An Undivided Heart
Title: An Undivided Heart
Author: Eustacia Vye
Author's e-mail: eustacia_vye28@hotmail.com
Rating: PG-13
Pairing: Gen. Mostly. :)
Disclaimer: Everyone here belongs to Christopher Nolan and not to me. His toys are fun to play with!
Spoilers/Warnings: Begins immediately post-movie. For the inception_kink meme prompt in round 17: It turns out that Ariadne was not some prodigy that fell into Dom's influence just when he needed her most. No, she's a highly trained government agent, sent to infiltrate and root out dangerous dream share criminals. For the "interrogating" box on my hc_bingo card.
Summary: The inception was successful. CIA Agent Eleanor Lewis was supposed to break cover and bring in her former coworkers. She knew so much more about dream share now, more than her superiors ever would have dreamed was possible. Their view was so narrow minded, so literal. They had no idea about the full potential of dream share and what it could actually do. This meant she had a decision to make.
I will walk in your truth; give me an undivided heart, that I may fear your name.
-Psalm 86:11
The problem with going deeply undercover was the risk of becoming the cover identity and empathizing far too much with the intended marks.
CIA Agent Eleanor Lewis had always thought her superiors were full of shit, but perhaps there was a very real concern after all. She had taken off her white jacket, tossing it onto the hotel bed beside her bag. She gripped the edge of the bathroom counter in both hands and stared at herself in the mirror. There were the wild loose curls she didn't bother to tame as Ariadne the architecture student, the pale oval face and the large golden eyes that looked so innocent. It was why she had been chosen for this program, after all. She was tiny and fragile looking, even if she wasn't, and her demeanor was fairly nonthreatening and inspired others to confide in her even when they probably shouldn't have. Eleanor could ask her questions with a straight face, and people never even knew she was interrogating them.
Staring at herself in the mirror, she realized she didn't know what she was going to do next.
Her superiors wouldn't know she was in the US yet. They knew about the Ariadne persona, and had threatened Stephen Miles with his involvement in the dream share underground in Europe. He might have been retired and seen as "simply" an architecture professor, his past experience as a consultant for the military dream share technology was all too easy for the CIA to find. Adding a little pressure regarding his grandchildren, and he had caved. Anyone coming to him for recommendations or referrals were supposed to be handed Ariadne on a silver platter. He had done his part and Ariadne had done hers.
Eames had been thorough, making flawless identities for all of the team members to leave Paris for Sydney. Separate identities were then used to get from Sydney to LA. There was nothing to link the names together, let alone to her actual identity. After getting to know Arthur, Eleanor was surprised that he hadn't realized Ariadne was a fake identity. Then again, the task force was good at what it did, and there was plenty of information in common databases to build a passable identity. Arthur had enough on his plate that he probably didn't check deeply enough and relied on the fact that Cobb had presumably gotten Ariadne straight from Stephen Miles. With Cobb falling apart as badly as he was, Arthur had his hands full shoring him up as well as gathering information on Robert Fischer.
It had worked, she knew. She had seen the subtle shift in Fischer's eyes, the change in the set of his shoulders. The team had done the impossible and Cobb would go home to his children again. She had helped them, God forgive her, and had been too caught up in the moment and the possibility to think about the repercussions of aiding and abetting criminals. Even if this was her assignment, even if she could plausibly explain everything that had happened in the dreaming, she knew better. She had wormed her way into the job not just to get closer to them, but because she didn't want them to be ripped apart by the shade in Cobb's head. She had grown to care for the team, and had wanted to ensure its success.
She knew so much more about dream share now, more than her superiors ever would have dreamed was possible. Their view was so narrow minded, so literal. They had no idea about the full potential of dream share and what it could actually do.
She should have been terrified, but she was never one to shy away from danger.
Her cell phone trilled, signaling a text message. Are you okay? Limbo is a serious dance move, and not everyone recovers completely.
Without realizing it, Eleanor smiled at Eames' words. She contemplated sending one in return, and was still considering it when she received a text from Arthur. Contact me if you need to talk more about what happened, it read. Concise and to the point, all business. He had been full of concern while they were waiting out the first level of the dream, watching carefully for signs that she brought something -- Mal -- back with her, or if her psyche was scarred by the experience.
These men were dangerous, but not in the way that the CIA had feared.
Still not sure what she was going to do, Eleanor grabbed her things and left the hotel room.
***
"You're looking peaky," Eames commented, seeing Ariadne in the bar waiting for him. He slid onto the stool beside her. "Talk with Arthur or Yusuf yet?"
She shook her head. "I texted Arthur to say I'll want to talk to him eventually. I haven't heard from Yusuf yet, and everyone initially said we should all part ways and not contact each other for a while..."
"As confident as you looked, I saw your face when you thought no one was looking." Eames waited a beat as the bartender came over to order his drink. While Ariadne was surprised, she stayed silent as well. "You're good, darling, but I'm better." He patted her arm gently, lessening the potential sting in his words. "Cobb was so bloody single minded, I don't think he gave any thought to what would happen to you after this job."
"He didn't look back," Ariadne murmured, wondering if it sounded like she was whining. Eleanor wouldn't care about something like that, since she would file away details to track him down later. But Ariadne was a student, and she had never been in dream share before. These men had taken her in and explained the necessary parts of the job and some aspects of the dream share world at large. Eleanor told herself at the time that she was filing it all away, that she would put the pieces together and eventually bring them all to justice.
But dream share policed its own, as well. And oftentimes, those hiring these men did it under the radar themselves. The CIA had no idea about the scope of dream share activity, just as she had no idea how much the others in dream share knew about her.
Eames seemed amiable enough at this time, and he seemed worried about her state of mind. This was still a seasoned thief and forger, someone willing to hang others out to dry in order to save himself. He still had his hand on her arm in a comforting gesture, and it bothered Eleanor that Ariadne needed that contact. She was supposed to be stronger than that. She wasn't supposed to be rattled. Ariadne was the prodigy, and she was supposed to be tough.
But seeing Mal had rattled her deeply, as much as she had tried to hide it. Eleanor wanted to cringe when she thought of the way her hands shook in limbo when faced with Mal, and her aim with the Baretta hadn't been true. She knew she wouldn't ever look at broken wine glasses the same way again.
"He can't," Eames was saying, seeing the inner turmoil etched on her face. "Whether just because of the job or he can't recognize anyone else's pain anymore, I don't know. He told some fairly deep lies to get us where he wanted us."
"Have you known him long?"
"As long as he's been a bloody wanker," Eames said flatly, leaning back to sip his drink. He watched her face carefully, and Eleanor wondered if she had made some kind of mistake. This was a man adept at reading human behavior, after all. She really was a novice next to him, for all of her experience.
"There must have been something there. Arthur... I can't imagine him staying near someone who's always been a douchebag."
Eames laughed and finished his drink. He took in her wan smile and impulsively slung an arm around her shoulders. "Have you a crush on our point, dear Ariadne?" he teased. He laughed again as she sputtered. "Or is it dream share in general?" he asked, lips curling into a knowing smile.
"I love the creation," she murmured.
"Yes, there's that. Dreams can be wonderful when physics are damned and forgotten, hm? Your immeasurable skills can be magnified, and you can lose yourself in what isn't really there."
"Then how do you stay grounded?" Ariadne asked, hating that her voice sounded fragile for a moment. "He lived a lifetime in limbo, and I saw the remnants crumbling when we went down there to get Fischer." She looked up at Eames, aware that she had a bleak and vulnerable expression on her face. There was no need to hide the confusion she was feeling, the conflict roiling deep within.
Eames pulled her close and leaned his head against hers. Eleanor knew that no one else could get this close to him, no one else would receive comfort from him like this. For a fleeting moment she felt special and cherished, a desired member of the team she had been part of for months. For a fleeting moment she thought about running away with him, dissolving all her past ties and living her life as a dream share criminal. She would know the ropes soon enough, and she would know how to keep out of sight. It would work, she knew. If that was what she really wanted, she could do it.
She would never be Eleanor Lewis again. Everything she once had would be lost forever.
"Ariadne. There are dangers in this world no one ever told you about. There are nuances and layers, and not just in dreams. Tread carefully, darling. You need to know what you want before you start. Otherwise, you'll lose yourself in the fog."
She looked at him with large eyes, her innocent-looking face turned toward his. "I love to build." That was true, she realized. Regardless of how she went about doing it, she had to build things again. She had to.
"Then you know what you have to do, Ariadne. You need to trust your instincts." There was a thread of sadness in his voice, and his fingers brushing down her arm sent a chill rolling down her spine. "You're one of us."
"So what does that mean for me?" she asked.
Eames pulled back, his arm moving away from her shoulders to reach into his jacket. She immediately missed his warmth and the connection through his touch. For that moment, she had felt grounded. For that moment, she had been Ariadne and not simply Eleanor pretending to be Ariadne.
He scribbled an address. "Make your way to Mombasa. You have the means, Ariadne. And if you truly want to stay, you'll find this address."
"What is it?"
"It's where you can start again."
He left the bar after dropping some money to cover their drinks, taking his secrets with him.
I follow the trail and I'll find them all. I'll break dream share wide open, she told herself. It's not falling down the rabbit hole. This is doing my job. This is following through until I get everything the CIA needs. I'm not lost yet.
Eleanor memorized the address and tucked the napkin into her pocket anyway. She wondered if she was simply fooling herself. Then she wondered if she should really care about everything she would leave behind if she stayed Ariadne.
She was in the middle of the maze, and she didn't think she had left any thread to find her way out.
***
Arthur was in Chicago when he called her. "You're still in LA?" he asked, sounding surprised.
"I'm not a fan of being in planes after all that travel recently," Ariadne said, voice listless. "I'm... I'm trying to figure out what I want to do next."
His sigh was palpable. "I can come to you."
"No, you're probably busy..."
"Not that busy anymore," he said quietly, making her wonder what was in Chicago for him. She barely knew anything about any of the men she had worked with other than Cobb; she had sensed right away there had been something deeply wrong with him. She had been right, but didn't feel any sense of satisfaction in knowing her instinct about him was right. Eleanor was fighting herself, she knew.
What do I do next?
"I... I don't have anything here," Ariadne said, voice firming into something a little more recognizable. "I can meet you."
"Ariadne..."
"I'm all right enough to travel, Arthur."
The crispness in her voice must have convinced him. "I can meet you at the Art Institute or the Robie House. You might like those."
She found herself smiling in spite of herself. "Perfect. Let's start with the Art Institute then. That ought to be easy enough to find from the airport."
