Notes: Team fic focused primarily on Ariadne with a strong secondary focus on Eames and Arthur. Warnings for obscene language and discussions of child abuse (but no depictions, nor are any canon characters directly involved.) For reference, this fic is currently complete on my computer, but I'm posting it in chunks it's all formatted for LJ and I don't have the patience to re-format all at once. Also, it's structured in chapters, so I may as well make use of the function.
I.
"Ah, Eames, thank you for joining us," Arthur says dryly as the hotel room door shuts behind the forger. Ariadne smiles at him; Yusuf waves.
"Not my fault this time, darling. My flight was delayed."
"I see. Anyway, sit." Arthur gestures to a chair and pulls out his briefcase. "It's good to work with you three again. The job is simple extraction – Eames, I was hoping you'd be the extractor for this, since I can't find anyone free whom I've worked with personally, and I don't want to risk this one with an unknown factor."
"Fine by me, especially since I wouldn't work with Cobb again if my life depended on it," Eames drawls. "But if it's simple extraction, why don't you want to work with a stranger? Just anxious?"
"No. But it's a delicate job." He sighs and leans forward slightly. "The mark is six."
For a moment there is absolute silence except for the hum of the air conditioner. Then Eames practically explodes out of his chair.
"What the actual fuck, Arthur?" he snarls.
"Calm down!" Arthur doesn't look at all intimidated. "It's for her sake, not anyone else's. Our client is the father. The mother abused him. He's in the process of divorce. He's worried the mother is abusing the girl as well, but if he raises the issue and it turns out to be false then he'll definitely lose custody. He wants evidence beforehand." He stands. "We'll be helping the kid, Eames. Come on."
Ariadne bites her lip, glancing from one man to the other in the thickening tension. She doesn't understand what's going on here, what's up with this sudden attack of warped morals, but Arthur looks as close to pleading as she's ever seen him, hands spread out and eyes entreating. Eames's white-knuckled fists are preternaturally still and his eyes are flickering frantically between Arthur and the door and the pictures – typical school pictures of a gap-toothed redhead in yellow – spilling out of the briefcase.
"The father is desperate, Eames," Arthur says, stepping closer, and then his voice drops and Ariadne can't catch what he says next, but it must matter because Eames collapses back into his chair and buries his face in his hands.
"Fine, I'll do it," he says, muffled but intelligible. "But you owe me for this one, dammit."
"I understand," Arthur says, adjusting his sleeves, and Ariadne wants to scream. But then he looks over at her and says "Ariadne, can you construct an environment where the girl will feel safe?" and she shakes it off.
"Yeah," she says, "definitely. What kind of things does she like?"
The day of the heist finds them waking, as expected, into a field of peonies and hand-sized roses. Ariadne shakes out her velvet skirts and glances around; Eames, she finds, is kneeling beside her.
"I'm not sure any real flowers have ever been so soft," he comments, rubbing a petal between his fingers. "Not, however, that I'm complaining."
"Vastly preferable to realistic flora," Arthur agrees, seemingly materializing out of the ferns. "In character, please, Mr. Eames."
"Certainly." Ariadne blinks and then Eames is replaced by a man several inches taller and a good ten years younger, fair-haired and dressed in armor far brighter than any real knight's could possibly have been. "Let's get this show on the road, shall we?" He glances around. "Where exactly have you brought us in?"
"It looks like south-southeast of the castle." Ariadne is the dreamer, but Arthur answers anyway, pointing to the gleaming towers and snapping pennants just visible beyond the gentle hill. "So that means the woods are –"
"That way," Ariadne interrupts, gesturing. "And that's where she'll put anything she considers bad."
"Evil lives in the woods, yes, dearie, we remember," Eames sighs; it sounds extraordinarily strange coming from the storybook prince's mouth. "God, Arthur, it's like having another you."
"I don't act like him!" she protests, folding her arms.
"You didn't know him when he was your age," Eames chuckles, and Arthur ducks his head. Ariadne nods noncommittally and turns on one heel, crushing a glossy daffodil as she does.
"Hey, wait!" Arthur calls, jogging a few feet to catch up. "I take point, it's my job. You do yours."
She nods, wincing, and steps aside. Her job is to stay safe and out of the way, so that if Arthur gets killed then Eames will still have time to work. That's all.
The woods are uncomfortably far away, although something about the fairy-tale influence of the dream seems to preclude blisters. The landscape shifts quickly from Disney through Perrault straight to Grimm: briar-covered trees, thick and dark enough that the shade is murky. Eames has to cut them a path before long; that summons bristling wolves with distended teeth, slinking through the bushes. Arthur dreams himself a sword and goes back-to-back with Eames, all flickering steel and silent blows amid the snarls. Ariadne is fairly sure that swordplay doesn't work like that, but she says nothing, just stands by the tree like a good heroine.
They find the cottage a little bit later; it's an architectural nightmare of crumbling stone and moldy thatch. Arthur sticks his head around the doorframe, empty except for a decades-old encrustation of cobwebs, and then nods to Eames.
"Wish me luck," the forger says, sighing, and then unsheathes his sword and steps forward, gleaming. Ariadne peeks through the window, ignoring Arthur's disapproving stare. There isn't much to see; Eames glances around and then heads straight for the dust-covered trunk in the corner. She can't make out what he finds there, but when Eames comes back out the door his hands are shaking.
"If that woman gets custody of her daughter I am personally going to have her shot," he bites out, and drops back into his own skin faster than Ariadne can follow. His shirt is rumpled and his eyes are bloodshot, which they weren't coming into the dream; Arthur holds out a pistol to him without comment.
Back in the hotel room, Eames doesn't look any better. "It seems psychosomatic reactions continue after leaving the dream, my friends," he says, half-snatching the PASIV line out of his wrist. He glances at the little girl on the other bed, curled in on herself, and half-runs for the bathroom before Ariadne even has her own line out. She recognizes the choked splatters and looks to Arthur for an explanation.
"I hadn't thought this would bother him so much," she says tentatively. Arthur sighs.
"He's fond of children. Got quite a few nieces and nephews, actually." He glances at the bathroom door. "And a daughter in Kent."
"What?" she yelps. "He's got – are you - Eames? Really?"
"Yes," Eames says from the bathroom doorway, and she nearly jumps out of her skin yet again. "Kylie. She turns five in a month."
She's still too far thrown to be embarrassed. "But – you with a kid, of all people –"
"Unexpected, I know. Her mother is one of my oldest friends. Kylie was the result of too much alcohol, desperation, and some very deep denial about our respective sexualities." She thinks that's supposed to be a lopsided smile, but it just looks pained.
"But you don't – I mean, you never mentioned, or – don't you, I don't know, I mean, why aren't you –"
"I see her whenever I can. Her mother got her shit together and married her girlfriend several months into the pregnancy, for which I am forever grateful, but the situation was awkward enough that I decided it would be better not to be around too often. I visit when I can – birthdays, holidays, the odd weekend."
"And he talks about her at great length whenever he gets drunk in private," Yusuf adds, packing up the PASIV in the corner. "And buys her things every time he has money to spare."
Eames shrugs, not nearly as nonchalantly as he usually would. "What can I say? I make an excellent doting uncle, and I'd be a horrible father."
"I doubt that," Arthur says; Yusuf just snorts, one eyebrow raised pointedly. Ariadne glances between the three of them and wishes she knew what to say.