"I'm not dying," Arthur rasps, pushing Cobb's arm off his shoulders. He somehow manages not to stumble, but he is unable to straighten out, shoulders hunched slightly to ease the pain as he stands on his own, Cobb's fingers trailing unfelt along his sleeve before slipping off.
"That's the problem," Cobb grinds out, the fine lines at the corner of his eyes and brows bunched together with worry. He glances back behind them and notes the deluge of cement and bricks and debris blocking the doorway, "At least we're safe from the projections. They won't be able to get past that barrier and there is no other entrance to this particular hallway."
"What could have caused that?" Arthur asks, more to distract Cobb, since he can come up with a few hypotheses on his own. He takes a moment to look around as he tries to control his breathing. It is Eames's dream, and while they'd had a practice run in it, there weren't many opportunities to admire the architect's handiwork. There isn't much to observe in this particular hallway though – it's nothing more than a run-of-the-mill facility, but Cobb always manages to include the strangest landmarks in his designs, like the abstract, warped clock plastered on the ceiling, looking wildly out of place in a hallway that is a dull color unable to decide between gray and periwinkle. The walls seem to stretch out into nothing, interspersed here and there with doorways that Arthur knows leads to rooms empty save for whatever the mark has filled them with. He has to close his eyes to concentrate on himself for a moment, because his lungs don't want to cooperate with him, and no matter how many breaths he takes, he doesn't feel like he's getting quite enough air.
"I suspect something shook in the real world," Cobb murmurs speculatively, "The dream is still going, so it must have been a temporary disturbance."
Arthur clears his throat a few times to rid it of the dust lodged there, but he stops quickly when the breaths he expels coat his hand in a fine spray of blood. Cobb continues talking in the background.
"There've been a lot of tremors lately; it's possible that we just had one in the…"
Cobb's voice trails off abruptly, and Arthur lowers his hand to hide it, but it's too late. When his eyes shoot over to Cobb's, they are transfixed on his mouth, and Arthur self-consciously wipes it, holding back a wince as it just smears blood on the back of his hand and mouth. He feels himself sway and clenches his thighs and calves to keep himself upright.
"Show me," Cobb commands, eyes flashing as he takes a step that brings them infinitely closer. Cobb is much larger than Arthur, a fact that they never notice or have ever had the necessity to acknowledge. It is unlike Eames and Cobb's relationship, which hinges on a certain amount of bulk and intimidation when things get particularly heated. Cobb and Arthur use words, yells, gestures. But Arthur feels it now, in Cobb's stance, how he is unconsciously trying to force Arthur to yield to his orders since he knows full well that in most circumstances, Arthur will refuse.
"It's fine," Arthur tries, even as he takes stock of the intense pain making his muscles tense, and the way his head swims slightly. But the job is not done.
"Arthur, the projections have been taken care of. They can't get past here. All that's left for us is to wait for Eames to finish and get the kick. There's no point in you suffering the whole time," Cobb plants his hands on his hips, shoulders tense, daring Arthur to deny his logic. If there's one thing Arthur respects, it's logic. The problem starts when things aren't necessarily decreed by logical choice. I don't want to leave you in the dream on your own.
But it hurts. It hurts and he can't breathe right. He did get impaled by a steel iron wire when the dream rattled and heaved and he fell, he supposes. Maybe Cobb is onto something after all.
"Where's your gun, Arthur?"
Arthur frowns, reluctant for a moment to reach under his coat for the gun with his filthy hands, but then remembers that they're in a dream and it doesn't matter. He slips his hand under his coat, meeting nothing but his own warm skin under a layer of clothing. He looks at Cobb as he presses his lips into a thin line. "It's not there. It must have fallen when I fell, or when we were running away from the tremor."
Cobb curses, muttering something about knowing he should have brought his own gun.
Arthur looks up, calm as always, despite the fact that he finds he has to inch a hand out to the wall behind him for support. "Look, it's fine. I'll just wait until the kick, there's nothing else to be done, Cobb."
Cobb grits his teeth. "It's not fine. God, I don't like to—" he runs his hands through his hair and paces once back and forth, "Jesus, Arthur, you're clearly in pain—"
"I beg to differ."
"With what?"
"The 'clearly'. My poker face is much better than that," Arthur says reasonably. There's no way that the pain is leaking through his face as much as Cobb says it is. Of course, Cobb knows Arthur inside and out, and even the slight tension of Arthur's jaw is probably a dead giveaway to him.
Cobb rolls his eyes, "Well, if you're still up for being snarky and sarcastic, you can't be too badly off," he grumbles. Arthur would try to put on an innocent expression, or argue the with the implications about his personality in that statement, he makes the mistake of taking a deep breath at that moment and is horrified to hear a wet, rattling noise much like sucking through a straw. He begins choking, and it is the oddest sensation, because as opposed to the feeling of liquid running down his windpipe, this seems to ooze upwards, spreading from the bottom up through his lungs.
Cobb is at his side immediately, rubbing his back in firm, quick strokes as Arthur bends forward and attempts to clear his throat, all sorts of undignified hacking sounds bursting from his mouth as well as spurts of less pretty things. He hears him mutter some nonsense, unable to distinguish whether they're words of comfort or dismay. When he can get a semi-dry breath in, he finally relents and allows Cobb to lower him to the floor, reluctantly conceding that the sudden lightheadedness that attacks him won't let him stand up any longer. He sits on the cold, soullessly-white linoleum floor, legs slightly bent out in front of him, doing his best to appear as in control as he can, because the pressure of Cobb's fingers tell him that he's already beating himself up over this.