"I thought you didn't like planes right now?" Arthur asked, a hint of a teasing lilt in his voice.
Ariadne laughed. "For you, I can make an exception."
"Let me know when your flight gets in, and I'll pick you up. Then we'll go to the Institute. We can figure out everything else once you get here."
"Sounds like a plan," Ariadne told him.
He thinks you're a friend, she told herself as she hung up. He thinks you need protection, that you're fragile. He wants to minimize the risks you've taken.
As much as she kept reminding herself of this, it was easy to forget once she was on the plane. She hadn't been to Chicago before, so she was looking forward to it. In her mind she was already filing away details she could use in mazes for dreams, tidbits that could be the hook that drew someone's subconscious into filling in all of the details she couldn't create on her own. Eleanor caught herself; Ariadne was simply a persona, a construct. Ariadne wasn't really real.
Arthur was in a button down shirt and corduroys when he picked her up at the airport, leaning against a column and his hands stuffed in his pockets. He brightened when he saw her, and she accepted his warm embrace. "Good to see you," he told her, and she could tell that he meant it.
They didn't talk at the Art Institute at first. They simply wandered through the halls side by side, and he let her shoulders relax and her strides lengthen. When she seemed calm enough, Arthur looked at her sideways. "Nightmares?"
Startled, she turned toward him. "What?"
"Are you having nightmares of what you've seen?" he asked her, voice gentle and far too understanding for comfort. She remembered the days on the first level of the Fischer job before the timer ran out, when he stayed with her and would hold her if she woke screaming from having Mal carve into her chest.
"No," she said, shaking her head. "I'm okay. I haven't seen her since we woke up. I... I've talked with Eames."
Arthur nodded as if he expected that, and perhaps he had. "And?"
"I've mentioned before about the creation. I couldn't stay away then... I'm not sure if I want to."
"But you're feeling like you should," Arthur guessed.
Ariadne nodded, lips pulled into an unhappy frown. She didn't know how much he knew, how much he could guess. She was out of her element with Arthur, too. In the heady necessity of the job prep and the job itself, it would be easy to overlook any inconsistencies she might have had in the Ariadne persona. Now that it was done, however...
"How do you keep from losing yourself in it?" Ariadne asked quietly. She stopped when Arthur did, barely noticing the piece of art in front of them. They looked like they were seriously contemplating it as far as a casual observer would be able to tell, but she couldn't see anything but the serious consideration that Arthur was giving her.
"In school, did you lose yourself in your work? In making the models like you did for us?"
"Yeah, sometimes."
"How did you find your way back from that?"
Ariadne stopped and looked at the painting in front of them. "Sometimes it was an outside thing. Sounds, someone walking by, someone calling my name. Sometimes I just seemed to wake up and realize where I was, like I'd been dreaming awake."
"This is the same way," he said in a solemn tone. He looked at the painting, but she could tell he wasn't really seeing its contents either. "You need to have something outside of dream share to keep you grounded, some kind of goal or focus."
"What do you have?"
"I actually have family," Arthur said, lip quirking into a smile. "I visit when I can. I'm a security consultant, though. So I can't talk about work and I'm all over the globe." He smiled wider at the appreciative look that Ariadne gave him. "There has to be something as an anchor. There has to be a reason to stay awake rather than dream."
"I don't have family." It was easier to create an orphan out of thin air, after all. It was harder to create a family that could never exist.
Arthur reached out and clasped her hand, leading her to another painting. "Family isn't always about blood," he said gently. "It's about the bonds you make, what you choose to keep as important in your life. That's what you need to decide now. That's what will tell you if you really want to stay in dream share."
"I want to build." It was the same thing she had told Eames, and this was the one true thing she knew. She would never be able to do this with the CIA, and it was part of the allure of dream share. She thought of the bishop in her pocket. It moved in diagonal lines, not obviously important on the board but definitely one of the major players. She had thought it was rather appropriate, and no one had stopped to question her about it. Eleanor had stories about chess that she could always appropriate for Ariadne if it came down to it, but no one asked. Just like she hadn't asked Arthur why his totem was a loaded die or Eames carried a poker chip. She could guess that they were nods to chance and fate, to the fact that their careers were so precarious. Eleanor didn't know, not for certain, and there was so much she didn't know about them as well as what they knew about her.
This was why she didn't simply turn them over to her superiors at the CIA, she told herself. There was too much she didn't know yet.
"You can. It comes so naturally to you, and the attention to detail was amazing." Arthur's tone was quietly appreciative, and she tried to listen to the clues within the silence between his words. Did he suspect that she was more than she seemed? Or did he think she was an ingenue he had helped to corrupt? Eleanor felt as though she was choking on her guilt, feeling as though she was betraying them with every breath. It was making her paranoid and unsure of herself, and she had never felt this way before taking on this mission. It was an uncomfortable and foreign feeling, and she was grasping at whatever straws she could reach for in order to explain it logically to herself.
"Who am I, Arthur?" she asked, stopping short in front of a painting of an angel lying on the ground, two other figures standing above it with a whip and knife. It was the painting Cupid Chastised by Bartolomeo Manfredi, and suddenly Eleanor wondered which of the three figures in the painting that she was.
A quick tug on her hand distracted her from the painting. "None of those," he said in firm tones. "You're an architect who's just discovered an entire universe waiting for you. The real world doesn't compare anymore, does it?" She shook her head wordlessly in the expectant pause. "Professor Miles would probably have Dom's head on a pike if he had time enough to ponder that part," Arthur said, a ghost of a smile at the corner of his lips. Ariadne wanted to reach out and touch it, to see if it was real or if he was simply a projection she had dreamed up. Perhaps she hadn't gotten off of the plane yet, but it would be too embarrassing to whip out her bishop just then to check.
Oh dear God. Is this how it all starts for them? Or was this how Mal's descent began?
"You look scared," Arthur commented abruptly, seeing the shift in her facial features.
"I... What if I didn't wake up? What if I'm still on the plane?" she asked, a thread of panic in her voice.
Arthur's lips pressed together into a fine line. "Go to the ladies' room and check. Then we'll go somewhere else for a little bit."
Confused, Ariadne followed his directions. Her bishop tipped over just the way it should have, its weight familiar in her palm. "I'm not in someone else's dream," she declared upon leaving the ladies' room. Arthur nodded and took her arm. "For a moment, though..."
"You've been in far too deep all at once. Immersion helps to understand the concepts, but it also leaves you wide open to question the reality of things and who you are."
"Who am I?" she asked again as he drove her through the streets of Chicago. She had no idea where they were going, and the realization should have terrified her. If he suspected she was really Eleanor Lewis and was going to kill her, this would be perfect. She was off the grid and didn't even know how to escape since she was in an unfamiliar city.
But he drove her into the suburbs. "You are the best architect I've had the opportunity to meet, whether legitimate or not," Arthur told her as he drove. He wove through the traffic patterns effortlessly, indicating his years of experience driving there. "To be honest, I think you're more scared of what you think this means than of the dreaming itself."
"Yes," Ariadne told him, stunned. The dreaming was the easy part, after all. It was everything else that was a mess.
"Do you really think Eames will give just anyone contact information?" Arthur asked, an apparent non sequitur that surprised her. She looked at him, startled, and he merely smiled as he focused on traffic. "For that matter, do you think I'd bother keeping contact with you if I didn't think you were worth it?"
The warm flush of pleasure that shot through her startled her as much as the admission had. "Oh."
Arthur glanced at her as he looked over his shoulder to change lanes. "You're surprised by that."
"I guess... You never made me feel stupid when I didn't know things, but I felt like I was. Like I'm still trying to figure out where I belong."
"The real world of responsibilities or the dream world with us," Arthur guessed.
"Yes."
"Can't you be in both?"
No. It was without a doubt a stupid idea to even contemplate. There was no way she could stick with her duties within the CIA and have some kind of relationship with Arthur or Eames, whether it was strictly platonic or started going in a romantic direction. Oh, agents in various departments had their CI's, and some of them could even consider the CI a friend. They were still criminal informants though, still criminals, still watched closely and not trusted with more precarious pieces of information.
No, if Eleanor wanted to build things in dreams, she would have to burn her ties and start over. She could never be Eleanor Lewis again. She would have to be Ariadne.
"I couldn't," she said, looking at Arthur's profile. "It's either all in or all out."
"Ah. I see the dilemma now." He clearly didn't understand it, but he accepted her words at face value.
Eleanor wondered how long it would take for him to start looking into her background and trying to puzzle it all out. She doubted that Ariadne's background would withstand a very thorough check, and she wondered how Arthur would feel if he discovered he'd been duped.
She felt raw somehow, scraped hollow at the thought that he would lose his faith in her. Her hands were tied, though. She had her orders, and she still hadn't reported back even though she had fulfilled them to the letter. There are other intentions here, she told herself. A wider network I could get access to. They trust me, and I have places to start now, if only I can follow through.
But she would be fooling herself if she didn't also acknowledge the desire to run headlong into dream share for good.
They pulled up in front of a house in the middle of Chicago's suburbs. "Where are we?" she asked, looking around with large eyes.
"My parents' house," Arthur commented. "I'm sure you can play along," he said, lips curling into a smile.
"I can do anything you can do," Ariadne challenged.
"Good girl," he said, voice soft as he left the car. Confused, Ariadne followed him out of the car and up the walk.
The woman that answered the door had graying hair and was wearing an actual apron over her jeans and T shirt. "Oh, I thought you'd be out longer," she said with a smile as soon as she saw Arthur and Ariadne half hiding behind him. "Come in, Henry. You don't have to be so formal."
Henry?
"Mom, this is Ariadne. I was picking her up at the airport, and I figured a trip to the Art Institute would help get her settled a bit."
Arthur's mother shook her hand and smiled at her. "Lovely to meet you, dear. Henry doesn't often bring other consultants to visit. I understand he can't talk about work," she said, holding up her hands as if Arthur was about to admonish her about that. "Let me finish up the cookies for Allie's party tomorrow, and then we'll chat about random things."
"I'll clean up the bowl," Arthur offered playfully, a much wider and looser grin on his face than Ariadne had ever seen before.
His mother snickered. "Of course you would. Allie's out back with Jashawn and Nigel." She caught Ariadne's blank expression. "You didn't explain the family, Henry?"
Arthur turned and saw Ariadne's wide eyed expression. "Oh. Not much, no. Just that I had family here and she could take time out to see if she wanted to go into the business or not."
Clucking her tongue, Arthur's mother smacked his arm. "Do forgive Henry, Ariadne. He's not much for details sometimes."
