She was never just God - she was the goddamned Architect.
The power to create labyrinths, to build the couldn'ts, the aren'ts, and the never-wills, to bend not just steel and glass but the very fabric of reality to her whimsy - no god could hold a candle to what she did for a living.
True, she had a hard time sleeping most nights in her shithole of an apartment that let in the most ungodly drafts, and who could forget the mess she'd made of the Latvian government when something had gone wrong in the Point Man department and they'd botched the job more horribly than anyone could have forseen. That wasn't her fault, though; her responsibility had been the bending-reality-to-her-fancy part, which she'd pulled off beautifully. It had been her best work.
She wonders now whether Miles would have been proud.
The three figures in the apartment remain motionless, haphazardly draped over armchairs and couches, where they had lain since she'd brought them.
The man sitting in a kitchen chair near the bathtub shifts in his sleep and murmers something, and she frowns. She glances into the bedroom as if to confirm that the hostage there is still alive (he is), then returns her attention to the man in the chair. His skin is so pale, if it weren't for the soft movement of his chest she might think he was dead.
As he blinks himself awake he becomes aware of the world one sense at a time. Smell - cinnamon, maybe, and carpet so old it ought to be rotting to pieces. Touch - the air is cold, the chair is hard, and he hasn't had a change of clothes in many, many hours if not days (he can tell because his arms prickle with the lack of fresh clothing). His shoulders are cramped. Sight - only the window, to his right, that looks at an empty street, a living room to his left carpeted with the most disgusting yellow shag he's ever seen, and a writing desk built into the wall in front of him. Sound - nothing, no neighbors upstairs or down, no refrigerator humming, no AC unit rattling. The silence presses in around him, making him far more uncomfortable than one really ought to be when one has been forcibly relocated to the most run-down apartment in the nation and possibly the world, confined to a small chair, and deprived of company.
Worn silk rubs at his wrists whenever he moves, and he can't lean forward far enough to see whether his ankles are similarly restrained (but a little wiggling confirms that they are). Still no sounds, not even people outside the apartment building. The back of his neck prickles with sweat (the sun is shining directly into his eyes), and suddenly he feels as though he is not alone.
"Having fun?" asks a sickly-sweet voice from somewhere close behind him. A coldness settles into his stomach and his hair stands on end. It can't be.
But of course, it is.
"I was worried you were lonely," says the voice on the back of his neck, and Ariadne steps around the chair, settles onto the writing desk with a crooked smile. "I thought you might miss me. Did you, Arthur?"
He ignores the question. "What is this?"
She tsks. "Pity, Arthur dear, you of all people ought to recognize this place. It has to have appeared in a dozen half-baked half-remembered dreams."
Now that she's drawn his attention to the details (it's always the details) the place does indeed tug at his memory like a forgotten lyric or something crucial overlooked. His gaze is drawn to the carpet - the ugliest yellow shag he's ever laid eyes on - and it triggers another memory of another half-remembered dream, one in which everything had gone wrong because Nash had fucked up the damn carpet...
"Is this your place now," he murmurs, eyebrows raised, glances around in renewed curiosity. This place has to be at least a million years old. She nods.
"Lovely, isn't it?"
"Why here, Ari?" She flinches at the pet name. "Why here, of all places?"
"Arthur? Arthur is that you?" calls a voice that, given the circumstances, is sweet, sweet music to his ears. "Thank the bloody Lord, I was beginning to-"
"Shut the hell up, Eames," she barks. For the first time Arthur notices she is holding his pistol. She's been clicking the safety on and off since Eames first piped up from somewhere out of sight, and now she aims it at the floorboards and pulls the trigger with a bang.
Eames shuts up.
Alright, so here's something a little bit different. Still well within my comfort zone - I don't really write fluff, although I devour it like it's ambrosia. Thanks for reading, and remember, reviews feed the empty plot! You have no idea how much each and every email means to me.