Everyone in this business is just a little broken, a little bit dead inside, either from it or before it.
Cobb lost his wife, his beautiful wife, his 'half of a whole' to it, and can no longer see his children because of what she did.
Mal is dead. She died and took Cobb's soul with her. She lost sight of reality and that was a hard lesson for all of them, but she is dead now and does not know it.
Ariadne has lost her innocence to it; projections can be harsh, vile things, and they always seem to attract the worst parts of a person when they are on a job. She has a coldness to her that never once existed in those lovely eyes, and it makes Eames hurt a little to see it, even if he pretends not to care.
Yusuf is probably doing the best out of all of them – he only does this as a sideline, and rarely enters the dreamspace anyway. He holds a certain dullness in his eyes, though, a sort of clouded worry because despite his seemingly flippant personality, he does care about his teammates – and somewhat for the poor, deluded souls who make use of his sedative every day to dream. He pities them but what can he do? It's just business.
Arthur, now Arthur's a special case; he was broken one too many times before entering the dreamspace, and now seems to have entirely forsaken himself in favour of pursuing an ever-escaping half-dream he can never remember. That hurts Eames, too, to see those soft eyes that should be full of life and light grow hard and soulless as the years continue on. But every now and then he'll surprise him by showing him an almost giddy side to him that must be an echo of what he was like as a young man, a student perhaps, overtaken by the wonder of the world, before he discovered the dreamspace.
Saito's lucky; he only went into the dreamspace once, and as soon as he was out of it again no longer wanted a repeat experience. Sure, he keeps in contact with them and even sometimes considers joining them on another mission, but he feels no lasting link to dreaming and has really gotten away very lightly, if with a slight paranoia about taxis now.
And Eames himself, well Eames is a survivor, always has been. He knows a little too much about people, looks a little too closely, and what he sees is biting and frozen, and it's all he can do to laugh and scrap with Arthur instead of breaking down at the sight of all that evil and hurt and sadness and pity in the world.
They are all a little broken, in their own way, and for this very reason they cling to each other, like a sinking ship where they all know they're drowning but hold on because they need that feeling of something, someone being there to protect them.
But in the end, all that does is make it worse. After all, look at Mal and Cobb.
AN: This came into my head as I was making my latest Inception mishmash vid, which will be up by this evening, I hope. I hope you've enjoyed this, and there will probably be a second chapter, but it's an optional bit, because this really is meant to be a oneshot, so I'm labelling it as 'complete'. Reviews and constructive criticism are much appreciated, so thank you for reading and I hope to hear from you.