Ariadne nearly choked and wondered if she had stepped into a parallel universe or had fallen asleep while she wasn't looking. Arthur merely smirked at her and brought her toward the backyard, a small fenced in area with three young children playing freeze tag. There was a black girl with long, gangling legs and beaded braids chasing one of the two other boys, both of whom were taller and stockier than she was. One boy was also black, the other was of Hispanic descent. The three of them didn't look anything like each other, and Ariadne swung her eyes toward Arthur with an unvoiced question.
"We're all foster kids or adopted," Arthur said. "I'm one of the adopted ones." He pushed his hands into his pockets. "Mom just can't help herself sometimes. There was once a dozen of us in this tiny house, but we all managed to make it work, even if once I wanted to strangle one of my foster brothers for stealing my clothes."
She couldn't help but smile at that, since he did seem to take his appearance seriously. "Henry?"
He chuckled. "Yeah, well. You didn't think Arthur was my real name, did you?"
"It suits you," she said, looking back toward the playing children. She had thought it was his real name; Dom Cobb had been real enough, and the two were associates for years.
"I was born Henry Arthur Basler. Kind of a mouthful for a little scrawny kid, but there you go."
She filed it away and thought about asking why he was fostered and adopted, what had happened to his birth family, how he had fallen into dream share. The words stuck in her throat and then the children noticed the two of them standing in the entrance to the yard. "Henry!" the girl shouted gleefully, changing course and making a beeline for him.
Arthur ducked down and collected the armful of gangling girl. He gave her a kiss on each cheek, making her giggle. His smile was wide enough for dimples to show, and he looked up at Ariadne. "Hey, Allie. This is my friend Ariadne."
"Oh. She staying for the party?"
"I thought the cookies were for school?"
"Mama Groves is going to have a party anyway, you know that," Allie said loftily. She looked at Ariadne with a shrewd look for a moment, seeming years older than the small child she was. "You're alone, too," the girl declared after a moment. She seized Ariadne's hand and gave her a tug. "Come play with us."
Arthur merely laughed and waved her on when Ariadne turned back and looked at him helplessly. She was torn, and looked back toward the children. "How old are you going to be?"
"I'm ten now," Allie said solemnly. "Jashawn's nine and Nigel's ten, too. How 'bout you?"
"A lot older," Ariadne replied, ignoring Arthur's laughter behind her as he sat on the picnic table to watch them.
"You still know how to play, right?" the Hispanic boy piped up. Ariadne nodded, and the boys looked from her to Allie. "She's still it!"
Before Ariadne could react, Allie smacked her soundly on the arm and took off running. "Hey!" Ariadne cried, looking affronted. It only made Arthur laugh harder, and she set her jaw to begin chasing the children around the backyard.
By the time Mrs. Groves decided it was time for everyone to come in and wash up for dinner, Ariadne was a sweaty mess but she felt better than she had in years. There was something exhilarating about playing with young kids, something uncomplicated about the rules of tag. Seeing Arthur in this kind of environment was startling, but it was good to see him relaxed and grinning. She could suddenly see why Arthur would risk bringing her here, why he had made his comments about family in the manner that he had. Whatever his blood ties were, these people were his family, and they were the ones he was protecting from his life of crime. It was easily apparent over dinner that he sent money irregularly to his adoptive mother, and that he would e-mail back and forth often while on a job. He knew his foster siblings or adoptive siblings and always made sure to visit and send gifts as he was able. He took great pains in keeping his dream share activities separate, and that this was grounding to him. It was also clear why he would work so hard to get Cobb back to his children.
"Better?" he asked after the younger children had gone to bed.
Ariadne nodded. Eleanor was fairly isolated and distant from her own parents, a pair of perfectionists that felt physical displays of affection were crass and inappropriate. It was so different in this household, where everyone held hands around the dinner table to give thanks for each other and their meal. There was noise and affection and frustration, but it was taken in stride that this was normal. It was everything Eleanor's early life wasn't.
"I didn't have this growing up," Ariadne said in halting words. "Your Mom is so very different from mine."
Arthur sat down beside her and handed her a beer bottle. Startled, Ariadne could only accept it and watch him take one of his own to sit on the couch. "This is real," he murmured, taking a swig. "This is my anchor. Not in the 'why do I do it' sense, but in the sense that this is how I know it's reality. This is what I come back to when I need a reminder of what the real world is truly like."
He was taking a risk with her, showing her his true identity. It could be a weakness, a pressure point to get to him. Eleanor would never get this close, but a lost Ariadne would be welcome here, would be comforted and then sent on her way into the world.
"Thank you."
Smiling, he nodded at her. She took a sip of the beer and thought for a moment. "Eames said there were dangers."
"Of course there are. We've both had military training." Another fact for her to file away, something else that explained so much. "You didn't, so you'd have more to have to learn. But it always helps to have a home to get back to once you're done and need a break."
"I guess I don't have anywhere to go for that."
Arthur looked at her, the corner of his lip curling into a smile. "Now you do."
Ariadne smiled at him, that warm flush flooding her again. She was accepted and she belonged and she felt so guilty for betraying his trust, even if she hadn't done it yet.
If anything, this visit only made it harder to do her job.
***
It was far easier to get to Mombasa than she thought. True, Arthur helped her as soon as she showed him the address and stumbled over the words to try to tell him that she wanted to see what she was capable of. Eleanor wanted to kick herself, but Arthur seemed to understand what she couldn't say. He brushed his fingers across her cheek gently and then kissed her forehead tenderly. "You know where to find me, Ariadne," he had said softly. "I'm here if you need me."
She had hacked into her own CIA account while waiting in the airport lounge, trying to see who had accessed her information and what her current status was listed as. She couldn't tell if Arthur had hacked into her files, but her current status was still listed as active. Her whereabouts and aliases were unknown, at least, though her files clearly stated that she was a deep cover agent for Project Morpheus. The name had always made her roll her eyes; governments just couldn't think of good code names, could they? Any dreamer would know who Morpheus was, and they would know what deep cover in such a project would mean.
Eleanor logged out of her account and simply shut down the worries in her mind. Arthur would have said something if he knew. Wouldn't he? He wouldn't have endangered Cobb's chances of returning home if she was an agent poised to narc them all out, nor introduced her to his own family.
Somehow, she had escaped his detection. At least, she hoped so. Eames was another sort, and he had no loyalty to Cobb to blind him. Eleanor didn't know what he knew, and she wasn't sure if the wild goose chase through Kenya was meant to wear her down. The chase had started in Mombasa, and had sent her to Cairo, Istanbul, Alexandria and then back to Mombasa. They were Eames' favorite haunts in the area, and Eleanor was collecting quite a number of names and references in the process. She checked in with Arthur regularly; he had left Chicago and was in Miami for a bit, researching a new job. The agent in the back of her mind screamed at her to tip off the branch office there. It was her job.
Ariadne kept silent insteadand arrived back in Mombasa. She was standing on Yusuf's doorstep, and the chemist swept her into his shop with smiles and a hug like a proud papa would give a bright child. She teared up and clutched at him tightly. She had missed him and his quiet sarcasm, the self assurance that everything would work itself out in the end.
"Come. We'll have tea, talk of inconsequential things, and then we can talk about business," Yusuf told her. He sat her down at a table and began boiling water in a beaker over a bunsen burner. The sight of it made her laugh, and Ariadne already felt better.
They had darjeeling tea and talked about planes and travel, about food and the differences in what was considered standard fare for hotels in different countries. "You're staying in dream share," Yusuf said during a lull in the conversation. There was no question in his voice, as if he was stating a foregone conclusion she had already made. "I would be pleased to work as the chemist with you again, if you are in the position to recommend one."
"I... I don't know if I'm staying," Ariadne stuttered.
Yusuf clucked his tongue at her as if she was a silly child. "Of course you're staying. You wouldn't have worked your way here otherwise. Perhaps you simply don't know it yet."
Ariadne didn't know what to say to that, and Yusuf patted her arm gently. "This is not glamorous. This is not something that leaves monuments behind. But you do make your mark on the world, Ariadne. You do have a place and you do matter. You are not simply a statistic or number, not a cog in the machine. You would be vital here."
"I'd have to cut ties with everything I used to be."
Yusuf nodded and set another beakerful of water to boil. "What makes you want to stay in your old life?"
Responsibility. Duty. Loyalty. Promises made that she couldn't quite bring herself to break yet.
"You don't have to tell me details," Yusuf continued, sensing her discomfort. "If it was easy, you would not be conflicted and would have already left. Whatever it is that needs to be done, only you can say if it is necessary or not. But a life unfulfilled is empty, and to me is not worth living."
"What did you leave behind to do this?" she asked quietly.
"I had family once," Yusuf said slowly, grasping the hot beaker with tongs and slowly pouring water into their cups for more tea. "I lost my wife, and there were difficulties with my parents and sister. That did not make it easier to break all ties. But I do understand the pain of it." He looked up, eyes dark and expression unreadable. "But an empty life will suck you dry sooner rather than later." He covered her hand in his larger one, his touch warm and gentle, soothing. "Where do you feel most alive?"
Here.
She must have said that aloud, because Yusuf gave her a magnanimous smile. "This is why I say you're joining this world."
"So you think it's a foregone conclusion?"
"Don't you?" Yusuf countered.
Ariadne frowned at him. "I don't know."
Yusuf scribbled an address down for her. "Visit him. He's been waiting for you."
She looked up, startled. "What?"
"Eames thought you would come here." Yusuf sipped his tea and then smiled. "I knew things well enough not to bet against him. Go. You know that's where you need to go next."
"What if it's a mistake?"
"We learn from mistakes, Ariadne. We don't learn by sitting idle in the corner."
She still had to figure out what she wanted to do. She still had a decision to make, and interrogating everyone she had met in dream share wasn't going to get her any closer to an answer. As good as it was to bask in Yusuf's calming company, he was right.
Ariadne headed to Eames' flat. He answered the door in a simple white button down shirt that was open at the neck and a pair of linen slacks. She could only see his left hand as it propped the door open. The other was inside the flat, and he could have been holding a gun for all that she could see. His blue eyes crinkled slightly as he smiled at her, not bothering to hide the crooked teeth of his upper jaw. "Sooner or later, I knew you'd be here."
"Why do you say that?"
"A liar can always sense another of their kind."
Eleanor's heart froze in her chest, though she knew enough not to let it show in her face. Ariadne cocked her head to the side. "How am I lying?" she asked.
"Aren't you lying to yourself, darling?" Eames drawled. He pushed his door wider open and beckoned her inside.
