Anabasis: Part I: 3

[coldthermistor]

Title: Anabasis
Author: coldthermistor
Artist: ellegen
Rating: R just in case, mostly for violence. There is no porn.
Word count: 80,617 words
Warnings: A little violence (possibly graphic), implied torture, and swearing.
Pairings: Cobb/Mal, Arthur/Cobb
Summary: Dominic Cobb is a man on the run. He's on the run from a marriage slowly falling apart, from being framed for a crime he didn't commit...and on the run from the memories of a betrayal that haunts him still. He remembers little of the night except for one thing, burned into his mind: Arthur betrayed him. Arthur cannot be trusted. Now, a business man, Saito has come forward: with what seems to be Cobb's best hope of learning the truth about that night so many years ago...and with Cobb's best hope of clearing his name. In return, he only wants an impossible job performed. Inception. There is no room for failure. The stakes are too high. But there is an enemy haunting Cobb's footsteps...an enemy wearing the face of a man that Cobb knows only too well: Cobb's former point man, Arthur...

-


This is Arthur, point man:

Steady. Dependable. Loyal. Determined. Consistent. These are all his watchwords. There’s more to him than that, of course. He’s rigorous, demanding, insistent on precision and correctness. Association with Dominic Cobb has softened those last few - he’s learned to be more comfortable with thinking on his feet, and more relaxed about bending some of the rules, and testing some of the boundaries.

But the first five words define him.

It isn’t his analytic ability that defines him, even though Arthur’s good at that, and good at what he does. He’s tenacious. Once he’s set on the trail of a mark, he doesn’t stop until he digs up every little piece of data he can find. Often enough, that’s a gift in itself. But Arthur takes it one step further - he’s good at putting things together. He’s capable of tracing links together from separate pieces of data until the puzzle falls into place and they have a coherent picture of the mark.

That sets him apart from most of the other point men in the business. He’s one of the best. Eames would say he’s the best.

But this doesn’t define him.

He’s steady. He’s the voice of caution to Cobb’s reckless daring. He’s the one who grounds them, who reminds them of the limits - and he’s the one who can always be trusted to do his job, and then go further than that. He doesn’t get carried away. He doesn’t lose his cool.

He’s loyal. When he takes a job up, he gives it all he has, and then a little more. He’s followed Cobb into too many shenanigans now, beyond count, no matter how many times he’s said it’s a bad idea. If a job goes to hell, he’ll be there, with Cobb, and not away saving his own skin. He’s dragged Cobb out of one or two scrapes before, and Cobb’s returned the favour. He trusts Cobb with his life, and knows that Cobb trusts him with his.

This is what defines him then: the number of times he’s stood by Cobb when someone else would have walked away. The number of times he’s followed Cobb, despite his misgivings. How he stays with Cobb, even though he could walk away, and find a job somewhere else. There’re plenty of other jobs available for a licensed extractor of his qualifications, for a point man of his calibre.

He doesn’t go.

This is what defines Arthur, point man:

It isn’t his dry humour, or his sarcastic comments. It isn’t his occasional moments of cheeky mischief. It isn’t his deadpan remarks.

These are nuances; subtle complexities that are part of him, but do not define him.

It’s this:

He’s more than just Cobb’s point man. More than just his friend. They’re closer than brothers, and Arthur would have it no other way.

-

“Arthur?” Cobb croaked. His voice was raspy from disuse. He tried to sit up but felt strangely weak. As his eyes focused, the figure resolved into the form of a man, dark, bespectacled - and most definitely not Arthur.

“You are awake then, Mr Cobb?” The man asked, handing a glass of water over. Cobb eyed it for a moment and then drank. He hadn’t realised how thirsty he was and it was wonderfully cool against his parched and dry throat. “You were not in a good condition by the time Eames brought you here, with Mr Saito.”

“Eames?” Cobb asked slowly. His brain felt sluggish. But he was certain he had seen Arthur in the alley…Christ. He set down the almost empty class on the wooden table by the bed and fumbled in his pocket to check for his totem. Christ. Had this man touched it? He didn’t have his coat on. Just a clean shirt that was not his - but not the same shirt he’d been wearing - earlier. Whenever that had been.

“Yes, Mr Cobb. He said Mr Saito had found you face down in one of the streets. You were badly bleeding from a laceration to your abdomen and another one on your side but Mr Saito did not think it wise to expose you to Cobol by taking you to a local clinic or hospital. Hence Eames suggested they bring you here. I do possess medical qualifications, and Mr Saito obtained what I did not have.”

Eames had mentioned…”You’re Yusuf,” Cobb guessed, “The chemist that Eames mentioned.”

“Yes,” Yusuf acknowledged, “In any case, your condition was serious, but not critical. You were bleeding out from the lacerations, and by the time you arrived, you were going into shock. You took some blunt trauma to the head, probably a concussion, but if things get worse…” he shrugged, “There’s nothing much I can do. You might experience some headaches or dizziness over the next few days, but they’ll go away in time, and with some tylenol.”

It was then that Cobb registered what Yusuf had said. “Saito? He’s here?”

Yusuf nodded again. “I would not advise you get up, Mr Cobb. It took twenty-four stitches to close that nasty slash you took, and eleven for your side.”

Cobb acquiesced, relaxing back against the pillows. “Did you see - a die?” he asked, finally. “A red, acrylic die?”

Yusuf smiled, and the corners of his hooded eyes crinkled. “It was in your coat pocket. I did not touch it. I know what it is for. Do you need it?”

“Yes,” Cobb said. Yusuf stood up, walked over to what Cobb realised was a lamp that had become a makeshift nightstand and removed a torn, dusty coat from where it had been draped over the lamp. He tossed it to Cobb, who fumbled for a moment and then caught it. He reached and felt for the pockets and felt anxiety rise as he could not locate - there. He withdrew the die with shaky fingers and Yusuf prudently turned his back.

Four. Six. Six. Four. Six.

No. Not a dream. This was real. Arthur was dead, and Eames - or Saito - had found him and brought him to Yusuf for treatment.

