For I Will Consider My Cat
Summary: Cobb gets a Scottish Fold. Everything starts from there. Consequences, and repercussions and fall out from the Fischer job. Crackfic that turned somewhat serious. Pre-slash A/C, or friendship fic, depending on your take.
The grey Scottish Fold let out another squeal of pleasure and batted eagerly at Ariadne's finger. "He's so cute!" Ariadne murmured. She had deposited her bookbag at the foot of the couch, and was playing with the kitten. "Does he have a name?"
"Not yet," Cobb said. He leaned back against the armchair, regarding them over the rim of his coffee mug. "James and Phillipa can't agree on one. I've told them that if they can't name it together, I'll do it for them."
"I never thought you were a cat person."
His eyes had gone that distant, faded blue that Ariadne had begun to associate with Mal; he held the chipped sea-green mug in his hand, fingers running over the web of cracks that marked the glazed surface. "No," he said, quietly. "Mal never was much of a cat person. She was allergic."
"How are things?" Ariadne asked, at the mention of Mal, tip-toeing around the matter with a care she'd never shown back when she'd bulled her way into his past.
Cobb side-stepped the question neatly smile was more a grimace. "Saito sends me the occasional email, and a basket of fruit on my birthday. I haven't heard anything from Eames. Yusuf sent me a box full of kittens."
She looked at the little bundle of fur and teeth, which had moved on from her finger to rubbing itself gently against her ankle. "This?"
"No," Cobb said. "There were a lot more of them." He eyed the kitten with grudging almost-suspicion. "I gave most of them away, but James insisted we keep one."
"Just one?"
"Only if they took care of it and were responsible," Cobb said. "It's their pet, not mine."
"You really should give him a name," Ariadne said. The kitten purred as she ran her fingers along its head, and down its back. "And stop referring to him as 'it'. How about Pounce?"
Cobb made a face. "Please don't encourage it," he said, but relented to add, "I was thinking of 'Folds' or 'Socks' myself."
Ariadne gave him a flat stare.
"He goes for my socks all the time. I can't count how many pairs of socks he's put holes in."
"Cobb," Ariadne said, "You can't be serious."
Cobb almost—almost—fidgeted as she stared him down. "Well," he muttered crossly, shielding himself with his coffee mug. "It seemed appropriate."
"Now you're sounding just like Saito," Ariadne said, disapprovingly. She frowned down at the kitten, but continued to stroke it all the same. "What about Arthur?"
"You can't be serious," Cobb said.
Ariadne blinked. "I meant, what about Arthur? You've mentioned Yusuf, Eames and Saito, and I'm sitting here, talking to you right now. But what about Arthur?"
Cobb's mouth tightened. "He sent me a postcard from Dresden for Christmas."
"That's all very nice," said Ariadne, impatiently, "But have you both…talked?"
Merry Christmas was all he had written, Cobb thought. Merry fucking Christmas. For all that Arthur was the one who did the research and who kept tabs on the different people you could approach depending on the job you had in mind, he seemed to have an aversion to technology at times. It seemed almost impossible to contact him over the phone, and he almost never checked his email. He dropped Arthur the occasional email (alright, so it hadn't been occasional at first), but he'd never gotten a response.
"Cobb," Ariadne said. His silence was the answer she needed.
He regarded her, the intelligent and determined young woman who forced him to talk about his demons, who had in some way, through that, given him the courage to face them and to walk away from them, for once and for all. He'd always run away. He'd always been running, before that. "Look," he said. "I appreciate what you're doing, why you're asking, even. But Ariadne. There are some things you just can't fix."
He recognised the mulish set of her jaw, almost as he said the words.
"It's been two years," Ariadne said. Her hand fell still. The kitten mewed plaintively and butted against her ankle, and she reached for the half-slashed up mouse toy that had been left on the table, and dangled it before the kitten. It blinked, and then stalked the toy, attempting to pounce on it.
"I know," Cobb agreed. "Ariadne. Arthur…hates it when people lie to him. Keeping secrets, he understands. He's done a lot of that. But he hates being lied to, and about something as dangerous as a job."
As Limbo, he meant to say. He didn't say it.
"Will you at least try talking to him?"
He smiled, tiredly, and shoved the stack of unmarked assignments further in before the kitten could bump the living room table and jar them loose, or even spill Ariadne's untouched coffee over them. "What do you think I've been doing? It takes two people to be stubborn, Ariadne. And it's always been Arthur's decision. I respect that."
She drew in a tight, frustrated breath and then seemed to give up on the topic altogether. "How's everything else?"
Cobb made a face. "Depends on what that 'everything else' is," he said. "Phillipa still isn't talking to me," he admitted. "And James wakes up at night screaming. He still thinks I'll vanish if he so much as takes his eyes off me, but he's getting better at it. Miles was right," he said, bitterly. "They needed a father, and I wasn't there."
"But you are now," Ariadne said. "These things take time, Cobb."
He accepted that with a nod. "As for my new job…half my students are on caffeine IVs. The other half probably need them. I'll need a night's worth of coffee just to make it through all the marking. I don't remember it ever being that bad when I was a student…or when Miles was still teaching. Have you spoken to him lately?"
"Miles? Yes, I have," Ariadne grinned. "He's enjoying retirement. He's paying all due attention to his hedges and rose bushes at long last."
"Figures," Cobb muttered. "I end up teaching, and Miles gets the cushy retirement." But he was smiling, all the same, at the mention of his father-in-law and their former mentor.
"He always talked about retiring, but no one thought he'd actually do it." Ariadne shifted in her seat. "He told me to talk to you."
"You did mention something about that, in your email. What about it?"