Come into my parlor, said the spider to the fly, Eleanor thought dizzily as she stepped across the threshold. Ariadne looked around, eyes wide and bright, taking in the few details present. It was a fairly impersonal front room, just the niceties to sit down and greet guests, but no sense of personality about it at all. "You don't live here," she commented.
"On the contrary," Eames protested, shutting the door behind her. "I do."
"This is a place you stay," Ariadne said, turning around. She still couldn't see his hands, and it was making her nervous. They were in his pockets now, so he wasn't holding a gun unless he had shoved it into the waistband of his pants at the small of his back. Funny how she hadn't felt this threatened in Arthur's presence, even if she had the same questions about how much he knew. "There's no sense of you here."
He advanced, not quite menacingly, but Ariadne was aware of the advantage in height and bulk that he had. She could fight and would absolutely fight dirty, but she couldn't fight physics in the real world. She backed up slowly, until she hit the armchair. "What did you expect to find here, Ariadne?"
"I don't know." Her voice was soft, barely above a whisper, and suddenly she felt as if the tables were turned. She truly was Ariadne, and Eleanor was gone. Eames was the one questioning her now, pinning her down and flaying her open with his words. She had somehow lost control of the situation and had never seen it coming.
Eames took his hands out of his pockets and leaned in over her, caging her against the armchair. It didn't feel comforting at all, and her heart beat in a triphammer rhythm. "Are you scared of me, pet?"
"No," she lied, managing not to stammer.
"You're cringing, Ariadne."
"I didn't want to bump heads."
He laughed, not unkindly, and then his body was pressed up against hers, one of his thighs wedged between hers. The sudden contact was startling, making her gasp. "Is this what you wanted? Is this what you hoped would happen?"
Her lips trembled as she looked up at him. "I don't know what I want," she whispered, looking at him with wide eyes. Maybe some of her fear showed, because his sharp gaze softened a fraction and he leaned in to kiss her. It was different from Arthur's kiss during the Fischer job, from the chaste yet promising touches he had given her. Arthur's touches had been an invitation of sorts, letting her know that advances would be welcome once she made up her mind about what she wanted. Eames' kiss was more demanding, his tongue at the seam of her lips to coax them open immediately. He was giving her a taste of what it would be like with him, what danger and innuendo and adrenaline could lead to.
If anything, she was even more confused once he was done and moved away.
Eames was watching her closely, and Eleanor was left wondering what mask she should wear for him. He had likely already seen behind them, to the confusion and vulnerability lying beneath them. His large hand cupped her jaw, his thumb running across her lower lip. "What do you know to be true?"
I was born Eleanor Lewis. I am trained by the CIA. Ariadne doesn't really exist. I don't want to turn you in.
She dropped her eyes from his as the reality of it sank in. She didn't want to turn them in. She didn't want to see Arthur or Eames or Yusuf rotting in a prison somewhere. They were in their element here, and caging wild things like them would only lead to chaos in its wake. They knew this world, could navigate it with ease. They kept others in check, kept things from getting too dangerous.
"Ariadne?"
She looked up at him, eyes shining with unshed tears. "I want to build," she whispered. "However I can."
Thumb still rubbing against her lower lip, Eames nodded. "We thought that was the case."
"We?"
Eames' thigh was still trapped between hers, and she was still more or less caged against the armchair. Suddenly she was very aware of that, of how little he had moved back from that searing kiss. "Did you think we couldn't tell?"
Eleanor couldn't breathe, and her mind stuttered to a stop. "What?"
"Darling," he sighed, his hand moving down to her throat. It didn't circle her windpipe, not quite, but she was frozen still. Instead of being the one artfully gathering information about them, laying down a trap, they had turned the tables and had brought her exactly where they wanted her.
Dear God, were they going to kill her after all?
"Arthur's on his way. He had a few contacts in Miami that were willing to roll over and give up some information," Eames said, thumb caressing her carotid. Pressure there for a little bit and she would grow faint. If he put his other hand around her neck, cutting off blood flow to her other carotid, she would pass out. There would be no stopping him from whatever it was that he wanted to do. But there was no obvious threat yet, nothing but adrenaline and fear of that unknown to send her heart racing, and she was afraid to push him into violence. He had always been charming to her before, but those sharp eyes had been assessing her all that time.
"What are you talking about, Eames?" she asked, glad her voice was even.
"Gifts like yours are rare, did you know that?"
She did. It was why the CIA thought she would be so damn enticing to the underground dream share community. "Eames," she prompted.
"It didn't add up, of course. But out of desperation, Cobb didn't question it."
Of course he wouldn't. The lure of his children had been too much, and his own guilt had blinded him to so much. Had she fallen into the same trap?
"There was a reason why Arthur missed the militarization, Ariadne." Eames pressed his body a little further into hers, and she could feel his warmth against her. She was practically shivering, caught under his spell. "Did it hurt, being caught between what you were told to do and what you wanted to do?" he asked, fingers curling around the back of her neck and making her look up at him. There was an infinite sadness in his eyes, but she had to wonder now if that was as crafted as their apparent ignorance to the truth.
"What do you think?" she asked, voice scraped raw as if she had been screaming.
"This is why you came to us," Eames told her, eyes locked to hers. His blue eyes were like lasers, boring down deep into the heart of her, exposing her for the fraud that she was. "You wanted us to make it easy for you, to tell you what you had to do."
"What are you going to do?" she asked softly.
Eames' lips curled into a smile. It wasn't menacing at all, as if he could already guess what she wanted. "Depends on your decision, doesn't it?"
She blinked rapidly, refusing to cry in front of him. She lifted her chin, not wanting to appear afraid or weak. "Is this how you treat people looking to you for help?"
"Darling, you forget something. Arthur disappears from the scene to recharge, regroup, do whatever it is that keeps his mind sharp for what he needs to do. I don't leave. I don't ever turn it off. This is my life. I move from one con to the next, one brand of forgery to the other. I know what it means to burn yourself free, to live without ties other than the ones you make in order to stay." His hand was warm on her neck, his eyes searching hers. "This isn't a field full of strangers, darling. It's precarious, trust a fragile and precious commodity. But without it, without even a modicum of trust, it all falls apart. Dream share is about who you know, what you know, who you have ties to." His hand dipped down beneath the edge of her blouse, under the scarf at her neck. His broad hand there made her feel even more tiny and fragile, and he could feel the tremors in her spine. "Do you know that? Do you understand?"
"No," she whispered, wet eyes looking up at him. "I'm trying."
"I know. You're trying so hard, but you're holding onto everything else you've ever known." His lips curled into a sad smile. "So you hover, but you won't fully understand until you fall." Eames moved away, stepping back from her. She held onto the armchair behind her for balance, suddenly feeling boneless and weak. "So what will it be, darling?" he asked. He held out a hand to her, no sense of urgency in his posture.
I don't know. I don't know. She looked up from his hand to his face, caught. He was right, she was hovering.
She thought of Arthur smiling at her, of his hand in hers as they walked through museums or he showed her around the Chicago suburbs. She thought of his adoptive and foster siblings, the innocent faces of his parents. They trusted in him, and he was so careful that his illegal activities wouldn't come back to hurt them. He was tightly coiled during a job, focused and razor sharp, keeping track of the final goal with single minded determination. The tension would break an ordinary man, but he was far from ordinary. That was one way to survive in this, one way to keep track of what was important.
Eames was in front of her, at the center of a network of connections and friendships that he had invited her to see. He lived his life on the run, no ties, no connections other than the ones in dream share. That was how he stayed safe, even if he sometimes had to be a dozen different people at once. He didn't lie exactly; he simply presented a facet of the truth and let you extrapolate everything else from it that you wanted to see. He used words like knives, looks like statements. Expectations were turned inside out and upside down, and he simply sat back to observe it all. Though he had the same capability for violence and aggression that Arthur did, that any dangerous criminal would, he didn't use it unless he had to. He preferred to con or charm his way out of situations.
She brought one hand to her mouth, covering her trembling lips. Unbidden, tears began rolling down her cheeks. She blinked at the wavering image of Eames in front of her, her gut clenched and tied into knots.
"You want to fall, darling," Eames said softly, hand dropping to his side. "You want it so badly, but you're afraid of it."
"I should turn you in," she said without thinking, her voice thick with tears.
"But you won't," he said confidently, coming forward just enough to be within arm's reach. "You won't."
"How can you be so sure?"
Smiling, he pulled her into his arms, holding her tightly when she would have fallen. "Because you respond to being called Ariadne. Because she's real to you, real as everyone else you've ever met in this crazed endeavor. And she won't let you."
Eleanor sobbed against Eames' chest, clutching at his shirt as he simply held her. Her chest was breaking open, and everything she had ever known to be true before was a jumbled mess.
Because he was right, and she couldn't turn them in. She couldn't, and she was lost.
***
Ariadne woke in a strange room, shades drawn tightly against the last filtering rays of the sun. Her head felt fuzzy and she didn't know where she was. The cottony taste in her mouth was the usual morning grime, nothing that a good rinse couldn't get out. There wasn't any chemical aftertaste that would indicate that she was drugged.
"Eleanor."
She whipped her head around to face Arthur standing in the doorway, his form back lit and shadows falling across his face. "Arthur," she said, her voice ragged.
He nodded and came into the room. He was in the same kind of casual look that he had back in Chicago, a relaxed set in his shoulders. "Or perhaps Ariadne is better?"
She looked up at him, a vulnerable expression on her face. Taking the hand he offered her, she let him draw her to her feet. "What's going to happen next?"
"What do you want to happen?"
There were only inches between them, but it could have been miles. Eames pushed and pulled like the tides, inevitable and relentless. Arthur was quiet and still, a lighthouse in the dark.
"They know about Ariadne," she whispered, knowing it wasn't exactly an answer at all.
But then, maybe it was, because he smiled at her and cupped her face in his hands. "You have other names now. You have options you didn't have months ago. You just have to pick which one you want. No one can make that decision for you. No one will push you where you don't want to go."
She thought of the comfortable house in the Chicago suburbs, of the sweltering heat of Mombasa. She thought of these inscrutable men, of the quiet and stillness in Yusuf's shop as he had welcomed her inside. An unfulfilled life is empty, Yusuf had told her. Where do you feel most alive?
Her lips trembled a little as she closed her hands over Arthur's. She was afraid, and he could sense that. She was at the precipice, hovering, almost about to fall and crash.
Yusuf's question circled back to haunt her. Where do you feel most alive?
Ariadne pulled Arthur down for a kiss, feeling as if she was falling.
Eleanor was lost now, but Ariadne had been found.