“Mr Saito wanted to speak with you after you were awake,” Yusuf said, then. He still didn’t turn around. “Do you feel up to it?”

Was there ever an option, Cobb wondered, to back out? He must have missed it a few days ago. He closed his eyes, feeling the hard die in his clenched fist. No. He’d made his choice. There was only one way to know what had really happened. Only one last way to find out the truth. “Yes,” he said aloud.

“I’ll tell him,” Yusuf said. He turned to leave and paused when Cobb called him, haltingly.

“Yusuf?”

“Mr Cobb?”

“It’s just Cobb. And thank you,” Cobb said quietly, “For helping me.”

Yusuf’s severe expression softened as he smiled. “You’re welcome,” he replied. He left, closing the door quietly behind him. Cobb allowed himself to sag back against the mattress. The sheets were fresh and smelled of cypress and sharp spices, and he wondered, not for the first time, if he was going quite mad. Maybe he was lying in that alley, dead and hallucinating.

Projections were one thing. Hallucinations were another. He thought he’d been through the worst of them, the involuntary memory-triggers, right after the job itself.

And then there was limbo.

No, Cobb thought, gripping the die fiercely, feeling the unyielding plastic bite into his hand. He wasn’t going to go mad. Not just yet. This was real.

He had too much to do.

-

Saito entered, with all the silent grace of a hunting cat. He closed the door behind him. “Mr Cobb. I trust you are feeling better?”

“Yes. Thank you,” Cobb said awkwardly, and then asked, “How did you know I was in Mombasa?”

Just the slightest hint of teeth. Saito pulled up the stool, next to the bed and sat. “I have been following your movements,” he said, calmly, “After all, I need to protect my investments. And quite fortunately for both of us. You were looking in terrible shape when I found you.”

“Cobol found me,” Cobb said, slowly. It was as much a statement as a question, and he found himself wondering just how much of it had been true and how much of it had been hallucinations. He didn’t dream. Not anymore.

“I would guess,” Saito acknowledged, with a nod, “There was no way to tell for certain. You were alone and unconscious. It was said you had fought three men off, staggered out and collapsed in the street. Naturally, no one wanted to have anything to do with you.” He smiled, cold and sharp. “Cobol’s doing.”

“Oh,” Cobb said, unsure of what else he could say in response to that. He frowned. He remembered none of that at all.

“Of course, I am looking into this matter,” Saito continued. “Cobol Engineering has always been obvious but this is audacity, and perhaps reeks of desperation.”

“Cobol doesn’t tolerate failure.”

“But their means are crude,” Saito said, with a little measured contempt. “Obvious. Sloppy. To hire an extraction on me, Mr Cobb, is bold. I admire a little audacity, even in my competitors. But sloppiness - not so much. And then they came for you. Which was foolish of them, if they believe I will allow interference in my affairs.”

“But Cobol doesn’t know I’m working for you. Only that my team failed our extraction.”

“You think the man who betrayed you held his tongue when Cobol came for him? I did not offer you a job then, Mr Cobb, but it is no difficult guess.”

Cobb jerked upright and forced himself to relax, hissing at the sudden, tight pain that flared in his abdomen and side. “Nash,” he said aloud. “You mean Nash.”

“The man who sold you out and tried to bargain for his life, yes,” Saito said, “But we digress. I intend to ensure Cobol learns not to interfere in my affairs. And I trust you will keep out of such trouble in future. It was a near thing, and I do not appreciate it when my investments - fail.”
“I remember our agreement,” Cobb said, quietly.

Saito eyed him and then lifted his shoulders in a light shrug of acquiescence. “Good,” he said, “Then there is no reason for me to be keeping you from rest.” He turned to go, and was almost at the door when Cobb’s throat finally worked and gave voice to the single question he had to ask.

“Mr Saito?”

Saito paused briefly, hand brushing the wooden doorframe.

It was important, and yet he took a moment before he could quite ask it. “You found me…alone? There was no one else?”

Saito’s face was impassive as he nodded.

“Thank you,” Cobb said, to Saito’s retreating back.

He closed his eyes for a moment. Arthur had felt real, then. But the projections and the flashbacks always felt real, until they ended. But they ended, and they were never real.

How do you know?

He resisted the urge to roll the die again, a reminder of the time he spent in Limbo. He’d never quite be able to wake up from a dream without needing to test, to make sure that this was real. (In reality, Arthur was dead, and Arthur had turned on him, no matter how many times Cobb tried to believe it wasn’t true.)

We need to get you to a hospital, Arthur had said.

It was said you had fought three men off, staggered out, and collapsed in the street.

Cobb stared at the ceiling. White plaster, peeling in places. A crack ran alongside the rightmost corner. He didn’t put the die away. He held it tightly in his clenched fist. Sleep took a long time to come.

He didn’t dream.

-

Cobb spent another week in Mombasa, until he was sufficiently recovered to the point that Yusuf had decided he could reluctantly suggest that Cobb could travel to Paris to pick up their new architect.

The week was spent drawing up brief plans for the inception on the mark: Robert Fischer, heir to the Fischer-Morrow energy conglomerate. Cobb ended up popping a variety of antibiotics and painkillers, and Yusuf took some time every day to inspect the stitches and to see how the wounds were healing up. He had been running a fever for the first three days, but evidently, the antibiotics had taken care of the infection and it looked like the wounds were healing cleanly, even if the stitches itched a little. The wounds hadn’t been too deep, and Yusuf had informed him the stitches would need to be removed in the time to come - perhaps a week later.

Looking through the basic information on the job and coming up with the beginnings of a plan kept Cobb occupied enough. It was easy enough to forget the alley where Cobol had tracked him down, and easy enough for the mingled feeling of pain and tightness in his chest and a feeling he couldn’t quite explain to fade to the usual, distant hurt and the need to know that had haunted him for months.