"Dreamsharing," Ariadne said, quietly. "It's hard to go back to designing normal structures when you're used to breaking all the rules."
"Yes," Cobb said, setting his mug down on the table. "I imagine it is." He leaned forward in his armchair. "Ariadne. If you want a job…"
"…I should be talking to Arthur," she said. "I know. I don't know what I want."
Cobb waited, unblinking. As her focus shifted to the conversation, Ariadne'd stopped jerking the toy around, and the kitten pounced on the little mouse with a squeal of delight.
"Why did you leave?" she finally asked.
He thought about the brushed-silver case of the PASIV, now with Arthur wherever he'd gone. He'd carefully found the box in the attic that had their dreamsharing notes; his and Mal's, and just as carefully sealed them away again. He thought about the way James gripped his hand before he went to sleep at night and panicked when Cobb so much as went out into the hallway to make himself a drink. He thought, as well, about the quick, impatient way Phillipa brushed him off with a, "I'm fine."
"I have a family again," he said, slowly, choosing every word carefully. "They matter more to me than anything—even dreamsharing. I got them back once. I don't think I'd ever be so lucky again."
He wasn't sure if he didn't dream, or he didn't remember them any longer, even if he had them. He woke up some nights, shaking, and never knew if he'd just escaped some nightmare.
He still couldn't feel sand against his bare feet without the memories sweeping in around him. Like the tide, they would drag him under if they could.
Cobb realised that Ariadne had gone silent. Realising it was being ignored, the kitten let out a plaintive mew and brushed ever so lightly against Cobb's foot.
"You should really give him a name, you know," she said, almost conversationally. Cobb bent, in spite of himself, to run his fingers through the kitten's soft fur. "And something better than 'Socks' or 'Folds', for goodness' sake. Or write Yusuf; he sent you the whole box after all."
"I'll drop you an email if Phillipa and James still can't come to an agreement," he said dryly. "You spoke to Miles about it as well, didn't you?"
Ariadne nodded. "I figured he would know," she said. "He did this once before, didn't he? And he walked away. I wanted to know."
"Why or how?"
"Both," she said, sipping her mug of coffee gone cold, legs crossed at the ankle, in some ways, far too young, with two worlds unfolding before her at her fingertips.
The kitten yawned and managed to spring up onto the sofa. It clambered onto his lap, pricking its way up indiscriminately, curled up by the crook of his elbow, and shut sleepy bright-amber eyes.
Eames had firmly ensconced himself in the kitchen, even before Cobb had left to get the first-aid kid. "You've gone bloody domestic," he said, amusement warring with disbelief. "So, where are the children?"
"James is off at his grandmother's for piano lessons," Cobb said absently, haphazardly stacking bottles all over the counter as he searched and found that half-full bottle of whiskey. He thrust it at Eames. "Phillipa has karate lessons on weekends—seriously, Eames, if I find out you've laid a trail that even an idiot can read all the way to my house…"
Eames looked once at the whiskey bottle, and made a rude sound. "Don't teach your grandmother to suck eggs," he muttered, affronted. "I'll have you know I'm a professional."
"So act like it," Cobb retorted, leaving him to get the first-aid kid. As he rummaged in the bathroom, opening shelves and drawers trying to find where he'd left the damnable thing, he heard—
"Ow! Fuck!"
"Eames, I'd appreciate it if you left less of a mess for me to clean up before the kids get back home," he called out. He found the first-aid kit, snatched it, and made his way back to the kitchen.
Eames was glaring at the kitten, and when Cobb entered, he drawled, "You know, I didn't know you'd taken to having a guard cat at home." The Scottish Fold hissed and clawed its way up Eames' right leg. "Ow, ow, Cobb, get your bloody cat off me before I—"
Cobb set down the first-aid kit and managed to grab the kitten by the scruff of its neck and deposited it gently on the other side of the kitchen. "Shoo," he muttered. "Don't bother me; I'm busy." The kitten hissed once more at Eames, sharp claws digging into Cobb's hand. Cobb winced; he'd have to clean out those scratches later. He managed to carefully disentangle the kitten from himself and left it there.
"Where the bloody hell did you get that cat from?" Eames demanded. "I swear that thing is a menace." He shot the cat another frigid grey glare for a moment, and then turned back to Cobb.
"Yusuf sent me a box of kittens," Cobb said. "Shirt off please. Are those the worst of them?"
Eames nodded obediently as he removed his bloodied and torn shirt. "Nasty fellow with a shiv hidden on the inside of his thigh. Didn't think to check." He added, defensively, when Cobb stared at him but began to clean out the stab wounds, "I was a little busy with the nasty big fellows with the brass knuckles and the guns. Got stabbed several times in the leg too, though I don't think that one's as bad. Got my tetanus shot anyway. I hate shivs, did I ever tell you? You never know where they've been."
The whiskey bottle, Cobb noticed, was very thoroughly empty, and Eames had set it by the kitchen sink.
"Well," Cobb said, "I have to give you points for trying. You nearly got yourself stabbed in the gut."
"Nearly being the key word," Eames retorted. "What happened to the other kittens?"
"Kittens? Oh. I gave them away."
"What possessed you to keep any of Yusuf's kittens anyway?" Eames demanded. "He probably feeds them experimental drugs or something. Stuff that makes them half-Bengal tiger or something. Your little monster looks like it's trying very hard."
Cobb rolled his eyes. "The kids wanted one," he said patiently. "They thought they were cute."
Eames swore as he pressed the alcohol-soaked swab a little too hard against the wound.
"You're going to need stitches," Cobb added. "Any reason why you're avoiding the ER?"
"Well…" Eames said.
"Actually," Cobb said, "I don't want to know. Just don't bring the police or whoever it was running to my doorstep. And Eames?"
