Fic: dream a dream (and what you see will be) - mizzy2k - PART 8
dream a dream (and what you see will be)
mizzy2k
Arthur lets her go. Ariadne stumbles a little, and straightens herself. She stares at the Mirror as it settles, and Eames drops the forge and turns to them, staring impassively.
Ariadne stares at him. "You killed him," she says, a little tremulously.
Eames returns her stare as he moves over to them. "Cobb told me about your pact," he returns, all the arrogant swagger in his voice that she knows so well, "Don't even pretend you wouldn't have done the same."
Ariadne opens her mouth to argue, and finds no valid response there. Just a heaviness in her heart that she should have been gearing up for, knowing it would be coming. Knowing what she was going to be part of.
So she stares back for a moment longer, swallowing, and then Eames turns to Arthur.
Arthur stares back, and he swallows hard, ducks his head for the briefest of moments, and then continues staring. His jaw is tense and Ariadne's never seen him more nervous.
"I'm sorry f-" Arthur starts, after the longest pause, like it hurts to say, and that note of reluctance is like music to Ariadne's ears because Arthur doesn't apologise, that's just who he is, and for him to be trying to apologise but hating it, it's more than she's been hoping for. "I'm-" he starts again.
"Shut up," Eames says. "I just need to know - is this it? Is this you? Are you going to stay this way now?"
Arthur blinks, like it's not what he expected to hear. "Yes?"
Eames' fists tense by his side and Ariadne steps forwards tentatively, getting ready to stand in the way just in case. The emotion blistering in Eames right now is palpable.
"I need you to be sure," Eames says, low and rough, like he's struggling to remain civil.
"Yes," Arthur says, looking at him and nodding. "I'm sure. I'm here. I'm real."
Eames lets out this sound. If Ariadne had thought Arthur's keening sound was terrible, this is a thousand times worse, and it's only as he's moving forwards that she realizes she's wrong.
It's a thousand times better. It's a sound of relief that's more immense than anything Ariadne's ever heard. It's utter, heartbreaking despair twisting into joy more pure, more amazing than Ariadne's ever felt, so scorching that she feels burned just standing near.
So when Eames collides into Arthur, slides his hands into Arthur's pristine hair, and kisses him like he'll die if he doesn't, Ariadne can't tear her gaze away from them. She's pretty sure she must be crying in real life because her eyes are stinging.
Arthur stumbles a little, and Eames just slides one of his arms around his hip, keeping him upright, and Arthur - Arthur who doesn't like to be touched - just melts up into Eames, and Arthur makes this sound in the back of his throat which is all surprised pleasure and that's the tipping point.
Ariadne clears her throat. Loudly.
Arthur and Eames break apart instantly. Arthur's cheeks are a dull pink, and Eames is trying to look like a schoolboy who's just been reprimanded, but his grin is just a bit too wide for him to pull it off.
"That's enough of that PDA business," Ariadne says, waving her hands.
"You're just jealous," Eames says, unrepentantly.
"Of course," Ariadne says, and throws herself at Arthur, winding her arms around his neck before he can protest. He's stiff for the longest moment, and then he relaxes into the hug, just a bit, his fingers clenching into her shoulders just for a moment, like he's just reassuring himself that she's there.
Like maybe Ariadne's his constant as much as Arthur is hers.
"I'm glad you're back," Ariadne says, muffled into his neck.
"I'm glad to be back," Arthur mutters.
"And that's enough of that," Eames says, "if I'm not allowed to, you're not."
Arthur pulls back, and for a moment it's obvious that he's hiding a smile, and Ariadne doesn't want to call him on it, because hiding smiles, that's just what Arthur does. It's going to be a long, long time before Ariadne finds any of Arthur's Arthurish tics annoying.
"I..." Arthur starts, falters, and looks away from Eames. "I don't know if you should have done what you did, though," Arthur says, somewhat blankly. They both turn to him. He looks into the distance for a moment, but then raises his gaze to them, trembling but defiant. "Both of you."
Ariadne flinches.
Arthur's face remains still, frozen - then it relaxes. "But I am grateful that you did," he admits, looking between them. "Thank you."
Eames looks suddenly, immensely embarrassed. "All for you, love," he says, in a tone that's much too jokey to be anything but real, and the look they exchange is so heated that Ariadne's suddenly certain that if she doesn't do something to break this moment then she might be subjected to a rather brilliant floorshow.
"Right," Ariadne says, "we still have the last dregs of the Amelia job. Let's get out of here." She pauses as they both break their mutual gaze to look at her. "Um, how do we get out of here?" She edges a look at the knife still in the sand. "Without stabbing each other, I mean."
"Well, we could go through the Mirror gate too," Arthur says. "Well, we should go through the back door and then go through it forward; going through reverse is instant death. Or..."
"Or?" Ariadne prompts.
"Or we could let Gmork kill us," Arthur says. "It's only a matter of time. He used to follow Bastian and Atreyu around everywhere."
"What's his problem?" Eames mutters, mock-seriously.
"Cobb called him a puppy once," Arthur says, scratching his nose almost apologetically. "You'd be a bit peeved too."
"I dunno," Eames says. "I've always fancied trying to forge myself into an animal."
Arthur rolls his eyes, and Ariadne moves past him, and thinks the safe word again to bring the door back. She pauses as she reaches for the handle, and looks at Arthur. "This isn't going to-" She pauses again, and hunts for the word. "You know," she finishes awkwardly.
"Oh," Arthur says, as Eames looks at him very seriously, "Oh, no." He rubs the back of his neck for a moment, looking oddly vulnerable. "No, there's no one else in my head now. No one but me." He sounds sad then, and lonely, and Ariadne realizes it's not going to be a dusted and done, case closed sort of job. She doesn't know why she ever thought that. The fallout from this job's going to go on, and on. Ariadne's not nervous of the thought, though. She just vows to be around for all of it.
She thinks of Seb. Seb who was still practically a child. Seb who ran away into his own head after Mal died, thinking Arthur was her favorite.
Seb who was so desperate to think he was wrong, that Mal loved him best, that he would walk directly to his death for it.
She's quiet as they pass through the door, then dismiss it and prepare to walk through the mirror. Their reflection is nothing but the three of them. The surface is still.
"One moment," Ariadne says, before they step through and back to the crazy carnival. "Eames, didn't the clowns kill you?"
Arthur turns to look at Eames, alarmed. Clearly that's a memory Bastian suppressed on Arthur's behalf.
"Only a little bit?" Eames offers. Ariadne raises both eyebrows. She catches Arthur in the reflection of the Mirror Gate doing the same. They both share a laugh that tastes too much like relief. "Yes. I got taken down by a pair of bloody clowns. Don't laugh so hard, I saved your lives."
Predictably it just makes Arthur and Ariadne laugh harder. Perhaps Eames can hear the relief in it now, though, because he shrugs ruefully.
"I came back in," Eames says. "'s not like we were sedated."
"Eames," Arthur hisses, using his angry professional voice that they've both been on the receiving end of a few times. "That could have killed you."
"We're in a dream-within-a-dream, pet," Eames says, rolling his eyes and blatantly checking himself out in the mirror as Arthur pitches a fit right next to him. Arthur's hissy fits manifest in a very tense jaw and an automatic hand to his gun. "It's not like dying sent me to limbo."
"No," Arthur grits out, "but an overdose of somnacin in any dream level has the potential to send you to limbo. And don't even pretend you don't know that. You've used that."
"That man in Brazil was a rapist and a paedo. Don't tell me he didn't deserve it," Eames says heatedly, well-rehearsed like it's the beginning of an old argument.
"That's not the issue," Arthur bats back, just as heated. "I'm just saying you shouldn't have. God, Eames, if I'd gotten back and you weren't there-"
He doesn't finish the sentence. He looks at Ariadne awkwardly, embarrassed that he's said too much.
Eames looks inordinately pleased with himself.
"Can we get out of here before you two start making out again and I lose the will to live?" Ariadne says pointedly. Arthur has the grace to look deeply embarrassed.
"On three," Arthur says solemnly, and Eames pushes them through before he even gets to two.
