Arthur let his eyes fall shut with a deep, heartfelt sigh, tilting his head back to rest on the seat of the rental car. Thoughts, images and fragments of speech, played out in no particular order as he took his first chance for a breather since waking up in Sydney over 18 hours ago.
A hallway, tilted on it's axis
A train cutting through the middle of a busy city street
Eames' smirking face. "You mustn't be afraid to dream a little bigger darling."
Mal, sadistic, vicious, wrong, shooting him in the knee
Ariadne, face lit with the joy of creation
The desperate rush to manufacture a kick in zero gravity
Eames looking up at him, eyes shining with unconditional trust
Flailing as the bane-love-of his life kicked his chair out from under him with glee
Mal, bright and lovely, at ten, fifteen, twenty, twenty-five, getting married, holding her newborn children, in dreams, in reality, laughing, laughing, always laughing
Then
Mal, cold, as he'd never seen her, ignoring the tears of her children, the pleas of her husband
Mal, dead, having killed herself, abandoning her children, Cobb, her family, Arthur
Her husband's shade of her, cruel as she had never, never, been in life, seeking him out in their shared dreams, with words that attempted to cut (He had been so so grateful Cobb had never known the true extent, the history, of his relationship with Mal when his subconscious proved to have not even a fraction of the real Mal's power to hurt him, to utterly destroy him) then, when that didn't work, going for more physical harm
Malmalmalmalmalmal
And
"I've done it before." A quick glance at Arthur's staring face before he pressed on
Arthur's eyes snapped open, but for a long moment, he didn't move, holding himself still as his mind made connections, connected the fucking dots, before he reached the inevitable conclusion.
That bastard.