Eames glanced at him. Cobb pressed down on the wound—hard. He let Eames read the steel in his eyes, the same sense of purpose that had driven him back when they were working the Fischer job. "I'm retired," Cobb said quietly. "You bring the cops or a bunch of thugs down on my family again, and you're going to be worrying about far worse things than the trouble you're running from. Understand?"
Eames met his gaze. "Crystal," he said, dryly. "Now, if you would stop being dramatic and start sewing…?"
He did. They sat there in silence for a long time. Eames at least wasn't prone to flinching or to fidgeting, unlike James or Phillipa, which made everything go much faster.
"The cat," said Eames. "What's its name anyway?"
Cobb said, "Well. It doesn't actually have one. Yet."
The grey Scottish Fold padded over silently to their side of the kitchen and sat there, watching them. Then, it began to wash itself, licking at its paws.
"You've had that kitten for how long now?" Eames asked, pointedly.
"Well," Cobb said, again. "Phillipa and James can't agree on what to name it. Phillipa really wants to call it 'Tiger'. And James has his heart set on 'Scruffy'. And they can't make up their minds either—it was Rikki-Tikki-Tavi the last month, and Crookshanks the month before that."
Eames grunted. "Your daughter," he said, "has excellent taste. That savage creature should be named 'Tiger' as a warning to all the visitors it mauls."
"He didn't maul Ariadne."
"That," Eames said, "is plain unfair." He was silent, glancing balefully at the kitten as he did so. "Arthur," he said at last.
"What about him?"
"The cat," Eames said, with the twitch of his lip that indicated he thought Cobb was being deliberately obtuse. "Name the bloody thing Arthur."
Cobb fought to hide his smile as he stitched up the last of Eames' wounds. "Are you seriously holding a grudge against my cat?"
"It's a dull sort of grey, it follows you around the bloody kitchen like a lost puppy, and it's a downright pain in the arse," Eames said. "It's perfect."
"It's not following me."
"No," Eames said, "It's staring. That just makes it worse."
Finally, Cobb moved on to cleaning out the angry red scratches the kitten had left on the two of them. He'd have to clean up the kitchen after that, make sure that there was nothing left that betrayed Eames' visit by the time Phillipa and James got back.
Sometimes, the things you left behind had a funny way of finding you. Little bits of a life he was far too happy to give up, but they were finding their way back to him anyway.
"Have you spoken to him?" Eames asked, finally.
"Arthur?"
Eames nodded.
"No," Cobb said. He started to put away the gauze and the surgical tape and the other odds and ends, leaving the bloodied swabs and cloths to be cleaned away later. "Any reason you're asking?"
Eames shrugged, perhaps a little too casually. "No reason. Just thought I'd ask since we're on the subject of the similarities between him and your little savage here." He stretched gingerly, testing his freedom of movement, and deftly dodged the kitten as it made another swipe at him. Cobb scooped it up before it could do more damage.
"And?" Cobb asked, knowing as he did so that the question was about far more than just Arthur. It was about Eames and lies that had spilled into their last job and had almost brought everything smashing down into the jagged rocks of Limbo.
Eames' lips curled in a smile; there was something dark and angry in his eyes for a moment. He looked away. The kitten yowled in Cobb's grip, demanding to be set down. He let it down absently on the kitchen table and its claws skittered off the smooth surface as it tried and then found purchase. "I don't think I'm awfully fond of the idea of taking a job with you at the moment. Fortunately, you've retired from the business. Haven't you?"
"That had better not be another box of kittens," Cobb said, arms folded across his chest.
Yusuf shot him a wounded look. "I promise," he said, "There are absolutely no kittens inside this. You have no idea how difficult it was to send Radha's litter to America, in any case."
The cat wove expertly between their legs, regarding Yusuf with interest. "Oh, I see you've kept one of them. Ariadne mentioned you had given the rest away."
"Yes, well," Cobb said. "What is it, then?"
Yusuf smiled beatifically. "Well, I've been working on something for people who've left the business. The capital from our last job was very useful in that regard." He set down the cardboard box on the kitchen table, fumbled in his pocket for a multi-tool and sliced through the sealing tape.
Cobb peered in the box and frowned; he saw vials and vials of yellowed-transparent fluid. Somnacin vials, he thought, recognising them in the fraction of a heartbeat. "Yusuf…"
"Dreams," Yusuf said. "You use somnacin long enough and you can't dream any longer."
"Or you lose the ability to remember dreams that aren't under the influence of somnacin," Cobb said, reflexively. It was an argument he'd had with Arthur, and one that they'd never managed to resolve.
Yusuf waved his hand dismissively. "You can't dream, can't remember your un-induced dreams, what difference does it make? I've been trying to work towards developing a solution for this." He added, "I think I've succeeded."
"So you mean…"
"A month's dose of the antidote," Yusuf said. He spread his hands out; his gestures were wide and expansive. "I haven't found any ill-effects with the testing group. About a month should do it."
Cobb stared at the vials in the box. Thirty-one vials, he thought. Thirty-one nights. He glanced up at Yusuf. "Do the effects take?"
"Of course it does," said Yusuf. "A month is merely how long it takes to start working."
Dreams, Cobb thought, sticking his hands in his pockets to hide the shaking that had stolen back on him, unexpected. In a way, he wanted nothing more to do with them; he'd made himself a promise, made it for Philippa and James, and for all of that, the hunger was still there, gnawing at his bones. But a way to undo the effects of somnacin…he could live with that.
Could he?
It would make things final, in a way they just hadn't been, no matter how much he said he was retired and leaving the business.
"Have you taken it?"