Ariadne wakes in the carnival to the dulcet, annoying tones of Cobb lecturing an already-awake (and nine-year-old again) Amelia about the weirdness of feeling old and waking up young.
She lets him get on with it. There's a certain poetry, she thinks softly, in that the two times Cobb's seriously messed up with Arthur he ended up getting mauled and stabbed through the chest.
She looks over to where Yusuf is throwing rocks out the door. "We should do this more often," he says, "the projections can only climb up one at a time. It's almost therapeutic cracking skulls from this height."
"Someone want to brief me on why you took so long?" Cobb calls across. "Ari? Eames? Seb?"
Eames moves to go towards Cobb, and Arthur puts a hand on Eames' shoulder. "I've got this," Arthur says, low and quiet. Eames narrows his eyes a little. Arthur shakes his head minutely. Eames holds up his hands and backs off, smacking into the wall of the treehouse and throwing the dark room they're holed up in a dirty look.
"It took time," Arthur says. He's speaking slower than normal, but his rhythm - if he's pretending to be Seb like Ariadne suspects - isn't right. That's more reassuring than anything else. "We had work to do."
Cobb frowns, and straightens up. "What do you mean?"
"Killing Bastian, getting rid of the Arthur personality for good-"
Cobb moves so fast that Ariadne regrets blinking, because she missed a good half of his rapid movement. Cobb has Arthur pushed up against the wall, his hands firmly in Arthur's shoulder blades, and his face is pushed up into Arthur's. "You'd better be messing with me, Seb. Because if you've gone and done something like that, I swear you won't be waking up any time soon-"
"And there's the Dominic Cobb the world knows and somehow loves," Arthur retorts, not bothering to disguise the anger in his voice. "Deciding that one forged personality has any right over the other. How come you get to be the voice of god?"
"In this circumstance because I'm the guy with the gun," Cobb says, pulling out a Beretta that Ariadne hadn't seen him packing earlier, and pushing it against Arthur's temple. "So tell me exactly what you did so we can reverse it?"
"Well," Arthur says, "Ariadne pushed Bastian through one of the back doors, saying my name. We splintered into all three of us. Bastian committed suicide and then the two forged personalities had to wrestle to the death. It wasn't pretty."
"Ari," Cobb barks, "tell me your version."
"What he said," Ariadne says, shrugging. "Then Eames came in. He forged into Mal."
"I distracted Seb. Made Seb think Mal was alive, and Seb killed himself to be with her. Mother complex, see. We came back here, Arthur pretended to be Seb, and stole the ammo from your gun while you were blustering," Eames says.
"I," Cobb says. "What?"
Arthur holds up the handful of bullets that Ariadne hadn't notice him take.
"Mal was a thief before she tried forging," Arthur says, fully in his tone now. He hands Cobb the bullets. "She taught me how to pick-pocket."
Eames looks at Arthur, a sour expression on his face. "Shall I punch him or do you want the honors?"
Arthur pushes at the strands of hair in his eyes, annoyed, and brushes dirt off the jeans Seb dreamed him into like Cobb hasn't pushed him against the wall. "It's a dream," Arthur says, "I'm sure I'd be validated in stabbing him."
Cobb squints, and then says, slowly, like he's only just really getting what's going on. "...Arthur?"
"He's finally got it," Arthur says, sliding out of Cobb's grip like it's nothing at all. "I think my violent streak has become too predictable," Arthur informs Eames, like Cob isn't even there. "I need to mix it up a little. Put some variety into my threats."
"Try adding a garrotte to your repertoire. I always find that's a nice variation. Less blood to stain your impeccable suits, too," Eames returns conversationally.
"It's sort of nice to know that he'd try and shoot Seb if he'd done what we pretended he had," Arthur muses. "Seb wouldn't have been able to steal the bullets, either."
"It makes me more inclined to believe he's not one hundred per cent a bastard," Eames says. "Maybe more like ninety eight."
"I'd go with ninety eight," Ariadne chimes in, agreeing.
"I feel like I've completely lost hold of the whole situation," Cobb says, in what would be a humorous tone in any other circumstance. Amelia leans over and pats him on the arm.
"It's okay, Mr. Cobb. You'll catch up eventually," she informs him.
"Yup," Ariadne says into Cob's stunned silence, unable to help the smile, "Cobb just got owned by a nine year old."
"I can fire you," Cobb says.
"But it's Mr. Eames' team," Amelia pipes up, calmly twisting her long golden hair into a side plait.
Eames grins.
"Seriously, Cobb," Arthur says, his tone more sombre now, fully serious. "We'll talk about this later."
Cobb swallows hard, and nods. "For what it's worth, I know what we did to you was-"
"Necessary," Arthur says, and tilts his head. "A little crazy. Completely wrong."
Cobb nods. "All of the above."
"And you and Mal saved my life, and I'll never forget that," Arthur says. "But we're not okay."
Cobb swallows, and stays silent.
Arthur looks at him for a long moment before adding, simply, "We will be."
"Thank you," Cobb says, low and quiet.
"I'm sorry to interrupt your moment, but I may have perhaps overstated how easy this is," Yusuf interjects, sounding strained. "They're sort of climbing on top of each other now to get up. Look at that. Amelia, your subconscious is quite resourceful."
"And you, I need words with you," Arthur says, shaking his head at a still baffled Cobb as he moves over to Yusuf. "How could you let Eames take the second dose of somnacin?"
"Hey," Eames says, "I'm a grown adult, there was no letting-"
"He's pretty resourceful too," Yusuf says morosely. "Threatened to garotte me."
"Ah," Arthur says.
"Not that it matters," Yusuf adds, his tone brighter. "This is a dream."
Arthur frowns at him.
"Thank you, Captain Obvious," Eames sing-songs.
"I mean," Yusuf says, squinting at Eames for a moment before looking back at Arthur, "it's a dream. I can do things with the compounds I cannot do up there. It's quite a discovery. It's a nice lesson to learn."
"What lesson?" Ariadne says, joining him at the doorway to the tree house. Yusuf leans over to watch again. The blind projections are literally making each other into a staircase. Yusuf was right. It's pretty damn resourceful of them.
"That you mustn't be afraid to dream a little better," Yusuf says, shrugging. "Seriously, stop being lazy and come look already. It's like Amelia's subconscious has become organised now she's become much more aware."
They all peer out of the door then, at the blind carnival goers throwing themselves on top of each other, soundlessly flailing their arms and climbing over each other to try and make a pile-up to climb on to get into the treehouse for the dream intruders.
"Huh," Ariadne says, "weirdest extraction ever."
"I hear you," Cobb mutters, rubbing his chest again surreptitiously to check it's still there.
Something near the PASIV beeps.
"Time to go," Yusuf says.
They all turn to Amelia. She looks up at them, pleadingly. "Wake me up. Please. Wake me up. Don't leave me here."
Ariadne only has time to nod before the ground shifts beneath her feet for the last time.
#
She wakes with a jolt, having to blink rapidly to re-adjust to the bright daylight filling Amelia's bedroom. Ariadne pushes herself into a more upright position.
"You're back," Amelia's mom breathes, and her face twitches over to Amelia's still sleeping body. "It didn't work."
She sounds much too relieved. Ariadne's stomach curls, and she forces herself not to glare. She wants to.
She wants to rip her face off personally.
Ariadne waits until Cobb gets up from the chair with an apologetic expression. He slides around behind Amelia's mother, as if going for another piece of equipment, and then he casually slides the bolt on the door and pulls out his gun, pointing it directly at Amelia's mom.
"What the hell-" Amelia's father blurts, pushing out of the chair. Ariadne calmly removes her cannula, already knowing Eames and Arthur will catch him.
Sure enough, Eames pushes down on his shoulders, keeping him down in the chair.
"We didn't succeed in waking your daughter up," Eames says, leaning on the back of Amelia's father's chair, "because she's physically incapable of waking up."
"Rubbish," he says, his eyes moving to his daughter's sleeping body, "the doctors all say. She should be capable of waking up. Her body's healthy, it's just her mind-"
"Her body's not entirely healthy," Cobb says, coming up behind Amelia's mom. "Is it?"
