Title: Pictures don't lie
Author: swamp_ophelia, swamp_ariadne on LJ
Pairing: Ariadne/Cobb
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: Minor for the movie, angst. Unbeta'd.
Disclaimer: Inception and its characters are owned by Chris Nolan. Plot points are inspired by the classic noir movies such as the Maltese Falcon, etc. All events, institutions, regulations, locations, persons are either fictitious or used fictitiously.
Summary: Dom has to race against time before a girl becomes truly lost. AU. Prompted by StrangeLittleSwirl/thursdays_girl in inception_kink comm in LJ, prompt is "Film Noir".
Author's Note: Please forgive me but I ended up crossing Dom over with the Marshall in Shutter Island. That accent is pretty much the quintessential hard-boiled detective voice in my head, so I ended up going with that. Hopefully this explains the strange voice I have here for Dom and hopefully it doesn't make it OOC.
Dames. They order you around, expect you to follow them about, and be happy in the doing of it. The last dame I was with, she was a true class act. She hated being called a dame – she was foreign-born, so she insisted she was a lady. Truth be told, she was a hell of a lady. Mile long legs and soft smiles. And then… I don't want to think about it. Remembering her, well it just drives me up the wall.
Apparently not just me though.
I've been in the Detecting business these last couple of years, after I got kicked out of the Force because of the… well, the Incident. I digress. My former partner Sgt. Eames, well, now he's Detective Eames you see. All shiny golden badge of justice he is. He got fed up with my drunken ass and stopped being all consoling and like.
"Cobb, you gotta start thinking about living. You have two mouths to feed and it won't do them any good to see their Da dead like their Ma," drawled Eames as he takes another empty bottle of rum from Cobb's nearly comatose form.
"Don't talk about her," Cobb barely slurs out. The world is spinning, spinning like a top and he thinks he's on it while he's all sprawled out on the carpet of his living room floor.
"I'm sorry partner, but I can't recommend lifting your suspension the way you are right now. Maybe… maybe you want to go back to France and be with her family? Take the kids with you?"
Cobb's bleary eyes become sharp, his steely glare having little effect on the other man. "Why can't you understand? She… she… I don't know what I did. Why didn't I see it coming Eames? Why did she jump? Maybe I've been working too many cases.."
"That is enough! I know you don't want to hear this but she was disturbed. She has been disturbed a long time…"
"Eames! She was not insane!," Cobb's eyes were bloodshot as he grabbed onto Eames' lapels and shook him, nearly pulling Eames down to the floor. "She wasn't one of those depressed people those psychoanalysts call it, she wasn't..."
"Get a grip Cobb, and when I say that I don't mean tear my coat off," rebuffs Eames, taking Cobb's hands off his person. "I've had it with you, I'm only trying to help you on account of James being my godson, but you need to start coming back to reality. You have to stop thinking you're living in a nightmare that you can't wake up from, or else your life will become a nightmare."
Eames turns and walks out of Cobb's apartment and it is the last Cobb has seen of him in three years.
Now, it looks like Detective Eames is angling to get my assistant, former rookie beat cop Arthur Hayes. Well, the kid's loyal, but what can you expect? The kid's practically my brother.
And there he is, bringing in the latest copy of the Times and greeting Mrs. Jones all before actually closing the office door.
Yup, my office door. The door to the office, the office I practically live in these days, since Stephen and Marie fought for custody and have taken my darlings James and Philippa to Nice. They told me if I could scrounge the money to vacation there for the summer, then maybe they'd let me get them back. That was their code for going back to the Force and being a legitimate cop with benefits again, but I couldn't do it. No one believes me you see, not even my partner and not even Arthur, when I say that there was a bit of foul play with my Mal dying. She jumped, but no happy woman in her right mind would do that. And she was happy… the alternative is unthinkable. She was happy.
"Hey Cobb," Arthur calls out, his shadowy outline fuzzy on the glass door that separated my messy, inner sanctum with Arthur's organized reception area. "Did the two o'clock show up today?"
"Hmm…?"
"The appointment with the client? You know, clients that fund this operation and keep a roof over our heads?"
"Don't sass me boy," I respond, squinting against the harsh incandescent lighting when I open the door and see a mildly amused Arthur peering at me.
"It's 2:15. Cobb… did you answer the door when the doorbell rang?," Arthur looks at me all innocent.
I swear the boy is giving me lip. Technically, he's a grown man but his purple argyle sweater vests don't help his cause. He'd been taking to wearing three-piece suits which I couldn't understand how he could afford considering I hadn't paid him since the last job. Maybe that explains the return of the argyle.
"I didn't hear the doorbell Arthur. You couldn't entertain the possibility that our client is late?", I answer, barely concealing my smirk. It doesn't take much to rile up my assistant.
"Which I apologize for," drifts a silken voice behind Arthur.
We both turn and see this bulky, Asian man, all dressed in what looks like an outfit of his native country. Couldn't tell what it is, except that the black robes looked like it could barely keep out the chill.
"My ship had been unavoidably delayed," he explains. "I would have been here as expected, except that I had to rectify the situation with the cruise line."