He’d called Mal on the second day. He hadn’t said anything about seeing Arthur in that alley or getting wounded, just mentioned that he needed information on Robert Fischer and let her do the research. It wasn’t, he thought quietly, as if she’d believe him. Maybe she would. He was painfully aware of how he didn’t quite know what she’d think anymore, and he was afraid that it would just be another tally on the list, another check on the diagnosis he’d gotten when she’d marched him to the psychiatrist, months ago.

Your husband might be suffering from some kind of psychological trauma. A kind of backlash, Dr Caine had said. Cobb hadn’t looked at him. I trust you are familiar with the term? They both turned to gaze at him, and Cobb shifted uneasily at the pity in Caine’s eyes. He didn’t need pity. He didn’t want pity. It’s to do with what Algol did to his victims, Dr Caine went on, in response to another question from Mal. He repeats the process. Uses the dreamshare to burn the trauma into the mind, so vividly that the victim cannot help but to relieve it.

He didn’t need her to question his sanity right now. Cobb wasn’t even entirely sure that he wasn’t losing it.

Eames took up most of the work for now, and although he said nothing, Cobb did not miss the pointed references Eames made to calling up Ramirez. For all he kept bringing up the matter of how they needed a point man, Eames didn’t actually force the issue by calling Ramirez up. Cobb didn’t know what he would do if Eames did. He knew, sensibly, that even if Ramirez wasn’t quite Arthur, a point man could only improve their chances of success.

It was another thing to convince himself that he wanted a point man in on the job.

He was just glad Eames never asked why. He wasn’t even sure he knew the answer to that question. Particularly among black-market extractors, loyalty was a commodity, to be purchased. It wasn’t entirely rare to be sold out by some of the more untrustworthy ones, and Cobb knew even Eames had his limits and when pushed, wouldn’t bat an eyelid about dropping out on a job if he thought the risks far exceeded the rewards.

It wasn’t as if Cobb didn’t know betrayal happened. (It did. Just never to him.) But it had been Arthur, and to Arthur, loyalty wasn’t purchased. It just was.

No, it wasn’t the fear of another betrayal that made Cobb think twice about working with another point man. It was something else, something far more personal that he couldn’t seem to explain.

Personal was always difficult to explain, and he didn’t even want to begin.

-

Yusuf hadn’t been too positive about the trip to Paris, pointing out that anyone who’d gotten that cut up should have been going for as much bed rest as possible. He’d reluctantly admitted that Cobb was fit enough to travel, and that as long as he didn’t do anything strenuous, and took plenty of rest, there shouldn’t be a problem. Cobb had to be content with that.

While Eames went to deal with the matter of finding a suitable work area for them (after he’d made it pointedly clear that this wasn’t actually included in the job description of a forger), Cobb went to see Miles.

Some things, at least, hadn’t changed. Miles still preferred to do his marking in the small lecture hall in which he taught, daily, instead of the even smaller office he had. Cobb slipped quietly into the lecture hall from the back, recognising the figure bent forward over the desk, frowning as he read through an essay.

It was a while before he spoke up.

“You never did like your office, did you?” Cobb commented softly, remembering how his voice would carry in the lecture hall. Miles glanced up immediately, and then focused on him. He set down the paper he was reading through, frowning.

“No space to think in that broom cupboard,” he said, and then he paused. “Is it safe for you to be here?” he wanted to know. Cobb got up from his seat and walked past steps of empty rows, down towards Miles’ desk.

He shrugged, keeping his voice as light and casual as he could. “Extradition between France and the United States is a bureaucratic nightmare, you know that?”

“I think they might find a way to make it work in your case,” Miles said dryly.

Cobb ignored that. He handed the brown paper bag over, with the stuffed animals he’d bought for James and Philippa in Tokyo, and the gift he’d found for Mal. “Look, I uh…brought these for you to give to the kids when you have the chance. I got Mal something too.”

“It’ll take more than the occasional stuffed animal to convince those children they still have a father,” Miles said. Cobb stiffened. He did not miss the mild reproach in Miles’ voice. “Or the occasional gift to convince my daughter that she still has a husband.”

“I’m just doing what I know. I’m just doing you taught me.”

“I never taught you to be a thief,” Miles retorted, sharply.

“No, you taught me to navigate people’s minds. But after…after what happened, there weren’t a whole lot of legitimate ways for me to use that skill.”

Miles’ lips compressed in a thin line but he said nothing in response to that. Finally, he sighed, put aside all his papers, and asked, “What are you doing here, Dom?”

“I think I’ve found a way home,” Cobb said, honestly, “It’s a job for some very, very powerful people - people who I believe can fix my charges permanently. But I need your help.”

Miles’ eyes narrowed. “You’re here to corrupt one of my brightest and best,” he said flatly.

Cobb shrugged. “You know what I’m offering,” he retorted, “You have to let them decide for themselves.”

“Money.”

“Not just money. You remember. It’s the chance to build cathedrals, entire cities…things that never existed…things that couldn’t exist in the real world.”

“So, you want me to let someone else follow you into your fantasy.” It wasn’t a question. It was a statement, sharp and cutting.

“They don’t actually come into the dream. They just…they just design the levels and teach them to the dreamers. That’s all.”

Miles nodded. His expression was hard and unyielding. “Design it yourself,” he said.

Cobb swallowed. He didn’t know if he could tell Miles. He couldn’t even quite tell Mal. But if he didn’t, there was no other way to convince Miles that he needed an architect. Miles was perfectly capable of sitting back on his hands and being stubborn when he wanted to. In a way, he was almost exactly like Mal. Or rather, Cobb amended, Mal was almost exactly like Miles.

“Arthur won’t let me,” he admitted, feeling the words tumble out, ugly and bitter. He tasted ashes on his tongue, for a moment, smelled smoke curl in the air. He clenched his fist, hard, until his fingers began to ache. No. No. Not now. This was Paris. This was Paris. Carefully, he relaxed again, to see Miles studying him with an inscrutable look - there was horror, and some pity - and yet Cobb wasn’t sure what else to read into it.

“Come back to reality, Dom,” he said, quietly. Pleading. “Please. Mal talked to me, you know.”

