Take care of him, Ari dear,” she said, before the door shut.
“I’m doomed,” Ariadne said as they watched the taxi vanish into the distance.
“Why?” Arthur asked. He took his horn-rimmed glasses off and tucked the earpiece into his jacket pocket.
“She likes you a lot, and in case you’re still in-character, we aren’t really dating, which could make things interesting for me if I show up back home without you,” Ariadne said as they turned around and headed back to the safe house.
“Just tell her I left you for Eames,” Arthur said with a wicked smile, one that provoked an absurd burp of laughter from her.
They finished the rest of the walk in silence, hand-in-hand, and were standing on the front step of the safe house when Ariadne spoke again.
“Hey, Arthur,” she said, letting go of his hand so he could get his keys.
“Hm?” He stopped and turned to look at her, keys in his hand.
“All that stuff you told my mom during dinner, the DADT, the New England old money, your dad playing golf with Cheney. Was it the truth?” she asked.
“Most of it, yeah, except for the part about how I met you. Please don’t tell anyone else about it.” He unlocked the door and held it open for her, and she stepped inside. Eames was nowhere to be seen, but he had left the downstairs light on for them. Arthur stepped into the hallway next and took his glasses out of his pocket before he put his jacket back on the coat rack.
Ariadne gathered her courage for a moment, and then barreled on before she lost her nerve. “You’re not boring, you know, Arthur? You’re one of the most interesting people I’ve ever known.”
“Thank you,” he had said with his usual slight detachment, handing the words over to her like he would a long-stemmed rose. She stepped up to him rashly, in an odd fury that she could not place, and kissed him, her fingers tangling in his fine, messy hair. She missed his mouth at first, caught him on the chin, and then pulled his face down to hers. He did not resist and his mouth was as soft and hot as it had been in the dream, his tongue velvety and slick, faint ghosts of the wine lingering in his breath.
“Mm,” he murmured as he pulled away from her, a faint surprise and wistfulness in his dark eyes. “What was that about?”
“The typical post-date kiss,” she said, letting go of his neck. The warmth of his skin lingered on her fingers, and she resisted the urge to reach out and touch her hand to the pulse on his neck. “Now we’re even.”
“Even? What for?” he asked, running his hand through his unruly hair.
“That kiss you stole from me on the Fischer job.”
“Hm,” he said, tilting his head a little as he thought. “I still think I got the better end of the deal there,” and she couldn’t help laughing as she climbed the stairs upstairs and walked back to her room.
Ariadne lay awake in bed, unable to sleep. She told herself that it was nerves over her thesis defense, but after a frustrated half-hour tossing and turning in bed she admitted to herself that it was more than that. She knew that once she went home they would be going on what Arthur had implied would be a suicide mission, and she was furious at her uselessness in the situation. They had kept her safe and alive for nearly two months, taught her to fight and defend herself, and now they were going off to get themselves killed. She made a small growl of annoyance and frustration, crawled out of bed, and shuffled downstairs to the kitchen for a cup of chamomile tea.
The kitchen light was on, and she found Eames and Arthur seated at their usual places at the table, talking quietly over the contents of a manila folder and a large map. Arthur glanced up at her as she entered and gathered the papers up, ostensibly to clear her some space at the table. She knew better. He was trying to protect her from learning too much about what they would be doing in Russia.
“Can’t sleep?” he asked, and she nodded mutely while she tried to articulate, mentally, what she had wanted to say. In the end she gave up and filled the kettle for some tea, and then sat down at her end of the table on Arthur’s left.
“I’m worried about you two,” she said after a few moments of awkward silence, as Eames folded the map. She noticed that he folded it up the same way it had come, along the pre-creased lines so nobody could look at it and tell where he had been planning on going.
“You don’t have to be, love,” Eames said as he put the map back down. He had dark circles around his eyes from lack of sleep, but his gaze was bright and alert, which made her suspect that he was flushing his painkillers again.
She bit her lip, and then looked at the both of them as the kettle seethed quietly in the background. “You know what they say, right? ‘Before you embark on a journey of revenge, dig two graves.’”
Arthur looked as though he wanted to say something, to contradict her, but Eames shook his head and warned him off. “This isn’t about revenge,” he said, after Arthur leaned back in his chair and let him speak. “Not for the both of us anyway. This is about how the business works.”
“You don’t want to survive any kind of assassination attempt without punitive payback,” Arthur explained, “Otherwise people will start thinking you’re too weak to fight back and this leads to individuals trying to take advantage of you.”
“So like the mutually-assured destruction of the Cold War,” Ariadne said, glancing back and forth between them.