"I- I don't know what you mean," Amelia's mom mutters, looking across at her husband, her eyes filling with tears.
"Munchhausen's by proxy," Eames says, straightening. He pulls one of Amelia's toy clowns from the shelf, and pulls its head off. Ariadne startles, but Eames just pushes his fingers into the stuffing and pulls out a bottle of pills. He throws it at Amelia's father, who catches it, his eyes widening at the sight of it. "Take those to a reputable doctor. They'll be able to wake your daughter up."
"We also suggest a quick divorce and criminal proceedings," Cobb adds.
"Graham," Amelia's mom starts, "I wouldn't, I- this is ludicrous, these are criminals-"
"How did you know?" Ariadne asks Eames quietly, while Cobb helps hold back Amelia's mother and Amelia's father rings for the police and an ambulance for Amelia.
"Been down in a dream with a dreamer pretty high on weed," Eames says. "It's the last time I saw a triple moon when we'd gone under during the day in a well-lit room. I knew none of you were high. Amelia was the only other option. Plus, when you passed me the clown earlier, I could feel the bottle. I had to be sure. I had to be sure Amelia knew what was going on."
"You saved her," Ariadne says, smiling at him.
"You saved Arthur," Eames says, his voice low and almost tremulous. He looks at with the most genuine expression she's ever seen from him. "If you hadn't pushed him through the door, I don't know if I could have gotten through to Seb like I did."
Ariadne swallows, because she doesn't feel like she did enough. She looks over at Arthur, who's checking the rest of the bedroom for any more hidden pills.
He's walking heel-to-toe, measured and precise. When she looks back at Eames, he's watching Arthur's feet too. Checking it's him. It might be a while before they can fully believe he's back.
But he is back, and Amelia's going to be fine, and that's more than any of them really believed going in.
#
When Ariadne gets the call from Amelia's father, she knows exactly what it means, and she's halfway through bullying Cobb out of the door to drive them to the hospital before the phone call even finishes.
It's just Graham who greets them at the hospital, leading them into the ward where Amelia is. Ariadne didn't expect to see Amelia's mother there. She's in custody. She took the whole getting arrested thing pretty calmly when the truth was fully out.
Sometimes the truth was an impossible thing to fight against.
"She asked to see you all," Graham tells them, as they approach the ward. "I think you've got a junior extractor on your hands here."
"We'll scare it out of her," Eames reassures him. Graham offers him a weak smile. Real full smiles are a long time away for him, Ariadne thinks.
Amelia remembers them impeccably, which is disturbing considering the dose of hallucinogenics that her mother had her on. It does show a certain propensity for dreamsharing. She likes Arthur the best. Arthur tries his best not to frown at her, but his smiles do look a little bit like constipation.
"She's getting tired," a nurse says pointedly after only ten minutes has passed.
"But-" Amelia protests.
"They'll come back another time," Graham says. Then he looks shiftily at the team. "Um, I mean-"
"We'll be back," Arthur says, warmly, patting him on the arm companionably. A little of the tension leaves Graham's shoulders at that.
"Bastian," Amelia calls, as they all turn to leave.
Arthur turns at that, and frowns slightly, and Ariadne's breath catches in her throat.
No. Surely not. Surely not- but Ariadne can see the color drain from Eames' face as the possibility of it hits him.
The possibility that this isn't over after all.
"Thank you for saving me," Amelia says. "I love Fantasia. Thank you for letting me play there too."
Play, Ariadne thinks. Well, it's probably a good thing Amelia doesn't remember all the running for their lives they did there.
"You're welcome," Arthur tells her. He shuffles out of the hospital room first, hands in his pockets, and Ariadne follows him.
Eames is quicker. As soon as they're out of sight, Eames turns Arthur, and slams him into the wall. He pulls a gun. "Leave him," Eames barks, glaring into Arthur's eyes. "Get the hell out. You said you'd leave him."
Arthur's eyes scan Eames' face like Eames is a piece of research that doesn't quite make sense. Then Arthur sighs, and in a fast blur of limbs, efficiently disarms Eames and reverses their position before Ariadne can even blink.
"I was pretending," Arthur says, "Jesus Christ, Eames. Sometimes you're the worst thing in my life."
"Your life is terribly less sad than I'd been assuming it must be, for me to be the worst thing in it," Eames returns.
Except now Ariadne has that inkling of what has been going on; she knows now that their words mean something else. Each insult is a checkpoint, an endearment disguised in a storm. I hate you - which anyone else would read between the lines of their words - means something else entirely. You're the worst thing is its complete opposite.
They both look up as Ariadne clears her throat, because once in the dreamscape was far more than enough. She's jealous of them enough as it is just seeing the way they interact, now she knows what each glance and barb actually means. Arthur returns Eames' gun, unapologetically reaching inside the waistband of Eames' pants to return the gun to its usual hiding spot.
"Come with me," Arthur says. "I've got something to show you both."
Ariadne and Eames share a curious look and follow him.
They're not too sure what to expect, so when Arthur steals Cobb's car keys, justifiably stranding him there for a while in Ariadne's opinion, it's strange that he takes them to the warehouse.
Odder still to see him setting up the PASIV.
"Arthur," Eames starts.
"It's just me," Arthur says. "This isn't dangerous." He sighs, his fingers stilling against the lid of the PASIV. He looks down at the clasps, like it's easier to speak if he's not looking directly at them. "I still have the somnacin-dependency. That illness isn't going to go away. So we need to try this sooner or later and I don't know who else I trust more to get me back." He looks up again, mouth pressed in a line. Ariadne nods and pulls up a lawnchair.
#
When they appear in the dream, they're in the Grassy Sea again. The sun is high, and the sky's free even of the paint-smear clouds.
Fantasia is still, without Bastian to bring it to full life, and Ariadne feels sad. She trails her hand through the soft, still grass and remembers him for a moment.
When she looks across at Arthur, he's not exactly smiling, but he's not exactly frowning either. Eames is standing loosely, his hands in his pockets, but there's a tension in his forehead. He doesn't like being here.
He doesn't like the reminder of how close they got to losing Arthur.
"Bastian left me something," Arthur says, slowly, not looking at either one of them, and he pulls something out of one his impeccably tailored pant pockets.
"AURYN," Ariadne breathes, as the intertwined snakes sparkle in the high Fantasian sun. Arthur does smile then, a soft and fond smile tempered with a little melancholy. It's elegiac and professional and so very Arthur that Ariadne's heart stutters in her chest, just for a moment. She might not be in love with him, something which is Eames' territory alone by the slightly awed way he's looking at Arthur and has looked at Arthur since they emerged from the dream, shaken and grieving, but she loves him regardless. If there's nothing else earned from this experience, it's that realisation.
Arthur looks at AURYN with consideration for a moment and closes his eyes.
"Love," Eames tries, sounding young and uncertain, "are you sure that's a good idea?"
"No," Arthur says, sounding a little insulted, "but when has that ever stopped me?"
"In real life, every moment. In the PASIV? Not so much," Eames allows.
Ariadne laughs, and it's in a blink that Fantasia changes.
The detail is breathtaking, exquisite. She trails her hand through the rough fronds of the Grassy Sea and feels the small creatures nose at her fingers, and across from her is the cry of the Purple Buffalo speeding across the plains, and a Tiny laughs as it wanders up to greet them.
It washes over her like a jumble of sound and brilliance and light, and she wants to laugh at it all and she wants to lie on her back in the grass and just stare at how alive this world is, and it's not Bastian doing it.
It's Arthur. She shares a look with Eames, who looks overwhelmed with it too.
"You've... imagination," Ariadne breathes, spinning around and taking it all in. She claps her hands, and wants to whirl around with Arthur, but he's still so reserved and stiff and Ariadne doesn't mind that, not one bit. She'd rather have Arthur back than anything.
Arthur tips her a small bow. "Hmmm. It's not like Bastian's. It's mine." He looks shyly across at Eames. "What do you think?"
"It's marvellous," Eames says promptly. "But I'm already starting to develop a complex."
