All the things one has forgotten scream for help in dreams.
~ Elias Canetti

"Well, well, well, the gang's all here." Eames smiled as he walked into the conference room. Had to be something big, to bring Cobb out of his self-imposed retirement. Or exile, as Eames thought of it.

Late, and unavoidably so, but he knew it would annoy Arthur. Arthur was a stickler for things like that, being on time. He liked to do that because it was such fun. Arthur wouldn't show it, of course, but Eames knew it would irk him. Truth was, he couldn't get to him any other way. Arthur had his number from the beginning, and was no fool. But if in his final appraisal he thought he knew all there was to know about Eames, he was wrong.

Arthur didn't look up or acknowledge him. Eames chuckled. A confidence man, Eames was the shrewd observer of human nature and psychology, and also the forger, and he gave that term entirely new meaning, as he was a charming shapeshifting trickster assumer of identities. And sometimes when he was stressed, Eames had the most devastatingly attractive nervous facial tic.

Arthur wasn't the only one Eames liked to tease though. He could always find an opportunity somewhere. On their last job, just for the additional fun of it, when Eames had transformed himself into a voluptuous blonde woman for his part in running the scam, he cornered Saito in the elevator, blatantly flirted with him, and then took Saito's hand and placed it on one of her ample breasts. And Saito might have gone for it, if not for his glancing up at the one of the elevator's reflective brass panels at the last minute, and seeing that it was actually Eames in another form in one of them.

Saito was not amused. You could always see who Eames really was in a triptych mirror or similarly reflective surface.

"Now, now - why so glum, Mr. Saito? It was rather clever, I thought." Eames said, and he must have laughed with glee for about five minutes straight.

Arthur was aloof. Serious. Controlled. Stick up his arse. But something simmering, just beneath the surface. A dream walkin'. Slim, compact build. Moved liked a male dancer does, effortless; athletic and graceful, yes, but with a physical strength and vigor of mind powering that grace. Knew his place in the organization, just as they all did, but never one to back down; and you knew he'd be right there, like a shot, to unseat a leader, just waiting for the right opportunity. It was in the way he didn't hestitate to speak up, with authority and confidence, and sometimes, even a little condescention. Perhaps that's what made him so valuable to the organization. But there was more. Arthur's totem was a loaded die; which told Eames there was a part of him who liked to take chances, but didn't leave things entirely to chance, that he took steps to help the odds to his favor, maybe even liked a little mischief, a little deception. Eames smiled. Like he said, a dream walking.

"Glad you could make it.'' Cobb said, a cool edge to his voice, as Eames took his place at the table.

"And good morning to you too, darling." Eames said.

None of them were here to win any popularity contests; they were hired simply because each was the best at what they did.

They were here to discuss their latest job; the prevention of a dream theft.

She needed more time. But he made it clear there wasn't going to be any more time. It was time she stopped making excuses for him, and on a deeper level, for her own mistake for allowing herself to get into this fix to begin with. She had been a little stunned to see him this way, someone she felt she could trust. So she stayed away, even though she did see him once more, at a distance. Same serious expression, and she wished she had been able to fix it.

It was always the same; the recurring nightmare. She'd get the sense that someone was following her in the dark, indistinct, then chasing her, gaining on her at every step, and she couldn't move to run away, paralyzed. Just before whoever it was reached her and she'd scream, or she'd see the face, she'd wake up with her heart racing, in a cold, shaky panic, then relief to find that it had only been a dream.

She hadn't had a dream like that in quite some time now.

She became annoyed; felt that this probing of her mind left her privacy invaded, and could see no useful purpose in dredging up things from her past that were best left where they were buried.

He wouldn't leave it alone, though.

"Ariadne. Look at me." Arthur said, angry at this man, whoever he was. "Did he threaten you."

Just what was her story.

He reached out to take her hand, treading cautiously here, which again only seemed to offend her. He had somehow gotten off on the wrong foot with her, and was determined to get it right. She was very sharp, and the architectural dreamscapes she had created were some of the best and most complex he'd ever seen.

"Arthur, please leave it." she snapped at him. "I'm sorry I even brought it up. Can't you just leave your work at the office."

Then she thought better of it. She knew that under that gruff exterior of his, there beat the heart of a gentle and caring man. Arthur was the point man; he held their lives literally in his hands when they were in the dream state, and they depended on him, more than they were willing to admit, sometimes.

"I'm sorry, Arthur." she said, taking his hand. "I know you're one of the good guys."

Arthur had leaned in and gently kissed her during the Fischer job; ostensibly to evade and confuse the many dream projection sentries that were everywhere in Fischer's defensively-trained mind.

Too bad it didn't have quite the effect he had hoped for in either case, she noted with a skeptical smile, when she thought she saw a mischievous gleam in his eye as they left for the hotel suite to prepare for the team's exit.

"C'mon, we'd better get out of here." he said.

She gazed at his handsome profile as she watched him get up to leave. To rooms 491 and 528, respectively. She may have been a top student when she was at university, but there were some things she just didn't have a whole lot of experience with.

But then, had it been in Arthur's dream ... or in hers.

"Couldn't stay away, could you." Arthur had once said to her, not surprised, when she came back after her first foray into dream building. And it was true, she couldn't. While it had been frightening at first, dangerous, and not entirely legal - she'd had mixed feelings about it in the beginning, felt that Fischer's mind was being tortured, it had ultimately proved to be something too seductive to resist, and she had to know more.

The things that revealed themselves in people's dreams, she mused. They had been trained to keep confidential anything secondary to their main objective that they should inadvertently happen to discover during their time in a person's mind in dream sharing, and to be discreet about whatever they might see or hear there - the hopes and fears, sorrows, regrets. Wishes, desires, fantasies, and not always the sexual fantasies. Personal matters, tragedies. Unsettling and ugly things. Including their own. The time she saw Cobb's leather-gloved hand caress Mal's thigh through her jeweled gown, then murmur something low and unintelligible in her ear, and kiss her neck; something that sounded like you can't imagine, and then Mal's eyes close in the most exquisite pleasure as she turned to him; and Ariadne felt she should have looked away from them then, leaving Cobb alone to the intimate fantasy, or perhaps it was a memory, but she couldn't.

Cobb and Mal seemed to have found one of the things that everyone seeks; the great love. Where or when she couldn't tell, or what had happened, but it appeared that something had. She'd asked Arthur about it; and even he, as no-nonsense and all business as he was, and what little he'd say about it, seemed to speak of them wistfully. And Arthur would know; he was just about the nearest thing to a confidant that Cobb had.

She'd made all the mistakes a newbie does - not remaining objective enough, identifying too much with the subject, becoming too involved. She had to get used to even treating someone as a subject.

One of Cobb's contacts in Mombasa, Yusuf, a former clinical pharmacologist, had formulated the sleeping compound so that anything not pertaining to the main objective would be gently forgotten upon leaving the dream state, in order to protect the dreamer's privacy, and sanity. Nepentha, (Nepenthazine Hcl) this latest version was called, after the mythical forgetfulness-inducing potion of Homer's Odyssey.

The new version was more rapidly absorbed and fast-acting, meaning they wouldn't have a lot of time - but also extensively metabolized, and leaving no residual after effects.

Honor among thieves after all, she smiled to herself.

Break in quickly, get the job done, get out just as fast - doing as little harm as possible, and leaving just a trace. That was the goal, anyway. The reality could be something else again.

tbc