AN: I feel like this is way, way too melancholy for me. Oh well. I'll get around to Eame's coquettishness at some point or another. And there will be tie-porn. and cream puffs. and general verbal abuse of arthur. good fun.
Ariadne smiles blandly at the man standing next to her, eyes sliding past to sneak a glance at the rest of the team, careful to keep her eyes moving, always moving. She has to be careful not to let them rest on anyone, and she has to physically restrain herself from jostling people out of the way. There are just so many of them, pressing in on her. They're different from projections. Muggier and more dense, less sharp and more soft, squishing against her. She is serene, she reminds herself. Just another rich college student home for a funeral. She tries not to glance at Eames, Yusuf, the pack of frightening Asian men that surround Saito. She reaches for the heavy gold pawn in her pocket for what feels like the thousandth time. When she smooths her thumb over the nick in it, the weight on her chest lessens. Its all real.
Across the busy baggage claim, totems roll in hands, dice are dropped, and breaths are released. They are home.
break
Arthur gets the first call at four in the morning. He's awake for the chiming of the phone. Fuck, he's been awake consistently the entire night, not even tiring as he does endless, menial tasks. His apartment has never been so clean, and he's never done that many push ups before. Restlessness crawls beneath his muscles, collecting in a tense knot at the base of his neck. They aren't just collecting, they are breeding. He thinks he even has one that is in the exact shape of a pregnant woman. So the phone is welcome. Unlike anyone else receiving a call at four AM, he appreciates the disturbance. Another thing to keep him busy until he passes out from lack of sleep.
"Hello." A statement, not a question. He doesn't say his name. Best not to give away information.
"Arthur. Your totem. It still works?" Arthur releases the breath that he didn't realize he'd been holding.
"Cobb, go cuddle with your kiddies. Its four in the morning."
There is silence on the other end.
"I just had to check. I couldn't...It just can't be, Arthur."
"Can't be real?"
"Yes."
"I'm still rolling ones, Dom. Get some rest."
On the other end, Cobb chokes with relief. Reassurance. Back to reality.
"You haven't heard from anyone else?"
Arthur rolls his neck. Fuck. He's got muscle knots on top of muscle knots.
"We aren't supposed to contact anyone after a job. You know that. Are you alright, Dom? Seriously."
"Yes. Sure. Forget it. Sorry to bother you so late."
"Cobb. Are. You. All. Right?"
"Fine. Really. I'm fine."
Arthur shakes his head and hangs up the phone. Thats what they've all been telling themselves.
break
Eames stretches out languidly on the hotel room bed. Not bad, this one. At least no cockroaches as big as your goddamn face. And free shampoo, which his locks are in desperate need of, to say the least. He grimaces at his reflection. He looks like he's been run over by a brick shithouse on wheels.
A little worse for wear, then. And he'll go without gel for a day, despite the fact that he'll look like a fucking hamster without it. Still, the hotel is an okay find for a last-minute booking on the twenty dollars he scrounged out of his pocket (Siato would transfer the pay later). its a decent middle-of-the-night-hookup joint. In fact, there's not even some couple fornicating in the room beside him, so he might get a decent night's rest, if he's lucky.
He pads gently over to the dresser and briefly considers pouring a glass of the amber liquid he bought off a homeless man two blocks down. Instead he shrugs and tosses it straight from the bottle down his throat, only coughing a little as it burns his esophagus into little pieces of charcoal. He smiles . Anything that he worried about from that day is gone. He's a fairly rich man now, thanks to Saito, and everything turned out okay. He's good at this, the part where all his worries are cut and released like so many balloons. The part where he sleeps easy when others, like Cobb, toss in their beds until the wee hours. The part where he can still dream.