Yusuf shook his head. "It only works if you've gone at least three months without touching somnacin," he said. "And don't take it if you're on somnacin. I can't guarantee what happens if you're on medication. Paracetemol, ordinary painkillers and antihistamines should be fine, but I can't tell what other drug interactions will do."
And Yusuf was still on somnacin, Cobb thought. Of course he was. He hardly took to the field, but a chemist would still need to evaluate what his own compounds did.
"I still dream," Yusuf added, his voice low.
Do you miss it? Arthur had once asked.
No, Cobb said.
"Do you miss it?"
"What?"
Yusuf's shrug indicated everything.
"I can't remember what it's like to dream without somnacin," Cobb said, quietly. "I don't know what I would dream about." He didn't add, though, that he remembered his last dream; the palest wisp, the merest whisper, the sort that dissolved in the pre-dawn light but he still retained the vaguest shape of it.
"It is a choice," Yusuf said. "Nothing more. I thought you would appreciate it. Many retired extractors do."
"I do," Cobb said, immediately. "It's just that…" He couldn't let himself finish the sentence.
"A choice," Yusuf said firmly, as he folded the flaps back over the box and bent down to gently stroke the cat. "Have you finally named him?"
"Did Ariadne tell you that as well?"
Yusuf laughed, soft-spoken, understated. "Yes, she did. I believe she told Eames as well."
"Oh. Well, he's called Arthur." He felt like he should add something to that, and so he said, "It was Eames' idea, and somehow, the name just stuck."
"Hmm," Yusuf said, noncommittally. And then, "You have spoken to him?"
"Eames? The previous week," Cobb said. "Apparently, he doesn't like my cat."
Yusuf rolled his eyes. "Yes, I know. He has called me about it and sent me five emails about the matter, including about why I have been so horrible as to give you a whole box full of baby Bengal tigers when they were just kittens."
Cobb snorted. "Well, why did you?"
"You have children, do you not?"
"That's hardly an explanation."
"My cat," Yusuf said, "Had a litter. I think I should really have her and the stray down the road neutered; this was the third time I had to deal with a litter of kittens and I am not running a cat shop. They're terrible creatures around glass vials and IV lines."
"And you thought I could use a litter of kittens here?"
"You have children!" Yusuf exclaimed, defensively. "I thought they would love kittens! Besides, Eames would drown them. And Arthur said it was a good idea."
He froze. "You've spoken to Arthur?"
"Yes," Yusuf said impatiently, "It was what I was asking you."
"When?"
The question was dragged out of him; dragged out by need and months-turned-to-years of silence and the enigmatic postcard on Christmas and on his birthday bearing stamps and postmarks from cities that might as well be anywhere in the world.
"Between jobs," Yusuf said, and there was something careful about his shrug this time, expansive gestures constrained and contained. "He sometimes comes to me about compounds, or ideas."
They write to each other, something in Cobb's head said. You knew this. All of them write. Except you.
Yusuf's gaze was expectant, as if he knew what was coming next. One question, Cobb thought. He picked the next one with great care.
"How is he?"
Yusuf replied, "Still in the business. Still one of the best." He raised dark eyebrows, and bent down to properly stroke the Scottish Fold. It purred with pleasure. "It is hardly my place to ask, otherwise."
In his pocket, Cobb felt his hands tighten, fingers closing together in fists. He felt them as though they were the hands of a stranger, as though this strange tension that hummed through him like a taught string belonged to someone else.
"How're things?"
"Going very well," Yusuf murmured, smiling. "I've had business here over the past week, which is why I've taken the liberty of bringing the box over personally."
"It wouldn't have anything to do with Eames, would it?" Cobb asked, remembering a fight Eames had come out the worse from and blood in the kitchen.
"I thought you told Eames you didn't want to know?"
"On second thought," said Cobb, "No, don't tell me, I really don't want to."
Saito cut a sharp figure in a charcoal suit, waiting at the very back of the lecture hall. Cobb was aware of the man's presence, the way he lingered by the very final row of seats, of the fact that Saito was watching him, but waiting. Nevertheless, he did not hurry through the small group of waiting students, all of whom had stayed back after the lecture had ended to ask him something.
"No," he said to a first year who really shouldn't have taken a third year elective and was struggling for it, "I can't make a consultation this week. Look, why don't you drop me an email and then we'll fix a slot that way?"
The student nodded, and beat a hasty retreat, and then and only then did Saito head casually down the flight of steps towards the lecturer's desk by the chalkboard.
"Busy, I see," he murmured, as Cobb shut off the projector and cleaned off the last of the chalk from the blackboard.
"Saito," he greeted, gathering his notes. "I didn't expect to see you here."
"Business," Saito said, calmly. "I found myself having to attend a few meetings, and then thought it would be wise of me to drop by."
"You just decided to drop by," Cobb repeated. He had a hard time believing that. They were hardly friends, for all that he'd thrown himself to the waves of Limbo and allowed himself to drown to pull Saito out again.
Those who had never been to Limbo never knew how to speak of it; it was the tidal surge tugging at his bones, the too-bright colours of a life that felt as though it wasn't-quite his, of people and places subtly wrong, never quite as you remembered them.
Saito eyed him. "Is that so hard to believe?"
Cobb sighed. "Please don't tell me Ariadne put you up to it," he said, resignedly. "I haven't been answering her emails or her calls because I'm busy. It's midterms season, for god's sake."
Saito almost smiled. "No," he said, after a pause. "Not quite," he amended. "Although Ariadne and Yusuf were quite insistent that I speak with you. As," he said, "was Eames."
"I'm going to kill them," Cobb said, quietly. "I'm going to kill them all, very slowly, when I next see them. I'm going to sic Arthur on them."