"I never wanted you just for your imagination," Arthur says, low and quiet, while Ariadne's quietly appalled.
"I'm right here," she says, because the look they share is intimacy and love, and full of promise that Ariadne's okay with missing the fulfilment of.
"I had to be sure. Why I never said I- I had to be sure." Arthur presses on, his jaw tight, like if he doesn't say this now he might never. "I had to be sure it was my heart and no one else's."
"And the verdict?" Eames aims for casual, and misses. Even Ariadne can hear how serious the question is.
"It was mostly Seb," Arthur tells him with a straight face. "I think you're terrible." The lie is terrible. The truth is too much in his eyes.
"You're terrible too, love," Eames says. Ariadne would almost buy it, but every love has too much truth in it now Arthur's back.
"While we're here," Ariadne says, "I'm just going to go exploring." She nods her head in a random direction, eager to get away and leave them some private space.
"You don't have to," Arthur says, like the words have gotten stuck partway in his throat.
"I'm a Neverending Story geek," she says, using Seb's words mockingly. "When are we going to come again?" She pins a knowing look at him.
Never is unspoken but is clear regardless in the space between them.
"I'll catch you on the flipside," she says, pointing at the sky, their usual signal for real life. She doesn't know who came up with it, but it works to think of real life at the top, and as sleep takes them under each time, they go down a level, down and down. And isn't limbo the name of the last level before hell?
Eames throws her a salute and a dirty wink. Ariadne rolls her eyes, turns resolutely away from them, and just starts to walk.
If she hears a few sweet nothings carried on the gentle breeze, she locks their content away in her heart, warm and fond.
The PASIV's set on default for an hour. Five minutes topside, one hour down. It's a pity death's the only way to get back quicker. It's odd that they never think to dream up painless ways of death just in case they need an early exit.
Perhaps it's the pain that reminds them: dreamsharing is dangerous.
Terribly dangerous, she thinks again, thinking of Seb and Bastian and Mal.
Lost in her thoughts, Ariadne loses track of where she is, too busy thinking; it's just as well Arthur knows how to hold the map of Fantasia in his head too or the dream would probably have started to collapses a few minutes ago. It's when she's passing the still, black Hollow Giants that Xayide in Seb's book left abandoned near the City of the Old Emperors that she can centre herself again.
She stands and looks at the Hollow Giants and their stylised faces. They're half sunken into the ground at distended angles, worn by weather and age. Ariadne feels sad again at the memory of Bastian. How long he must have been trapped, wandering his dreams for ever and ever. He lived more than a life in the PASIV. His death is sad, but not painful.
Ariadne knows where she is now. She memorised the whole landscape. If she goes a little more to the South, she should come across a wooden sign in the shape of a hand, a sign pointing to the House of Change.
It's as good a destination as any, even though worry hits Ariadne as she ambles towards it - she recalls something vaguely from the book, that travellers avoided the Hollow Giants because of the curse on their land.
It's just a book, though. Beautiful, but nowhere near as amazing as what the PASIV is capable of. In a book, Ariadne's imagination has to do most of the work. In the PASIV, her imagination combines with all of the dreamers into a symphony. She trails her hand over the wooden hand-shaped sign, and follows its pointed finger to the House of Change.
The House of Change looks just like an ordinary house. It could have been transplanted from any suburb, any state. Ariadne thinks the architecture is maybe West Coast, 1960s. It's not her favorite design period, so she's not too sure.
It's not the outside that's supposed to be special. It's the inside, that changes depending on what you wish to find. Dame Eyola's domain. Dame Eyola, who Mal pretended to be. Dame Eyola, so goes the story, is the woman who nurtured Bastian for dizzy, carefree months, leaving him wanting for nothing.
Mal will have spent those months, creating Seb, creating a story to lure him back into the real world.
Ariadne walks up closer to the house, smiling at it. It looks like a family kind of house. She imagines she can almost hear the laughter of kids coming from inside it.
She can. It's not her imagination. Ariadne hurries closer to the windows. Fantasia may be full now of all its creatures, so she has no idea who it might be.
She's curious, delightfully curious, and she feels like she's almost swollen with it; so of course when she does see who's behind the window, it feels like she bursts wide open.
Ariadne halts and stares, and stares some more.
It's Bastian and Seb.
They're just sitting at a table, laughing and joking together over something. It looks like Seb's writing something, and Bastian's checking it over, making suggestions. Ariadne stares and stares, her heart in her mouth. She suppresses the cry she wants to make and stumbles back.
It's ridiculous. They can't be real. She has to get away. She has to warn Arthur that he's in danger. Or maybe she's overreacting and they're just ghosts, or-
She's been trying to escape quietly, but walking backwards is no easy trick, and she crashes into something that makes a sound - an old metal bucket and an abandoned, rusty trowel, like someone's been gardening. Cobb told her once about random items that turned up in the dreamscape. They're remnants of memories that the dreamers don't remember.
Ariadne looks up in fear to see if someone's noticed her racket. To her relief, Seb and Bastian haven't moved from the table.
To her muted shock, the front door flies open and it's Mal standing there.
She swallows. The House of Changes is Dame Eyola's house. It's not a real surprise, is it? But it is. Ariadne looks at Mal, eyes wide.
Mal just smiles at her, steps out of the house, and closes the door behind her.
"You're not real," Ariadne blurts out, louder than she meant to. The location picks up her voice, echoing it back at her like a cruel taunt.
"Who's to say what's real and what's not?" Mal asks her, tilting her head slowly, unnaturally. She isn't blinking. "You remember Seb and Bastian both, don't you?"
"Of course," Ariadne starts, and then pauses. "What does that mean?"
"It means people we love can live on in our memories," Mal says, stepping closer. Still not blinking. "In a way, you remember me also. When you walk the paths of your daily life, sometimes I live in your head as a memory, do I not?"
"I... suppose," Ariadne says, freaking out. It's weird enough that Mal is there, let alone that they seem to be having some sort of philosophical debate.
Maybe this Mal's a projection, not a creation of Arthur's new imagination. That makes more sense. She's part of Arthur's subconscious. Probably his guilt. Or maybe she's a projection of Ariadne's guilt.
Heaven knows she's been accumulating enough of that for a lifetime.
"In some way," Mal says, moving smoothly towards Ariadne, like she's almost gliding over the uneven grass, "memories are more real. We trust and distrust them in equal measure as we trust and distrust other humans in equal measure." Mal's close then, really close, so close that Ariadne can see her eyes, the two colors layering her iris, and she can feel Mal's breath on her cheek. Eames is right; they're very knowing eyes...
"Memories can be as real as flesh and bone," Mal whispers, moving in so her mouth is directly next to Ariadne's ear. "And now Seb and Bastian can live in your head too."
She pulls back and smiles at Ariadne, wider, wider. Ariadne stares at her, feeling lost.
Mal pulls back just far enough that Mal's face fills her vision. The soft wind around them drops suddenly. Arthur's dropped thinking of Fantasia in its entirety because the dream is nearly over.
Behind Mal, Seb and Bastian stare at Ariadne through the window.
Ariadne looks back at Mal. She's still smiling.
"Time to go," Mal says, sing-song smooth, and Ariadne wakes up.
#
Secrets aren't the only thing Dominic Cobb will attempt to extract.
Sometimes he'll try and extract other things. Just ask Arthur and Amelia sometime. Walking, living proof of Dom's blitzes of madness.
Ask James and Phillipa sometime in the future. They might have a different opinion of daddy's dreaming.
Sometimes Cobb will dream big and try the impossible.
It's always a gamble. Ask Eames sometime - he's the gambling expert. You win big or you lose big when you gamble big, and usually it's none too much of the former.
Sometimes Cobb wins big, like inception, and saving Amelia.
Sometimes Cobb loses big, like nearly losing Arthur. Like Mal.
It takes knowing how to see the big picture to gamble big in the extraction business, and Cobb's very good at seeing the big picture.
But sometimes when it's a big win, when you have to concentrate solely on the big picture to win something back like a love or a life on the brink, you can be so busy celebrating and focusing on the big details that you miss the little things.
Like how Ariadne walks out of the warehouse.