“What did she say?” Cobb wanted to know, “That those kids - your grandchildren - they’re waiting for their father to come back home? That’s reality, Miles. That’s their reality. And this job - this last job - that’s how I get there.”

Miles raised his head, slowly. For the first time, Cobb was acutely aware that this hadn’t been too easy on Miles either. His eyes were sunken, and the large eyebags and the tired lines on his face only gave him an old, hollow and weary appearance.

“Does it end there, Dom?” he asked, “When you go back home? She told me. You still dream about him. It’s hurting you, and you’re hurting her because you shut her out. Locked the door. There’s nothing she can do.”

Cobb swallowed. What hurt the most was how matter-of-factly Miles said it, and how he didn’t quite allow himself to plead. And how he’d promised this man, years ago, that he’d make Mal happy. He’d take care of her. He loved her.

“Does it help your children if their father goes home…but they still end up losing their parents?”

Cobb’s blood ran cold. “You’re talking about divorce,” he said, finally. “She…she wants out?”

“I didn’t say that,” Miles said evenly, “I’m saying that if you don’t get your act together and do what’s best for Mal, do what’s best for your children…it’s not going to end well. Stop running away, Dom.”

“I can’t,” Cobb said, before he could think the better of it. There wasn’t a way to get past Miles’ disapproval. He resisted the urge to press the heel of his hand against his eyes, ended up running his hand through his disordered blond hair. “Look. Miles. I…I just can’t fit back in there any longer. Even if…” he swallowed hard, and fought to make the words come out. “Even if the police didn’t believe I was Algol. I can’t let her in. I can’t even begin to understand what he did to me. I can’t even remember much of that night. I can’t. The memory’s locked away in here - “ he tapped his temple with a finger, “ - for a reason. And I can’t let her go into my head, and see what kind of mess it is in there. The job I’ve taken? He says he’s got the files. The information. He can do more than clear my name. He knows exactly what happened that night.” He looked up, willing Miles to believe him. “I have to know, Miles,” he said. Fiercely. Desperately. “It’s the only way I can begin to fix things. I wouldn’t be standing here if I knew any other way.”

Miles said nothing.

“I need an architect who’s as good as I was.”

Finally, Miles smiled. It was a weak smile, and there was little happiness in his eyes. It was resigned. “I’ve got somebody better,” he said.

“Thank you,” Cobb said quietly.

“Tell me, honestly,” Miles said, brushing off Cobb’s thanks. He leaned forward, intently. “How long do you intend to keep pushing Mal away?”

Cobb’s throat worked. Nothing came out.

“She cared about Arthur, too,” Miles continued, “And he was my student, for a time. How long are you going to keep doing this to yourself? And to her?”

Miles deserved better than a lie, Cobb thought. Miles deserved honesty. So instead, he said, “I don’t know. I’m trying. I need closure, Miles. I think if I know what happened that night…why Arthur did what he did…if Arthur…” he paused. His throat had locked up, against his will. He tried again, “I think if I know…I’ll be able to live with it. I can’t live with…not knowing for sure. Not knowing if I can…trust myself, and what I remember. That’s as definite as I can give you.”

Miles nodded. Just once.

“The students will be coming in shortly,” he said, turning the conversation to other things. “Then, I’ll introduce you.”

“Thank you,” Cobb said, again. This time, it wasn’t just for Miles’ help.

“Just do right by my daughter,” Miles said, quietly.

It was a promise Cobb didn’t know if he could keep. He made it, all the same. He owed Miles - and Mal - that much, at the very least.

-

The ‘somebody better’ was Ariadne, a third-year architecture undergraduate with dark hair and intelligent brown eyes. The first thing Cobb got from her was that she was intelligent - very intelligent, and unafraid to ask questions.

He doubted that Miles was wrong, but he put her to designing a few basic mazes on paper, just to test her abilities, and found out that Miles had been right. She was better, with an intuitive ability to think out of the box, and after he fumbled through solving one of her mazes, he decided that she was the architect he needed.

He made arrangements with her to meet at the warehouse Eames had secured after the last of her classes had ended. Cobb was mostly off medication now, except for the last of the course of antibiotics and the occasional painkiller. Yusuf didn’t quite like the idea of mixing medication with somnacin, but had gone through Cobb’s antibiotics and reluctantly gave the green light. Eames could have done it, but he still wasn’t too much of an architect. It had to be Cobb who went under to assess just how well their potential architect dealt with building in shared dreams.

He hardly needed to worry. She was as quick as he’d thought she was, picking up the cardinal rules of dreamsharing almost immediately and pushing the limits without him needing to prompt her. That kind of creativity, that kind of awareness of the boundaries and how to push and tweak them - it couldn’t quite be taught. It was what made a good architect.

They walked through the streets of a Paris folded over on itself. He warned her to be careful with how much she changed as more and more of his projections started to notice her. One or two of them bumped into Ariadne, giving her blank, hostile stares, and then carried on.

“Jesus. Mind telling your subconscious to take it easy?” she complained, disgruntled.

“It’s my subconscious, remember?” he reminded her. He strolled along, hands in his jacket pocket, looking around at the city she’d created. It was Paris, obviously, and yet not-quite Paris. Not all the details were there, but it was always the feel of things that mattered. “I can’t control it.”

He watched, feeling the stab of jealousy as she built bridges before and after them, using the mirrors to visualise so the path before them and after them were identical. He couldn’t build like that. Not anymore. It was too dangerous. (And she was better.) He shoved his hands deeper into his pocket, and refused to think about that. They had their architect now. It was clear from how much she was enjoying herself, exploring the dream.

She was going to want to do this. She wasn’t going to want to walk away.

The mirrors shattered. The dream changed. They were on a large pedestrian bridge - Cobb felt his stomach clench as he walked, right before he saw the two figures. Right before he saw himself, leaning back against the railing of the bridge, overlooking the water. Right before he saw himself, smiling widely, maybe cracking a joke. Right before he saw Arthur next to the projection of himself, laughing. Leaning into each other’s presence, arms almost touching.