"You have been in contact with Arthur then?"
"No," Cobb said, and then glanced at his watch and blanched. "Look, uh, Saito. There's another lecture scheduled to start here in about fifteen minutes. Let me head up to my office to drop off my things first." He started for the exit, shoving the heavy door open with his shoulder.
Saito fell into step beside him. "Allow me to buy you a coffee."
"Fine. There's a café down on the block. Fewer students, but there's a discount for students and staff. You need my card?"
Saito shook his head. "That'll be fine," he said. "In ten, then?"
"Make it fifteen," Cobb said, and left.
"You mentioned the others wanted you to talk to me," Cobb said, half a cup of warm coffee later.
"I did," Saito said. He lowered his espresso. He'd sipped it, nothing more. "Retirement suits you." He'd seen them, in the murky depths of Limbo—some of those dreams that lurked beneath the surface of Cobb's mind, wishes unexpressed, half-formed, mostly-dead. But still they lingered, and in Limbo, the ocean breathed life into these shells, throwing them out on that immense beach salt-soaked but alive.
In Limbo, there was no dreamer or subject; all dreamed, all were dreamed. Sometimes he saw fleeting dream-memories of a house in the countryside high where the mountains were, with traditional tatami matting and modern heating.
"Yes," Cobb said, studying Saito for some hint of what the man wanted. But Saito's poker face had always been good; his expression was bland, neutral, and revealed nothing that Cobb could see. "So far, I'm not regretting it. Is there any particular reason why all of you keep showing up on my doorstep?"
Except Arthur.
"They all kept in touch after the job," Saito said. "And most of them are still working in one end of the business or the other." He smiled briefly. "I suppose, as you have once said, dreamsharing does not let go easily. It is…exhilarating. Addictive, even."
"But I'm retired," Cobb said. "For good." He thought about the box of vials that sat under his bed, half of them empty. It was almost a month, and the past nights had brought him snatches he could barely remember—things that he might have called dreams if he could only remember what it was like to do so.
"Yes," Saito replied. "You did say as much. How were the kittens?"
"Fine, I kept one, it's called Arthur. Do they tell you everything?"
Saito looked faintly surprised. "Hardly," he said, after a slight pause. "Yusuf contacted me and asked me how he ought to go about the process of sending you a box of kittens without breaking too many laws in the process. He said he had it on good authority that you would never forgive him if the police showed up on your doorstep for animal smuggling or something along those lines. I told him I would see to it. And you kept one, and this cat—it is named Arthur?"
Cobb sighed. He was already more than regretting ever opening that box full of kittens, much less giving in to Phillipa's and James' begging and letting them keep one as a pet. "Yes," he answered, wearily. "Don't the others tell you anything? Eames came by, he hated the cat, and decided to call it 'Arthur' because it reflected his dislike for the man. And the name kind of just stuck."
"As I said," Saito replied, unruffled, "They hardly tell me everything." He drank down his espresso, but still worried at the empty glass. "I simply wished to see for myself how life was treating you."
"I got your fruit basket on my birthday," Cobb said, nevermind that he'd never told Saito when his birthday was. The more he thought about it—Eames had his own ways of figuring things out, but Ariadne and Yusuf shouldn't have known where his address was. They knew his email but that was something different. "Thanks."
Saito inclined his head briefly. "You are welcome."
He thought of another time when he'd talked to that man, in a dream within a dream, across a table so polished he could see his own reflection.
"If not for a job," he said, "Why are the others asking you to check up on me?"
"Ah," Saito said. "So it comes to that." Unlike Yusuf, his gestures were tight and constrained, as if Saito was content to take up far less space, but filled it with a spark that could turn into a focused intensity at any moment, when he brought the full force of his personality to bear. "Arthur."
Cobb frowned down at his coffee. "You're not the first one to mention him." Everyone had, he thought. Ariadne, Eames, Yusuf. It seemed that everyone expected him to have heard from Arthur after the job, more, at any rate, than two postcards which had been stuffed into a drawer of his writing desk.
"He's in trouble," Saito said, bluntly.
Cobb blinked. "What?"
"He's doing well as an extractor," Saito continued, unperturbed. He laced his fingers together, resting his hands on the table as he watched Cobb carefully. "Or so I hear. But Ariadne is under the impression that he's burning out, bit by bit."
"He never knew his limits," Cobb said, and it struck him then that he could have been talking about himself. Arthur would never push the rules to their very limits and keep on pushing; instead, he took his anger and his stress out on himself, running himself ragged, pushing himself beyond the point where his body began to break down from the abuse he heaped ceaselessly on it. And that was another thing; extractors had to plan for every contingency, a pointman even more so. Arthur had run point for so long that he sometimes forgot he wasn't indomitable, keeping himself together and focused by sheer, stubborn will long past the point where even caffeine wasn't helping.
Saito didn't hide his smile this time. "I believe," he observed, "there are many who would say the same about you."
"I know," he acknowledged. In a way, they had been each other's limits. His fingers closed around the warm porcelain of his cup as he breathed in the fresh roasted aroma of the coffee. "It's gotten worse, hasn't it? That's why Ariadne and Eames and Yusuf were happy to dance around the point…until now."
Saito nodded, just once.
"What do you want me to do about it?"
Saito raised imperious eyebrows. "I was under the impression he is your friend," he said, at last. "And that you had reason to be concerned for his welfare."
"I sent him emails," Cobb said. "I called him over the phone. He isn't picking up, and all I've gotten is the postcard as Christmas, and the one on my birthday. He's not talking to me, and in all honesty, I can't blame him. I can try," he added, at Saito's stare, "But there's not much I can do if Arthur doesn't want to be found. He knows where I live, and I'm not leaving James and Phillipa behind to go chasing him around the world. I've left the business, Saito."