There is a blooming splotch of blood on Arthur's right side that has managed to soak through his undershirt, dress shirt, vest and now his suit, and Cobb's eyes are wide as he focuses on it.
"Stop overreacting," Arthur manages to grunt. "It's just a dream, remember." Cobb forgets, sometimes. Or more accurately, gets lost in this faux reality more easily. For Arthur, it's easy to brush off the dreamworld and focus on reality. There's a different taste and texture in the real world— more detailed, dirtier, bleeding into everything else—the air, the smoke, the background noise. In dreams, tastes and textures and colors are almost overwhelmingly vivid and pure. But for Cobb, it's easy to get lost in that purity and place it on a silver pedestal, easy to admire and wish to emulate.
Cobb's eyes narrow, "Dreams are no longer just dreams, Arthur."
There is a certain bitterness to his words, a certain amount of pain and awareness. And Arthur does understand—just because this is a dream doesn't mean that the pain he feels right now won't be remembered, or that it's not just as intense as it would be in the real world. Just because it's a dream doesn't mean it can't haunt their waking hours as well. But the separation is still there, and Cobb has always had a hard time with that. He doesn't respond to Cobb, partly because he disagrees, and partly because it's wiser for him to conserve his breath.
It becomes apparent that this is going to be a very painful few hours. Every breath Arthur takes is like a cheese grater scraping away at his lungs. And he'd been banking on bleeding to death, but the badge of courage across his chest expands proportionally as opposed to exponentially. The blood has begun clotting around the wound, keeping the blood from spreading much further. He's sure he can still count on some amount of internal bleeding, but a time estimate is out of his range.
Cobb sits beside him, and within a few moments, Arthur's head falls to rest on his shoulder.
And Cobb watches.
He always has to wonder – pain is in the mind, yes. But they have never been shot in real life. How does the mind know what kind of pain to subject itself to? They travel through the world of dreams like wide-eyed children, enchanted, eager to mold and admire, adapting to it and becoming proficient in this language of willpower and imagination. But like children, they travel ignorant of its true depth, of its implications and complexities. There are still so many things that Cobb does not understand about his mind and its workings, and what dreams mean.
Right now, he does not understand how Arthur's body knows to become pale, knows to dull Arthur's eyes and hitch his breath in his throat, and make that horrible, disgusting wheezing sound at each feeble gasp. How it knows to bead Arthur's forehead in cold sweat and give his lips that faint grey tinge that Cobb is sure will turn to blue eventually.
"Arthur," Cobb pleads desperately. Arthur's head lolls towards him, and Cobb checks his watch. It's been half an hour. They still have another hour and a half to wait before the kick, and Arthur looks miserable, his brows scrunched and his jaws locked tight, and his fingers gripping his jacket lapels, clenching and unclenching there, wrinkling the fabric, because he can't touch his wound. Cobb feels ill imagining the pain Arthur is going through. It makes him sigh and fret and dig his fingers through his hair. It's almost as bad as watching his children in discomfort, invoking the same need to fix it and make it all better.
Arthur makes a noncommittal noise, something he'd surely be horrified at were he in any state to pay mind to his articulation. Cobb slides his fingers, carefully, over the clammy skin of Arthur's knuckles. They're cold to the touch.
"Arthur, please. Let me send you back up. I can't stand watching you die like this."
Arthur raises his eyes, opaque chocolate orbs, and frowns. "No."
"You're not doing me any favors by staying," Cobb grunts, trying for another tactic since Arthur apparently doesn't give a shit about Cobb begging. "If things somehow don't go according to plan, you're not going to be anything more than a liability."
"Even…. 'f all I can do's distract 'em…" Arthur mumbles, "S'good enough for me."
"Arthur." Cobb is reduced again to desperate pleas. "I'm sure you're doing this out of… loyalty or bravery or pride." Arthur shakes his head feebly, but Cobb ignores it and continues, "But damn it, you realize I'm going to have nightmares about watching you bleed to death in front of me for years, don't you?"
Arthur's fingers twitch, going still on the lapels of his jacket, where the faint edges of the oxidized blood stain have now reached. He blinks slowly, and Cobb can see when something, shame perhaps, or realization, floods into Arthur's understanding.
"I'm not…" he begins, and his voice is crackly and like rubbing two pieces of paper together. "It's jus' a dream, Dom…"
"I know that, Arthur." Cobb takes his hands, ignores the cold and the flakes of dried blood and the dampness of fresh blood. He focuses on the fine, solid bones of Arthur's hands, the knobs of his knuckles and the fine hairs at the base of each finger. "But this is what it would look like in real life too, and I don't… I've seen enough, Arthur, I saw Mal's body splatter to the ground, I can't—I can't handle adding yours as well." The admittance is costly, and Cobb feels a part of his mind breaking loose and floating away, to that dollhouse where Mal's reality was kept, to memories of a hotel that he revisited over and over again. "Arthur, don't you dare put me through the death of someone I love again."
Arthur is staring at him with a half-dazed expression. Cobb is not sure how much of that is due to blood-loss and how much of it is due to Cobb's words. For his part, Cobb feels a bit defensive. It's not like they don't know how much they mean to each other.
"…Alright." Arthur closes his eyes, and when he opens them, the dullness is replaced by that tenacity that has gotten them through many a sleepless night planning and scheming and praying. "But can you do it?"