Laughing.

There was a time, when everything had been easy between them. When everything had been easy.

“I know this bridge,” he said aloud, closing his eyes. When he opened them, the projections had vanished. They hadn’t been real. They’d never been real. Except, Cobb thought, that they’d done just that, gone on walks to discuss things. Maybe that had been the day when he’d admitted he’d almost screwed up trying to talk to Mal. Or when he’d screwed up and Arthur’d walked in on him in the shower.

Yeah, that had been it. They’d agreed (without saying) never to mention it.

He bit his lip and felt the dull pain, the memories swimming in his skull, confused and indistinct. Anything too close to that night was faded, hazy. The further back they were, the clearer the memories got.

How could he have betrayed you? How could he have turned on you, set you up, broke you?

Cobb shook his head to clear it. “This place is real, isn’t it?” He asked, aloud.

“Yeah!” Ariadne called back, “I cross it every day to get to the college!”

“Never recreate places from your memory! Always imagine new places!” he focused on the lesson instead, hiding the fact he’d been shaken by the projections that had appeared.

“Well, you’ve got to draw from stuff you know, right?” she pointed out.

“Only use details - a…a…” he cast about for an example, and then finally seized on one. “A street lamp or a phone booth. Never entire areas.”

“Why not?” she wanted to know, frowning up at the ceiling of the bridge. He hoped she wasn’t going to try tweaking that next.

“Because,” he said, impatiently, “Building a dream from your memory’s the easiest way to lose your grasp on what’s real and what is a dream.”

“Is that what happened to you?”

He grabbed her by her arm and spun her around roughly. “Listen,” he snapped, “This has nothing to do with you, you understand?” He wanted to do more than that. He wanted to yell. He wanted to grab her by the shoulders and shake her until she was afraid, until she stopped asking questions he didn’t have the answers to (was too afraid to answer), until she did her damned job and stopped trying to dig deeper into him.

“Is that why you need me to build your dreams?” Ariadne continued, unfazed.

There was thunder in his head now, and red smoke, curling around the base of his spine. He smelled the fire, now, felt the heat of it on his skin and took a careful step back, trying to get everything under control. Breathe. It’s past. It’s over. You can’t change it.

He realised belatedly his projections were staring at them, hostile. His anger and hostility was leaking over to his subconscious. One or two of them seized Ariadne - he broke their grip and pushed them back. “Get off of her,” he snapped, shoving them away. But they kept coming, and then three of them seized him and pinned his arms, dragging him backwards. Cobb tried to stomp on someone’s instep and then twist free, but he couldn’t - they had him in too secure a hold and he couldn’t at all get free.

Ariadne was screaming, calling for him to help her, demanding the projections let her go - and then Cobb saw the figure, slipping through the still ranks of his projections. He froze, for a moment.

Arthur.

Arthur slipped through the crowd, his face expressionless except for the hint of a smile. He stopped in front of where Ariadne was held, helpless in the grip of the other projections. “Hello,” he said, to Ariadne, and then he pulled out his Glock and shot her.



Cobb winced as he watched her go limp in the restraining arms of the projections. Dying in a dream had never been pleasant, but at least that had been quicker than getting crushed by a falling pillar in a collapsing dream - or getting stabbed and left to bleed to death.

He hadn’t realised he’d been screaming a denial, struggling futilely against the projections until suddenly there was no resistance and he staggered free. “Well,” Arthur said, and then he smiled. It wasn’t, in any way, a pleasant smile. “Aren’t you a sight for sore eyes.”

Cobb licked his dry lips. He said nothing, rubbing at his wrists.

Arthur holstered his Glock, slipped it back into his waistband. “You should really stop getting yourself into such scrapes,” he informed Cobb, bemused. “I’d hate to have to get you out of another one.”

“You call shooting her ‘getting me out of a scrape’?” Cobb demanded, incredulously.

A smile played about Arthur’s lips. He stepped up to Cobb, slowly, hands held out at his side to show that he wasn’t going to do anything. Yet. “You mean you wanted her in your dream, asking questions…prying into your head….”

He paused. He was right next to Cobb now, and he leaned over and whispered, lips almost brushing Cobb’s ear, “…Learning your secrets?”

“Godamnit, Arthur,” Cobb snapped, jerking away and taking a step backwards. “You know I didn’t.”

Arthur shrugged, as if to say, then?

“I could have handled it just fine,” Cobb said. He was acutely aware of the fact it was a lie. He had been angry, utterly furious. He hadn’t been anywhere close to handling anything just fine.

“I’d hate to see your idea of what you can’t handle,” Arthur retorted.

Cobb wanted to say, no, you wouldn’t. He’d been there, each time Cobb tried desperately to hold the pieces together in his head, to somehow reconstruct what had happened. He was the only constant in the wavering dreams; that and the easy relish with which he shot Cobb in the knee, and then in the head.

Those were the better dreams.

He said none of it. Arthur knew what he was thinking, anyway.

“I’m watching your back,” Arthur said, “That’s all I do, Cobb.”

Cobb was spared from having to answer by Eames shutting down the PASIV, because the next thing he knew, he was blinking and staring at the ceiling.

No, he thought, ripping the line from his hand, and dropping it - he barely glanced at Eames and Ariadne before he staggered off to one of the side-areas. There was a brown work-table there, mostly empty except for large sheets of paper and discarded pencils. His hands felt clumsy as he fumbled for Arthur’s die - found it, and then cast it on the surface of the table. And again. And again. Until the numbness that pounded his brain finally gave way to some kind of calm.

Real, he reminded himself. Arthur was dead. He’d died in the fire. He’d died going back into the fire. He couldn’t trust him anymore, no matter how much he wanted to.

In the end, Arthur always turned on him.

Cobb rolled the die a few more times, not really glancing at the pips, until he thought he felt Eames watching him.

“She left,” Eames told him, arms folded squarely across his chest. “Not that it’s a big problem, certainly. I do think she’ll be back shortly.”