Saito reached into the pocket of his suit jacket and produced a folded slip of paper. He slid it across the table. Cobb took it, but didn't unfold it. Instead, he slipped it into the pocket of his pants. "What is it?" he asked.
"A number for my private line," Saito said. "It goes directly to me, past my secretary. I trust you will not misuse it."
Cobb had a brief vision of Eames making a cheery prank call. He barely stifled his grin.
"Why?"
"I've seen men like him before," Saito said, simply. "I recognised a little of how you were then in him. He'll work himself until he dies in some forgotten corner of the world on a job, just to avoid facing it. If you are his friend, you will want to act on it. That number is if you change your mind."
"Facing what?"
Saito shrugged. "That," he said, "is a question only Arthur can answer."
The country house was almost exactly as Cobb remembered it, with the rose bushes in the front neatly trimmed and the sprawling garden at the back of the stone house. He walked up the path, wondering how much of a mistake this was.
Why are you leaving, Papa? James had asked, plaintively. And then, you're coming back, aren't you?
I promise. It's only for a short while.
He pressed the doorbell. He waited.
In the late afternoon heat, it seemed to take an extraordinarily long time, but then the wooden door with its light coating of blue paint swung open. "Cobb," Miles said.
"I called ahead," he said, by way of explanation.
"So you did. Come in."
The interior of the house was a little cooler; the windows were wide open and with the sluggish breeze came the lazy hum of bees. "I haven't been here in a long time," Cobb said, quietly. "Retirement's treating you well."
"From what I hear," Miles said, "I'm not the only one enjoying it."
"True," he agreed, with a sharp nod as he left his light jacket on the coat rack. Everything looked much the same as it had when he'd come by with Mal all those ages ago; Miles had always liked his antiques, and the same carved-wood cupboard stood in the corner. This time, Cobb nearly missed grazing his elbow against it.
He heard a soft, curious mew; he found the cat a moment later, an imperious-looking tabby that regarded him from the window sill and then closed its eyes and curled up and went back to sleep.
"Would you like a drink? I made some iced tea."
"Yes, please," Cobb said. They moved out to the verendah to sip their drinks, looking out into the garden. Ariadne, Cobb thought, had been right about the attention Miles was now free to lavish on his rosebushes and hedges. He even had a small sectioned-off herb garden. He clutched his glass and looked at the lemon slice and lavender sprig that garnished his. "You're getting creative."
"I suppose I am," Miles said. "Not much for me to do in retirement, is there? But you came with questions."
"Did you speak to Arthur recently?"
Miles had taught him, and he had taught Arthur, back in the days when they had been students new to the seemingly infinite possibilities that dreamsharing introduced. It had been such a new technology then, its implications poorly understood, and there was a certain thrill to being pioneers, to uncovering new territory with every session they spent under.
Dreaming. Creating things.
He could still feel the slight buzz of excitement in his veins, at the memory.
He dreamed the previous night; it was nothing much, more a memory than a dream, Arthur as he had been back then, less reserved, more open, before he'd begun to burn himself down to a flicker. The gardens of Miles' cottage; sitting on the grass at the bottom of the hill counting the different ways to build a dream and populate it. "There will be an exam," Miles had said, and they'd traded looks then; Cobb confident, Arthur challenging.
And then they had met Mal; working with her father, and already making a name for herself as one of the most promising researchers in the field.
"Yes." Miles shot him a mild look. "He came by to talk about some things."
"How was he?"
Miles shifted, and set down his glass of iced tea. "Doing well enough for himself," he said quietly. "Angry, too."
"I haven't often seen Arthur angry," he admitted. Incompetence irritated him, there was that—Arthur was meticulous and absolutely detested sloppy work, which made how he'd put up with Cobb's slow breakdown all the more amazing. He chalked it down to their long partnership and even longer friendship.
But no, he realised. He had. Arthur had been angry—truly, deeply furious—when he'd discovered the length of Cobb's deception during the Fischer job. He'd been angry too, Cobb remembered. Angry and afraid and he'd lashed out at Arthur, accusing him of screwing up, when the screw up was just as much his, but he couldn't talk about it or he'd be forced to face the fact he'd been slowly losing whatever control he had left over his rogue projection of Mal. He'd be forced to admit that she was eroding away at his sense of purpose, his sense of reality. That he was slowly drowning and she was pulling him under even though he'd refused to jump all that time ago.
He remembered the sharp angry set of Arthur's shoulders, the way his mouth drew into a tight line. Arthur was like Saito in their shared sense of reserve; sometimes, his gestures were sloppy and relaxed, but he never fully occupied the space they described. He remembered a dream-within-a-dream and an Arthur so furious they were up in each other's personal space; a crossing of boundaries uncharacteristic for both of them.
Uncharacteristic, Cobb thought, since he'd come back from the ocean that had swallowed him. In the dream, he hadn't even been aware of the space that had grown between them.
And then, in the light of this memory, he found the others—reaching out to yank him, to drag him under, just like the crashing waves on the beach deep in his mind where the barriers of the conscious and the unconscious met and fought like waves pounding away at a rocky beach, with neither earth nor water the victor.
The same angry tension, the flicker in Arthur's dark eyes—"I'd hate to see you out of control," "You don't know that."
Cobb let out a long slow breath, aware of how tightly he was gripping the glass, its surface cool and slick to the touch. He hadn't seen it. Or he'd seen the warning signs and chosen to ignore them. When had he gotten to the point when he couldn't even read Arthur any longer?
"You said something?" he asked, aloud.
"Yes," Miles said, slowly, concern in his eyes. "Are you all right?"
