A Promise
Her sobbing is the only thing that pierces the invisible barrier that has so wholly encased him. His skin is numb, he cannot feel his feet, his legs, his hands. He stares at them, his hands, they don't appear to bear any resemblance to his own, they lie in his lap lifelessly, listlessly, foreign – he can't feel them but it does little to alarm him. It is as if his skin has become impermeable to sound, to smell, to touch, to taste, to everything, everything but her sobbing. She is three rooms away, separated by walls and furniture, but the noise still touches every cell of his being. His eyes focus on the opposite wall but he doesn't see. He sees nothing. As if he sits in murky water, drowning, cold, breathless.
Ever since Miles arrived at the door, eyes wide, forehead creased and gaze searching with urgency for his prized pupil he had left them – he had stumbled from the door only pausing to see Miles kneel with slight difficulty before the young woman who remained still on the sofa. The older man had grasped her hands lightly and as if she were nothing more than cracked glass waiting to shatter she'd collapsed; the river unable to be held back for even a moment longer.
The sobbing began …and didn't stop.
The sound stings his ears, his throat, his heart. It fills every corner of each room as an icy wind would were the windows that looked over the cold Parisian night opened. He seeks refuge, he turns from the room, knuckles turning white as his fingers grasp onto anything that can keep him upright. His knees are weak now that he knows Ariadne has someone else to hold her up. He doesn't deserve to escape but he does. He does, hearing the muffled sound of Miles' voice. He can't remember calling the man yet he knows he must have. He can't remember anything. Just Ariadne.
Miles' face swims into his vision later – how much later he holds no comprehension of. Seconds….minutes….hours…days? He sees the man's lips open yet no sound accompanies it and he simply stares. It is only then that he realises that silence is everywhere. That the sobbing has stopped. It is the first thing that alarms him because silence does not belong. Screaming, crying, grieving, yelling, breaking – all expected yet there is nothing but silence. The same kind of silence that followed the fall. But when his eyes find Miles' once more he is reassured because he knows that the man would never have left Ariadne had she needed him. Perhaps she had passed out, submitted to the darkness, the cold, vacant space he knew she was drowning in – he knew because he too was there. It is not long, or is it, before Miles stands once more. His eyes do not follow the man, instead they focus on the opposite wall once more, and still he sees nothing more than he has already.
Yusuf arrives next. The chemist is frantic, almost desperate, almost manic. He has no idea of how much time has passed, only wonders where Ariadne is, his friend kneels and lays his hand on his forearm and tells him slowly as if he's already done so once that she's asleep, that's she's okay for the moment. He doesn't hear the rest of Yusuf's words, he doesn't meet his eyes again, he just wonders of what their young architect dreams. He wishes for a moment that she'd lost that ability like the rest of them. That she was no longer able. But maybe, just maybe, her subconscious was kind, and maybe she was dreaming of a time before. Before everything. Before now. Maybe until her eyes opened again she could find some peace. He wonders with an aching chest how hard it would be for her to wake up into this nightmare.
Cobb. His eyes are tired. Swimming in devastation. Broken. He's seen this expression before – many times. Seen the expression in reality and out of it, so much so that in some strange way it offers him some comfort, some familiarity when everything is so inordinately confusing. But this expression isn't for Mal. This time it isn't about her. The extractor is pale, his eyes are red, hair dishevelled. He wonders where the children are, Miles is here, with Maria perhaps. Looking at Cobb, he realises that the man had to cross water to be there. His eyes are too tired to search for the window though, his mind too pained to worry for the time of day. Letting his eyes drop away from the man he realises that there's a glass of water and bread on the ground beside him, he can't remember who it was that put it there. His eyes are dry, his throat too and it screams for the water but his arms are too heavy, his fingers turned to lead, set in stone. He stares at it.
He feels Cobb leave a while later. He doesn't hear anything else and this time his eyes slide close and his head hits the wall that he sits against.
And once more there is simply nothing.
When her face floats into his vision though, when she kneels before him on aching knees, regardless of the fact she feels no pain – her skin, her heart too numb, her brain paralysed. But when she appears before him, when it's her eyes that find his and her cold, small fingers that wrap around his wrist he shows up. He pulls himself from somewhere he hadn't visited in a long time, some part of his world that was so dark and so cold and shows up for her. Because he has ripped her apart, he is responsible for her shredded heart. It is him who deserves nothing of her attention, nothing of her time, nothing of her heart for he is the one that has caused her devastation. The walls of her world have collapsed, her world has been folded in half and turned upside down on itself by none of her own volition.
The sobbing starts once more. Yet this time she is not alone.
And his eyes find the window, find the stars that lie beyond it, and he sends a promise in a prayer that he too will become a star before he breaks. A promise to do everything in his power and beyond to make sure the woman in his arms is not alone, is not broken forever. A promise for a friend. A promise for a brother. A promise for Arthur.
He is winded, and perhaps his ribs are shattered. And there's a heavy weight on his chest preventing his lungs from filling. He can feel the trickle of blood down the back of his head. He knew he'd regret the job, he knew it had been a bad idea, but the panic and concern are mounting and he wonders if he really will get out of this one alive. Perhaps it was his time. Gunshots ring in his ears as his heart hammers, five on one – unfair of course. He strikes left and swipes right before ducking hastily and spitting out blood on the way. His vision swims and he wonders if there had been five men surrounding him holding guns and chains alike when there were now only three. He attempts to blink his eyes back into focus and now there are four. The fight feels like it spans years until suddenly there is another beside him. He feels his presence before he sees his face. They've always worked in synchrony, in flawless time, Ariadne teases them too much that they should have been dancers.
With another set of eyes and hands and doubled strength the men that have had what appeared like pleasure at running blades through his skin for days on end spitting at him for information he would not give, lie on the ground before him. Arthurs' bullet catches the last one before he turns for Eames who falters. Arthur stables him before nodding and Eames breathes for the first time in days. He hears the thanks, the gratitude as Arthur's eyes catalogue what will soon be scars on his skin, knowing that he and Ariadne were safe because of the forger's silence. They talk, they push and pull and tease and mock and get into a fight before they get to the exit. They've worked alongside one another for nine years that month and he laughs as Arthur groans remarking that Ariadne wasn't going to let the forger out of her sight for God knows how long after the trouble he'd found himself in. Eames laughs and finally sees sunlight. It's as they walk out the door chatting aimlessly as if he hadn't just been plucked from the middle of Germany where he'd been held. As if they'd just walked to the store to pick up milk. It's as Arthur turns to snap a photo of the place no doubt to have Saito's men take it apart later that Eames feels the point man slam into his body both of them falling to the ground. The echo of the lone gunshot meant to stop his heart never leaves his ears again.
Please review...I wrote this in some of the harder moments of the past year after losing people that I love still so much. Hope you enjoy.