Toe-to-heel.
Like a dancer.
masterpost
mizzy2k
Arthur lets her go. Ariadne stumbles a little, and straightens herself. She stares at the Mirror as it settles, and Eames drops the forge and turns to them, staring impassively.
Ariadne stares at him. "You killed him," she says, a little tremulously.
Eames returns her stare as he moves over to them. "Cobb told me about your pact," he returns, all the arrogant swagger in his voice that she knows so well, "Don't even pretend you wouldn't have done the same."
Ariadne opens her mouth to argue, and finds no valid response there. Just a heaviness in her heart that she should have been gearing up for, knowing it would be coming. Knowing what she was going to be part of.
So she stares back for a moment longer, swallowing, and then Eames turns to Arthur.
Arthur stares back, and he swallows hard, ducks his head for the briefest of moments, and then continues staring. His jaw is tense and Ariadne's never seen him more nervous.
"I'm sorry f-" Arthur starts, after the longest pause, like it hurts to say, and that note of reluctance is like music to Ariadne's ears because Arthur doesn't apologise, that's just who he is, and for him to be trying to apologise but hating it, it's more than she's been hoping for. "I'm-" he starts again.
"Shut up," Eames says. "I just need to know - is this it? Is this you? Are you going to stay this way now?"
Arthur blinks, like it's not what he expected to hear. "Yes?"
Eames' fists tense by his side and Ariadne steps forwards tentatively, getting ready to stand in the way just in case. The emotion blistering in Eames right now is palpable.
"I need you to be sure," Eames says, low and rough, like he's struggling to remain civil.
"Yes," Arthur says, looking at him and nodding. "I'm sure. I'm here. I'm real."
Eames lets out this sound. If Ariadne had thought Arthur's keening sound was terrible, this is a thousand times worse, and it's only as he's moving forwards that she realizes she's wrong.
It's a thousand times better. It's a sound of relief that's more immense than anything Ariadne's ever heard. It's utter, heartbreaking despair twisting into joy more pure, more amazing than Ariadne's ever felt, so scorching that she feels burned just standing near.
So when Eames collides into Arthur, slides his hands into Arthur's pristine hair, and kisses him like he'll die if he doesn't, Ariadne can't tear her gaze away from them. She's pretty sure she must be crying in real life because her eyes are stinging.
Arthur stumbles a little, and Eames just slides one of his arms around his hip, keeping him upright, and Arthur - Arthur who doesn't like to be touched - just melts up into Eames, and Arthur makes this sound in the back of his throat which is all surprised pleasure and that's the tipping point.
Ariadne clears her throat. Loudly.
Arthur and Eames break apart instantly. Arthur's cheeks are a dull pink, and Eames is trying to look like a schoolboy who's just been reprimanded, but his grin is just a bit too wide for him to pull it off.
"That's enough of that PDA business," Ariadne says, waving her hands.
"You're just jealous," Eames says, unrepentantly.
"Of course," Ariadne says, and throws herself at Arthur, winding her arms around his neck before he can protest. He's stiff for the longest moment, and then he relaxes into the hug, just a bit, his fingers clenching into her shoulders just for a moment, like he's just reassuring himself that she's there.
Like maybe Ariadne's his constant as much as Arthur is hers.
"I'm glad you're back," Ariadne says, muffled into his neck.
"I'm glad to be back," Arthur mutters.
"And that's enough of that," Eames says, "if I'm not allowed to, you're not."
Arthur pulls back, and for a moment it's obvious that he's hiding a smile, and Ariadne doesn't want to call him on it, because hiding smiles, that's just what Arthur does. It's going to be a long, long time before Ariadne finds any of Arthur's Arthurish tics annoying.
"I..." Arthur starts, falters, and looks away from Eames. "I don't know if you should have done what you did, though," Arthur says, somewhat blankly. They both turn to him. He looks into the distance for a moment, but then raises his gaze to them, trembling but defiant. "Both of you."
Ariadne flinches.
Arthur's face remains still, frozen - then it relaxes. "But I am grateful that you did," he admits, looking between them. "Thank you."
Eames looks suddenly, immensely embarrassed. "All for you, love," he says, in a tone that's much too jokey to be anything but real, and the look they exchange is so heated that Ariadne's suddenly certain that if she doesn't do something to break this moment then she might be subjected to a rather brilliant floorshow.
"Right," Ariadne says, "we still have the last dregs of the Amelia job. Let's get out of here." She pauses as they both break their mutual gaze to look at her. "Um, how do we get out of here?" She edges a look at the knife still in the sand. "Without stabbing each other, I mean."
"Well, we could go through the Mirror gate too," Arthur says. "Well, we should go through the back door and then go through it forward; going through reverse is instant death. Or..."
"Or?" Ariadne prompts.
"Or we could let Gmork kill us," Arthur says. "It's only a matter of time. He used to follow Bastian and Atreyu around everywhere."
"What's his problem?" Eames mutters, mock-seriously.
"Cobb called him a puppy once," Arthur says, scratching his nose almost apologetically. "You'd be a bit peeved too."
"I dunno," Eames says. "I've always fancied trying to forge myself into an animal."
Arthur rolls his eyes, and Ariadne moves past him, and thinks the safe word again to bring the door back. She pauses as she reaches for the handle, and looks at Arthur. "This isn't going to-" She pauses again, and hunts for the word. "You know," she finishes awkwardly.
"Oh," Arthur says, as Eames looks at him very seriously, "Oh, no." He rubs the back of his neck for a moment, looking oddly vulnerable. "No, there's no one else in my head now. No one but me." He sounds sad then, and lonely, and Ariadne realizes it's not going to be a dusted and done, case closed sort of job. She doesn't know why she ever thought that. The fallout from this job's going to go on, and on. Ariadne's not nervous of the thought, though. She just vows to be around for all of it.
She thinks of Seb. Seb who was still practically a child. Seb who ran away into his own head after Mal died, thinking Arthur was her favorite.
Seb who was so desperate to think he was wrong, that Mal loved him best, that he would walk directly to his death for it.
She's quiet as they pass through the door, then dismiss it and prepare to walk through the mirror. Their reflection is nothing but the three of them. The surface is still.
"One moment," Ariadne says, before they step through and back to the crazy carnival. "Eames, didn't the clowns kill you?"
Arthur turns to look at Eames, alarmed. Clearly that's a memory Bastian suppressed on Arthur's behalf.
"Only a little bit?" Eames offers. Ariadne raises both eyebrows. She catches Arthur in the reflection of the Mirror Gate doing the same. They both share a laugh that tastes too much like relief. "Yes. I got taken down by a pair of bloody clowns. Don't laugh so hard, I saved your lives."
Predictably it just makes Arthur and Ariadne laugh harder. Perhaps Eames can hear the relief in it now, though, because he shrugs ruefully.
"I came back in," Eames says. "'s not like we were sedated."
"Eames," Arthur hisses, using his angry professional voice that they've both been on the receiving end of a few times. "That could have killed you."
"We're in a dream-within-a-dream, pet," Eames says, rolling his eyes and blatantly checking himself out in the mirror as Arthur pitches a fit right next to him. Arthur's hissy fits manifest in a very tense jaw and an automatic hand to his gun. "It's not like dying sent me to limbo."
"No," Arthur grits out, "but an overdose of somnacin in any dream level has the potential to send you to limbo. And don't even pretend you don't know that. You've used that."
"That man in Brazil was a rapist and a paedo. Don't tell me he didn't deserve it," Eames says heatedly, well-rehearsed like it's the beginning of an old argument.
"That's not the issue," Arthur bats back, just as heated. "I'm just saying you shouldn't have. God, Eames, if I'd gotten back and you weren't there-"
He doesn't finish the sentence. He looks at Ariadne awkwardly, embarrassed that he's said too much.
Eames looks inordinately pleased with himself.
"Can we get out of here before you two start making out again and I lose the will to live?" Ariadne says pointedly. Arthur has the grace to look deeply embarrassed.
"On three," Arthur says solemnly, and Eames pushes them through before he even gets to two.