The End.
Author: Eustacia Vye
Author's e-mail: eustacia_vye28@hotmail.com
Rating: PG-13
Pairing: Gen. Mostly. :)
Disclaimer: Everyone here belongs to Christopher Nolan and not to me. His toys are fun to play with!
Spoilers/Warnings: Begins immediately post-movie. For the inception_kink meme prompt in round 17: It turns out that Ariadne was not some prodigy that fell into Dom's influence just when he needed her most. No, she's a highly trained government agent, sent to infiltrate and root out dangerous dream share criminals. For the "interrogating" box on my hc_bingo card.
Summary: The inception was successful. CIA Agent Eleanor Lewis was supposed to break cover and bring in her former coworkers. She knew so much more about dream share now, more than her superiors ever would have dreamed was possible. Their view was so narrow minded, so literal. They had no idea about the full potential of dream share and what it could actually do. This meant she had a decision to make.
I will walk in your truth; give me an undivided heart, that I may fear your name.
-Psalm 86:11
The problem with going deeply undercover was the risk of becoming the cover identity and empathizing far too much with the intended marks.
CIA Agent Eleanor Lewis had always thought her superiors were full of shit, but perhaps there was a very real concern after all. She had taken off her white jacket, tossing it onto the hotel bed beside her bag. She gripped the edge of the bathroom counter in both hands and stared at herself in the mirror. There were the wild loose curls she didn't bother to tame as Ariadne the architecture student, the pale oval face and the large golden eyes that looked so innocent. It was why she had been chosen for this program, after all. She was tiny and fragile looking, even if she wasn't, and her demeanor was fairly nonthreatening and inspired others to confide in her even when they probably shouldn't have. Eleanor could ask her questions with a straight face, and people never even knew she was interrogating them.
Staring at herself in the mirror, she realized she didn't know what she was going to do next.
Her superiors wouldn't know she was in the US yet. They knew about the Ariadne persona, and had threatened Stephen Miles with his involvement in the dream share underground in Europe. He might have been retired and seen as "simply" an architecture professor, his past experience as a consultant for the military dream share technology was all too easy for the CIA to find. Adding a little pressure regarding his grandchildren, and he had caved. Anyone coming to him for recommendations or referrals were supposed to be handed Ariadne on a silver platter. He had done his part and Ariadne had done hers.
Eames had been thorough, making flawless identities for all of the team members to leave Paris for Sydney. Separate identities were then used to get from Sydney to LA. There was nothing to link the names together, let alone to her actual identity. After getting to know Arthur, Eleanor was surprised that he hadn't realized Ariadne was a fake identity. Then again, the task force was good at what it did, and there was plenty of information in common databases to build a passable identity. Arthur had enough on his plate that he probably didn't check deeply enough and relied on the fact that Cobb had presumably gotten Ariadne straight from Stephen Miles. With Cobb falling apart as badly as he was, Arthur had his hands full shoring him up as well as gathering information on Robert Fischer.
It had worked, she knew. She had seen the subtle shift in Fischer's eyes, the change in the set of his shoulders. The team had done the impossible and Cobb would go home to his children again. She had helped them, God forgive her, and had been too caught up in the moment and the possibility to think about the repercussions of aiding and abetting criminals. Even if this was her assignment, even if she could plausibly explain everything that had happened in the dreaming, she knew better. She had wormed her way into the job not just to get closer to them, but because she didn't want them to be ripped apart by the shade in Cobb's head. She had grown to care for the team, and had wanted to ensure its success.
She knew so much more about dream share now, more than her superiors ever would have dreamed was possible. Their view was so narrow minded, so literal. They had no idea about the full potential of dream share and what it could actually do.
She should have been terrified, but she was never one to shy away from danger.
Her cell phone trilled, signaling a text message. Are you okay? Limbo is a serious dance move, and not everyone recovers completely.
Without realizing it, Eleanor smiled at Eames' words. She contemplated sending one in return, and was still considering it when she received a text from Arthur. Contact me if you need to talk more about what happened, it read. Concise and to the point, all business. He had been full of concern while they were waiting out the first level of the dream, watching carefully for signs that she brought something -- Mal -- back with her, or if her psyche was scarred by the experience.
These men were dangerous, but not in the way that the CIA had feared.
Still not sure what she was going to do, Eleanor grabbed her things and left the hotel room.
***
"You're looking peaky," Eames commented, seeing Ariadne in the bar waiting for him. He slid onto the stool beside her. "Talk with Arthur or Yusuf yet?"
She shook her head. "I texted Arthur to say I'll want to talk to him eventually. I haven't heard from Yusuf yet, and everyone initially said we should all part ways and not contact each other for a while..."
"As confident as you looked, I saw your face when you thought no one was looking." Eames waited a beat as the bartender came over to order his drink. While Ariadne was surprised, she stayed silent as well. "You're good, darling, but I'm better." He patted her arm gently, lessening the potential sting in his words. "Cobb was so bloody single minded, I don't think he gave any thought to what would happen to you after this job."
"He didn't look back," Ariadne murmured, wondering if it sounded like she was whining. Eleanor wouldn't care about something like that, since she would file away details to track him down later. But Ariadne was a student, and she had never been in dream share before. These men had taken her in and explained the necessary parts of the job and some aspects of the dream share world at large. Eleanor told herself at the time that she was filing it all away, that she would put the pieces together and eventually bring them all to justice.
But dream share policed its own, as well. And oftentimes, those hiring these men did it under the radar themselves. The CIA had no idea about the scope of dream share activity, just as she had no idea how much the others in dream share knew about her.
Eames seemed amiable enough at this time, and he seemed worried about her state of mind. This was still a seasoned thief and forger, someone willing to hang others out to dry in order to save himself. He still had his hand on her arm in a comforting gesture, and it bothered Eleanor that Ariadne needed that contact. She was supposed to be stronger than that. She wasn't supposed to be rattled. Ariadne was the prodigy, and she was supposed to be tough.
But seeing Mal had rattled her deeply, as much as she had tried to hide it. Eleanor wanted to cringe when she thought of the way her hands shook in limbo when faced with Mal, and her aim with the Baretta hadn't been true. She knew she wouldn't ever look at broken wine glasses the same way again.
"He can't," Eames was saying, seeing the inner turmoil etched on her face. "Whether just because of the job or he can't recognize anyone else's pain anymore, I don't know. He told some fairly deep lies to get us where he wanted us."
"Have you known him long?"
"As long as he's been a bloody wanker," Eames said flatly, leaning back to sip his drink. He watched her face carefully, and Eleanor wondered if she had made some kind of mistake. This was a man adept at reading human behavior, after all. She really was a novice next to him, for all of her experience.
"There must have been something there. Arthur... I can't imagine him staying near someone who's always been a douchebag."
Eames laughed and finished his drink. He took in her wan smile and impulsively slung an arm around her shoulders. "Have you a crush on our point, dear Ariadne?" he teased. He laughed again as she sputtered. "Or is it dream share in general?" he asked, lips curling into a knowing smile.
"I love the creation," she murmured.
"Yes, there's that. Dreams can be wonderful when physics are damned and forgotten, hm? Your immeasurable skills can be magnified, and you can lose yourself in what isn't really there."
"Then how do you stay grounded?" Ariadne asked, hating that her voice sounded fragile for a moment. "He lived a lifetime in limbo, and I saw the remnants crumbling when we went down there to get Fischer." She looked up at Eames, aware that she had a bleak and vulnerable expression on her face. There was no need to hide the confusion she was feeling, the conflict roiling deep within.
Eames pulled her close and leaned his head against hers. Eleanor knew that no one else could get this close to him, no one else would receive comfort from him like this. For a fleeting moment she felt special and cherished, a desired member of the team she had been part of for months. For a fleeting moment she thought about running away with him, dissolving all her past ties and living her life as a dream share criminal. She would know the ropes soon enough, and she would know how to keep out of sight. It would work, she knew. If that was what she really wanted, she could do it.
She would never be Eleanor Lewis again. Everything she once had would be lost forever.
"Ariadne. There are dangers in this world no one ever told you about. There are nuances and layers, and not just in dreams. Tread carefully, darling. You need to know what you want before you start. Otherwise, you'll lose yourself in the fog."
She looked at him with large eyes, her innocent-looking face turned toward his. "I love to build." That was true, she realized. Regardless of how she went about doing it, she had to build things again. She had to.
"Then you know what you have to do, Ariadne. You need to trust your instincts." There was a thread of sadness in his voice, and his fingers brushing down her arm sent a chill rolling down her spine. "You're one of us."
"So what does that mean for me?" she asked.
Eames pulled back, his arm moving away from her shoulders to reach into his jacket. She immediately missed his warmth and the connection through his touch. For that moment, she had felt grounded. For that moment, she had been Ariadne and not simply Eleanor pretending to be Ariadne.
He scribbled an address. "Make your way to Mombasa. You have the means, Ariadne. And if you truly want to stay, you'll find this address."
"What is it?"
"It's where you can start again."
He left the bar after dropping some money to cover their drinks, taking his secrets with him.
I follow the trail and I'll find them all. I'll break dream share wide open, she told herself. It's not falling down the rabbit hole. This is doing my job. This is following through until I get everything the CIA needs. I'm not lost yet.
Eleanor memorized the address and tucked the napkin into her pocket anyway. She wondered if she was simply fooling herself. Then she wondered if she should really care about everything she would leave behind if she stayed Ariadne.
She was in the middle of the maze, and she didn't think she had left any thread to find her way out.
***
Arthur was in Chicago when he called her. "You're still in LA?" he asked, sounding surprised.
"I'm not a fan of being in planes after all that travel recently," Ariadne said, voice listless. "I'm... I'm trying to figure out what I want to do next."
His sigh was palpable. "I can come to you."
"No, you're probably busy..."
"Not that busy anymore," he said quietly, making her wonder what was in Chicago for him. She barely knew anything about any of the men she had worked with other than Cobb; she had sensed right away there had been something deeply wrong with him. She had been right, but didn't feel any sense of satisfaction in knowing her instinct about him was right. Eleanor was fighting herself, she knew.
What do I do next?
"I... I don't have anything here," Ariadne said, voice firming into something a little more recognizable. "I can meet you."
"Ariadne..."
"I'm all right enough to travel, Arthur."
The crispness in her voice must have convinced him. "I can meet you at the Art Institute or the Robie House. You might like those."
She found herself smiling in spite of herself. "Perfect. Let's start with the Art Institute then. That ought to be easy enough to find from the airport."
