Dangerous Territory
Chapter 1
Araidne first noticed it when trying to retrieve her winter coat. Far to lazy to reorganize her hall closet and wardrobe for the sake of interchanging her seasonal items, she was content, instead, to reach into the hall closet with a cautious hand, grope around for the thing, and yank it out. (She didn't have enough faith to assure her that if she opened the door, she wouldn't be met with an avalanche of clothes and whatever else she had stuffed in there over the course of her college years). It was a reasonable enough quest, after all. She was quite sure she could fit another coat into her wardrobe before driving Arthur absolutely crazy, and she knew that if she had to go through the rest of the year in Paris, she would most definitely need it.
After she successfully finagled it out of the closet with a cry of triumph, though, she had the misfortune of looking around the place. And while she loved her place, and while she loved that she and Arthur had decided to stay there even after she finished her last semester at the college (though they certainly had the money to go anywhere else; or even get a bigger place), she had to cringe at the misorder of it. It was a rare day when she or Arthur didn't bruise themselves in walking around the place—not that there was much room for that.
Sure, she wasn't likely to change her style or become much cleaner, but quite honestly, the place was crammed to the brim. She couldn't do much about their collection of books that were haphazardly stacked everywhere—she could never get rid of those—or even their collection of CD's and vinyls that dominated the floor-to-ceiling shelves that claimed almost all the wall space in the apartment; she couldn't even do much about the artwork Arthur insisted on (which he didn't have to insist upon, necessarily), but the other things? Her old projects she didn't really want to get rid of, but perhaps she could store them in the hall closet. After all, the closet only had a few seasonal clothes in it.
Surely there can't be too many things in there, she thought. I'll just have to rifle through it and reorganize it a bit. Maybe get a new chest of drawers in the bedroom if I can't get rid of any the clothes; there's enough room in there. But I definitely need to go through this apartment and get rid of all this unnecessary stuff.
Sighing, she tossed her jacket onto the living room couch across from her, went into her room—even though it was just the door to the left, literally two paces away, she managed to stub her two on a stack of books and slam her hip on the bathroom door on the opposite side—to pull on a more suitable working shirt, and wandered back with a determined sigh. Grimacing, she pulled open the door and leapt aside, closing her eyes in anticipation of the rush of things that would come out. She was relieved to hear nothing of the sort, and was astounded, when she opened her eyes, to see a collection of hung, heavy winter jackets and neatly folded hats and mittens—both hers and Arthur's. Perhaps Arthur cleaned it up like the rest of the apartment when he moved in? She wondered. But when had he done that?
Shrugging, she was about to retrieve her projects she wanted to keep and put them on the unoccupied bottom and top drawers, when she noticed a sliver glint in the corner of her eye. She turned back toward the closet, and narrowed her eyes at the source of the glint. There, in the corner, stood a silver briefcase. Most definitely Arthur's PASIV.
What the hell? He told me he gave it Cobb. We both decided to stay off the damn thing—hell, we haven't even been doing extractions anymore! We both promised not to!
Arthur wasn't doing extractions anymore—she was sure of that. He was working steadily now, she knew. She would have noticed a difference in him; this too, she was sure of. If he was working at dreams, she would have noticed a different aura around him—his more pragmatic, working, cold-hearted side of him. And he wasn't like that anymore; he wasn't as uptight and stiff as he once was. Of course, she hadn't changed his personality completely and wouldn't be with him if he had changed much, but she knew she had brought out his more sensitive, emotional side. Hell, he wouldn't be going to Friday night outs with Eames, Cobb, Yusuf, and her if he was the same on-the-job Arthur that she had worked with during Inception.
No, she suspected that the suitcase was still here because of something that was more dangerous than just extractions. More addicting.
This was about dreams. More specifically, a lack of them.