“Rather like it, yes,” Eames said, “‘Honor among thieves’ only really happens if it’s enforced by overwhelming force. Otherwise, it’s survival of the fittest, and the extraction world, like Nature, is red in tooth and claw”
She felt her internal balance tip for a moment, and then looked fiercely up at Arthur, and at Eames. “You’re going to need a good architect for this. I’m coming along with you.”
“It’s dangerous. I can’t let you do that,” Arthur said, his tone a little sharper than before.
“More dangerous than the past two months?” she asked, staring him down.
“It could be,” Eames said. “We are dealing with rather nasty individuals here.”
“I still think I’d rather take my chances with the both of you than go back to the US and be murdered by the people you’re after,” she said, as the kettle started whistling. She pushed her chair back and got up to take it off the burner.
Arthur let out a long, tired sigh and reached up to rub at his face with his hands. “I know I’m not going to dissuade you if you have your mind set on this,” he said, his voice slightly muffled. “Even Cobb couldn’t resist you when you wanted to come along on the Fischer job. But what’s to stop us from just packing up and leaving without you?”
“I don’t think you should do that, Arthur,” Eames said. “You’d just be treating her like a child again, and I think she has the right to make this choice.”
Arthur sighed again and then turned in his chair to look at her. “If you do this, and come along with us, you’re never going to be free of the extraction world, you understand? You might never be able to return to a normal life. Is that what you really want?”
“No,” she said, and stilled her trembling hands with an effort of will. “That isn’t what I want, but it’s better than turning my back on the both of you as you go into some kind of suicide mission.”
“We’ll talk about this more later,” Eames said, “but before you go to bed I want you to remember your Milton.”
“John Milton? Paradise Lost?” she asked, unsure of the point he was driving at.
“‘Innocence, once lost, can never be regained. Darkness, once gazed upon, can never be lost’,” he said, softly and simply, the slight hoarseness in his voice underscoring the line better than any theatrical flair could.
“I’ll take that under advisement,” she said, her face set and hard, her hands curled into fists at her sides.
“I hope to God you don’t come to regret this later,” Arthur said, pride, frustration and worry warring in his eyes and the tone of his voice.
Ariadne was back at her own apartment in Kléber, packing her bags several days after a successful thesis defense. She had already boxed up the majority of her stuff and sent it ahead of her to her parents’ house, and she guessed she’d collect it when she found her own place to live. A soft scratching at her window made her look up, and she saw her landlady’s large orange cat sticking its head through the drapes. It mewed softly when it saw her, and then leapt onto her bed and onto the floor and butted its head against her ankles.
“Hey, you,” she said affectionately before she picked it up like a baby. The cat purred loudly as she did so and settled down in her arms with its paws on her shoulder, and she patted it for a few moments as she looked around at the empty strangeness of her apartment. She had spent four years of her life here, a time that felt rather dreamlike to her now that it was drawing to a close. She did not reach for her totem, however. She knew enough to know that this was reality, and if it was a dream, it was probably her own.
“I’m going to miss you when I’m gone, you know, you big orange lardball?” she whispered to the cat, who mewed softly in reply, as though it understood English (which it didn’t.)
There was a soft tap at the door and she put the cat down gently and dusted the fur off her blouse before she went to the door and checked the peephole, mindful of the Skyph holstered behind her right hip. Arthur was standing outside on the landing with a manila envelope in his hands, and she turned the bolt and opened the door to let him in.
“Hey,” he said, glancing a little suspiciously at the cat, which in accordance with the instincts of its kind, went immediately to demand caresses from the one person in the room who was in fact allergic to cats.
“I’m ready,” she told him as she shut the door behind him. “Everything’s packed.”
“Yeah,” he said, looking around at the empty bookshelf and wardrobe and the bare hardwood floor. He handed the manila envelope to her, and she opened it up and took a look inside. Resting within it was a plane ticket to Helsinki, booked in her own name, and a brand-new American passport. The photograph in it was hers, but the name and address were not. She knew enough about Arthur’s connections to know that this was a legitimate passport, and that it would likely stand up to the biometric checks performed at most airports. “There’s still enough time to turn around and go back to the US,” he told her. “Once you do this, there’s no turning back.”
She flipped through the pages of the passport, looked at the stamps in it, a fictitious travel history for a fictitious woman. England, Andorra, Spain. Luxembourg, France, Finland. “I’m ready,” she said, tucking her new passport in the money belt she wore around her waist, under her shirt.
Arthur bit his lip, as though he were about to say something more, but did not. He took her suitcase instead and opened the apartment door for her. “Let’s go, Ms. Elliot,” he said, using the name on her new passport, “We have a flight to catch.”
Ariadne picked up her backpack and overnight bag and stepped out of her apartment. As she did so she paused on the threshold and turned back to glance at the cat grooming itself in the middle of the room, and then shut the door behind her with a soft click.