Falling Apart At The Seams
Title: Falling Apart At The Seams
Series: #10 of Haunted
(#1 - Lost In Your Embrace, #2 - Conquer And Devour, #3 - Cry Out For More, #4 - Not Meant For Me, #5 - Marked, #6 - Mistress, #7 - Shadow Of The Sun, #8 - Nothing Less From You, #9 - Salvage)
Author: Eustacia Vye
Author's e-mail: eustacia_vye28@hotmail.com
Rating: R for violence and Bad Things Happening.
Pairing: Ariadne/Arthur/Eames
Disclaimer: Everyone here belongs to Christopher Nolan and not to me. His toys are fun to play with!
Spoilers/Warnings: Post-movie. For the inception_kink meme prompt in round 13: Ariadne and Arthur (or Eames) are on a job together, things get rough and Arthur (or Eames) ends up having to kill someone. Someone related to (and just as dangerous as) their mark. Dark and angsty, and no real need to have read the others in the series first.
Summary: Sometimes things go wrong on a job. Sometimes they go very, very wrong. This is one of those times when everything falls apart.
Over Ariadne's objections, Arthur dove headlong into work again. He didn't want to stop and think about what could have happened if he or Eames had been killed on his prior job. He wanted to lose himself in work, in research, in the endless minutiae that came with a job. He didn't want to sit around at home and feel out of sorts, didn't want to contemplate the endless boring stretch of days that would come with an ordinary office job as a security consultant. He needed something challenging, something that would keep him from thinking what if? every time his brain stopped. He knew very well that this was avoidance, that sooner or later he would have to think about the nature of their work.
The new job wasn't something he would take every day, but it was the first one available. Cordoni was a mob boss and had hired Arthur and Eames through Arthur's friend Xavier on their prior job. Now that Xavier was dead, there was a vacuum in the dream share business in Paris and Geneva. A few men and women with smaller shares of the region had stepped up, though Arthur didn't know or trust any of them.
Cordoni's consigliere Stefano contacted Arthur directly. Arthur had previously thought perhaps Stefano was trying to set him up or take over the business from Cordoni. Marco had been working with someone when he nearly killed them, and Cordoni wanted to know who it was. Stefano had been troubled after Marco's behavior, and had started to suspect others in Cordoni's organization. Of particular interest was a man named Morgan, who tended to some of Cordoni's financial concerns. The consigliere wanted to know if Morgan was still on Cordoni's payroll, or if he had started working with others to bring down Cordoni from the inside out. He was especially concerned if Morgan was working with any federal or international agencies, and wanted Arthur to extract the information from Morgan.
"I don't like this," Eames said, shaking his head. "It's getting messy, and I don't like how the job might turn out."
"Marco's dead. We don't have to worry about him this time," Arthur replied, voice flinty. His eyes were flat and angry; he didn't like thinking what would have happened if Marco had finished setting him and Eames up for his own personal gain. They would both be dead and Ariadne would be alone. It hurt thinking about that.
"Mob shit always gets messy," Eames warned. "I don't expect anything less, and I've never gotten much good from working with them before."
"Aren't you the one that said Marco never did you a bad turn?" Arthur asked with a biting tone.
He flinched and turned away. "He's dead, you said," Eames replied, voice soft. Arthur immediately felt like an ass and reached out to touch Eames' arm in apology. "We got away once, Arthur. You don't understand how bad this can be, you really don't."
"So? You've worked with them before. You know what to expect, so we can prepare. If it was good enough for you to work for them before, it should be fine now."
"It's not good enough anymore, Arthur." He didn't know how to get that idea across. "It's one thing if I was alone and didn't give a flying fuck what happened to me. There's too much to lose now, and it's not worth the risk. Too much can go wrong here, Arthur. Just walk away. We don't need this job. We don't need the money."
"It's not about the money," Arthur protested. It really wasn't. He just didn't want to think about anything personal for a while. Getting lost inside of a job always helped, and this was simply the first job to come along.
"Then we all work together," Ariadne insisted, coming into the living room with her juice. She had a determined look on her face; she knew that Arthur would never want to endanger her, even if she was working to be capable enough in the real world to take care of herself if the need arose. "We watch each others' backs, and if it starts feeling off, we run."
Arthur looked between the two of them. "You're not going to warn me off again, then?"
"You're so bullheaded it's not worth the effort," Eames said.
"You're antsy," Ariadne said at the same time, shrugging. "You want to do something. If it's not this, it would be something else." She sat down on the couch next to him. "Though honestly? You need friends outside of this business."
She laughed a little when Arthur wrinkled his nose in distaste. "Oh, come on. It's nice to not worry about saying or doing the wrong thing all the time."
"No, darling, I think he'd worry more," Eames pointed out. He moved to sit on the other side of Arthur. "Constantly worrying about the worst case scenario for jobs, plus years on the run with Cobb... I don't think you really even know how to relax. Last time you seemed relaxed was at your Mum's."
"I should call her," Arthur said instantly, getting up. "I meant to yesterday..."
Ariadne shook her head fondly as Arthur went to pick up the phone. She scooted over to snuggle next to Eames, careful not to spill her glass. "After this job, we're taking a vacation, no matter what he says."
"There's also Ariston's wedding preparations. We need to fly to Chapel Hill for the fittings soon."
"That should also keep him busy for a while." She listened to the steady beat of Eames' heart for a minute or two, comfortable in his one armed embrace. "You think he needs to leave the business, don't you?" she asked quietly, looking over to where Arthur was standing as he spoke with his mother.
"He needs a break. Like you said, a vacation. Maybe then he won't be quite so... Arthur," he said finally, not sure how to describe how intensely focused Arthur was being. While he was normally highly professional and details oriented, that seemed to have only intensified in the weeks after he and Eames returned to Paris.
She leaned up to kiss his cheek. "Well, that's why he has us. We'll slow him down."
***
Morgan was in his mid thirties and had fairly nondescript features. He was known to have a quick temper but was also known to be exceedingly fair in his dealings within Cordoni's organization. Arthur tracked his immediate family of seven, as well as nieces and nephews, cousins, his uncle that also worked for Cordoni as well as known associates both in and out of Cordoni's organization. Some of it was simply expanding on the prior work he had done, but most of it was brand new. If he noticed Eames and Ariadne exchanging worried glances, he ignored it. He had a job to do, and he was going after that information with the same kind of determination he did with everything. He certainly didn't expect them to understand why this was so important to him. He knew Ariadne loved the creation of the dreams, the way cities could rise and fall with a single thought. He knew she hated the bureaucracy and bullshit inherent in real world architecture firms, and she didn't want to wait the twenty years to become well known enough to design something iconic. Arthur knew Eames had honed his people watching skills due to years of abuse and simply didn't know what else to do with that skill. As for himself, Arthur honestly couldn't think of anything else he could do that would give him the same sense of satisfaction.
Eames charmed Morgan's youngest sister Amber, a twenty-two year old university student. Ariadne lofted an eyebrow at him when he reported that tidbit, wondering how far he would take his seduction routine, though she didn't say a word. She would never presume to tell him how to do his job or insult his intelligence by forbidding him to touch her. He had never really gone into detail, but Ariadne and Arthur both knew that sometimes Eames had done just about anything to get the job done. Or had done just about anything to keep people he had been working with in line. It had only been over the past year that he had stopped trying to use his body and sexuality as his weapon of choice.
"She's saving herself for marriage," Eames told Ariadne, amused at the jealousy she wouldn't voice. "Such a darling little Catholic school girl."
Arthur rolled his eyes at them and tuned them out, following tax records and bank statements. They didn't go back as far as he would have liked, so he would have to find a few of his contacts that would have access to the paper records. "Think you two can get along without me for a bit?" he asked, shutting his laptop. He loaded a few notebooks into his bag at their nods. "I need to get to the source for this one. Hacking won't get me far enough."
"Take a sweater, dear," Eames sing-songed with a smile, earning himself a dirty look.
"Should we wait on dinner?" Ariadne asked, throwing a pencil at Eames' head.
"Go on without me. I'll pick something up on the way home."
Ariadne nodded and tilted her head up to give him a goodbye kiss when he approached. She watched with a fond smile as Eames mimicked the move for his own, but made the kiss much more erotic than it had to be. "Just a reminder for dessert, Arthur," Eames said with a grin.
"As if I'd forget," Arthur replied, shaking his head. "I'll see you around dinnertime."
Retrieving her pencil as Arthur left the apartment, Ariadne shook her head at Eames. "Just when I thought you stopped winding him up."
"What? He's so easy to read now! I can't help it if it's fun."
She snorted and moved so that she was sitting on the couch with her feet in his lap. She had her sketchbook in her own lap, and he was reading files that Arthur had already generated on Morgan's family members. "So the sister, huh?"
"Morgan dotes on her," Eames said with a shrug. "For some reason, I'd rather do a forge for this job. I don't want to go in wearing my own face."
"Worried?" she asked sympathetically.
"You'll watch over us," he said, shaking his head. "That's not what I'm worried about. This thing sounds on the surface like an ordinary job, but I just can't shake the feeling that there's more to it. Arthur usually can suss that out, but I don't think he's in his ordinary head space."
"You're worried about Arthur, then." Ariadne rubbed her toes against his stomach and smiled when he wrapped his hand around her ankle to stroke it gently. "He's a workaholic. You know that. It's not even about the money, considering how careful he is that his identities aren't compromised and he doesn't always have to shoot his way out. He just can't sit still doing nothing. After a while of doing that, he gets an itch to work."
"He's stocked up on ammo after dealing with Marco."
"I did, too," Ariadne pointed out.
Eames blew out a breath. "No way to really explain this. It's just a feeling I get."
