Disclaimer: I do not own Inception, its concepts, or its characters.
And yes, I suppose this does assume the pessimistic ending of the movie. My bad. And another thing, God frickin darn it, I did NOT mean for this to be an A/A fic. There are far, far too many of those for my liking. But their male/female friendship, like all the ones in my real life as well, just awkwardly tries to be more no matter what I do.
Hypnopompia
He's well dressed as always, but Ariadne can't see Arthur's shoes. They're hidden, along with the hems of his trousers, by a pile of translucent red dice. As she watches, he bends, selects one, and rolls it.
"Four," he says quietly, and she realizes that he's noticed her; Arthur is not one to talk to himself.
"It's time for the funeral," she replies. He turns to face her, and she sees that his hair is as neat as ever.
"How long?"
She'd asked for a minute in the waking world (real world, she corrects herself), which gave her twelve minutes in the dream. She'd been watching him at least for three.
"About nine minutes."
He meets her eyes for the first time in days. "Would you like me to hold your hand until the kick?"
She nods. When he steps towards her, dice scatter; every one lands with four dots facing up. And Arthur does hold her hand for the next nine minutes, until there's a terrible tipping feeling and they both open their eyes, separated by half a room. Then he stands, disconnects his IV, and leaves.
"I can't dream on my own anymore," he whispers to her in the car.
"It's been a bad few days."
"I suppose," he murmurs.
What kills Ariadne is the not knowing: not knowing what he saw, not knowing how long he was in there, not knowing if there was anything she herself could have done differently to save him.
Not knowing if Dominic Cobb killed himself because he thought that he was dreaming, or because he knew that he wasn't.
What she doesn't tell Arthur is that she isn't dreaming on her own either, anymore. She isn't even sleeping.
At the funeral she sits between Arthur and Yusuf; Saito and Eames are nowhere to be found. This shouldn't frustrate her, but it does. All her life she had longed to be a part of something, a part of a team, and now it's over and all they'd gotten to do together was the dirty work. Yusuf, he's still around because despite his line of work he's a genuinely nice guy, but she knows that soon they'll return to their respective continents.
As for Arthur, she can't decide if he's here because he wants to get in her pants or because she's the only other person alive who can miss Dominic Cobb the way that he can.
Yusuf leaves when the funeral ends, and Ariadne reaches for Arthur's hand without thinking, or looking. She finds it in his lap, unsurprisingly, but it's sitting there in the shape of a fist.
Gently she uncurls his fingers; his die, his totem, has left violent purple wedges in his smooth, pale skin. He stands, lets it fall; it lands with a clink on his metal folding chair, and its face shows four dots. Ariadne doesn't understand, but when he turns to her she puts her arms around him and pretends not to feel the tears dripping into her hair.
"In your dream, all the dice landed on four too. And that's what it's supposed to be? I don't get it."
"Ariadne," Arthur murmurs. "In my dream, every side was a four. They had no choice."
"Trying to convince yourself that that was the real world."
Arthur nods, and even as she's trying to comfort him she gets the feeling that he's the chaperone here, he's the one in charge. He won't let her wipe the tears from his face, won't let her take the die from the palm it's most certainly bruising. "Cobb's gone, Ariadne. Cobb's gone and I feel like I'm dreaming." He turns away when she puts her hand to his cheek, and it breaks her heart when he has to cough a little before speaking. "I just want any world to be the real world."
Then he's back in control, and somehow his face is now dry and his eyes are now steady, and he stands and stretches and hands her the die.
"Fool me if you can, architect," he says softly. "At this point, I wouldn't care."