"I thought you didn't like planes right now?" Arthur asked, a hint of a teasing lilt in his voice.
Ariadne laughed. "For you, I can make an exception."
"Let me know when your flight gets in, and I'll pick you up. Then we'll go to the Institute. We can figure out everything else once you get here."
"Sounds like a plan," Ariadne told him.
He thinks you're a friend, she told herself as she hung up. He thinks you need protection, that you're fragile. He wants to minimize the risks you've taken.
As much as she kept reminding herself of this, it was easy to forget once she was on the plane. She hadn't been to Chicago before, so she was looking forward to it. In her mind she was already filing away details she could use in mazes for dreams, tidbits that could be the hook that drew someone's subconscious into filling in all of the details she couldn't create on her own. Eleanor caught herself; Ariadne was simply a persona, a construct. Ariadne wasn't really real.
Arthur was in a button down shirt and corduroys when he picked her up at the airport, leaning against a column and his hands stuffed in his pockets. He brightened when he saw her, and she accepted his warm embrace. "Good to see you," he told her, and she could tell that he meant it.
They didn't talk at the Art Institute at first. They simply wandered through the halls side by side, and he let her shoulders relax and her strides lengthen. When she seemed calm enough, Arthur looked at her sideways. "Nightmares?"
Startled, she turned toward him. "What?"
"Are you having nightmares of what you've seen?" he asked her, voice gentle and far too understanding for comfort. She remembered the days on the first level of the Fischer job before the timer ran out, when he stayed with her and would hold her if she woke screaming from having Mal carve into her chest.
"No," she said, shaking her head. "I'm okay. I haven't seen her since we woke up. I... I've talked with Eames."
Arthur nodded as if he expected that, and perhaps he had. "And?"
"I've mentioned before about the creation. I couldn't stay away then... I'm not sure if I want to."
"But you're feeling like you should," Arthur guessed.
Ariadne nodded, lips pulled into an unhappy frown. She didn't know how much he knew, how much he could guess. She was out of her element with Arthur, too. In the heady necessity of the job prep and the job itself, it would be easy to overlook any inconsistencies she might have had in the Ariadne persona. Now that it was done, however...
"How do you keep from losing yourself in it?" Ariadne asked quietly. She stopped when Arthur did, barely noticing the piece of art in front of them. They looked like they were seriously contemplating it as far as a casual observer would be able to tell, but she couldn't see anything but the serious consideration that Arthur was giving her.
"In school, did you lose yourself in your work? In making the models like you did for us?"
"Yeah, sometimes."
"How did you find your way back from that?"
Ariadne stopped and looked at the painting in front of them. "Sometimes it was an outside thing. Sounds, someone walking by, someone calling my name. Sometimes I just seemed to wake up and realize where I was, like I'd been dreaming awake."
"This is the same way," he said in a solemn tone. He looked at the painting, but she could tell he wasn't really seeing its contents either. "You need to have something outside of dream share to keep you grounded, some kind of goal or focus."
"What do you have?"
"I actually have family," Arthur said, lip quirking into a smile. "I visit when I can. I'm a security consultant, though. So I can't talk about work and I'm all over the globe." He smiled wider at the appreciative look that Ariadne gave him. "There has to be something as an anchor. There has to be a reason to stay awake rather than dream."
"I don't have family." It was easier to create an orphan out of thin air, after all. It was harder to create a family that could never exist.
Arthur reached out and clasped her hand, leading her to another painting. "Family isn't always about blood," he said gently. "It's about the bonds you make, what you choose to keep as important in your life. That's what you need to decide now. That's what will tell you if you really want to stay in dream share."
"I want to build." It was the same thing she had told Eames, and this was the one true thing she knew. She would never be able to do this with the CIA, and it was part of the allure of dream share. She thought of the bishop in her pocket. It moved in diagonal lines, not obviously important on the board but definitely one of the major players. She had thought it was rather appropriate, and no one had stopped to question her about it. Eleanor had stories about chess that she could always appropriate for Ariadne if it came down to it, but no one asked. Just like she hadn't asked Arthur why his totem was a loaded die or Eames carried a poker chip. She could guess that they were nods to chance and fate, to the fact that their careers were so precarious. Eleanor didn't know, not for certain, and there was so much she didn't know about them as well as what they knew about her.
This was why she didn't simply turn them over to her superiors at the CIA, she told herself. There was too much she didn't know yet.
"You can. It comes so naturally to you, and the attention to detail was amazing." Arthur's tone was quietly appreciative, and she tried to listen to the clues within the silence between his words. Did he suspect that she was more than she seemed? Or did he think she was an ingenue he had helped to corrupt? Eleanor felt as though she was choking on her guilt, feeling as though she was betraying them with every breath. It was making her paranoid and unsure of herself, and she had never felt this way before taking on this mission. It was an uncomfortable and foreign feeling, and she was grasping at whatever straws she could reach for in order to explain it logically to herself.
"Who am I, Arthur?" she asked, stopping short in front of a painting of an angel lying on the ground, two other figures standing above it with a whip and knife. It was the painting Cupid Chastised by Bartolomeo Manfredi, and suddenly Eleanor wondered which of the three figures in the painting that she was.
A quick tug on her hand distracted her from the painting. "None of those," he said in firm tones. "You're an architect who's just discovered an entire universe waiting for you. The real world doesn't compare anymore, does it?" She shook her head wordlessly in the expectant pause. "Professor Miles would probably have Dom's head on a pike if he had time enough to ponder that part," Arthur said, a ghost of a smile at the corner of his lips. Ariadne wanted to reach out and touch it, to see if it was real or if he was simply a projection she had dreamed up. Perhaps she hadn't gotten off of the plane yet, but it would be too embarrassing to whip out her bishop just then to check.
Oh dear God. Is this how it all starts for them? Or was this how Mal's descent began?
"You look scared," Arthur commented abruptly, seeing the shift in her facial features.
"I... What if I didn't wake up? What if I'm still on the plane?" she asked, a thread of panic in her voice.
Arthur's lips pressed together into a fine line. "Go to the ladies' room and check. Then we'll go somewhere else for a little bit."
Confused, Ariadne followed his directions. Her bishop tipped over just the way it should have, its weight familiar in her palm. "I'm not in someone else's dream," she declared upon leaving the ladies' room. Arthur nodded and took her arm. "For a moment, though..."
"You've been in far too deep all at once. Immersion helps to understand the concepts, but it also leaves you wide open to question the reality of things and who you are."
"Who am I?" she asked again as he drove her through the streets of Chicago. She had no idea where they were going, and the realization should have terrified her. If he suspected she was really Eleanor Lewis and was going to kill her, this would be perfect. She was off the grid and didn't even know how to escape since she was in an unfamiliar city.
But he drove her into the suburbs. "You are the best architect I've had the opportunity to meet, whether legitimate or not," Arthur told her as he drove. He wove through the traffic patterns effortlessly, indicating his years of experience driving there. "To be honest, I think you're more scared of what you think this means than of the dreaming itself."
"Yes," Ariadne told him, stunned. The dreaming was the easy part, after all. It was everything else that was a mess.
"Do you really think Eames will give just anyone contact information?" Arthur asked, an apparent non sequitur that surprised her. She looked at him, startled, and he merely smiled as he focused on traffic. "For that matter, do you think I'd bother keeping contact with you if I didn't think you were worth it?"
The warm flush of pleasure that shot through her startled her as much as the admission had. "Oh."
Arthur glanced at her as he looked over his shoulder to change lanes. "You're surprised by that."
"I guess... You never made me feel stupid when I didn't know things, but I felt like I was. Like I'm still trying to figure out where I belong."
"The real world of responsibilities or the dream world with us," Arthur guessed.
"Yes."
"Can't you be in both?"
No. It was without a doubt a stupid idea to even contemplate. There was no way she could stick with her duties within the CIA and have some kind of relationship with Arthur or Eames, whether it was strictly platonic or started going in a romantic direction. Oh, agents in various departments had their CI's, and some of them could even consider the CI a friend. They were still criminal informants though, still criminals, still watched closely and not trusted with more precarious pieces of information.
No, if Eleanor wanted to build things in dreams, she would have to burn her ties and start over. She could never be Eleanor Lewis again. She would have to be Ariadne.
"I couldn't," she said, looking at Arthur's profile. "It's either all in or all out."
"Ah. I see the dilemma now." He clearly didn't understand it, but he accepted her words at face value.
Eleanor wondered how long it would take for him to start looking into her background and trying to puzzle it all out. She doubted that Ariadne's background would withstand a very thorough check, and she wondered how Arthur would feel if he discovered he'd been duped.
She felt raw somehow, scraped hollow at the thought that he would lose his faith in her. Her hands were tied, though. She had her orders, and she still hadn't reported back even though she had fulfilled them to the letter. There are other intentions here, she told herself. A wider network I could get access to. They trust me, and I have places to start now, if only I can follow through.
But she would be fooling herself if she didn't also acknowledge the desire to run headlong into dream share for good.
They pulled up in front of a house in the middle of Chicago's suburbs. "Where are we?" she asked, looking around with large eyes.
"My parents' house," Arthur commented. "I'm sure you can play along," he said, lips curling into a smile.
"I can do anything you can do," Ariadne challenged.
"Good girl," he said, voice soft as he left the car. Confused, Ariadne followed him out of the car and up the walk.
The woman that answered the door had graying hair and was wearing an actual apron over her jeans and T shirt. "Oh, I thought you'd be out longer," she said with a smile as soon as she saw Arthur and Ariadne half hiding behind him. "Come in, Henry. You don't have to be so formal."
Henry?
"Mom, this is Ariadne. I was picking her up at the airport, and I figured a trip to the Art Institute would help get her settled a bit."
Arthur's mother shook her hand and smiled at her. "Lovely to meet you, dear. Henry doesn't often bring other consultants to visit. I understand he can't talk about work," she said, holding up her hands as if Arthur was about to admonish her about that. "Let me finish up the cookies for Allie's party tomorrow, and then we'll chat about random things."
"I'll clean up the bowl," Arthur offered playfully, a much wider and looser grin on his face than Ariadne had ever seen before.
His mother snickered. "Of course you would. Allie's out back with Jashawn and Nigel." She caught Ariadne's blank expression. "You didn't explain the family, Henry?"
Arthur turned and saw Ariadne's wide eyed expression. "Oh. Not much, no. Just that I had family here and she could take time out to see if she wanted to go into the business or not."
Clucking her tongue, Arthur's mother smacked his arm. "Do forgive Henry, Ariadne. He's not much for details sometimes."