"I trust that, Ben," Ariadne told him softy, curling her toes into his side affectionately. "I know he does, too. It's just that he needs to prove to himself that he can still take care of things, that the fuck up from last time won't happen again." She put her sketchbook aside and leaned forward to rest her hands on his arm. "We keep promising family we're going to be all right, and I think it really threw him that he almost didn't come home."
"It's not affecting me the same," Eames said slowly, looking at her with a troubled expression. "What does that say about me?"
"Arthur never expected that to go well," she began.
"I expected it to go over better than it did. Arthur was the one leery of working with Marco. And he was right, Marco turned on us. I didn't see that coming at all."
Ariadne tilted her head slightly and looked at him with an even expression. "You don't expect much from other people you work with, do you?"
"What do you mean?"
"I remember the first job we all did together." Her fingers curled into the inside of his arm, stroking gently. "You were ready to just cut and run, give it all up. But you weren't surprised when Cobb said we couldn't just shoot our way out. You looked like you expected to be screwed that way."
"Well not that way, darling," he drawled, "but it would have happened sooner or later. He burned a lot of people along the way."
"But you've had that look a lot before going out on jobs after that. Not with me or Arthur when we've worked together, but you've never trusted anyone else."
"Perhaps Pietro," Eames said with a shrug. "But he's probably dead. We would have heard something by now if not."
"Right. But Arthur doesn't have that same belief, you know. He doesn't expect people to turn on him like that, not during a job." She slid her fingers inside of his shirtsleeve to stroke his skin gently. "So I think it hurt him more than you last time, is all." She ran her nails across his skin lightly and smiled sadly. "So he wants to prove that it won't happen again, that it's not his judgment that's off."
"Ah. And I'm not affected like that because I'd never trusted others before," Eames concluded.
"It's a theory," Ariadne offered.
He tucked her hair behind her ears and smiled sadly. "Well, there's only four people in the world I trust now, and I sleep with two of them."
"Four?" she asked with a smile.
"My cousin Spencer and Arthur's Mum." He paused. "I suppose I should put Ariston on that list, yeah? He knows what we do for a living and hasn't told a soul."
"Well, I trust him. He's my brother, after all. You don't have to."
"I suppose I do, now that I think about it. About as much as Spence."
"And in our line of work? Anyone there?"
"Yusuf's a good one. Best chemist I know. I suppose there's one or two extractors I don't expect to try to kill me or throw me to the wolves. That's about it."
"Not exactly a ringing endorsement of what we do," Ariadne said wryly.
Eames laughed. "No, I don't suppose it is. But it's a dangerous world we live in, darling. Not everyone could pull it off."
"Very true."
Eames looked down at her body, all but curled up into him. "Feeling cold, Ariadne?" he teased.
She laughed and shifted so that she was leaning against him and he could put his arm around her. "No. I just like touching you sometimes."
"Well, good, I like touching you, too." He kissed the top of her head. "Since we're not getting any work done anyway, let's plan what we'll do for Arthur, hm? He's bound to be wound up tighter than a spring by the time he comes home."
Ariadne laughed. "Just admit it, you find that look hot, too."
"Of course I do. I just happen to like his fucked-out, blissful expression, too." She snorted and pressed a kiss to the underside of his jaw happily. "It's practically almost medicinal that we do this, you understand," he said, a smile on his face. "We'll keep his poor brain from overheating with its conspiracy theories."
Giggling, she snuggled tightly against him. "Sounds like an excellent plan."
***
Eames might have felt that Morgan was closest with his youngest sister Amber, but it was fairly clear that he trusted his older sister Diamond's judgment with business deals. She was whip smart, bitter after her messy divorce from a Cordoni associate and had a ruthless streak a mile wide in her own business, a construction company that she owned and managed single handedly. The company had been struggling when she bought it, and over the course of three years had turned it into a successful and profitable business. It managed to stay outside of Cordoni's hands despite her ex-husband's attempts to take it away from her, but Diamond had been as solid as her name and twice as sharp.
There were no obvious attempts to undermine Cordoni's business, but if they were obvious, he wouldn't be paying them an exorbitant amount of money to extract that information from Morgan. He suspected but he didn't know, and Cordoni wanted to be sure of everything before he had Morgan killed. Otherwise, he would be eliminating an asset and leaving himself exposed to further destabilizing influences.
With all of their preparation, the extraction itself went off without a hitch. Ariadne timed the kick, and Arthur woke up with a relieved smile on his face. For all of Morgan's real world security that they had to circumvent, there had been no dream security to speak of. He and Eames learned quite a lot about Morgan and his business dealings with Diamond, as well as with Cordoni and Cordoni's competitors. Marco had been the one to pull Diamond into the deal, as a matter of fact. She was dealing with competitors at Morgan's behest, and they were splitting the profits. Morgan didn't want to take over Cordoni's business for himself, but he was definitely undermining his interests.
Ariadne started cleaning up after them, winding up the PASIV tubing and disposing of the needles in the small sharps container in the case. Arthur had pushed extra sedation before she disengaged the machine, and Eames set about wiping their prints. They had ten to fifteen minutes to get away from Morgan's house before the sedation wore off and the bribed security guards changed shift.
Of course, this was when Diamond and Amber came into the house looking for Morgan.
Diamond immediately recognized the silver case in Ariadne's hand and spun Amber around and behind her with her left hand as she pulled out her gun with her right. She fired wildly, forcing the trio back into the room with Morgan for cover. Their thoughts were all variants of Fuck! and Goddammit! and She wasn't supposed to be here!
Eames drew his USP Compact and Arthur drew his Glock. The two of them took positions at the door, firing intermittently to keep Diamond off center. Ariadne started reaching for the Beretta she kept beneath her sweater when Arthur shook his head sharply at her. "Don't. Watch Morgan, make sure she doesn't shoot him by accident. Cordoni won't want him dead yet."
She drew her lips together unhappily but nodded and did as he said. It was the truth, even if it upset her that he didn't seem to trust that she would be able to help or that she could take care of herself. Morgan was fine, but she manhandled him to the floor to be sure that he would be out of the line of fire if anything came through the walls as Arthur feared. She looked up at the stuttering fire her boys laid down. It was happening too fast to really be afraid, but there was that niggling fear in the back of her head that this wasn't going to go well. Arthur had chosen the wrong job to try to prove to himself that he could handle things and still trust his judgment on jobs.
Ariadne left Morgan's side, PASIV still in hand. Diamond was still intermittently shooting, and Eames was reloading his gun. "I've only one more magazine," he muttered, slamming it home. "I didn't expect this much trouble."
Arthur's lips were compressed into a tight, unhappy line. "We're running out of time on the sedation. We have to speed this up."
"Kill the girls, you mean?" Eames asked, eyebrows raised.
"Maybe we can still avoid it."
They could hear Amber crying and screaming at her sister, confused and not sure what the hell was happening. Diamond was telling her to keep quiet and duck down out of the way, anger in her tone. She was still shooting whenever she saw what looked like Eames or Arthur in the doorway. This wouldn't be a good way out, and the plate glass windows of Morgan's bedroom didn't open at all. They were effectively trapped and had to get the hell out.
When Diamond's shooting paused so that she could reload, Eames rolled out of the doorway, shooting. She let out a shriek of surprise and pushed Amber out of the way as she dropped to the floor. Eames kept his shots even and intermittent enough to let Arthur and Ariadne out of the bedroom without risking return fire from Diamond. Ariadne started scuttling to the side, and Arthur picked up his gun and started shooting when Diamond let out another volley of shots from behind the couch in the living room. There was a distinct cry of pain, and then panicked screaming from Diamond. It was incoherent, but it sounded as if she was calling Amber's name.
The two men exchanged a wary glance and Ariadne was pale. This couldn't be good.
Diamond surged up from behind the couch, her shooting wild and angry, a large red stain on her chest. Arthur and Eames tried to duck out of the way, diving to the floor. What was worse, they could hear Morgan groaning in the bedroom, as if he was starting to wake up.
"We need to get the fuck out of here," Eames said, shooting from his sprawled position on the floor. Diamond saw him and started shifting her attention from Arthur to Eames. As she turned to aim at him, Arthur immediately shot her in the chest. It threw her back, but there was no spray of blood.
The prior stains on her chest hadn't been her own, then.
"She's wearing a vest," Ariadne said. "Come on, let's just go!"
Eames scuttled across the floor toward her and Arthur. He cleared it just ahead of the shots Diamond fired; with as bad as her aim was, he could only guess that she used the gun more for threatening than for actual shooting. Her response to recoil was piss poor, her stance was off and she had an awful grip on the gun. Still, it was dangerous and not something to be discounted, especially after what he had discovered about her. She was just as ruthless as Morgan in her business dealings, and would think nothing of killing the three of them. "Head to the back of the house," he told them, waving as Morgan stumbled out of his bedroom. "Now!"
Morgan staggered forward and Diamond rushed out of her hiding place to catch him. She pressed the gun she was holding into his hands, and his eyes sharpened at the sound of whatever she was telling him. He turned to them, fury in his eyes.
Ariadne broke out in a run, PASIV still in her hand. She had almost forgotten about it. Arthur and Eames were behind her, turning every once in a while to shoot behind them. Ariadne watched in horror as Eames was shot in the arm and stumbled as he ran. Arthur's face whitened, and he shot with cold precision. The back of Diamond's head exploded in bits of brain and bone and blood, and she staggered, falling into Morgan. Arthur shot at him as well, just as Ariadne pulled him around the corner of the hallway.
The three of them escaped the house, and Ariadne stowed the case beneath the passenger seat, her hands shaking with adrenaline. Arthur drove, his knuckles white on the steering wheel. Eames was in the front passenger seat, using Ariadne's scarf as a makeshift tourniquet. "I'm calling Cordoni, getting this over with. He probably has someone on his payroll to take the bullet out of my arm. Same fucking arm as last year, too."