Ariadne wakes in the carnival to the dulcet, annoying tones of Cobb lecturing an already-awake (and nine-year-old again) Amelia about the weirdness of feeling old and waking up young.
She lets him get on with it. There's a certain poetry, she thinks softly, in that the two times Cobb's seriously messed up with Arthur he ended up getting mauled and stabbed through the chest.
She looks over to where Yusuf is throwing rocks out the door. "We should do this more often," he says, "the projections can only climb up one at a time. It's almost therapeutic cracking skulls from this height."
"Someone want to brief me on why you took so long?" Cobb calls across. "Ari? Eames? Seb?"
Eames moves to go towards Cobb, and Arthur puts a hand on Eames' shoulder. "I've got this," Arthur says, low and quiet. Eames narrows his eyes a little. Arthur shakes his head minutely. Eames holds up his hands and backs off, smacking into the wall of the treehouse and throwing the dark room they're holed up in a dirty look.
"It took time," Arthur says. He's speaking slower than normal, but his rhythm - if he's pretending to be Seb like Ariadne suspects - isn't right. That's more reassuring than anything else. "We had work to do."
Cobb frowns, and straightens up. "What do you mean?"
"Killing Bastian, getting rid of the Arthur personality for good-"
Cobb moves so fast that Ariadne regrets blinking, because she missed a good half of his rapid movement. Cobb has Arthur pushed up against the wall, his hands firmly in Arthur's shoulder blades, and his face is pushed up into Arthur's. "You'd better be messing with me, Seb. Because if you've gone and done something like that, I swear you won't be waking up any time soon-"
"And there's the Dominic Cobb the world knows and somehow loves," Arthur retorts, not bothering to disguise the anger in his voice. "Deciding that one forged personality has any right over the other. How come you get to be the voice of god?"
"In this circumstance because I'm the guy with the gun," Cobb says, pulling out a Beretta that Ariadne hadn't seen him packing earlier, and pushing it against Arthur's temple. "So tell me exactly what you did so we can reverse it?"
"Well," Arthur says, "Ariadne pushed Bastian through one of the back doors, saying my name. We splintered into all three of us. Bastian committed suicide and then the two forged personalities had to wrestle to the death. It wasn't pretty."
"Ari," Cobb barks, "tell me your version."
"What he said," Ariadne says, shrugging. "Then Eames came in. He forged into Mal."
"I distracted Seb. Made Seb think Mal was alive, and Seb killed himself to be with her. Mother complex, see. We came back here, Arthur pretended to be Seb, and stole the ammo from your gun while you were blustering," Eames says.
"I," Cobb says. "What?"
Arthur holds up the handful of bullets that Ariadne hadn't notice him take.
"Mal was a thief before she tried forging," Arthur says, fully in his tone now. He hands Cobb the bullets. "She taught me how to pick-pocket."
Eames looks at Arthur, a sour expression on his face. "Shall I punch him or do you want the honors?"
Arthur pushes at the strands of hair in his eyes, annoyed, and brushes dirt off the jeans Seb dreamed him into like Cobb hasn't pushed him against the wall. "It's a dream," Arthur says, "I'm sure I'd be validated in stabbing him."
Cobb squints, and then says, slowly, like he's only just really getting what's going on. "...Arthur?"
"He's finally got it," Arthur says, sliding out of Cobb's grip like it's nothing at all. "I think my violent streak has become too predictable," Arthur informs Eames, like Cob isn't even there. "I need to mix it up a little. Put some variety into my threats."
"Try adding a garrotte to your repertoire. I always find that's a nice variation. Less blood to stain your impeccable suits, too," Eames returns conversationally.
"It's sort of nice to know that he'd try and shoot Seb if he'd done what we pretended he had," Arthur muses. "Seb wouldn't have been able to steal the bullets, either."
"It makes me more inclined to believe he's not one hundred per cent a bastard," Eames says. "Maybe more like ninety eight."
"I'd go with ninety eight," Ariadne chimes in, agreeing.
"I feel like I've completely lost hold of the whole situation," Cobb says, in what would be a humorous tone in any other circumstance. Amelia leans over and pats him on the arm.
"It's okay, Mr. Cobb. You'll catch up eventually," she informs him.
"Yup," Ariadne says into Cob's stunned silence, unable to help the smile, "Cobb just got owned by a nine year old."
"I can fire you," Cobb says.
"But it's Mr. Eames' team," Amelia pipes up, calmly twisting her long golden hair into a side plait.
Eames grins.
"Seriously, Cobb," Arthur says, his tone more sombre now, fully serious. "We'll talk about this later."
Cobb swallows hard, and nods. "For what it's worth, I know what we did to you was-"
"Necessary," Arthur says, and tilts his head. "A little crazy. Completely wrong."
Cobb nods. "All of the above."
"And you and Mal saved my life, and I'll never forget that," Arthur says. "But we're not okay."
Cobb swallows, and stays silent.
Arthur looks at him for a long moment before adding, simply, "We will be."
"Thank you," Cobb says, low and quiet.
"I'm sorry to interrupt your moment, but I may have perhaps overstated how easy this is," Yusuf interjects, sounding strained. "They're sort of climbing on top of each other now to get up. Look at that. Amelia, your subconscious is quite resourceful."
"And you, I need words with you," Arthur says, shaking his head at a still baffled Cobb as he moves over to Yusuf. "How could you let Eames take the second dose of somnacin?"
"Hey," Eames says, "I'm a grown adult, there was no letting-"
"He's pretty resourceful too," Yusuf says morosely. "Threatened to garotte me."
"Ah," Arthur says.
"Not that it matters," Yusuf adds, his tone brighter. "This is a dream."
Arthur frowns at him.
"Thank you, Captain Obvious," Eames sing-songs.
"I mean," Yusuf says, squinting at Eames for a moment before looking back at Arthur, "it's a dream. I can do things with the compounds I cannot do up there. It's quite a discovery. It's a nice lesson to learn."
"What lesson?" Ariadne says, joining him at the doorway to the tree house. Yusuf leans over to watch again. The blind projections are literally making each other into a staircase. Yusuf was right. It's pretty damn resourceful of them.
"That you mustn't be afraid to dream a little better," Yusuf says, shrugging. "Seriously, stop being lazy and come look already. It's like Amelia's subconscious has become organised now she's become much more aware."
They all peer out of the door then, at the blind carnival goers throwing themselves on top of each other, soundlessly flailing their arms and climbing over each other to try and make a pile-up to climb on to get into the treehouse for the dream intruders.
"Huh," Ariadne says, "weirdest extraction ever."
"I hear you," Cobb mutters, rubbing his chest again surreptitiously to check it's still there.
Something near the PASIV beeps.
"Time to go," Yusuf says.
They all turn to Amelia. She looks up at them, pleadingly. "Wake me up. Please. Wake me up. Don't leave me here."
Ariadne only has time to nod before the ground shifts beneath her feet for the last time.
#
She wakes with a jolt, having to blink rapidly to re-adjust to the bright daylight filling Amelia's bedroom. Ariadne pushes herself into a more upright position.
"You're back," Amelia's mom breathes, and her face twitches over to Amelia's still sleeping body. "It didn't work."
She sounds much too relieved. Ariadne's stomach curls, and she forces herself not to glare. She wants to.
She wants to rip her face off personally.
Ariadne waits until Cobb gets up from the chair with an apologetic expression. He slides around behind Amelia's mother, as if going for another piece of equipment, and then he casually slides the bolt on the door and pulls out his gun, pointing it directly at Amelia's mom.
"What the hell-" Amelia's father blurts, pushing out of the chair. Ariadne calmly removes her cannula, already knowing Eames and Arthur will catch him.
Sure enough, Eames pushes down on his shoulders, keeping him down in the chair.
"We didn't succeed in waking your daughter up," Eames says, leaning on the back of Amelia's father's chair, "because she's physically incapable of waking up."
"Rubbish," he says, his eyes moving to his daughter's sleeping body, "the doctors all say. She should be capable of waking up. Her body's healthy, it's just her mind-"
"Her body's not entirely healthy," Cobb says, coming up behind Amelia's mom. "Is it?"