Ariadne nearly choked and wondered if she had stepped into a parallel universe or had fallen asleep while she wasn't looking. Arthur merely smirked at her and brought her toward the backyard, a small fenced in area with three young children playing freeze tag. There was a black girl with long, gangling legs and beaded braids chasing one of the two other boys, both of whom were taller and stockier than she was. One boy was also black, the other was of Hispanic descent. The three of them didn't look anything like each other, and Ariadne swung her eyes toward Arthur with an unvoiced question.
"We're all foster kids or adopted," Arthur said. "I'm one of the adopted ones." He pushed his hands into his pockets. "Mom just can't help herself sometimes. There was once a dozen of us in this tiny house, but we all managed to make it work, even if once I wanted to strangle one of my foster brothers for stealing my clothes."
She couldn't help but smile at that, since he did seem to take his appearance seriously. "Henry?"
He chuckled. "Yeah, well. You didn't think Arthur was my real name, did you?"
"It suits you," she said, looking back toward the playing children. She had thought it was his real name; Dom Cobb had been real enough, and the two were associates for years.
"I was born Henry Arthur Basler. Kind of a mouthful for a little scrawny kid, but there you go."
She filed it away and thought about asking why he was fostered and adopted, what had happened to his birth family, how he had fallen into dream share. The words stuck in her throat and then the children noticed the two of them standing in the entrance to the yard. "Henry!" the girl shouted gleefully, changing course and making a beeline for him.
Arthur ducked down and collected the armful of gangling girl. He gave her a kiss on each cheek, making her giggle. His smile was wide enough for dimples to show, and he looked up at Ariadne. "Hey, Allie. This is my friend Ariadne."
"Oh. She staying for the party?"
"I thought the cookies were for school?"
"Mama Groves is going to have a party anyway, you know that," Allie said loftily. She looked at Ariadne with a shrewd look for a moment, seeming years older than the small child she was. "You're alone, too," the girl declared after a moment. She seized Ariadne's hand and gave her a tug. "Come play with us."
Arthur merely laughed and waved her on when Ariadne turned back and looked at him helplessly. She was torn, and looked back toward the children. "How old are you going to be?"
"I'm ten now," Allie said solemnly. "Jashawn's nine and Nigel's ten, too. How 'bout you?"
"A lot older," Ariadne replied, ignoring Arthur's laughter behind her as he sat on the picnic table to watch them.
"You still know how to play, right?" the Hispanic boy piped up. Ariadne nodded, and the boys looked from her to Allie. "She's still it!"
Before Ariadne could react, Allie smacked her soundly on the arm and took off running. "Hey!" Ariadne cried, looking affronted. It only made Arthur laugh harder, and she set her jaw to begin chasing the children around the backyard.
By the time Mrs. Groves decided it was time for everyone to come in and wash up for dinner, Ariadne was a sweaty mess but she felt better than she had in years. There was something exhilarating about playing with young kids, something uncomplicated about the rules of tag. Seeing Arthur in this kind of environment was startling, but it was good to see him relaxed and grinning. She could suddenly see why Arthur would risk bringing her here, why he had made his comments about family in the manner that he had. Whatever his blood ties were, these people were his family, and they were the ones he was protecting from his life of crime. It was easily apparent over dinner that he sent money irregularly to his adoptive mother, and that he would e-mail back and forth often while on a job. He knew his foster siblings or adoptive siblings and always made sure to visit and send gifts as he was able. He took great pains in keeping his dream share activities separate, and that this was grounding to him. It was also clear why he would work so hard to get Cobb back to his children.
"Better?" he asked after the younger children had gone to bed.
Ariadne nodded. Eleanor was fairly isolated and distant from her own parents, a pair of perfectionists that felt physical displays of affection were crass and inappropriate. It was so different in this household, where everyone held hands around the dinner table to give thanks for each other and their meal. There was noise and affection and frustration, but it was taken in stride that this was normal. It was everything Eleanor's early life wasn't.
"I didn't have this growing up," Ariadne said in halting words. "Your Mom is so very different from mine."
Arthur sat down beside her and handed her a beer bottle. Startled, Ariadne could only accept it and watch him take one of his own to sit on the couch. "This is real," he murmured, taking a swig. "This is my anchor. Not in the 'why do I do it' sense, but in the sense that this is how I know it's reality. This is what I come back to when I need a reminder of what the real world is truly like."
He was taking a risk with her, showing her his true identity. It could be a weakness, a pressure point to get to him. Eleanor would never get this close, but a lost Ariadne would be welcome here, would be comforted and then sent on her way into the world.
"Thank you."
Smiling, he nodded at her. She took a sip of the beer and thought for a moment. "Eames said there were dangers."
"Of course there are. We've both had military training." Another fact for her to file away, something else that explained so much. "You didn't, so you'd have more to have to learn. But it always helps to have a home to get back to once you're done and need a break."
"I guess I don't have anywhere to go for that."
Arthur looked at her, the corner of his lip curling into a smile. "Now you do."
Ariadne smiled at him, that warm flush flooding her again. She was accepted and she belonged and she felt so guilty for betraying his trust, even if she hadn't done it yet.
If anything, this visit only made it harder to do her job.
***
It was far easier to get to Mombasa than she thought. True, Arthur helped her as soon as she showed him the address and stumbled over the words to try to tell him that she wanted to see what she was capable of. Eleanor wanted to kick herself, but Arthur seemed to understand what she couldn't say. He brushed his fingers across her cheek gently and then kissed her forehead tenderly. "You know where to find me, Ariadne," he had said softly. "I'm here if you need me."
She had hacked into her own CIA account while waiting in the airport lounge, trying to see who had accessed her information and what her current status was listed as. She couldn't tell if Arthur had hacked into her files, but her current status was still listed as active. Her whereabouts and aliases were unknown, at least, though her files clearly stated that she was a deep cover agent for Project Morpheus. The name had always made her roll her eyes; governments just couldn't think of good code names, could they? Any dreamer would know who Morpheus was, and they would know what deep cover in such a project would mean.
Eleanor logged out of her account and simply shut down the worries in her mind. Arthur would have said something if he knew. Wouldn't he? He wouldn't have endangered Cobb's chances of returning home if she was an agent poised to narc them all out, nor introduced her to his own family.
Somehow, she had escaped his detection. At least, she hoped so. Eames was another sort, and he had no loyalty to Cobb to blind him. Eleanor didn't know what he knew, and she wasn't sure if the wild goose chase through Kenya was meant to wear her down. The chase had started in Mombasa, and had sent her to Cairo, Istanbul, Alexandria and then back to Mombasa. They were Eames' favorite haunts in the area, and Eleanor was collecting quite a number of names and references in the process. She checked in with Arthur regularly; he had left Chicago and was in Miami for a bit, researching a new job. The agent in the back of her mind screamed at her to tip off the branch office there. It was her job.
Ariadne kept silent insteadand arrived back in Mombasa. She was standing on Yusuf's doorstep, and the chemist swept her into his shop with smiles and a hug like a proud papa would give a bright child. She teared up and clutched at him tightly. She had missed him and his quiet sarcasm, the self assurance that everything would work itself out in the end.
"Come. We'll have tea, talk of inconsequential things, and then we can talk about business," Yusuf told her. He sat her down at a table and began boiling water in a beaker over a bunsen burner. The sight of it made her laugh, and Ariadne already felt better.
They had darjeeling tea and talked about planes and travel, about food and the differences in what was considered standard fare for hotels in different countries. "You're staying in dream share," Yusuf said during a lull in the conversation. There was no question in his voice, as if he was stating a foregone conclusion she had already made. "I would be pleased to work as the chemist with you again, if you are in the position to recommend one."
"I... I don't know if I'm staying," Ariadne stuttered.
Yusuf clucked his tongue at her as if she was a silly child. "Of course you're staying. You wouldn't have worked your way here otherwise. Perhaps you simply don't know it yet."
Ariadne didn't know what to say to that, and Yusuf patted her arm gently. "This is not glamorous. This is not something that leaves monuments behind. But you do make your mark on the world, Ariadne. You do have a place and you do matter. You are not simply a statistic or number, not a cog in the machine. You would be vital here."
"I'd have to cut ties with everything I used to be."
Yusuf nodded and set another beakerful of water to boil. "What makes you want to stay in your old life?"
Responsibility. Duty. Loyalty. Promises made that she couldn't quite bring herself to break yet.
"You don't have to tell me details," Yusuf continued, sensing her discomfort. "If it was easy, you would not be conflicted and would have already left. Whatever it is that needs to be done, only you can say if it is necessary or not. But a life unfulfilled is empty, and to me is not worth living."
"What did you leave behind to do this?" she asked quietly.
"I had family once," Yusuf said slowly, grasping the hot beaker with tongs and slowly pouring water into their cups for more tea. "I lost my wife, and there were difficulties with my parents and sister. That did not make it easier to break all ties. But I do understand the pain of it." He looked up, eyes dark and expression unreadable. "But an empty life will suck you dry sooner rather than later." He covered her hand in his larger one, his touch warm and gentle, soothing. "Where do you feel most alive?"
Here.
She must have said that aloud, because Yusuf gave her a magnanimous smile. "This is why I say you're joining this world."
"So you think it's a foregone conclusion?"
"Don't you?" Yusuf countered.
Ariadne frowned at him. "I don't know."
Yusuf scribbled an address down for her. "Visit him. He's been waiting for you."
She looked up, startled. "What?"
"Eames thought you would come here." Yusuf sipped his tea and then smiled. "I knew things well enough not to bet against him. Go. You know that's where you need to go next."
"What if it's a mistake?"
"We learn from mistakes, Ariadne. We don't learn by sitting idle in the corner."
She still had to figure out what she wanted to do. She still had a decision to make, and interrogating everyone she had met in dream share wasn't going to get her any closer to an answer. As good as it was to bask in Yusuf's calming company, he was right.
Ariadne headed to Eames' flat. He answered the door in a simple white button down shirt that was open at the neck and a pair of linen slacks. She could only see his left hand as it propped the door open. The other was inside the flat, and he could have been holding a gun for all that she could see. His blue eyes crinkled slightly as he smiled at her, not bothering to hide the crooked teeth of his upper jaw. "Sooner or later, I knew you'd be here."
"Why do you say that?"
"A liar can always sense another of their kind."
Eleanor's heart froze in her chest, though she knew enough not to let it show in her face. Ariadne cocked her head to the side. "How am I lying?" she asked.
"Aren't you lying to yourself, darling?" Eames drawled. He pushed his door wider open and beckoned her inside.