"They're all dead," Arthur said, voice tight. Ariadne's heart ached to hear it. He was already blaming himself for what happened, she knew. He was blaming himself for not doing enough research, not figuring out where Diamond and Amber were, something. It didn't matter if this was supposed to be an easier job to do, he would constantly blame himself for whatever went wrong on a job.
"Listen. Cordoni might order the hit anyway, after what I found on the both of them. Cordoni's men won't come after us," Eames told him, grunting as he tied the knot tighter around his arm.
"I'll report in," Arthur said, shaking his head.
"Bloody hell, Arthur," Eames snapped. "Do you have a death wish?"
"Stop it! Both of you!" Ariadne shouted as Arthur glared at Eames. "Just... Pull over or something. Calm the hell down."
He didn't question her and pulled over as she asked. Ariadne reached through the gap between the front seats and touched Arthur's arm. He looked at her, and she could see the fear and panic in his eyes. "We will figure this out together, okay?" She leaned forward, twisting to press a kiss to his lips. "Just calm down, and you'll see a way to get out of this. I have faith in you."
Arthur struggled to calm down, and Ariadne left her hand on his shoulder in silent support as she turned to Eames. "Are you all right?"
"Just peachy, love," Eames replied flippantly, looking away from her.
"Benjamin," she said in her most severe tone. "Are you all right?" she repeated.
"I've been fucking shot, what do you think?"
"Don't talk to her that way!" Arthur growled.
"Enough!" Ariadne cried, giving Arthur a shake and a glare. She turned to look at Eames. "I meant, are you all right enough to finish this job? Can you do it, or do we need to plan for that, too?" she asked, voice firm.
Eames' eyes flicked from hers to Arthur's. He was a mess, and she was the more commanding presence at the moment. "Yeah. I can finish the job. Just a flesh wound."
"Then we'll go finish the job and get the hell out of here."
"I don't want Cordoni seeing you," Arthur rasped, shaking his head. "Bad enough he knows who we are..."
Ariadne leaned forward so that her forehead touched the side of Arthur's. "Arthur. I knew what I was getting into. I know the risks, same as you and Ben."
"Ariadne..."
"Stop. Just stop. I may not be some big, tall badass assassin, but I'm also not a little doll to tuck into the closet to take out whenever you feel like it. Okay? You've never been this bad before. What the hell happened?"
"I can't lose the both of you!" Arthur snapped, lips thin and hands clenched into white-knuckled fists.
Ariadne sighed and Eames' gaze softened. He touched Arthur's knee gently as Ariadne kissed his temple. "We're right here, Arthur," Eames said softly. "We're not dead, it didn't go completely tits up. We're all fine."
"It almost wasn't," he said, releasing a shuddering breath. "I fucked up."
"No," Ariadne whispered against his temple. "That wasn't anything you could've prevented, Arthur. It wasn't, you have to believe that."
"No more messing about with the mob, yeah?" Eames offered, squeezing his thigh.
"That's got to be a rule," Ariadne said with a shaky laugh. "For all of us, no more mob things. Stick with corporate espionage or rich idiots wanting to know if they're cheating on each other. We don't need the trouble."
Eames let his hand run higher along Arthur's leg as Ariadne let go of Arthur. "Come on, then. We'll get Ariadne settled watching the hotel room for us. I'll present what we found and see what Cordoni wants to do. You know he'll probably order a hit anyway if Morgan survived."
"This is such a mess," Arthur groaned. He leaned his head down on the steering wheel, feeling the adrenaline rush fade. His mind was blank due to the panic. This was new and not like him at all. He was usually better prepared than this. Had there really been nothing he could have changed?
"We'll figure it out together. We'll salvage this, go far away and take a break," Eames told him. "Stay with your Mum, perhaps. Let you unwind."
"And we need to visit Chapel Hill anyway," Ariadne reminded him. Arthur took a deep breath and raised his head. "It will all be okay, Arthur. We'll make it okay. We just need to work together. You can't shut us out like this, or we can't help."
He nodded. "All right." He turned around and faced her. "But please, Ariadne. Please just stay in the hotel room? Cordoni's men don't know about you, and I don't want them to."
She nodded, though she wasn't happy about it. At least now he was asking.
They dropped her off at the hotel, and she let herself into the hotel room. Before she could close the door, it was viciously shoved open and she fell to the floor. Morgan stood over her, a grim expression on his face. He was dressed in a dark gray suit and black leather gloves; she could imagine that there was a gun hidden beneath his jacket even though she couldn't see it. She could feel her own dig into her ribs as she looked up at him. Morgan calmly shut the hotel room door behind him and watched as she scuttled backward, away from him.
"Unlike your companions, I won't hurt you to get what I want," he said, voice hollow and flat. Fury burned in his eyes. "I want the one that killed my sisters. I want the one you were kissing in the car."
Ariadne felt a chill roll through her. While Arthur never would have stayed focused on his driving the way he was, she now sharply regretted asking him to pull over to calm down. It allowed Morgan to catch up and follow them.
He removed his jacket. The shirt was stained with blood, probably Diamond's. He had strapped on his shoulder holster and had a Sig Sauer in it. His eyes were hard and uncaring as they took in her shock, and he merely took the Sig out of the holster. "Call him."
Skittering backward a little farther from him, she reached for her purse. She had a Bersa Thunder in a pocket holster in the bag. It was tiny but packed a pretty powerful punch, and Morgan seemed to think she was someone inconsequential.
That thought was reassessed when he clicked off the safety to his Sig. "Slowly. Don't make me regret sparing you."
She nodded and swallowed slowly. She had to think. They had left her not even five minutes before, and were on their way to meet Cordoni. She was on her own, with only her two guns, her cell phone and her own wits about her. She was petite and doll-like, even if she repeatedly asked the boys not to treat her that way.
But Morgan didn't know her. He didn't know what she was capable of, and if it came down to him or her, it sure as hell wasn't going to be her. She wasn't going to allow him to hurt Arthur or Eames either.
Slowly retrieving her cell phone, she hit the speed dial for Arthur's number. Morgan's gun was steady, centered on her chest. She had flicked off the snap that held her Bersa Thunder in its pocket holster, but hadn't done much more than that when getting her cell phone. She didn't want to know how sensitive his trigger finger was.
Arthur picked up on the second ring. "Ariadne?" he asked, a thread of concern in his voice.
Ariadne was suddenly calm as she looked up at Morgan. He was dealing with grief and didn't expect anything from her. "Can you come back?" she asked, her voice even. She wasn't even shaking anymore. Whatever happened, Morgan wasn't going to walk away to harm Arthur. She simply wouldn't allow that.
Arthur didn't seem calmed by her tone of voice at all. "Is everything all right?" He paused, not hearing her respond right away. "Clear your throat if you can't speak freely. Use the code if you have to..."
Ariadne didn't take her eyes off of Morgan. "I'm fine. Morgan's here," she said abruptly, then hung up.
Morgan looked at her in disbelief. "Why did you do that?"
"You wanted him here. Now we know he's coming."
He circled her, but she didn't move. She had her cell phone in one hand, her purse in her lap. Her Beretta was pressed against her ribs beneath her loose sweater and her Bersa was in her purse. Too far away if he decided to pull the trigger, but she could tell by his stance that he didn't think she was a threat to him as she sat on the floor.
His mistake.
"You've been mixed up in the wrong crowd," Morgan said, moving his finger from the trigger to the trigger guard. He eased his stance, but he didn't seem to relax yet.
Ariadne kept her eyes on his face. That would tell her when he moved, what he was planning to do. If she startled him, she would only have a second or two before he got his finger back on the trigger. She didn't plan to go down the way Morgan's sisters had.
Keeping her purse in hand, she slowly used the wall to pull herself up to her feet. She released the catch on her Beretta as she moved, hiding it as bracing herself to get up slowly. "I don't know what you're talking about," she said in a low tone.
His lips curled into a patronizing smile, and his shoulders relaxed slightly. "You know who I am, sweetheart," he sneered. "You really think you can play with the big boys?"
His finger was off the trigger guard now, curled against the grip. Only an extra second's reprieve, really, but it might just be enough.
"You think I'm helpless because I'm so small?" she asked. His eyes were on her face, and he never told her to drop the purse or cell phone in her hand. He didn't even bother to track the motion as she put the cell phone back in her purse, replacing it with her Bersa.
He was too busy laughing at her calm composure. "Oh, sweetheart. What did he say? That he'll keep you in silk and diamonds? That screwing the boss will keep you safe?" His lips curled in derision. "His protections don't mean shit. He's not here."
"No, he's not," Ariadne agreed, her hand curling around the Bersa.
He laughed, and Ariadne dropped her purse as she rushed forward at him, just inside the swing of his gun. She shot him twice in the chest without even blinking, then grasped his gun arm with her left hand to redirect the shot he was trying to make. Blood was everywhere, but Ariadne ignored it, pushing the Bersa into the hollow of his throat and digging her fingernails into the soft underside of his wrist. "You're not hurting Arthur. Ever," she said, voice cold. She ignored his left hand; she could see nothing in it out of her peripheral vision and he knew full well if he startled her that his throat would be shot out. "Drop the gun."
Morgan complied, eyes wide with disbelief as he contemplated her. "But..."
"You should know better, Morgan," Ariadne told him, tightening her grip on his right hand. He dropped his gun, but she wasn't a fool and wouldn't let her guard down until he was dead. He was bleeding out quickly, his face turning gray, but people were known to do ridiculous things when fueled by adrenaline.
"You can't have," he began, starting to collapse to his knees. If anything, that made it even easier for Ariadne to maintain her grip on him and keep the gun at his throat. "This isn't happening. I'm still dreaming."