Slipping into a sleeveless t-shirt, he flops onto the bed, and promptly passes out, blessing the saint who invented moonshine.
break
Yusuf has never had trouble waking up. Its in his description. To keep so many people constantly dreaming, he has to believe in his reality. And believe he does. He prays before going to sleep, tossing his totem between his fingers like a rosary. His wife hugs him, leaves him tea and goes to sleep, leaving him to his routine. She knows better than to speak and tiptoes out as the tea steam curls his hair with fanatic energy, his lips forming words for the ears of the unseen. He falls asleep with his totem in his fingers, slumped to the ground as if in submission to his god. He doesn't dream, and it doesn't bother him in the slightest. The dreams will come if they want to.
break
Saito never used to dream. Its one of the reasons he is so good at protecting his subconscious. He has only ever remembered three dreams in his life, apart from the ones simulated for extraction.
The first one, he is small, curled in the lap of a large cat. It licks his face, its tongue as big as he is, and he screams, his brain looping the dream. Again and again he is scraped raw by a massive, disgusting, wet tongue, suffocating, being curled up, afraid of being eaten until finally the colossal Siamese gets hungry and devours him. And he wakes up.
He had the dream a grand total of four times before ordering the maid to drown Morita, his mother's multi-thousand dollar albino Siamese, in a river.
The second, he is a teenager. He has been in love with the girl for approximately four weeks, three days, and eleven hours. They have had two conversations, each about the weather, and that is all his pubescent mind needs. She works in the grocery store he passes on the way back and forth from school and is taller than him, slender, and impossibly lovely. He wakes up sweat slicked and angry with himself and humiliated, throwing away seven pairs of sheets with the excuse to his mother that they were too rough. At the last set of sheets, he uses his wealth and none too bad looks to coax the girl into letting him live the experience out in real life, in his real bed, between his brand new, Egyptian-cotton, thousand thread count sheets. He dumps her as soon as the dreams go away. He lets her keep the sheets.
The third dream that he remembers, he is thirty four. His first child has just been born. And he doesn't know her name. He doesn't acknowledge her presence. Because, remember, she isn't his. He has no children. Not with this woman. He is the face of the company, married to the company. No room for a real wife and definitely no room for a screaming, lovely, pink-faced baby demanding his love. He sends child support every week. Enough for her to have anything in the world. Anything in the world. He falls asleep and the baby stares down at him, doe-eyed and looking just like her mother.
"Everything I want." she says.
He wakes with a start and an oath, guilt cackling sulfurous breaths in his stomach . The next day, he starts looking to find a woman to marry for good, if only for the dreams to stop. But this one he can't just erase, and it takes two years before it fades completely.
So when Saito gets off the plane, and he remembers this dream, he knows that the job he orchestrated really was just what he thought- a dream.
Still, when he gets off the plane, he palms the switchblade carefully until he finds the button. He presses down, and smiles as the lining to his silk suit tears.
break
Cobb always has trouble believing in good things. It's why he snatched Arthur up so quickly- he's the only person Dom's ever met who believes in the worst more than Dom does(which is why he's such a good point man). He has never been a religious man, and he never will be. Cobb is not what one would call a satanist, per say- he's not a worshiper of the worst. He is simply a believer in it. Mal used to call him out on it. He was her melancholy man. And he was her worst.
His children take his breath away in one fell swoop. He can no longer believe in the worst when he is looking in the face of the best.
And yet, he still compulsively rotates towards it. It can't be real, he thinks. It is the thought of the worst that drives him, and makes him twitch, haunts him like he haunted Mal. It is what pushes him to call Arthur about five times in a row until Ariadne calls him on Arthur's behest and tells him to shut his stupid gob, and it is what prompts him to- horrors- hug his father like a small boy.
He gravitates towards the worst. But luckily for Dom Cobb, he is surrounded by the best, to catch him when he falls.
fin
Another AN: please do indulge me in reviews, I'd love to hear what everyone's favorite lines were from either the story or the origional movie. Also, or your general info: I did not really consider Yusuf to have any particular religion. I simply loved the image of his totem being used as a sort of rosary. So please do not think be racist for making him appear to be Muslim simply because he is Middle-Eastern. I feel like his totem is probably something totally beautiful, like a picture his kid drew of something slightly inappropriate. And I feel like Saito practically HAS to have a freaky-ass totem like a switchblade, or a butterfly knife. It's required.