Come into my parlor, said the spider to the fly, Eleanor thought dizzily as she stepped across the threshold. Ariadne looked around, eyes wide and bright, taking in the few details present. It was a fairly impersonal front room, just the niceties to sit down and greet guests, but no sense of personality about it at all. "You don't live here," she commented.
"On the contrary," Eames protested, shutting the door behind her. "I do."
"This is a place you stay," Ariadne said, turning around. She still couldn't see his hands, and it was making her nervous. They were in his pockets now, so he wasn't holding a gun unless he had shoved it into the waistband of his pants at the small of his back. Funny how she hadn't felt this threatened in Arthur's presence, even if she had the same questions about how much he knew. "There's no sense of you here."
He advanced, not quite menacingly, but Ariadne was aware of the advantage in height and bulk that he had. She could fight and would absolutely fight dirty, but she couldn't fight physics in the real world. She backed up slowly, until she hit the armchair. "What did you expect to find here, Ariadne?"
"I don't know." Her voice was soft, barely above a whisper, and suddenly she felt as if the tables were turned. She truly was Ariadne, and Eleanor was gone. Eames was the one questioning her now, pinning her down and flaying her open with his words. She had somehow lost control of the situation and had never seen it coming.
Eames took his hands out of his pockets and leaned in over her, caging her against the armchair. It didn't feel comforting at all, and her heart beat in a triphammer rhythm. "Are you scared of me, pet?"
"No," she lied, managing not to stammer.
"You're cringing, Ariadne."
"I didn't want to bump heads."
He laughed, not unkindly, and then his body was pressed up against hers, one of his thighs wedged between hers. The sudden contact was startling, making her gasp. "Is this what you wanted? Is this what you hoped would happen?"
Her lips trembled as she looked up at him. "I don't know what I want," she whispered, looking at him with wide eyes. Maybe some of her fear showed, because his sharp gaze softened a fraction and he leaned in to kiss her. It was different from Arthur's kiss during the Fischer job, from the chaste yet promising touches he had given her. Arthur's touches had been an invitation of sorts, letting her know that advances would be welcome once she made up her mind about what she wanted. Eames' kiss was more demanding, his tongue at the seam of her lips to coax them open immediately. He was giving her a taste of what it would be like with him, what danger and innuendo and adrenaline could lead to.
If anything, she was even more confused once he was done and moved away.
Eames was watching her closely, and Eleanor was left wondering what mask she should wear for him. He had likely already seen behind them, to the confusion and vulnerability lying beneath them. His large hand cupped her jaw, his thumb running across her lower lip. "What do you know to be true?"
I was born Eleanor Lewis. I am trained by the CIA. Ariadne doesn't really exist. I don't want to turn you in.
She dropped her eyes from his as the reality of it sank in. She didn't want to turn them in. She didn't want to see Arthur or Eames or Yusuf rotting in a prison somewhere. They were in their element here, and caging wild things like them would only lead to chaos in its wake. They knew this world, could navigate it with ease. They kept others in check, kept things from getting too dangerous.
"Ariadne?"
She looked up at him, eyes shining with unshed tears. "I want to build," she whispered. "However I can."
Thumb still rubbing against her lower lip, Eames nodded. "We thought that was the case."
"We?"
Eames' thigh was still trapped between hers, and she was still more or less caged against the armchair. Suddenly she was very aware of that, of how little he had moved back from that searing kiss. "Did you think we couldn't tell?"
Eleanor couldn't breathe, and her mind stuttered to a stop. "What?"
"Darling," he sighed, his hand moving down to her throat. It didn't circle her windpipe, not quite, but she was frozen still. Instead of being the one artfully gathering information about them, laying down a trap, they had turned the tables and had brought her exactly where they wanted her.
Dear God, were they going to kill her after all?
"Arthur's on his way. He had a few contacts in Miami that were willing to roll over and give up some information," Eames said, thumb caressing her carotid. Pressure there for a little bit and she would grow faint. If he put his other hand around her neck, cutting off blood flow to her other carotid, she would pass out. There would be no stopping him from whatever it was that he wanted to do. But there was no obvious threat yet, nothing but adrenaline and fear of that unknown to send her heart racing, and she was afraid to push him into violence. He had always been charming to her before, but those sharp eyes had been assessing her all that time.
"What are you talking about, Eames?" she asked, glad her voice was even.
"Gifts like yours are rare, did you know that?"
She did. It was why the CIA thought she would be so damn enticing to the underground dream share community. "Eames," she prompted.
"It didn't add up, of course. But out of desperation, Cobb didn't question it."
Of course he wouldn't. The lure of his children had been too much, and his own guilt had blinded him to so much. Had she fallen into the same trap?
"There was a reason why Arthur missed the militarization, Ariadne." Eames pressed his body a little further into hers, and she could feel his warmth against her. She was practically shivering, caught under his spell. "Did it hurt, being caught between what you were told to do and what you wanted to do?" he asked, fingers curling around the back of her neck and making her look up at him. There was an infinite sadness in his eyes, but she had to wonder now if that was as crafted as their apparent ignorance to the truth.
"What do you think?" she asked, voice scraped raw as if she had been screaming.
"This is why you came to us," Eames told her, eyes locked to hers. His blue eyes were like lasers, boring down deep into the heart of her, exposing her for the fraud that she was. "You wanted us to make it easy for you, to tell you what you had to do."
"What are you going to do?" she asked softly.
Eames' lips curled into a smile. It wasn't menacing at all, as if he could already guess what she wanted. "Depends on your decision, doesn't it?"
She blinked rapidly, refusing to cry in front of him. She lifted her chin, not wanting to appear afraid or weak. "Is this how you treat people looking to you for help?"
"Darling, you forget something. Arthur disappears from the scene to recharge, regroup, do whatever it is that keeps his mind sharp for what he needs to do. I don't leave. I don't ever turn it off. This is my life. I move from one con to the next, one brand of forgery to the other. I know what it means to burn yourself free, to live without ties other than the ones you make in order to stay." His hand was warm on her neck, his eyes searching hers. "This isn't a field full of strangers, darling. It's precarious, trust a fragile and precious commodity. But without it, without even a modicum of trust, it all falls apart. Dream share is about who you know, what you know, who you have ties to." His hand dipped down beneath the edge of her blouse, under the scarf at her neck. His broad hand there made her feel even more tiny and fragile, and he could feel the tremors in her spine. "Do you know that? Do you understand?"
"No," she whispered, wet eyes looking up at him. "I'm trying."
"I know. You're trying so hard, but you're holding onto everything else you've ever known." His lips curled into a sad smile. "So you hover, but you won't fully understand until you fall." Eames moved away, stepping back from her. She held onto the armchair behind her for balance, suddenly feeling boneless and weak. "So what will it be, darling?" he asked. He held out a hand to her, no sense of urgency in his posture.
I don't know. I don't know. She looked up from his hand to his face, caught. He was right, she was hovering.
She thought of Arthur smiling at her, of his hand in hers as they walked through museums or he showed her around the Chicago suburbs. She thought of his adoptive and foster siblings, the innocent faces of his parents. They trusted in him, and he was so careful that his illegal activities wouldn't come back to hurt them. He was tightly coiled during a job, focused and razor sharp, keeping track of the final goal with single minded determination. The tension would break an ordinary man, but he was far from ordinary. That was one way to survive in this, one way to keep track of what was important.
Eames was in front of her, at the center of a network of connections and friendships that he had invited her to see. He lived his life on the run, no ties, no connections other than the ones in dream share. That was how he stayed safe, even if he sometimes had to be a dozen different people at once. He didn't lie exactly; he simply presented a facet of the truth and let you extrapolate everything else from it that you wanted to see. He used words like knives, looks like statements. Expectations were turned inside out and upside down, and he simply sat back to observe it all. Though he had the same capability for violence and aggression that Arthur did, that any dangerous criminal would, he didn't use it unless he had to. He preferred to con or charm his way out of situations.
She brought one hand to her mouth, covering her trembling lips. Unbidden, tears began rolling down her cheeks. She blinked at the wavering image of Eames in front of her, her gut clenched and tied into knots.
"You want to fall, darling," Eames said softly, hand dropping to his side. "You want it so badly, but you're afraid of it."
"I should turn you in," she said without thinking, her voice thick with tears.
"But you won't," he said confidently, coming forward just enough to be within arm's reach. "You won't."
"How can you be so sure?"
Smiling, he pulled her into his arms, holding her tightly when she would have fallen. "Because you respond to being called Ariadne. Because she's real to you, real as everyone else you've ever met in this crazed endeavor. And she won't let you."
Eleanor sobbed against Eames' chest, clutching at his shirt as he simply held her. Her chest was breaking open, and everything she had ever known to be true before was a jumbled mess.
Because he was right, and she couldn't turn them in. She couldn't, and she was lost.
***
Ariadne woke in a strange room, shades drawn tightly against the last filtering rays of the sun. Her head felt fuzzy and she didn't know where she was. The cottony taste in her mouth was the usual morning grime, nothing that a good rinse couldn't get out. There wasn't any chemical aftertaste that would indicate that she was drugged.
"Eleanor."
She whipped her head around to face Arthur standing in the doorway, his form back lit and shadows falling across his face. "Arthur," she said, her voice ragged.
He nodded and came into the room. He was in the same kind of casual look that he had back in Chicago, a relaxed set in his shoulders. "Or perhaps Ariadne is better?"
She looked up at him, a vulnerable expression on her face. Taking the hand he offered her, she let him draw her to her feet. "What's going to happen next?"
"What do you want to happen?"
There were only inches between them, but it could have been miles. Eames pushed and pulled like the tides, inevitable and relentless. Arthur was quiet and still, a lighthouse in the dark.
"They know about Ariadne," she whispered, knowing it wasn't exactly an answer at all.
But then, maybe it was, because he smiled at her and cupped her face in his hands. "You have other names now. You have options you didn't have months ago. You just have to pick which one you want. No one can make that decision for you. No one will push you where you don't want to go."
She thought of the comfortable house in the Chicago suburbs, of the sweltering heat of Mombasa. She thought of these inscrutable men, of the quiet and stillness in Yusuf's shop as he had welcomed her inside. An unfulfilled life is empty, Yusuf had told her. Where do you feel most alive?
Her lips trembled a little as she closed her hands over Arthur's. She was afraid, and he could sense that. She was at the precipice, hovering, almost about to fall and crash.
Yusuf's question circled back to haunt her. Where do you feel most alive?
Ariadne pulled Arthur down for a kiss, feeling as if she was falling.
Eleanor was lost now, but Ariadne had been found.
The End.