"I- I don't know what you mean," Amelia's mom mutters, looking across at her husband, her eyes filling with tears.
"Munchhausen's by proxy," Eames says, straightening. He pulls one of Amelia's toy clowns from the shelf, and pulls its head off. Ariadne startles, but Eames just pushes his fingers into the stuffing and pulls out a bottle of pills. He throws it at Amelia's father, who catches it, his eyes widening at the sight of it. "Take those to a reputable doctor. They'll be able to wake your daughter up."
"We also suggest a quick divorce and criminal proceedings," Cobb adds.
"Graham," Amelia's mom starts, "I wouldn't, I- this is ludicrous, these are criminals-"
"How did you know?" Ariadne asks Eames quietly, while Cobb helps hold back Amelia's mother and Amelia's father rings for the police and an ambulance for Amelia.
"Been down in a dream with a dreamer pretty high on weed," Eames says. "It's the last time I saw a triple moon when we'd gone under during the day in a well-lit room. I knew none of you were high. Amelia was the only other option. Plus, when you passed me the clown earlier, I could feel the bottle. I had to be sure. I had to be sure Amelia knew what was going on."
"You saved her," Ariadne says, smiling at him.
"You saved Arthur," Eames says, his voice low and almost tremulous. He looks at with the most genuine expression she's ever seen from him. "If you hadn't pushed him through the door, I don't know if I could have gotten through to Seb like I did."
Ariadne swallows, because she doesn't feel like she did enough. She looks over at Arthur, who's checking the rest of the bedroom for any more hidden pills.
He's walking heel-to-toe, measured and precise. When she looks back at Eames, he's watching Arthur's feet too. Checking it's him. It might be a while before they can fully believe he's back.
But he is back, and Amelia's going to be fine, and that's more than any of them really believed going in.
#
When Ariadne gets the call from Amelia's father, she knows exactly what it means, and she's halfway through bullying Cobb out of the door to drive them to the hospital before the phone call even finishes.
It's just Graham who greets them at the hospital, leading them into the ward where Amelia is. Ariadne didn't expect to see Amelia's mother there. She's in custody. She took the whole getting arrested thing pretty calmly when the truth was fully out.
Sometimes the truth was an impossible thing to fight against.
"She asked to see you all," Graham tells them, as they approach the ward. "I think you've got a junior extractor on your hands here."
"We'll scare it out of her," Eames reassures him. Graham offers him a weak smile. Real full smiles are a long time away for him, Ariadne thinks.
Amelia remembers them impeccably, which is disturbing considering the dose of hallucinogenics that her mother had her on. It does show a certain propensity for dreamsharing. She likes Arthur the best. Arthur tries his best not to frown at her, but his smiles do look a little bit like constipation.
"She's getting tired," a nurse says pointedly after only ten minutes has passed.
"But-" Amelia protests.
"They'll come back another time," Graham says. Then he looks shiftily at the team. "Um, I mean-"
"We'll be back," Arthur says, warmly, patting him on the arm companionably. A little of the tension leaves Graham's shoulders at that.
"Bastian," Amelia calls, as they all turn to leave.
Arthur turns at that, and frowns slightly, and Ariadne's breath catches in her throat.
No. Surely not. Surely not- but Ariadne can see the color drain from Eames' face as the possibility of it hits him.
The possibility that this isn't over after all.
"Thank you for saving me," Amelia says. "I love Fantasia. Thank you for letting me play there too."
Play, Ariadne thinks. Well, it's probably a good thing Amelia doesn't remember all the running for their lives they did there.
"You're welcome," Arthur tells her. He shuffles out of the hospital room first, hands in his pockets, and Ariadne follows him.
Eames is quicker. As soon as they're out of sight, Eames turns Arthur, and slams him into the wall. He pulls a gun. "Leave him," Eames barks, glaring into Arthur's eyes. "Get the hell out. You said you'd leave him."
Arthur's eyes scan Eames' face like Eames is a piece of research that doesn't quite make sense. Then Arthur sighs, and in a fast blur of limbs, efficiently disarms Eames and reverses their position before Ariadne can even blink.
"I was pretending," Arthur says, "Jesus Christ, Eames. Sometimes you're the worst thing in my life."
"Your life is terribly less sad than I'd been assuming it must be, for me to be the worst thing in it," Eames returns.
Except now Ariadne has that inkling of what has been going on; she knows now that their words mean something else. Each insult is a checkpoint, an endearment disguised in a storm. I hate you - which anyone else would read between the lines of their words - means something else entirely. You're the worst thing is its complete opposite.
They both look up as Ariadne clears her throat, because once in the dreamscape was far more than enough. She's jealous of them enough as it is just seeing the way they interact, now she knows what each glance and barb actually means. Arthur returns Eames' gun, unapologetically reaching inside the waistband of Eames' pants to return the gun to its usual hiding spot.
"Come with me," Arthur says. "I've got something to show you both."
Ariadne and Eames share a curious look and follow him.
They're not too sure what to expect, so when Arthur steals Cobb's car keys, justifiably stranding him there for a while in Ariadne's opinion, it's strange that he takes them to the warehouse.
Odder still to see him setting up the PASIV.
"Arthur," Eames starts.
"It's just me," Arthur says. "This isn't dangerous." He sighs, his fingers stilling against the lid of the PASIV. He looks down at the clasps, like it's easier to speak if he's not looking directly at them. "I still have the somnacin-dependency. That illness isn't going to go away. So we need to try this sooner or later and I don't know who else I trust more to get me back." He looks up again, mouth pressed in a line. Ariadne nods and pulls up a lawnchair.
#
When they appear in the dream, they're in the Grassy Sea again. The sun is high, and the sky's free even of the paint-smear clouds.
Fantasia is still, without Bastian to bring it to full life, and Ariadne feels sad. She trails her hand through the soft, still grass and remembers him for a moment.
When she looks across at Arthur, he's not exactly smiling, but he's not exactly frowning either. Eames is standing loosely, his hands in his pockets, but there's a tension in his forehead. He doesn't like being here.
He doesn't like the reminder of how close they got to losing Arthur.
"Bastian left me something," Arthur says, slowly, not looking at either one of them, and he pulls something out of one his impeccably tailored pant pockets.
"AURYN," Ariadne breathes, as the intertwined snakes sparkle in the high Fantasian sun. Arthur does smile then, a soft and fond smile tempered with a little melancholy. It's elegiac and professional and so very Arthur that Ariadne's heart stutters in her chest, just for a moment. She might not be in love with him, something which is Eames' territory alone by the slightly awed way he's looking at Arthur and has looked at Arthur since they emerged from the dream, shaken and grieving, but she loves him regardless. If there's nothing else earned from this experience, it's that realisation.
Arthur looks at AURYN with consideration for a moment and closes his eyes.
"Love," Eames tries, sounding young and uncertain, "are you sure that's a good idea?"
"No," Arthur says, sounding a little insulted, "but when has that ever stopped me?"
"In real life, every moment. In the PASIV? Not so much," Eames allows.
Ariadne laughs, and it's in a blink that Fantasia changes.
The detail is breathtaking, exquisite. She trails her hand through the rough fronds of the Grassy Sea and feels the small creatures nose at her fingers, and across from her is the cry of the Purple Buffalo speeding across the plains, and a Tiny laughs as it wanders up to greet them.
It washes over her like a jumble of sound and brilliance and light, and she wants to laugh at it all and she wants to lie on her back in the grass and just stare at how alive this world is, and it's not Bastian doing it.
It's Arthur. She shares a look with Eames, who looks overwhelmed with it too.
"You've... imagination," Ariadne breathes, spinning around and taking it all in. She claps her hands, and wants to whirl around with Arthur, but he's still so reserved and stiff and Ariadne doesn't mind that, not one bit. She'd rather have Arthur back than anything.
Arthur tips her a small bow. "Hmmm. It's not like Bastian's. It's mine." He looks shyly across at Eames. "What do you think?"
"It's marvellous," Eames says promptly. "But I'm already starting to develop a complex."
"I never wanted you just for your imagination," Arthur says, low and quiet, while Ariadne's quietly appalled.