"No, you're not dreaming, Morgan."
He tried to lunge forward, even knowing how futile it would be, and Ariadne pulled the trigger. The cartridge blew out most of his throat, and he dropped limply at her feet.
Ariadne stepped back and looked around her. This would draw all kinds of attention they couldn't afford. She knew Arthur and Eames would be returning, and there was no way she would be able to cover this up on her own.
The hotel door swung open abruptly minutes later, and Arthur rushed in with his Glock in hand. Ariadne recognized the fake Interpol badge that he sometimes carried; that would help keep the hotel staff from prying too closely. Arthur had his controlled panicked look on his face; it was a tight and angry mask, though his eyes were wild and couldn't seem to focus on any one thing at a time. He was pale and took in the bloody scene.
"Oh, God. Ariadne..."
Ariadne blinked, and everything seemed to come into sharp relief. She grabbed her purse to reholster her gun and saw that Arthur was alone. "Where's Eames?" she asked, worry in her tone. "Did Morgan have any other guys following you?"
He strode to her side and had to touch her to be sure she was real. "He went on to report to Cordoni." He cradled her face in one hand. "Are you all right? I thought..."
She tried to smile at him, though she could start to feel her own adrenaline rush start to fade. "He thought I was a helpless little girl. He still couldn't believe it, even when I shot him."
Arthur's relieved laughter was shaky. "I thought... I didn't think you'd actually get much range time when you went with Sandrine. I figured the two of your just used it as an excuse to hang out, not that you would actually practice."
"Not always," she agreed, leaning into his touch. "But sometimes we did get actual time in. Plus all the practice in dream levels..." She could feel a tremor in her hands when she reached for him. "I'm okay, Arthur. See? I'm really okay."
"He didn't hurt you? You're not grazed?" he asked, not quite able to believe it.
"I'm fine. It's not my blood, Arthur. None of it's mine." He was shaking a little despite her reassurance, and had to put up his Glock. Ariadne reached up to grasp his face in her hands. "I'm okay, Arthur. Really, I'm okay."
"Eames was shot," he said in a low tone. "And you could've been."
She suddenly realized that this was Arthur in shock, and he couldn't quite wrap his mind around the fact that she was really okay. This was a second easy job that had gone all to hell on his watch, which had already shaken his confidence. Now he was left wondering if he could keep his lovers safe.
"Let's go get him, and we'll go home. We'll leave off the dream share for a while. Just be ourselves and not some random identity."
He nodded, taking a deep breath. Then it was almost as if the work persona clicked into place, and he was the calm and collected Arthur she was used to seeing. He took out his cell phone and dialed Eames, telling him in crisp tones that Ariadne was safe and Morgan was taken care of. She eyed him archly, considering that it almost sounded like Arthur was taking credit. "He's... contained," Arthur said in answer to Eames' question. There was a pause, likely as Eames relayed information to Cordoni, and Arthur returned her gaze evenly. "Understood. We'll wait until you get here. There's a mess you'll need to help us clean up."
Ariadne crossed her arms over her chest as he hung up. "So?"
"Cordoni gave the order to kill Morgan." His voice was toneless, and he looked down at the mess on the floor. "The Interpol excuse will only get us so far. This might be bigger than this persona can handle."
"Then let Cordoni clean up the mess," Ariadne said. "You don't have to handle this if it's not your job."
"This is part of my job."
"Arthur," Ariadne said softly, taking his hands in hers. "Some things are out of your control. It's okay to have help. Really."
"It's my job to take point," Arthur disagreed. "I'm supposed to plan for these things, find the holes in the job, keep everyone safe. This is my job. And I've been fucking up."
She squeezed his hand tightly. "You couldn't have planned this. The job itself went fine."
He shook his head. "This is my job, no on else's. This is going to be a bitch to clean up..."
Ariadne dragged Arthur to the bed and had him sit down. "Okay. You're going to need to calm down. We'll wait for Ben, then we'll figure out what we're doing next. All right?" The truth was, a panicky Arthur was starting to scare her.
By the time Eames arrived, Arthur was calm and had put together a story for the hotel staff that was believable. Eames had put on a jacket to cover his wounded arm, and looked over the mess in the room. Arthur had started cleaning the room with Ariadne's help, but he looked over Morgan's body. "Well, we don't need to worry about Ariadne, then," he said, sounding impressed. "Good work, love."
She had been avoiding the body, not wanting to look at it or even think about what she had done now that it was over. Plus, Arthur falling apart meant that she couldn't lean on him for this. He was usually her rock, the one that calmed her down when she was upset over something, but he was already upset with how badly this job was going. She could say all sorts of calming things for his sake, but she didn't have enough strength to think about how to calm herself down.
Looking at Morgan's body now made her start to shake, and Ariadne had to look away or she would throw up and undo all the work she and Arthur had done. Eames looked alarmed, and caught her arm. "You've a plan, right?" he asked Arthur firmly, turning Ariadne slightly so that Arthur wouldn't see her expression. He listened to Arthur's cover story and nodded briskly. "I can work with this." He sat Ariadne down on the bed. "Now, look upset, Ariadne. You're about to play the role of a witness under our protection."
Ariadne looked at him with a grateful expression, because she didn't know how much longer she could keep it together. "I can do that," she said, her voice quivering. She was near tears, and Arthur looked at her with growing anxiety. "I'm fine," she told him, her voice firmer than she felt.
"Focus," Eames told Arthur. "I'll arrange things with Cordoni's men, you track down proper hotel staff. Get video security footage, grease some wheels, whatever it is you need to do to keep them silent. I'm sure Cordoni would love to have someone pretend to be a coroner to pick up the body. It'll be proof enough we've done what we said we would." His tone was commanding, and it helped Arthur snap into his usual role more easily.
Ariadne let the tears flow as Arthur left the room and Eames called Cordoni. She started to shake, and she wrapped her arms around herself tightly. As much as she didn't want to, her eyes kept straying to Morgan's glassy ones. She had never killed in the real world before. Projections didn't count.
Once Eames was off the phone, he sat next to Ariadne on the bed. He took her hand in his calloused one and rubbed the back of her hand gently. "It's okay to fall apart if you need to, Ariadne," he told her softly. "I'm here."
"I can't," she groaned, shaking her head. "I need to keep it together for Arthur. He's not handling this well."
"I know, love," he told her, voice soft and gentle. "I'll take care of him. You can lean on me. I'm here." He slung an arm around her shoulder, heedless of the blood on her clothes. "I'll figure this out. It's going to be all right. I'll make sure of it."
Ariadne turned and sobbed openly against Eames' chest, the bottled terror finally breaking free. "He would've killed Arthur, maybe you and me, too. He said he wouldn't, but he just didn't care. He didn't care at all, and I couldn't let him hurt you. I couldn't let him hurt Arthur. God, after all the assurances we gave everyone... I can't do this, Ben. I can't just pretend this doesn't bother me."
Eames was rubbing her back in a soothing manner. "I know," he murmured next to her ear. "We'll take time off. We don't need to work. We'll figure out what we want to do, then. I've got you," he said, holding her. He started rocking her, and she clung to him as her tears slowed.
She looked up at him after a while. "Arthur's not handling this well. I don't know what to do. He's always taken care of everything if it went wrong..."
He kissed her forehead. "Let me worry about that, Ariadne." There was a loud knocking at the door. "Showtime."
Ariadne wiped her eyes as Eames slipped on a professional mask and answered the door. She didn't recognize the man there, though he had what looked like an EMT gurney and a black body bag. She forced herself to watch him take Morgan's body, to feel the terror and responsibility for her actions. The man pretending to be from the coroner's office was brutally efficient and had an uncaring mask on his face. She never wanted to be that way, to take human life so dispassionately.
Arthur and one of the hotel managers returned as he was zipping up the body bag, and the hotel manager looked at her sympathetically. Her miserable expression only sold the sob story Arthur had told him, and he was explaining a back route out of the hotel that they could use, a maze of service entrances and corridors so that no further assassins could come and try to kill her. They had given Arthur all of the surveillance they had regarding their entry and exits for the past two days, as well as Morgan's surreptitious entry into the hotel. The fake coroner left with the body unimpeded, and the hotel manager escorted the three of them out to the parking garage. He waived the parking fee and let them drive away with their belongings, agreeing that the fees Arthur had paid were enough to make the paperwork disappear and to cover the cleaning charges.
Eames drove, leaving Arthur and Ariadne in the backseat. When both had protested, he stared them down and simply pointed at the backseat. "Sit. Down. Now." His tone had brooked no argument, even if Ariadne had wanted to offer up token protest. The two of them simply sat there, clinging to each other. Eames occasionally eyed them as he drove, keeping watch as Arthur finally allowed himself to let go of his worry and panic. He refused to let Arthur take over. He knew the plan as well as the point man did, and at the moment he was the one best able to execute it.
He did make one change in the plans, however. When the three of them settled into a new hotel room, he canceled their plane tickets to Paris and instead booked a flight to Dulles International Airport. A few weeks with Arthur's mother in DC prior to visiting Ariadne's brother in Chapel Hill would help restore their equilibrium.
And if Arthur ever wanted to take a job from a mob boss ever again, Eames would punch him in the mouth and lock him in the apartment. Ariadne was right. These jobs just weren't worth the money in their bank accounts. Eames lay awake between Arthur and Ariadne for a while after they fell into an exhausted sleep. An arm around each of them, he stroked them in their sleep. They were the best things that had ever happened to him, and he would make sure that nothing happened to them. He would move heaven and earth if he had to, just as they would do the same for him.
Sometimes he worried about his place in their relationship, but today was a stark reminder that they truly did need him as much as he needed them. They were his family, the three of them. No one in the world would ever take that away from him.