"I hope that the waters hadn't been stormy," offers Arthur, "Mr…?"
"You may address me as Mr. Saito. The waters had been a bit choppy, but other than having to purchase the line everything went well," he responds lazily, leisurely sitting down in one of the chairs in the reception area.
"Did you just say you purchased a line?", I asked, not exactly sure if I had woken up on the right side of the sofa.
"Yes, I purchased the cruise line."
I don't know what to say to that.
"Mr. Saito sir, since you're obviously a magnate of some sort I'm not exactly sure why you're in my office with an appointment when clearly you have the means to hire better men," I said, all the while I had taken a glass from my bar and poured my guest a brandy that's been decanting for God knows how long. I offer him the glass and he takes it politely, his eyes boring into mine.
"I came to you because you had been recommended," Saito answered. "You had worked before in an experimental division in your police force, one that closed down when you left."
Arthur and I eyed each other, and we knew now why this man sought us, me, out.
"Sir, I don't work those kinds of cases anymore. I just do basic detection, like if you need me to find out if your wife is cheating on you or if you suspect your accountant or business partner is skimming off the top. I don't do…"
"Extractions?," Saito cuts me off. I really hate it when they do that.
"Interrogations, no sir I don't do that," I correct him. Arthur looks like he's looking for the Colt under his desk, his hand inching towards his drawer. I catch his eye and shake my head. Man like Saito probably has more goons waiting in the hallway, and the last thing I want is my former partner Eames strolling in here examining my corpse.
Saito takes a rectangular piece of paper from his chest (so the robe is like a jacket, then) and hands it to me. It is a photograph of a woman… no barely a woman. A girl. Dark hair, with eyes that seem to sparkle with intelligence. She was also somewhat… familiar. My eyes pop out as I ruminate on the implications of this.
"You want me to extract her?"
"No Mr. Cobb, I want you to protect her. She's a valuable… asset."
Saito stands up and faces me, his shoulders relaxed yet squared as if ready to do battle at a moment's notice. I puzzle over this as the last thing I think of myself as is threatening.
"Mr. Cobb, I need you to help me find her, and then I need you to help train her," says Saito.
"Where is she, Mr. Saito?," inquires Arthur from behind his desk, his hand still hovering near this drawer.
"She's been taken, and I'm not exactly sure where. She was last seen with Robert Fischer a two months ago."
This was completely startling news, and now the pieces seem to fall into place. "Robert Fischer, oil tycoon heir. This girl," I start pacing the room now while holding on to the picture, searching for back issues of the Times where Arthur laid them out on the coffee table, "she was one of Fischer's girlfriends?"
"She was a fiancé last I heard," Saito responds.
"Why are you interested in the girl Mr. Saito?," Arthur asks, his suspicion all over his face. I swear I have to teach him to squint one of these days.
"Her father was a very close family friend. When he died, she became my ward. She had been educated all over the world, but Paris was where she wanted to be and so I thought that she would be there still," Saito expounds. "When you find her, you need to bring her back there."
"So she isn't there now," I remark, wincing at the coincidence. "Why would you want her trained?"
"Because she is bound to be a target of similar… advances, the kind that Robert Fischer makes."
"So, you're saying you don't want her to have a boyfriend or get married?," asks Arthur. Clearly I'm not the only one confused about this.
"Robert Fischer is with her in the guise of romance, of marriage seeking. He knows that as my ward, she isn't exactly an heiress so he's not after that. What he's after is her mind," presses Saito, his eyes trying to communicate a point that I seem to be missing.
"Is she some kind of… genius?," I ask, looking again at the picture of a girl that's barely a woman who's apparently the object of desire of a number of powerful men.
"You would know, Mr. Cobb. She was targeted for the same program you had been. In fact, it seems that according to your own father-in-law, she topped your raw scores," answered Saito, his eyes smug as I fully grasp why Saito had approached me with this job.
"Robert Fischer," Saito continues, "dips his fingers in many pies. He has heard that your father-in-law has developed a new technology but isn't sure what it is. Your name has cropped up whenever this technology has been mentioned, in relation to your work in the Police. My Ariadne," he points to the picture," has been Professor Miles' assistant the past year. I fear that he is merely using her to get a hand on the technology and the practice."
"How do you know all this?", my voice waivered as bit as the gaps of the past three years of my extended family's life was filled in by this stranger.
"I had funded your father-in-law."
"Had?," Arthur asks, noticing the detail.
"Why would I need to be involved in training her when she's Miles' assistant?," I inquire. "Doesn't she already know how to…?,"
"Professor Miles stopped, Mr. Cobb. He's no longer involving himself, but it seemed that my Ariadne had tried to continue on with his work. By herself," Saito eyes me, "which from my understanding is dangerous."
This girl, this girl needs to be found. This thing, this field that I promised myself never to get back to because in some way it became my Mal's undoing, I have to go back. I have to find this Ariadne before she becomes a pawn in a game played by powerful men. I look at the picture again, and her eyes are so vibrant, how could I have missed what she was?
"Where was Fischer last seen?" I ask.
"New York."
So, it looks like I'm chasing another dame. Here I come Big Apple.