Cobb gave a short, bitter bark of a laugh. "I suppose," he said, at last. "I've really screwed up, haven't I?"
Miles raised his eyebrows. "So you've realised."
"I realised that in the months after. I thought I should've seen something before that—when we all woke up. All I could think was that everything was going to be fine. I was going home at last. But that wasn't it. I suppose I shouldn't have expected anything different."
Miles was silent, as he picked up his glass of iced tea and drank from it. Cobb looked over at him, and said, "Everyone's telling me that it's getting bad."
"Hard to help someone who doesn't want help," Miles said, pointedly.
Cobb smiled, ruefully. Perhaps it was easier to look back on it, now that he wasn't a fugitive. Now that he wasn't being haunted. It was strange to wake up to his home every morning, and to find that the empty space in bed beside him wasn't accusatory. It just was. Somehow, he'd managed to shift out from under the weight of his pain, and he realised then that was how it felt to know he was going to be fine.
"Well," he said, as neutrally as he could. "It's not easy."
"It never is, is it? We all screw up. You know that. You didn't come to me to be told that. You came about Arthur. Well, he's angry, and from the sound of it, he has good reason to be."
"It's about the job, isn't it."
Miles' gaze was long and measuring. "Better you hear it from him," he said, at last. "There's no help for that, anyway."
"I was hoping you knew where he was. Saito was insistent I find him. I told him I didn't have time for a wild goose chase around the world."
Not even for Arthur? something in his mind asked. He refused to allow the guilt any leeway; friendship would demand he do something. The other part of his mind coolly noted the damage had been done—quite enough of it, as it was, and after all he'd dragged the man through, maybe he'd reached the limit of what he had a right to ask from Arthur.
Maybe was pushing it.
Miles shook his head. "I'm sorry," he said. "I don't know. I know he was in the country—"
"Everyone seems to be these days," Cobb muttered, and for a few moments, his annoyance got the better of him.
"Everyone?"
"I spoke to Ariadne."
"Ah yes," Miles said, wistfully. "Graduated the top of her class, nevermind the leave of absence she took when you pulled her into dreamsharing."
"She mentioned visiting you."
"Yes." Miles' smile made him seem more gentle—even for those who knew the stories of one of the most dangerous men who'd ever done dreamsharing research, nevermind that Miles was now retired. "A lot of my former students seem to be popping up recently, now that I'm retired."
"So I'm learning. Too many former colleagues popping out of the woodwork," Cobb said, wincing.
He had the faintest of suspicions that there was a grand conspiracy going on. There was no way in hell so many former colleagues would 'just happen' to show up in the country and drop by to say hi and to criticise his cat.
"What is its name?" he asked, on a whim.
Miles blinked at the sudden change of subject. "What is what, sorry?"
"Your cat. Its name."
"Oh, nothing as strange as 'Arthur'. He's called Simba."
"Did Phillipa have anything to do with this?" he recalled Miles mentioning that Phillipa thought the Lion King was the best film ever all those years ago, and he'd surreptiously picked up a stuffed lion from a zoo souvenir shop in Frankfurt for her, and asked Miles to give it to her when he went to the States. He'd gotten James a meerkat; for some reason that Cobb would never know, James had taken to the animal, declaring it his favourite.
Three months later, he'd decided he liked sharks better.
"Yes," Miles said. "James wanted to call him Timon. I made them flip a coin for it. Phillipa won."
"I should've made them do that," Cobb said. "It'd have saved me all that trouble."
It was a long and tiring day at the very end of the semester, and having finished the last tutorial of the day, Cobb wanted nothing better than to trudge home, drop down onto the sofa, and to manage to do completely nothing until he had to fix the kids something for dinner.
He noticed, when he got home, that Arthur was scratching forlornly at the front door, and he sighed. Arthur had a way of slipping out of the house everytime Cobb left for work or the children for school, and it was Phillipa's responsibility this week to check after she came back from school and to let Arthur back in.
The Scottish Fold rubbed itself briefly against his leg in greeting; Cobb bent down and stroked it. "Hello, Arthur," he said. He reached in his pocket for the keys, and tried the door. To his surprise, it was already open. That was two strikes on his list; Phillipa had left the front door unlocked and forgotten to let the cat back in.
"Phillipa?" he called out as he pushed open the door, Arthur brushing past him to slip into the darkness of the house. "How many times have I told you to lock the door and to let Arthur back in?"
"You named your cat after me?"
Cobb started, and then he found the person who'd spoken. Arthur sat on his sofa, satchel deposited neatly at his feet. The cat-Arthur padded over to him, mewing curiously.
"It was Eames' idea," he answered, "And the name just stuck. I'm guessing you let yourself in."
He didn't bother mentioning the house keys. Arthur had a set of them from a long time ago, and even if Cobb had remembered to take them back, a set of locks wasn't a particularly big challenge to an extractor as versatile as Arthur was.
"I did. Retirement's treating you well, then."
"It is." Cobb shut the door and locked it, aware all the time of the guarded way Arthur sat, the carefully-neutral expression he wore. He took the time to study Arthur briefly; a light navy jacket that was folded up on his lap, and he wore a short-sleeved shirt, no tie. Not on a job, then. "I didn't know you were stateside."
A twitch of Arthur's mouth that could've been a smile. He reached out his hand, and in a swift movement, cat-Arthur clawed him. "Ow!" he yelped, and then "Ouch! Cobb, your fucking cat is a monster," as the Scottish Fold hissed, claws drawing angry red scratches down Arthur's arm and then blood.
"You and Eames agree on that score," Cobb said. "I'll get something to clean out the scratches. You never know what he's got on his claws." He looked at the long line of scratches from Arthur's forearm down to his wrist, and sighed. "Stick it under the tap for a bit, will you?"