The End.
Series: #10 of Haunted
(#1 - Lost In Your Embrace, #2 - Conquer And Devour, #3 - Cry Out For More, #4 - Not Meant For Me, #5 - Marked, #6 - Mistress, #7 - Shadow Of The Sun, #8 - Nothing Less From You, #9 - Salvage)
Author: Eustacia Vye
Author's e-mail: eustacia_vye28@hotmail.com
Rating: R for violence and Bad Things Happening.
Pairing: Ariadne/Arthur/Eames
Disclaimer: Everyone here belongs to Christopher Nolan and not to me. His toys are fun to play with!
Spoilers/Warnings: Post-movie. For the inception_kink meme prompt in round 13: Ariadne and Arthur (or Eames) are on a job together, things get rough and Arthur (or Eames) ends up having to kill someone. Someone related to (and just as dangerous as) their mark. Dark and angsty, and no real need to have read the others in the series first.
Summary: Sometimes things go wrong on a job. Sometimes they go very, very wrong. This is one of those times when everything falls apart.
Over Ariadne's objections, Arthur dove headlong into work again. He didn't want to stop and think about what could have happened if he or Eames had been killed on his prior job. He wanted to lose himself in work, in research, in the endless minutiae that came with a job. He didn't want to sit around at home and feel out of sorts, didn't want to contemplate the endless boring stretch of days that would come with an ordinary office job as a security consultant. He needed something challenging, something that would keep him from thinking what if? every time his brain stopped. He knew very well that this was avoidance, that sooner or later he would have to think about the nature of their work.
The new job wasn't something he would take every day, but it was the first one available. Cordoni was a mob boss and had hired Arthur and Eames through Arthur's friend Xavier on their prior job. Now that Xavier was dead, there was a vacuum in the dream share business in Paris and Geneva. A few men and women with smaller shares of the region had stepped up, though Arthur didn't know or trust any of them.
Cordoni's consigliere Stefano contacted Arthur directly. Arthur had previously thought perhaps Stefano was trying to set him up or take over the business from Cordoni. Marco had been working with someone when he nearly killed them, and Cordoni wanted to know who it was. Stefano had been troubled after Marco's behavior, and had started to suspect others in Cordoni's organization. Of particular interest was a man named Morgan, who tended to some of Cordoni's financial concerns. The consigliere wanted to know if Morgan was still on Cordoni's payroll, or if he had started working with others to bring down Cordoni from the inside out. He was especially concerned if Morgan was working with any federal or international agencies, and wanted Arthur to extract the information from Morgan.
"I don't like this," Eames said, shaking his head. "It's getting messy, and I don't like how the job might turn out."
"Marco's dead. We don't have to worry about him this time," Arthur replied, voice flinty. His eyes were flat and angry; he didn't like thinking what would have happened if Marco had finished setting him and Eames up for his own personal gain. They would both be dead and Ariadne would be alone. It hurt thinking about that.
"Mob shit always gets messy," Eames warned. "I don't expect anything less, and I've never gotten much good from working with them before."
"Aren't you the one that said Marco never did you a bad turn?" Arthur asked with a biting tone.
He flinched and turned away. "He's dead, you said," Eames replied, voice soft. Arthur immediately felt like an ass and reached out to touch Eames' arm in apology. "We got away once, Arthur. You don't understand how bad this can be, you really don't."
"So? You've worked with them before. You know what to expect, so we can prepare. If it was good enough for you to work for them before, it should be fine now."
"It's not good enough anymore, Arthur." He didn't know how to get that idea across. "It's one thing if I was alone and didn't give a flying fuck what happened to me. There's too much to lose now, and it's not worth the risk. Too much can go wrong here, Arthur. Just walk away. We don't need this job. We don't need the money."
"It's not about the money," Arthur protested. It really wasn't. He just didn't want to think about anything personal for a while. Getting lost inside of a job always helped, and this was simply the first job to come along.
"Then we all work together," Ariadne insisted, coming into the living room with her juice. She had a determined look on her face; she knew that Arthur would never want to endanger her, even if she was working to be capable enough in the real world to take care of herself if the need arose. "We watch each others' backs, and if it starts feeling off, we run."
Arthur looked between the two of them. "You're not going to warn me off again, then?"
"You're so bullheaded it's not worth the effort," Eames said.
"You're antsy," Ariadne said at the same time, shrugging. "You want to do something. If it's not this, it would be something else." She sat down on the couch next to him. "Though honestly? You need friends outside of this business."
She laughed a little when Arthur wrinkled his nose in distaste. "Oh, come on. It's nice to not worry about saying or doing the wrong thing all the time."
"No, darling, I think he'd worry more," Eames pointed out. He moved to sit on the other side of Arthur. "Constantly worrying about the worst case scenario for jobs, plus years on the run with Cobb... I don't think you really even know how to relax. Last time you seemed relaxed was at your Mum's."
"I should call her," Arthur said instantly, getting up. "I meant to yesterday..."
Ariadne shook her head fondly as Arthur went to pick up the phone. She scooted over to snuggle next to Eames, careful not to spill her glass. "After this job, we're taking a vacation, no matter what he says."
"There's also Ariston's wedding preparations. We need to fly to Chapel Hill for the fittings soon."
"That should also keep him busy for a while." She listened to the steady beat of Eames' heart for a minute or two, comfortable in his one armed embrace. "You think he needs to leave the business, don't you?" she asked quietly, looking over to where Arthur was standing as he spoke with his mother.
"He needs a break. Like you said, a vacation. Maybe then he won't be quite so... Arthur," he said finally, not sure how to describe how intensely focused Arthur was being. While he was normally highly professional and details oriented, that seemed to have only intensified in the weeks after he and Eames returned to Paris.
She leaned up to kiss his cheek. "Well, that's why he has us. We'll slow him down."
***
Morgan was in his mid thirties and had fairly nondescript features. He was known to have a quick temper but was also known to be exceedingly fair in his dealings within Cordoni's organization. Arthur tracked his immediate family of seven, as well as nieces and nephews, cousins, his uncle that also worked for Cordoni as well as known associates both in and out of Cordoni's organization. Some of it was simply expanding on the prior work he had done, but most of it was brand new. If he noticed Eames and Ariadne exchanging worried glances, he ignored it. He had a job to do, and he was going after that information with the same kind of determination he did with everything. He certainly didn't expect them to understand why this was so important to him. He knew Ariadne loved the creation of the dreams, the way cities could rise and fall with a single thought. He knew she hated the bureaucracy and bullshit inherent in real world architecture firms, and she didn't want to wait the twenty years to become well known enough to design something iconic. Arthur knew Eames had honed his people watching skills due to years of abuse and simply didn't know what else to do with that skill. As for himself, Arthur honestly couldn't think of anything else he could do that would give him the same sense of satisfaction.
Eames charmed Morgan's youngest sister Amber, a twenty-two year old university student. Ariadne lofted an eyebrow at him when he reported that tidbit, wondering how far he would take his seduction routine, though she didn't say a word. She would never presume to tell him how to do his job or insult his intelligence by forbidding him to touch her. He had never really gone into detail, but Ariadne and Arthur both knew that sometimes Eames had done just about anything to get the job done. Or had done just about anything to keep people he had been working with in line. It had only been over the past year that he had stopped trying to use his body and sexuality as his weapon of choice.
"She's saving herself for marriage," Eames told Ariadne, amused at the jealousy she wouldn't voice. "Such a darling little Catholic school girl."
Arthur rolled his eyes at them and tuned them out, following tax records and bank statements. They didn't go back as far as he would have liked, so he would have to find a few of his contacts that would have access to the paper records. "Think you two can get along without me for a bit?" he asked, shutting his laptop. He loaded a few notebooks into his bag at their nods. "I need to get to the source for this one. Hacking won't get me far enough."
"Take a sweater, dear," Eames sing-songed with a smile, earning himself a dirty look.
"Should we wait on dinner?" Ariadne asked, throwing a pencil at Eames' head.
"Go on without me. I'll pick something up on the way home."
Ariadne nodded and tilted her head up to give him a goodbye kiss when he approached. She watched with a fond smile as Eames mimicked the move for his own, but made the kiss much more erotic than it had to be. "Just a reminder for dessert, Arthur," Eames said with a grin.
"As if I'd forget," Arthur replied, shaking his head. "I'll see you around dinnertime."
Retrieving her pencil as Arthur left the apartment, Ariadne shook her head at Eames. "Just when I thought you stopped winding him up."
"What? He's so easy to read now! I can't help it if it's fun."
She snorted and moved so that she was sitting on the couch with her feet in his lap. She had her sketchbook in her own lap, and he was reading files that Arthur had already generated on Morgan's family members. "So the sister, huh?"
"Morgan dotes on her," Eames said with a shrug. "For some reason, I'd rather do a forge for this job. I don't want to go in wearing my own face."
"Worried?" she asked sympathetically.
"You'll watch over us," he said, shaking his head. "That's not what I'm worried about. This thing sounds on the surface like an ordinary job, but I just can't shake the feeling that there's more to it. Arthur usually can suss that out, but I don't think he's in his ordinary head space."
"You're worried about Arthur, then." Ariadne rubbed her toes against his stomach and smiled when he wrapped his hand around her ankle to stroke it gently. "He's a workaholic. You know that. It's not even about the money, considering how careful he is that his identities aren't compromised and he doesn't always have to shoot his way out. He just can't sit still doing nothing. After a while of doing that, he gets an itch to work."
"He's stocked up on ammo after dealing with Marco."
"I did, too," Ariadne pointed out.
Eames blew out a breath. "No way to really explain this. It's just a feeling I get."
