Author's Note: This is my first multi-chapter Inception fic, and I hope you enjoy it! Basically after seeing the movie it haunted me that Cobb had pretty much placed the exact same idea into Saito that he did into Mal, so I decided to write this. Obviously Inception doesn't belong to me, because it's too fucking awesome to belong to anyone but Christopher Nolan.
Rain drummed on the window of the small hotel room Arthur had reserved in Toronto, almost drowning out the low murmurs of the evening news on the television. Ariadne was half-listening to the broadcast while flipping through her sketchbook, which at one time had been filled with various building and structure designs but was now only used to craft new mazes within dreamscapes. Arthur was in the shower after a day of reconnaissance. Their mark was the mistress of a Detroit politician and the job was fairly straightforward: find out where to get a hold of concrete proof of the politician's affair so as to destroy his campaign. The mark herself, according to Arthur at least, was a dumb bimbo whose brain would be pretty easy to infiltrate. The way he had said it pleased Ariadne in a kind of vain and petty way she wasn't used to.
Ariadne was wearing her pajamas and was about to turn off the television when the newscaster caught her attention. Frowning, crawling to the edge of the bed to hear better (she hadn't thought to turn up the volume), Ariadne absorbed one of the minor stories in business news with rapt attention.
"In Tokyo today, pedestrians were shocked to see the body of a man fall from a fifty story building," the reporter announced. "It was discovered soon after that the man was none other than a Mr. Saito, from the energy mega corporation Renu Inc. No word from authorities on the circumstances of Mr. Saito's death, although it has been assumed to be suicide. The death of Renu Inc's CEO is expected to cause a profound drop in the company's stocks tomorrow morning. Mr. Saito was 43 years old."
Ariadne stared at the television, unable to process the information it had just fed her. Arthur walked out from the shower to see his partner staring intently, almost furiously at a commercial for ShamWow!
"I guess I know what to get you for your birthday…" he said, sitting down next to her and raising an eyebrow.
Ariadne blinked and swiveled herself around to face Arthur, unsmiling.
"Saito's dead," she said, her inflection almost questioning.
"What? Saito from the inception job?" Arthur asked, as if they knew any other. She nodded. He ran a hand through his still wet hair, frowning.
"Jesus," he glanced at the television which was distracting him. With a swift motion he turned it off before looking at Ariadne again. "What happened?"
"They think it was suicide," she said, but even as she said it she knew he wouldn't understand the gravity of that fact. Arthur's relationship with Cobb had been one of detached affection; Arthur never knew who Cobb had first planted an idea in, and Ariadne had never told him out of respect for her former boss. But her mind was reeling with a sickening thought: that Saito had been driven mad by the parasitic idea that his world wasn't real, that death was the only escape.