"I'm right here," she says, because the look they share is intimacy and love, and full of promise that Ariadne's okay with missing the fulfilment of.
"I had to be sure. Why I never said I- I had to be sure." Arthur presses on, his jaw tight, like if he doesn't say this now he might never. "I had to be sure it was my heart and no one else's."
"And the verdict?" Eames aims for casual, and misses. Even Ariadne can hear how serious the question is.
"It was mostly Seb," Arthur tells him with a straight face. "I think you're terrible." The lie is terrible. The truth is too much in his eyes.
"You're terrible too, love," Eames says. Ariadne would almost buy it, but every love has too much truth in it now Arthur's back.
"While we're here," Ariadne says, "I'm just going to go exploring." She nods her head in a random direction, eager to get away and leave them some private space.
"You don't have to," Arthur says, like the words have gotten stuck partway in his throat.
"I'm a Neverending Story geek," she says, using Seb's words mockingly. "When are we going to come again?" She pins a knowing look at him.
Never is unspoken but is clear regardless in the space between them.
"I'll catch you on the flipside," she says, pointing at the sky, their usual signal for real life. She doesn't know who came up with it, but it works to think of real life at the top, and as sleep takes them under each time, they go down a level, down and down. And isn't limbo the name of the last level before hell?
Eames throws her a salute and a dirty wink. Ariadne rolls her eyes, turns resolutely away from them, and just starts to walk.
If she hears a few sweet nothings carried on the gentle breeze, she locks their content away in her heart, warm and fond.
The PASIV's set on default for an hour. Five minutes topside, one hour down. It's a pity death's the only way to get back quicker. It's odd that they never think to dream up painless ways of death just in case they need an early exit.
Perhaps it's the pain that reminds them: dreamsharing is dangerous.
Terribly dangerous, she thinks again, thinking of Seb and Bastian and Mal.
Lost in her thoughts, Ariadne loses track of where she is, too busy thinking; it's just as well Arthur knows how to hold the map of Fantasia in his head too or the dream would probably have started to collapses a few minutes ago. It's when she's passing the still, black Hollow Giants that Xayide in Seb's book left abandoned near the City of the Old Emperors that she can centre herself again.
She stands and looks at the Hollow Giants and their stylised faces. They're half sunken into the ground at distended angles, worn by weather and age. Ariadne feels sad again at the memory of Bastian. How long he must have been trapped, wandering his dreams for ever and ever. He lived more than a life in the PASIV. His death is sad, but not painful.
Ariadne knows where she is now. She memorised the whole landscape. If she goes a little more to the South, she should come across a wooden sign in the shape of a hand, a sign pointing to the House of Change.
It's as good a destination as any, even though worry hits Ariadne as she ambles towards it - she recalls something vaguely from the book, that travellers avoided the Hollow Giants because of the curse on their land.
It's just a book, though. Beautiful, but nowhere near as amazing as what the PASIV is capable of. In a book, Ariadne's imagination has to do most of the work. In the PASIV, her imagination combines with all of the dreamers into a symphony. She trails her hand over the wooden hand-shaped sign, and follows its pointed finger to the House of Change.
The House of Change looks just like an ordinary house. It could have been transplanted from any suburb, any state. Ariadne thinks the architecture is maybe West Coast, 1960s. It's not her favorite design period, so she's not too sure.
It's not the outside that's supposed to be special. It's the inside, that changes depending on what you wish to find. Dame Eyola's domain. Dame Eyola, who Mal pretended to be. Dame Eyola, so goes the story, is the woman who nurtured Bastian for dizzy, carefree months, leaving him wanting for nothing.
Mal will have spent those months, creating Seb, creating a story to lure him back into the real world.
Ariadne walks up closer to the house, smiling at it. It looks like a family kind of house. She imagines she can almost hear the laughter of kids coming from inside it.
She can. It's not her imagination. Ariadne hurries closer to the windows. Fantasia may be full now of all its creatures, so she has no idea who it might be.
She's curious, delightfully curious, and she feels like she's almost swollen with it; so of course when she does see who's behind the window, it feels like she bursts wide open.
Ariadne halts and stares, and stares some more.
It's Bastian and Seb.
They're just sitting at a table, laughing and joking together over something. It looks like Seb's writing something, and Bastian's checking it over, making suggestions. Ariadne stares and stares, her heart in her mouth. She suppresses the cry she wants to make and stumbles back.
It's ridiculous. They can't be real. She has to get away. She has to warn Arthur that he's in danger. Or maybe she's overreacting and they're just ghosts, or-
She's been trying to escape quietly, but walking backwards is no easy trick, and she crashes into something that makes a sound - an old metal bucket and an abandoned, rusty trowel, like someone's been gardening. Cobb told her once about random items that turned up in the dreamscape. They're remnants of memories that the dreamers don't remember.
Ariadne looks up in fear to see if someone's noticed her racket. To her relief, Seb and Bastian haven't moved from the table.
To her muted shock, the front door flies open and it's Mal standing there.
She swallows. The House of Changes is Dame Eyola's house. It's not a real surprise, is it? But it is. Ariadne looks at Mal, eyes wide.
Mal just smiles at her, steps out of the house, and closes the door behind her.
"You're not real," Ariadne blurts out, louder than she meant to. The location picks up her voice, echoing it back at her like a cruel taunt.
"Who's to say what's real and what's not?" Mal asks her, tilting her head slowly, unnaturally. She isn't blinking. "You remember Seb and Bastian both, don't you?"
"Of course," Ariadne starts, and then pauses. "What does that mean?"
"It means people we love can live on in our memories," Mal says, stepping closer. Still not blinking. "In a way, you remember me also. When you walk the paths of your daily life, sometimes I live in your head as a memory, do I not?"
"I... suppose," Ariadne says, freaking out. It's weird enough that Mal is there, let alone that they seem to be having some sort of philosophical debate.
Maybe this Mal's a projection, not a creation of Arthur's new imagination. That makes more sense. She's part of Arthur's subconscious. Probably his guilt. Or maybe she's a projection of Ariadne's guilt.
Heaven knows she's been accumulating enough of that for a lifetime.
"In some way," Mal says, moving smoothly towards Ariadne, like she's almost gliding over the uneven grass, "memories are more real. We trust and distrust them in equal measure as we trust and distrust other humans in equal measure." Mal's close then, really close, so close that Ariadne can see her eyes, the two colors layering her iris, and she can feel Mal's breath on her cheek. Eames is right; they're very knowing eyes...
"Memories can be as real as flesh and bone," Mal whispers, moving in so her mouth is directly next to Ariadne's ear. "And now Seb and Bastian can live in your head too."
She pulls back and smiles at Ariadne, wider, wider. Ariadne stares at her, feeling lost.
Mal pulls back just far enough that Mal's face fills her vision. The soft wind around them drops suddenly. Arthur's dropped thinking of Fantasia in its entirety because the dream is nearly over.
Behind Mal, Seb and Bastian stare at Ariadne through the window.
Ariadne looks back at Mal. She's still smiling.
"Time to go," Mal says, sing-song smooth, and Ariadne wakes up.
#
Secrets aren't the only thing Dominic Cobb will attempt to extract.
Sometimes he'll try and extract other things. Just ask Arthur and Amelia sometime. Walking, living proof of Dom's blitzes of madness.
Ask James and Phillipa sometime in the future. They might have a different opinion of daddy's dreaming.
Sometimes Cobb will dream big and try the impossible.
It's always a gamble. Ask Eames sometime - he's the gambling expert. You win big or you lose big when you gamble big, and usually it's none too much of the former.
Sometimes Cobb wins big, like inception, and saving Amelia.
Sometimes Cobb loses big, like nearly losing Arthur. Like Mal.
It takes knowing how to see the big picture to gamble big in the extraction business, and Cobb's very good at seeing the big picture.
But sometimes when it's a big win, when you have to concentrate solely on the big picture to win something back like a love or a life on the brink, you can be so busy celebrating and focusing on the big details that you miss the little things.
Like how Ariadne walks out of the warehouse.
Toe-to-heel.
Like a dancer.
masterpost