"I trust that, Ben," Ariadne told him softy, curling her toes into his side affectionately. "I know he does, too. It's just that he needs to prove to himself that he can still take care of things, that the fuck up from last time won't happen again." She put her sketchbook aside and leaned forward to rest her hands on his arm. "We keep promising family we're going to be all right, and I think it really threw him that he almost didn't come home."
"It's not affecting me the same," Eames said slowly, looking at her with a troubled expression. "What does that say about me?"
"Arthur never expected that to go well," she began.
"I expected it to go over better than it did. Arthur was the one leery of working with Marco. And he was right, Marco turned on us. I didn't see that coming at all."
Ariadne tilted her head slightly and looked at him with an even expression. "You don't expect much from other people you work with, do you?"
"What do you mean?"
"I remember the first job we all did together." Her fingers curled into the inside of his arm, stroking gently. "You were ready to just cut and run, give it all up. But you weren't surprised when Cobb said we couldn't just shoot our way out. You looked like you expected to be screwed that way."
"Well not that way, darling," he drawled, "but it would have happened sooner or later. He burned a lot of people along the way."
"But you've had that look a lot before going out on jobs after that. Not with me or Arthur when we've worked together, but you've never trusted anyone else."
"Perhaps Pietro," Eames said with a shrug. "But he's probably dead. We would have heard something by now if not."
"Right. But Arthur doesn't have that same belief, you know. He doesn't expect people to turn on him like that, not during a job." She slid her fingers inside of his shirtsleeve to stroke his skin gently. "So I think it hurt him more than you last time, is all." She ran her nails across his skin lightly and smiled sadly. "So he wants to prove that it won't happen again, that it's not his judgment that's off."
"Ah. And I'm not affected like that because I'd never trusted others before," Eames concluded.
"It's a theory," Ariadne offered.
He tucked her hair behind her ears and smiled sadly. "Well, there's only four people in the world I trust now, and I sleep with two of them."
"Four?" she asked with a smile.
"My cousin Spencer and Arthur's Mum." He paused. "I suppose I should put Ariston on that list, yeah? He knows what we do for a living and hasn't told a soul."
"Well, I trust him. He's my brother, after all. You don't have to."
"I suppose I do, now that I think about it. About as much as Spence."
"And in our line of work? Anyone there?"
"Yusuf's a good one. Best chemist I know. I suppose there's one or two extractors I don't expect to try to kill me or throw me to the wolves. That's about it."
"Not exactly a ringing endorsement of what we do," Ariadne said wryly.
Eames laughed. "No, I don't suppose it is. But it's a dangerous world we live in, darling. Not everyone could pull it off."
"Very true."
Eames looked down at her body, all but curled up into him. "Feeling cold, Ariadne?" he teased.
She laughed and shifted so that she was leaning against him and he could put his arm around her. "No. I just like touching you sometimes."
"Well, good, I like touching you, too." He kissed the top of her head. "Since we're not getting any work done anyway, let's plan what we'll do for Arthur, hm? He's bound to be wound up tighter than a spring by the time he comes home."
Ariadne laughed. "Just admit it, you find that look hot, too."
"Of course I do. I just happen to like his fucked-out, blissful expression, too." She snorted and pressed a kiss to the underside of his jaw happily. "It's practically almost medicinal that we do this, you understand," he said, a smile on his face. "We'll keep his poor brain from overheating with its conspiracy theories."
Giggling, she snuggled tightly against him. "Sounds like an excellent plan."
***
Eames might have felt that Morgan was closest with his youngest sister Amber, but it was fairly clear that he trusted his older sister Diamond's judgment with business deals. She was whip smart, bitter after her messy divorce from a Cordoni associate and had a ruthless streak a mile wide in her own business, a construction company that she owned and managed single handedly. The company had been struggling when she bought it, and over the course of three years had turned it into a successful and profitable business. It managed to stay outside of Cordoni's hands despite her ex-husband's attempts to take it away from her, but Diamond had been as solid as her name and twice as sharp.
There were no obvious attempts to undermine Cordoni's business, but if they were obvious, he wouldn't be paying them an exorbitant amount of money to extract that information from Morgan. He suspected but he didn't know, and Cordoni wanted to be sure of everything before he had Morgan killed. Otherwise, he would be eliminating an asset and leaving himself exposed to further destabilizing influences.
With all of their preparation, the extraction itself went off without a hitch. Ariadne timed the kick, and Arthur woke up with a relieved smile on his face. For all of Morgan's real world security that they had to circumvent, there had been no dream security to speak of. He and Eames learned quite a lot about Morgan and his business dealings with Diamond, as well as with Cordoni and Cordoni's competitors. Marco had been the one to pull Diamond into the deal, as a matter of fact. She was dealing with competitors at Morgan's behest, and they were splitting the profits. Morgan didn't want to take over Cordoni's business for himself, but he was definitely undermining his interests.
Ariadne started cleaning up after them, winding up the PASIV tubing and disposing of the needles in the small sharps container in the case. Arthur had pushed extra sedation before she disengaged the machine, and Eames set about wiping their prints. They had ten to fifteen minutes to get away from Morgan's house before the sedation wore off and the bribed security guards changed shift.
Of course, this was when Diamond and Amber came into the house looking for Morgan.
Diamond immediately recognized the silver case in Ariadne's hand and spun Amber around and behind her with her left hand as she pulled out her gun with her right. She fired wildly, forcing the trio back into the room with Morgan for cover. Their thoughts were all variants of Fuck! and Goddammit! and She wasn't supposed to be here!
Eames drew his USP Compact and Arthur drew his Glock. The two of them took positions at the door, firing intermittently to keep Diamond off center. Ariadne started reaching for the Beretta she kept beneath her sweater when Arthur shook his head sharply at her. "Don't. Watch Morgan, make sure she doesn't shoot him by accident. Cordoni won't want him dead yet."
She drew her lips together unhappily but nodded and did as he said. It was the truth, even if it upset her that he didn't seem to trust that she would be able to help or that she could take care of herself. Morgan was fine, but she manhandled him to the floor to be sure that he would be out of the line of fire if anything came through the walls as Arthur feared. She looked up at the stuttering fire her boys laid down. It was happening too fast to really be afraid, but there was that niggling fear in the back of her head that this wasn't going to go well. Arthur had chosen the wrong job to try to prove to himself that he could handle things and still trust his judgment on jobs.
Ariadne left Morgan's side, PASIV still in hand. Diamond was still intermittently shooting, and Eames was reloading his gun. "I've only one more magazine," he muttered, slamming it home. "I didn't expect this much trouble."
Arthur's lips were compressed into a tight, unhappy line. "We're running out of time on the sedation. We have to speed this up."
"Kill the girls, you mean?" Eames asked, eyebrows raised.
"Maybe we can still avoid it."
They could hear Amber crying and screaming at her sister, confused and not sure what the hell was happening. Diamond was telling her to keep quiet and duck down out of the way, anger in her tone. She was still shooting whenever she saw what looked like Eames or Arthur in the doorway. This wouldn't be a good way out, and the plate glass windows of Morgan's bedroom didn't open at all. They were effectively trapped and had to get the hell out.
When Diamond's shooting paused so that she could reload, Eames rolled out of the doorway, shooting. She let out a shriek of surprise and pushed Amber out of the way as she dropped to the floor. Eames kept his shots even and intermittent enough to let Arthur and Ariadne out of the bedroom without risking return fire from Diamond. Ariadne started scuttling to the side, and Arthur picked up his gun and started shooting when Diamond let out another volley of shots from behind the couch in the living room. There was a distinct cry of pain, and then panicked screaming from Diamond. It was incoherent, but it sounded as if she was calling Amber's name.
The two men exchanged a wary glance and Ariadne was pale. This couldn't be good.
Diamond surged up from behind the couch, her shooting wild and angry, a large red stain on her chest. Arthur and Eames tried to duck out of the way, diving to the floor. What was worse, they could hear Morgan groaning in the bedroom, as if he was starting to wake up.
"We need to get the fuck out of here," Eames said, shooting from his sprawled position on the floor. Diamond saw him and started shifting her attention from Arthur to Eames. As she turned to aim at him, Arthur immediately shot her in the chest. It threw her back, but there was no spray of blood.
The prior stains on her chest hadn't been her own, then.
"She's wearing a vest," Ariadne said. "Come on, let's just go!"
Eames scuttled across the floor toward her and Arthur. He cleared it just ahead of the shots Diamond fired; with as bad as her aim was, he could only guess that she used the gun more for threatening than for actual shooting. Her response to recoil was piss poor, her stance was off and she had an awful grip on the gun. Still, it was dangerous and not something to be discounted, especially after what he had discovered about her. She was just as ruthless as Morgan in her business dealings, and would think nothing of killing the three of them. "Head to the back of the house," he told them, waving as Morgan stumbled out of his bedroom. "Now!"
Morgan staggered forward and Diamond rushed out of her hiding place to catch him. She pressed the gun she was holding into his hands, and his eyes sharpened at the sound of whatever she was telling him. He turned to them, fury in his eyes.
Ariadne broke out in a run, PASIV still in her hand. She had almost forgotten about it. Arthur and Eames were behind her, turning every once in a while to shoot behind them. Ariadne watched in horror as Eames was shot in the arm and stumbled as he ran. Arthur's face whitened, and he shot with cold precision. The back of Diamond's head exploded in bits of brain and bone and blood, and she staggered, falling into Morgan. Arthur shot at him as well, just as Ariadne pulled him around the corner of the hallway.
The three of them escaped the house, and Ariadne stowed the case beneath the passenger seat, her hands shaking with adrenaline. Arthur drove, his knuckles white on the steering wheel. Eames was in the front passenger seat, using Ariadne's scarf as a makeshift tourniquet. "I'm calling Cordoni, getting this over with. He probably has someone on his payroll to take the bullet out of my arm. Same fucking arm as last year, too."