Cobb nodded assent, moving away from the table and roughly shoving Arthur’s totem back into his pocket. “Reality’s not going to be enough for her now,” he said, distractedly. “She’ll be back.”

Eames was still watching him. “She said something very curious,” Eames finally mentioned. “Something about one of your projections shooting her.”

Cobb went very still for a moment. He knew Eames had picked up on it. Eames noticed everything, especially about people. It was his job. “Yes,” he said, carefully. “She started changing too many things around in the dream.”

Eames nodded slowly, but he didn’t look convinced. He seemed content enough to let the issue slide for now though, and he said nothing as Cobb slipped past him and went to get some space.

Eames, at least, knew enough to give him that space.

-

This is Eames, forger:

(Just Eames, thank you very much.)

He’s gone by a great many names, most of them adjectives. In particular, invectives. Eames is the one that he’s known by, these days. This may or may not be true.

And that’s another thing about Eames: he’s deceptively difficult to pin down. If people are supposed to be complex matrices of motive and interlocking aspects of their personality, then Eames takes complexity to a whole new level.

And here’s yet another:

He’s the best forger around. Forgery, Eames thinks, is a very subtle art. It isn’t just about getting how the person looks right. That’s the absolute basic. If you can’t even get that right, you fail out of forger school. (Not that there is one.) The next step is mannerisms, posture…the way a person sits, the way he gestures, the way he holds himself, the way he speaks, his facial expressions. Those are a bit more of a bother. But Eames has always enjoyed a good challenge.

And that’s just the beginning for any decent forger.

It’s in the feel of things, he would say. That’s where it all leads up to in the end. That you must convincingly project the essence of who that person is, the feel, the impression that he leaves on the mark in their interactions. A single individual leaves many different impressions on many different people. The key is to grasp that impression, and to be able to project it.

That’s where most people fail. And that’s where Eames doesn’t. Because he’s the best (and proud of it, thank you.)

He’s good at the ordinary criminal things too. He’s well able to convincingly forge just about anyone’s handwriting, and he’s forged one or two art pieces in his day. He’s absolutely excellent at anything involving sleight-of-hand and cheats outrageously at cards and spends the time betting on how long it’ll take for people to catch on.

Most of them don’t. He’s that good.

He’s a professional. He has a sense of style. He’ll be the first to admit that he trades off on simple, unembroidered efficiency for a little flamboyance - but that’s as far as he goes. Above all, he still goes for whatever gets the job done. Preferably with some flash, some style. It’s those little subtle things that really separate the best from the mediocre, and Eames has always been one of the best.

He knows people. It’s an almost-intuitive feel for a person, what makes them tick, what they’ll do and what they won’t. It’s this ability to slip so completely beneath a person’s skin that sets him apart from the other forgers, and he’s honed it to a keen understanding through relentless practice and observation.

This is how he knows that there’s something that Dominic Cobb is hiding. Something that Cobb is not saying, something that has him - shaken. Disturbed.

Ariadne was shot by one of Cobb’s projections. But there’s something in there that doesn’t add up, even though Cobb says she changed too much of the dream, even though Eames knows it’s a perfectly reasonable explanation. There’s something in there that tugs at his understanding of Cobb, and Eames can’t quite put his finger on it.

Eames doesn’t like mysteries. He likes them as challenges to be answered; as problems to be solved. He doesn’t like questions to which there can never be answers.

There’s a funny feeling, nestled right at the bottom of his stomach, that he probably knows who the projection was. Whose shape the projection took. He doesn’t give voice to it. It’s a suspicion, and Eames trusts his instincts, but these same instincts say that it’s pointless to press things for now.

His sense of self-preservation is starting to twinge with worry. Cobb’s one of the best, but if his control is slipping, he’s going to fly apart one day, and Eames doesn’t want to be anywhere near when the inevitable fall-out happens. But there’s the lure of the job, inception, and this time, he’s working with the best. There’s only one answer to it, really, and that’s to sit back for now and to see how things pan out. He’s got no problems with backing out of a job at the last minute, if things get too messed up.

Cobb reminds him of someone he’d once forged, Eames thinks, as Cobb pushes past him, roughly. A war veteran. Lost, haunted…not quite able to make his way back. Someone who’d left a bit of himself where the war went and never quite managed to find it again.

Instinct and observation say that there’s no point in pushing Cobb, not now, when his face is so carefully blank and empty. Not when there isn’t quite anything in his eyes, and when he’s casting Arthur’s totem on the table, again and again. (Funny little things, really, he’s never really needed to use one. Never really seen the point of one, either.) Cobb, Eames guesses, is a man who’d run away from his problems, pretend they don’t exist, rather than face them. And quite frankly, it’s none of his business. He’s not Cobb’s psychologist, and he’s not paid to psychoanalyse Cobb.

He steps back. For now.

After all, Eames has always taken the path of least resistance, whenever he can.

-

Ariadne came back two days later. Eames took her into the PASIV and ran her through the basics of dream architecture and building mazes. Cobb knew he was avoiding her - she knew he was avoiding her - and often enough, he felt her eyes on him as he consolidated the research that Mal sent over. Any communication from her was curt. The shadow of their last disagreement still hung over them.

Surprisingly, Saito had pitched in with the resources at his disposal. Saito’s sources were good, Cobb had discovered, as he went through all the research they’d had. They were thorough, and most of the links had already been drawn out for him. He just needed to organise them and to sort out what they most definitely needed in order to construct a better picture of Robert Fischer and Peter Browning - and whatever was of secondary importance. He discarded the rest.

In truth, the research that Saito had provided somehow kept reminding Cobb of Arthur. He didn’t quite know why, except that the way some of the points were organised, the way the whole set of notes had been couched, and some of the annotations on the documents struck Cobb as so intensely familiar that he had to fight down memories.