"Yeah, I guess. I'll come with you." He stood up, and followed Cobb to the kitchen. Over his shoulder, Cobb heard the murmur of running water a few moments later as he searched the first few drawers for the alcohol and gauze they kept in the kitchen. He found it in the second drawer a few moments later.
Arthur—not the cat—let out a sharp hiss of pain as Cobb cleaned out the scratches, but they weren't deep. There was something familiar about this, Cobb thought, even if neither of them said anything about it. They'd performed first aid on each other enough times, even if it wasn't usually for something as small as a bunch of cat scratches.
The whole situation was too familiar. They'd always fallen back easily into conversation, no matter how long the silence. Before, he would have said that two years were nothing; now he wasn't sure. It wasn't just two years—it was all the time spent on the run, and the Fischer job, and all his little misdirections and lies and attempts to shut Arthur out, to shove the burden of carrying the job out on Arthur's shoulders.
"Fuck," Arthur said, when he was done and putting away the alcohol and the gauze. "Now I know why I never had a cat."
"Did you come here just to hate on my cat?" Cobb asked, mildly.
"No, Ariadne said he was pretty cute," Arthur replied. "Then again, I don't think she'd ever gotten clawed up by him."
"He has that effect on people."
For a moment, Arthur met his eyes. Then he glanced away; the joke fell flat. Too much history, Cobb thought. There was no telling, not any longer.
It'd taken him too long to see it.
"I got fed-up of ignoring emails and calls," Arthur said, at last, still sitting on the battered wooden chair that the cat had clawed up one too many times. "Ariadne can be pretty persistent; when she's roped in Eames and Yusuf and Saito—Saito actually got his secretary to call me!—she's a downright terror. And then Miles started."
"I called you," Cobb said. "I sent you emails."
"I know." Arthur hesitated, before adding, "I was angry. I think I still am."
"I know. For what it's worth…I'm sorry. I shouldn't have lied to all of you. And I shouldn't have been using you. If I'd told you—any of you—what was at stake, you might have called the run off. Considered it too risky. I was too close for any of you to want out."
"Here's the thing," Arthur said. "You tell me you're sorry. But you would have done it anyway."
"Of course I would," he said. He closed his eyes. "They're my family. They're all I have left. I would have done anything to get back to them. You knew it, from the start."
"Yeah," said Arthur, his eyes closed. "I knew it. I just didn't know how far you were willing to go to do it."
He glanced back at Arthur, recognising the tight anger now that he knew how to look for it. Now that he remembered how to look for it. "I don't think I was in a very good place back then," Cobb said, quietly. "Maybe neither of us were."
Arthur laughed; a broken, bitter sound. "I trusted you," he breathed. "That was the problem. I trusted you, right where you kept telling me everything was okay even when it was fucking up right in front of me. I was willing to overlook the fact that you had a projection of Mal going fucking crazy in your head and trying to kill me in all sorts of twisted, overly creative ways. Sorry doesn't make that go away. Maybe you're really sorry, but you don't just decide when to trust people and when not to and to expect that to come back just because you're sorry!"
Cat-Arthur had slipped back into the kitchen; it hissed, ears laid back. Arthur gave the cat a flat stare, and it stared right back, before slinking over to Cobb's side.
"I don't expect you to trust me, all over again, just because I said so," Cobb said, evenly. "I did owe you an apology, though."
"Just the one?"
"It's all you're getting."
It was a familiar line between them, another old joke that fell flat. There were some boundaries, Cobb was learning, that simply couldn't be crossed, and now that he had pushed past them, it was an open question as to whether things could ever quite be fine between them.
"Tell me. Why did you come, then?"
"Besides being tired of having five—no, six—people constantly badgering me over the phone and in my email?"
"You didn't have to talk to me about it," Cobb retorted.
"I know." Arthur stood up abruptly, almost begun to pace. He forced himself to sit back down. "I came because they were right. You have to leech the poison first."
"And then?" Cobb found himself asking.
"Some things can't be fixed," Arthur said, quietly. "Sometimes you get something different. And then we see what happens next."
He held out his hand—cautiously—and this time the Scottish Fold padded over to him. He ran his fingers through the soft grey fur, and the cat licked his hand.
"I'll still need time," Arthur warned. "I don't know if you'll find me anytime soon."
"At least answer the emails," Cobb retorted. "Honestly, Arthur? A postcard at Christmas and on my birthday?"
"Fine." It was, Cobb thought, the least they could do. And then they would have to see what became of it. "At least stay for dinner," he added. "We—the kids and I—are making pizza tonight. They always love that. And we've got loads of olives and I made up a batch of salsa last night."
Arthur's laugh was more a startled bark. "I didn't believe them, but you've really gone domestic." The Scottish Fold purred, and brushed softly against his ankle, and gazed up at him innocently.
Cobb's shrug was somewhat self-conscious. "I'm all they have left," he said, "Don't you think?"
"Yeah," Arthur said. "Alright. I'll stay. For dinner, since you've got olives." He added, more quietly, almost an afterthought, "It's been ages since I saw your kids." His mouth twisted in a wry smile. "If your cooking sends me to the hospital, you're paying off my medical bills."
"Deal," said Cobb, and felt his smile ease the tiredness that had settled over him, like an old blanket. It wasn't quite what they had. It would never be that way again, he thought. But it was the beginning of something else, and for some reason, he thought he didn't mind.
A/N: Salvaged from an old not-quite fic that was floating somewhere in the depths of my computer. I took it upon myself to attempt to finish it. It wasn't what the fic was originally meant to be, but I think I am, in a way, somewhat satisfied with the final product.