"They're all dead," Arthur said, voice tight. Ariadne's heart ached to hear it. He was already blaming himself for what happened, she knew. He was blaming himself for not doing enough research, not figuring out where Diamond and Amber were, something. It didn't matter if this was supposed to be an easier job to do, he would constantly blame himself for whatever went wrong on a job.
"Listen. Cordoni might order the hit anyway, after what I found on the both of them. Cordoni's men won't come after us," Eames told him, grunting as he tied the knot tighter around his arm.
"I'll report in," Arthur said, shaking his head.
"Bloody hell, Arthur," Eames snapped. "Do you have a death wish?"
"Stop it! Both of you!" Ariadne shouted as Arthur glared at Eames. "Just... Pull over or something. Calm the hell down."
He didn't question her and pulled over as she asked. Ariadne reached through the gap between the front seats and touched Arthur's arm. He looked at her, and she could see the fear and panic in his eyes. "We will figure this out together, okay?" She leaned forward, twisting to press a kiss to his lips. "Just calm down, and you'll see a way to get out of this. I have faith in you."
Arthur struggled to calm down, and Ariadne left her hand on his shoulder in silent support as she turned to Eames. "Are you all right?"
"Just peachy, love," Eames replied flippantly, looking away from her.
"Benjamin," she said in her most severe tone. "Are you all right?" she repeated.
"I've been fucking shot, what do you think?"
"Don't talk to her that way!" Arthur growled.
"Enough!" Ariadne cried, giving Arthur a shake and a glare. She turned to look at Eames. "I meant, are you all right enough to finish this job? Can you do it, or do we need to plan for that, too?" she asked, voice firm.
Eames' eyes flicked from hers to Arthur's. He was a mess, and she was the more commanding presence at the moment. "Yeah. I can finish the job. Just a flesh wound."
"Then we'll go finish the job and get the hell out of here."
"I don't want Cordoni seeing you," Arthur rasped, shaking his head. "Bad enough he knows who we are..."
Ariadne leaned forward so that her forehead touched the side of Arthur's. "Arthur. I knew what I was getting into. I know the risks, same as you and Ben."
"Ariadne..."
"Stop. Just stop. I may not be some big, tall badass assassin, but I'm also not a little doll to tuck into the closet to take out whenever you feel like it. Okay? You've never been this bad before. What the hell happened?"
"I can't lose the both of you!" Arthur snapped, lips thin and hands clenched into white-knuckled fists.
Ariadne sighed and Eames' gaze softened. He touched Arthur's knee gently as Ariadne kissed his temple. "We're right here, Arthur," Eames said softly. "We're not dead, it didn't go completely tits up. We're all fine."
"It almost wasn't," he said, releasing a shuddering breath. "I fucked up."
"No," Ariadne whispered against his temple. "That wasn't anything you could've prevented, Arthur. It wasn't, you have to believe that."
"No more messing about with the mob, yeah?" Eames offered, squeezing his thigh.
"That's got to be a rule," Ariadne said with a shaky laugh. "For all of us, no more mob things. Stick with corporate espionage or rich idiots wanting to know if they're cheating on each other. We don't need the trouble."
Eames let his hand run higher along Arthur's leg as Ariadne let go of Arthur. "Come on, then. We'll get Ariadne settled watching the hotel room for us. I'll present what we found and see what Cordoni wants to do. You know he'll probably order a hit anyway if Morgan survived."
"This is such a mess," Arthur groaned. He leaned his head down on the steering wheel, feeling the adrenaline rush fade. His mind was blank due to the panic. This was new and not like him at all. He was usually better prepared than this. Had there really been nothing he could have changed?
"We'll figure it out together. We'll salvage this, go far away and take a break," Eames told him. "Stay with your Mum, perhaps. Let you unwind."
"And we need to visit Chapel Hill anyway," Ariadne reminded him. Arthur took a deep breath and raised his head. "It will all be okay, Arthur. We'll make it okay. We just need to work together. You can't shut us out like this, or we can't help."
He nodded. "All right." He turned around and faced her. "But please, Ariadne. Please just stay in the hotel room? Cordoni's men don't know about you, and I don't want them to."
She nodded, though she wasn't happy about it. At least now he was asking.
They dropped her off at the hotel, and she let herself into the hotel room. Before she could close the door, it was viciously shoved open and she fell to the floor. Morgan stood over her, a grim expression on his face. He was dressed in a dark gray suit and black leather gloves; she could imagine that there was a gun hidden beneath his jacket even though she couldn't see it. She could feel her own dig into her ribs as she looked up at him. Morgan calmly shut the hotel room door behind him and watched as she scuttled backward, away from him.
"Unlike your companions, I won't hurt you to get what I want," he said, voice hollow and flat. Fury burned in his eyes. "I want the one that killed my sisters. I want the one you were kissing in the car."
Ariadne felt a chill roll through her. While Arthur never would have stayed focused on his driving the way he was, she now sharply regretted asking him to pull over to calm down. It allowed Morgan to catch up and follow them.
He removed his jacket. The shirt was stained with blood, probably Diamond's. He had strapped on his shoulder holster and had a Sig Sauer in it. His eyes were hard and uncaring as they took in her shock, and he merely took the Sig out of the holster. "Call him."
Skittering backward a little farther from him, she reached for her purse. She had a Bersa Thunder in a pocket holster in the bag. It was tiny but packed a pretty powerful punch, and Morgan seemed to think she was someone inconsequential.
That thought was reassessed when he clicked off the safety to his Sig. "Slowly. Don't make me regret sparing you."
She nodded and swallowed slowly. She had to think. They had left her not even five minutes before, and were on their way to meet Cordoni. She was on her own, with only her two guns, her cell phone and her own wits about her. She was petite and doll-like, even if she repeatedly asked the boys not to treat her that way.
But Morgan didn't know her. He didn't know what she was capable of, and if it came down to him or her, it sure as hell wasn't going to be her. She wasn't going to allow him to hurt Arthur or Eames either.
Slowly retrieving her cell phone, she hit the speed dial for Arthur's number. Morgan's gun was steady, centered on her chest. She had flicked off the snap that held her Bersa Thunder in its pocket holster, but hadn't done much more than that when getting her cell phone. She didn't want to know how sensitive his trigger finger was.
Arthur picked up on the second ring. "Ariadne?" he asked, a thread of concern in his voice.
Ariadne was suddenly calm as she looked up at Morgan. He was dealing with grief and didn't expect anything from her. "Can you come back?" she asked, her voice even. She wasn't even shaking anymore. Whatever happened, Morgan wasn't going to walk away to harm Arthur. She simply wouldn't allow that.
Arthur didn't seem calmed by her tone of voice at all. "Is everything all right?" He paused, not hearing her respond right away. "Clear your throat if you can't speak freely. Use the code if you have to..."
Ariadne didn't take her eyes off of Morgan. "I'm fine. Morgan's here," she said abruptly, then hung up.
Morgan looked at her in disbelief. "Why did you do that?"
"You wanted him here. Now we know he's coming."
He circled her, but she didn't move. She had her cell phone in one hand, her purse in her lap. Her Beretta was pressed against her ribs beneath her loose sweater and her Bersa was in her purse. Too far away if he decided to pull the trigger, but she could tell by his stance that he didn't think she was a threat to him as she sat on the floor.
His mistake.
"You've been mixed up in the wrong crowd," Morgan said, moving his finger from the trigger to the trigger guard. He eased his stance, but he didn't seem to relax yet.
Ariadne kept her eyes on his face. That would tell her when he moved, what he was planning to do. If she startled him, she would only have a second or two before he got his finger back on the trigger. She didn't plan to go down the way Morgan's sisters had.
Keeping her purse in hand, she slowly used the wall to pull herself up to her feet. She released the catch on her Beretta as she moved, hiding it as bracing herself to get up slowly. "I don't know what you're talking about," she said in a low tone.
His lips curled into a patronizing smile, and his shoulders relaxed slightly. "You know who I am, sweetheart," he sneered. "You really think you can play with the big boys?"
His finger was off the trigger guard now, curled against the grip. Only an extra second's reprieve, really, but it might just be enough.
"You think I'm helpless because I'm so small?" she asked. His eyes were on her face, and he never told her to drop the purse or cell phone in her hand. He didn't even bother to track the motion as she put the cell phone back in her purse, replacing it with her Bersa.
He was too busy laughing at her calm composure. "Oh, sweetheart. What did he say? That he'll keep you in silk and diamonds? That screwing the boss will keep you safe?" His lips curled in derision. "His protections don't mean shit. He's not here."
"No, he's not," Ariadne agreed, her hand curling around the Bersa.
He laughed, and Ariadne dropped her purse as she rushed forward at him, just inside the swing of his gun. She shot him twice in the chest without even blinking, then grasped his gun arm with her left hand to redirect the shot he was trying to make. Blood was everywhere, but Ariadne ignored it, pushing the Bersa into the hollow of his throat and digging her fingernails into the soft underside of his wrist. "You're not hurting Arthur. Ever," she said, voice cold. She ignored his left hand; she could see nothing in it out of her peripheral vision and he knew full well if he startled her that his throat would be shot out. "Drop the gun."
Morgan complied, eyes wide with disbelief as he contemplated her. "But..."
"You should know better, Morgan," Ariadne told him, tightening her grip on his right hand. He dropped his gun, but she wasn't a fool and wouldn't let her guard down until he was dead. He was bleeding out quickly, his face turning gray, but people were known to do ridiculous things when fueled by adrenaline.
"You can't have," he began, starting to collapse to his knees. If anything, that made it even easier for Ariadne to maintain her grip on him and keep the gun at his throat. "This isn't happening. I'm still dreaming."