Mostly, Cobb realised, the research painted the picture of a lonely, bitter young man, whose relationship with his father was strained, at the very best. That having been established, he spent a few nights discussing with Eames, trying to come up with some kind of plan. After glancing at what Saito’s sources had produced, Eames had reluctantly concluded that maybe they wouldn’t quite need a point man for this job after all. He admitted he’d made a probing call to Ramirez but had found that Ramirez was on a job, anyway, and unavailable.

It all went back down to positive emotion. Catharsis. Reconciliation. Cobb frowned at the sheets that summarised Fischer’s relationship with his father and scribbling a note in the margin to refer to set B for the list of times when Maurice Fischer had brought any conflict with his son out into the public eye. They needed something Eames could work with. Something that could be tweaked, something to work from to suggest a positive relationship with his father to Fischer.

He couldn’t yet find anywhere they could start from.

Cobb closed his eyes and rested his forehead against his hand. This was almost like working on his thesis, all over again. Except that back then, Mal had been working on her paper, and Arthur…Arthur had stayed, for a while. And then he’d left, for a stint with the cops. They probably had him doing paperwork or something until he’d quit. That was sometime after Mal had Philippa.

And then they were right where it all had started. Working as consultants when the police had called them in about Algol.

Cobb forced himself to read the line on the press statement Fischer had given about his role in his father’s company. He was holding the pencil tightly enough that his fingers hurt and then when he moved to underline the statement, the pencil broke. Cobb cursed and got out the sharpener.

“Having trouble?”

He glanced up. Saito leaned against the doorframe, watching him. There was no telling what he was really thinking.

Cobb shrugged. “No, not at all,” he said, “Your sources are…very good. This research…it’s very thorough and well-organised. It’s making things a lot easier for me.”

Saito nodded briefly. “I expect the best from my employees,” he said. That was it.

“Where’d you get your sources?” Cobb hadn’t quite meant to ask the question, but it slipped out anyway.

“Out of the ashes,” Saito said, with a thin-lipped smile, “So as to speak. A rather fortunate turn of events, on my part. As you have discovered, Mirfak is rather thorough.”

“Mirfak?” Cobb asked, frowning. It sounded strangely familiar, though he couldn’t quite put his finger on the reason why.

The thin smile almost disappeared from Saito’s lips. He just nodded shortly. “The term seemed appropriate. You will understand if I do not feel the need to reveal my sources to you, Mr Cobb.”

“Fair enough,” Cobb acknowledged.

Saito said nothing more, but Cobb could all but feel his presence, leaning over his shoulder, peering at the papers that Cobb was going through. It was seemingly purposeless, but Cobb didn’t quite believe that a man like Saito was much given to being driven by his whims. He was proven right when, a while later, Saito spoke up again. “How familiar are you with astronomy?”

Startled by the sudden question, Cobb half-turned his head, glancing at Saito. Saito folded his arms across his chest and waited for an answer.

“Not very,” Cobb admitted. He’d never had much to do with astronomy, save for a passing phase with his father’s dented telescope, as a boy, and an introductory astrophysics module meant to fill extracurricular requirements as an undergraduate.

Saito nodded slowly. “It would appear so,” he observed, neutrally.

Cobb wanted to ask Saito why. It was obvious Saito was hinting at something - maybe getting at something, and he wasn’t quite sure what kind of game the businessman was playing at. Except that a why was probably exactly what Saito was waiting for, and Cobb wasn’t up to playing by Saito’s rules. So he said nothing, and after a while, added, “Thank you. I don’t suppose you can thank your sources for me?”

Saito raised his eyebrows, but conceded, “I will convey your gratitude,” in a tone that made it evident he did not approve of being demoted to messenger-boy.

When Saito finally left, Cobb scribbled Mirfak down on a scrap of paper, and underlined it. He wasn’t sure what Saito was getting at, but he was sure he was good for a bit of research to find out.

He promptly forgot about it in the next ten minutes.

-

“So,” Eames said, folding his arms across his chest and studying the girl in front of him, “I’m supposed to start you on building mazes.”

“And you are?” Ariadne asked.

“Eames,” Eames said. He smiled faintly. “Just Eames, mind.”

“Ariadne,” Ariadne said. Two could play at that game, and she’d already gotten that most of them didn’t seem inclined to reveal much more than that. “I’m supposed to be the new architect.”

Eames nodded. “I’m the team’s forger,” he told her, and waited for the inevitable question.

“What’s a forger?”

“Being a forger,” Eames said, with a little relish, “Is a rather tricky business. You see, Ariadne, what you essentially do is impersonation. You assume the appearance of, well, somebody else in a dream. It lets you go about your business with a little more subtlety than your average extractor.”

“You mean you deceive the subject?” Ariadne asked, raising an eyebrow.

Eames shrugged. “Squeamish, are we?” he remarked pleasantly. There was just the hint of a smirk playing about his lips.

Ariadne wasn’t fazed. “Maybe just a little,” she admitted. “But if I was, then I wouldn’t be here, would I?”

“Oh, I wouldn’t say that,” Eames said. He carefully stepped aside to let a projection - an elderly woman, balancing bulging shopping bags and leaning on a walking stick - past. “Excuse me,” he called after her. Ariadne watched, bemused. “People are more complicated than they let on, you know.”

“And you’re an expert on people, I take it?”

Eames flashed her a proud grin. “Of course,” he said, “That’s what I do, after all. Now, before we start on anything fancy - here’s the absolute basic of what you have to know.” He gestured around them, a motion that took in the entire construction of Trafalgar Square around them, and the crowd comprised of Ariadne’s projections, even the pigeons. “Looks like a normal place, doesn’t it? One that you’ve seen just about anywhere.”

“It’s Trafalgar Square, isn’t it?” Ariadne asked, frowning at the bronze lions that surrounded the towering Nelson’s Column. “I thought we weren’t supposed to build from memory.”

Eames dismissed her concerns with a negligent wave of his hand. “Oh, that. Well, you’re better off not doing that, but it doesn’t really matter. I’ve hardly had to build, and there’re enough discrepancies for me to figure this isn’t the real thing.”

“Like?”