"No, you're not dreaming, Morgan."
He tried to lunge forward, even knowing how futile it would be, and Ariadne pulled the trigger. The cartridge blew out most of his throat, and he dropped limply at her feet.
Ariadne stepped back and looked around her. This would draw all kinds of attention they couldn't afford. She knew Arthur and Eames would be returning, and there was no way she would be able to cover this up on her own.
The hotel door swung open abruptly minutes later, and Arthur rushed in with his Glock in hand. Ariadne recognized the fake Interpol badge that he sometimes carried; that would help keep the hotel staff from prying too closely. Arthur had his controlled panicked look on his face; it was a tight and angry mask, though his eyes were wild and couldn't seem to focus on any one thing at a time. He was pale and took in the bloody scene.
"Oh, God. Ariadne..."
Ariadne blinked, and everything seemed to come into sharp relief. She grabbed her purse to reholster her gun and saw that Arthur was alone. "Where's Eames?" she asked, worry in her tone. "Did Morgan have any other guys following you?"
He strode to her side and had to touch her to be sure she was real. "He went on to report to Cordoni." He cradled her face in one hand. "Are you all right? I thought..."
She tried to smile at him, though she could start to feel her own adrenaline rush start to fade. "He thought I was a helpless little girl. He still couldn't believe it, even when I shot him."
Arthur's relieved laughter was shaky. "I thought... I didn't think you'd actually get much range time when you went with Sandrine. I figured the two of your just used it as an excuse to hang out, not that you would actually practice."
"Not always," she agreed, leaning into his touch. "But sometimes we did get actual time in. Plus all the practice in dream levels..." She could feel a tremor in her hands when she reached for him. "I'm okay, Arthur. See? I'm really okay."
"He didn't hurt you? You're not grazed?" he asked, not quite able to believe it.
"I'm fine. It's not my blood, Arthur. None of it's mine." He was shaking a little despite her reassurance, and had to put up his Glock. Ariadne reached up to grasp his face in her hands. "I'm okay, Arthur. Really, I'm okay."
"Eames was shot," he said in a low tone. "And you could've been."
She suddenly realized that this was Arthur in shock, and he couldn't quite wrap his mind around the fact that she was really okay. This was a second easy job that had gone all to hell on his watch, which had already shaken his confidence. Now he was left wondering if he could keep his lovers safe.
"Let's go get him, and we'll go home. We'll leave off the dream share for a while. Just be ourselves and not some random identity."
He nodded, taking a deep breath. Then it was almost as if the work persona clicked into place, and he was the calm and collected Arthur she was used to seeing. He took out his cell phone and dialed Eames, telling him in crisp tones that Ariadne was safe and Morgan was taken care of. She eyed him archly, considering that it almost sounded like Arthur was taking credit. "He's... contained," Arthur said in answer to Eames' question. There was a pause, likely as Eames relayed information to Cordoni, and Arthur returned her gaze evenly. "Understood. We'll wait until you get here. There's a mess you'll need to help us clean up."
Ariadne crossed her arms over her chest as he hung up. "So?"
"Cordoni gave the order to kill Morgan." His voice was toneless, and he looked down at the mess on the floor. "The Interpol excuse will only get us so far. This might be bigger than this persona can handle."
"Then let Cordoni clean up the mess," Ariadne said. "You don't have to handle this if it's not your job."
"This is part of my job."
"Arthur," Ariadne said softly, taking his hands in hers. "Some things are out of your control. It's okay to have help. Really."
"It's my job to take point," Arthur disagreed. "I'm supposed to plan for these things, find the holes in the job, keep everyone safe. This is my job. And I've been fucking up."
She squeezed his hand tightly. "You couldn't have planned this. The job itself went fine."
He shook his head. "This is my job, no on else's. This is going to be a bitch to clean up..."
Ariadne dragged Arthur to the bed and had him sit down. "Okay. You're going to need to calm down. We'll wait for Ben, then we'll figure out what we're doing next. All right?" The truth was, a panicky Arthur was starting to scare her.
By the time Eames arrived, Arthur was calm and had put together a story for the hotel staff that was believable. Eames had put on a jacket to cover his wounded arm, and looked over the mess in the room. Arthur had started cleaning the room with Ariadne's help, but he looked over Morgan's body. "Well, we don't need to worry about Ariadne, then," he said, sounding impressed. "Good work, love."
She had been avoiding the body, not wanting to look at it or even think about what she had done now that it was over. Plus, Arthur falling apart meant that she couldn't lean on him for this. He was usually her rock, the one that calmed her down when she was upset over something, but he was already upset with how badly this job was going. She could say all sorts of calming things for his sake, but she didn't have enough strength to think about how to calm herself down.
Looking at Morgan's body now made her start to shake, and Ariadne had to look away or she would throw up and undo all the work she and Arthur had done. Eames looked alarmed, and caught her arm. "You've a plan, right?" he asked Arthur firmly, turning Ariadne slightly so that Arthur wouldn't see her expression. He listened to Arthur's cover story and nodded briskly. "I can work with this." He sat Ariadne down on the bed. "Now, look upset, Ariadne. You're about to play the role of a witness under our protection."
Ariadne looked at him with a grateful expression, because she didn't know how much longer she could keep it together. "I can do that," she said, her voice quivering. She was near tears, and Arthur looked at her with growing anxiety. "I'm fine," she told him, her voice firmer than she felt.
"Focus," Eames told Arthur. "I'll arrange things with Cordoni's men, you track down proper hotel staff. Get video security footage, grease some wheels, whatever it is you need to do to keep them silent. I'm sure Cordoni would love to have someone pretend to be a coroner to pick up the body. It'll be proof enough we've done what we said we would." His tone was commanding, and it helped Arthur snap into his usual role more easily.
Ariadne let the tears flow as Arthur left the room and Eames called Cordoni. She started to shake, and she wrapped her arms around herself tightly. As much as she didn't want to, her eyes kept straying to Morgan's glassy ones. She had never killed in the real world before. Projections didn't count.
Once Eames was off the phone, he sat next to Ariadne on the bed. He took her hand in his calloused one and rubbed the back of her hand gently. "It's okay to fall apart if you need to, Ariadne," he told her softly. "I'm here."
"I can't," she groaned, shaking her head. "I need to keep it together for Arthur. He's not handling this well."
"I know, love," he told her, voice soft and gentle. "I'll take care of him. You can lean on me. I'm here." He slung an arm around her shoulder, heedless of the blood on her clothes. "I'll figure this out. It's going to be all right. I'll make sure of it."
Ariadne turned and sobbed openly against Eames' chest, the bottled terror finally breaking free. "He would've killed Arthur, maybe you and me, too. He said he wouldn't, but he just didn't care. He didn't care at all, and I couldn't let him hurt you. I couldn't let him hurt Arthur. God, after all the assurances we gave everyone... I can't do this, Ben. I can't just pretend this doesn't bother me."
Eames was rubbing her back in a soothing manner. "I know," he murmured next to her ear. "We'll take time off. We don't need to work. We'll figure out what we want to do, then. I've got you," he said, holding her. He started rocking her, and she clung to him as her tears slowed.
She looked up at him after a while. "Arthur's not handling this well. I don't know what to do. He's always taken care of everything if it went wrong..."
He kissed her forehead. "Let me worry about that, Ariadne." There was a loud knocking at the door. "Showtime."
Ariadne wiped her eyes as Eames slipped on a professional mask and answered the door. She didn't recognize the man there, though he had what looked like an EMT gurney and a black body bag. She forced herself to watch him take Morgan's body, to feel the terror and responsibility for her actions. The man pretending to be from the coroner's office was brutally efficient and had an uncaring mask on his face. She never wanted to be that way, to take human life so dispassionately.
Arthur and one of the hotel managers returned as he was zipping up the body bag, and the hotel manager looked at her sympathetically. Her miserable expression only sold the sob story Arthur had told him, and he was explaining a back route out of the hotel that they could use, a maze of service entrances and corridors so that no further assassins could come and try to kill her. They had given Arthur all of the surveillance they had regarding their entry and exits for the past two days, as well as Morgan's surreptitious entry into the hotel. The fake coroner left with the body unimpeded, and the hotel manager escorted the three of them out to the parking garage. He waived the parking fee and let them drive away with their belongings, agreeing that the fees Arthur had paid were enough to make the paperwork disappear and to cover the cleaning charges.
Eames drove, leaving Arthur and Ariadne in the backseat. When both had protested, he stared them down and simply pointed at the backseat. "Sit. Down. Now." His tone had brooked no argument, even if Ariadne had wanted to offer up token protest. The two of them simply sat there, clinging to each other. Eames occasionally eyed them as he drove, keeping watch as Arthur finally allowed himself to let go of his worry and panic. He refused to let Arthur take over. He knew the plan as well as the point man did, and at the moment he was the one best able to execute it.
He did make one change in the plans, however. When the three of them settled into a new hotel room, he canceled their plane tickets to Paris and instead booked a flight to Dulles International Airport. A few weeks with Arthur's mother in DC prior to visiting Ariadne's brother in Chapel Hill would help restore their equilibrium.
And if Arthur ever wanted to take a job from a mob boss ever again, Eames would punch him in the mouth and lock him in the apartment. Ariadne was right. These jobs just weren't worth the money in their bank accounts. Eames lay awake between Arthur and Ariadne for a while after they fell into an exhausted sleep. An arm around each of them, he stroked them in their sleep. They were the best things that had ever happened to him, and he would make sure that nothing happened to them. He would move heaven and earth if he had to, just as they would do the same for him.
Sometimes he worried about his place in their relationship, but today was a stark reminder that they truly did need him as much as he needed them. They were his family, the three of them. No one in the world would ever take that away from him.
The End.