Eames just smiled. “You’ll see,” he said, “Consider it a challenge, if you like.” He sauntered on, hands in the pockets of his tweed coat. He led the way to the lobby of a towering skyscraper - one that seemed very much out of place with the architecture of the whole area, and Ariadne said as much.

Eames nodded approvingly. “Very quick,” he said, “I added that in.”

“Why? Where are we headed?”

“You’ll see,” Eames responded. Ariadne resisted the urge to step on his foot. He was the kind of person who liked keeping secrets, just because they were secrets, and he flashed her an infuriatingly smug grin. “Can’t take the waiting, can we? After you.” He waited for her to step into the lift, and then got in himself, hitting the button for the highest floor.

They got out when the lift stopped, and Eames led her to an open-air balcony that overlooked the entire square. “Look,” he said, “What do you see?”

“It’s a maze,” Ariadne breathed, “The whole square - the whole area - it’s a maze.”

“Exactly,” Eames said, “That’s the whole point of this. Trafalgar Square looks perfectly normal, with the exception of the few additions I’ve made. But from above - you start to realise the whole place is really just one huge maze. That’s what you do.”

“So the mazes can be really big, can’t they?” Ariadne guessed, “Like this one. Where the whole level, the whole area is just one big maze. But how big do they really have to be? Is there some kind of limit or something?”

“No,” Eames shook his head, “Anything. As large as you need. They can be as big as the floor of a building, for example. Or they can be as big as an entire city. You see, Ariadne, there’s only one really important bit. The levels have got to be fiendishly brilliant enough to let us hide from the projections. And that bit is where you come in.”

“Cobb can’t build anymore, can he?” she blurted out.

Eames glanced at her sharply, but Ariadne didn’t back down. “Well, now,” he said, slowly, “That’s a question I’d give a good deal to find out the answers to. He used to be an architect, you know. One of the best. But he stopped building, after a while. After all that ruckus with Algol and Arthur.”

“Algol? And who’s Arthur?”

Eames exhaled slowly. “Algol was an extractor gone rogue. Now, I’m not particular about professional ethics, but Algol was one hell of a sick bastard who enjoyed breaking people.”

“You mean torture.”

“I mean,” Eames said, his voice clipped and deliberately detached, “That dreamsharing, Ariadne, isn’t just used to extract information. What we do is just the tip of a very nasty iceberg. Algol had a talent for slipping into people’s minds and breaking them. You’ve died in Cobb’s dream before. Hurt like hell, didn’t it?”

Ariadne swallowed, remembering the projection. The almost complete lack of expression on his face when he shot her. The sharp feeling of impact. The shock of blood and pain. “Yes,” she said aloud, aware of Eames’ eyes, watching her. “It did.”

“So imagine this. You could bring a person under, do all sorts of nasty things to them, finally kill them, and wake them up. Put them under again. Rinse and repeat. It’d take a particularly nasty bastard to do that - but Algol was exactly that.”

“And…what happened to him?”

Eames shrugged. “Long story, and I’m not particularly close to Cobb.”

“What do you know?”

“Only what’s been said here and there,” Eames said, “Cobb dealt with Algol. His point man, Arthur, betrayed him on that job. Everything changed after that.” He held out a hand to forestall further questions. “This is as much as I know, I’m afraid.”

“So…they’re not talking to each other?”

Eames blinked, and then shook his head. “Oh, no. No. It’s not that at all. You see, Ariadne, Arthur…Arthur is dead.”

“What happened?”

Eames frowned. “Damned if I can figure out,” he said slowly, “And Cobb’s never said anything. The most I got was that the job had gone wrong from the start, and one of the only few people who could have done it was Arthur. Arthur…attacked Cobb. He died in the scuffle.”

“You’re saying…Arthur was Algol,” Ariadne realised, catching on Eames’ hesitation.

Eames’ mouth tightened in a thin line. “No,” he said, at last. “That’s what they say.”

“And you don’t think so?”

“I know people, don’t I? It’s what I do. I figured you would be back, from the moment you walked out of that door. It was going to be too irresistibly interesting for you to just walk away. And then of course…it was unique. No limits. No boundaries. You could create and build anything you wanted, and it would exist. Am I getting close?”

Ariadne nodded reluctantly. “And Arthur? What was he like?”

“Oh, Arthur?” Eames shrugged. “Reliable,” he offered, “Oh, and loyal. Very loyal. A bit of a stick-in-the-mud, really. I’d worked with him and Cobb on a couple of occasions. Two of them were like brothers. Maybe even closer than that. Not much of an imagination, though. But he was the best at what he did.”

“Which was?”

He raised an eyebrow. “Being a point man, of course.”

“Is that why Cobb keeps refusing to work with another point man?”

“Eavesdropping, are we?”

“I heard it,” Ariadne admitted, refusing to be swayed. “But is that…?”

“Partly,” Eames said, “But you should really ask Cobb, you know. If he’ll give you a straight answer.”

“But why?”

“Why what?”

“Why would Arthur betray Cobb if they were that close?”

“Yes, well, now that’s the rub, isn’t it?” Eames said, with a nod of approval. “It’s the bit that never quite made sense to me. Arthur was about as straight as you could bloody well get - which is to say, very. So what made him betray Cobb, hmm? And of course, they say it’s always the quiet ones. But I’d have sworn the man wasn’t capable of Algol’s sociopathy.”

“You don’t think he was the traitor?”

“I think,” Eames said, “That he was. It’s the only thing that makes sense, and Cobb would be the last person to believe that Arthur could turn on him until it actually happened.”

“But?”

“I’d give a great deal to know why. What could make someone like Arthur choose to turn on Cobb. That’s the question, of course.”

Ariadne opened her mouth to ask one of the many questions that were swarming her brain, but in the end, she didn’t ask any of them.

“Enough of that,” Eames said, abruptly. “Time to start showing me how you work with building mazes.”

Ariadne nodded, and they got down to it.

-

Prologue
Part I: Extraction
1 | 2 | 3
Part II: Inception
4