Disclaimer: None of this is mine, it belongs to Warner Bros and other creative outlets and people, I don't intend to profit from this in any way. I am just trying to curb my own writer's block.

I've never been to Paris (or anywhere else in France) so everything you've been reading regarding landscape and university is what I've found online. Every named location is real though.

Chapter title from the Yeah Yeah Yeahs song. The lyrics don't really fit (dance dance until you die!) but I listened to it a lot whilst writing this chapter, and but the keyboard and beat suggest impending doom…

Thanks to kks99, obliviate-exterminate and penguinsfan18 for the favorites, athousandroses, Aura the Artist and shanynde for the story alert and shanynde and obliviate-exterminate for the reviews! I love the support!

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Heads Will Roll

Monday, October 4, 2011: Paris, France: Le Pub St. Germain: Arthur

Even though she'd proven she didn't need it, Arthur couldn't help but follow protectively behind Ariadne as she led the way to their destination. Behind him, Cobb walked, hands deep in his pockets and a perpetual frown on his face. Every now and then, Arthur glanced behind him to study Cobb. It didn't matter that he knew Cobb was no longer armed; Arthur officially did not trust the man.

Ahead of him, Ariadne kept her head up and her pace even. Her right arm was wrapped possessively around her bag, which she had mostly emptied of books to make room for the guns. They'd been walking for almost five minutes and hadn't said a word to each other. The silence was deafening to Arthur and he walked a little faster, brushing his left hand against the small of her back and leaning over her shoulder.

"Are you okay?"

She rolled her eyes. "I wasn't the one held at gunpoint by their best friend, Arthur. I should be asking you that."

Arthur sighed, his breath floating across her hair. "He wasn't going to shoot me."

"Sure. That's exactly what it looked like."

He wasn't going to get any honest conversation with her now. "Where are we going?"

"Le Pub St. Germain," she replied. "I could really use a drink right now." She caught Arthur's eye and scowled at his smirk. "I don't care that it's barely five o'clock. I'm still shaking."

He glanced down, and realized that part of the reason she was gripping her bag so tightly was to conceal the fact that her hands were shaking. Keeping his left on her back, he reached with his right and brushed his fingertips along the back of her hand.

"It'll be okay."

"I don't want to talk about this now," she whispered sharply, aware that Cobb was right behind them and attempting to hang on their every word. "I've got plenty of things I intend to say to you later though."

"I look forward to it," Arthur murmured. She frowned again but adjusted her bag, pulling away from Arthur's touch. He glanced behind him again and spotted Cobb's relaxed expression; Arthur sighed again in irritation at it.

They reached the restaurant and Arthur pulled the door open, letting Ariadne and Cobb pass through before him. She led the way, choosing a table in the corner with Cobb on her tail while Arthur approached the bar.

Cobb raised his eyebrows when Arthur returned with his usual drink, scotch on the rocks. "How-"

"You've been drinking the same thing for ten years," Arthur responded with a snap in his voice. Cobb shrugged it off as Arthur sat, passing Ariadne her cosmopolitan without a word and taking a gulp of his beer.

"So," Ariadne said. "Cobb. What the hell is going on?"

Cobb sighed deeply. "Two days ago, I was at home in San Francisco with my kids. I heard a knock on the front door; I went to answer it, thinking it was a package Stephen told me he was going to send. Must've been at least four of them, because the next thing I knew I was waking up in my driveway surrounded by my neighbors and clutching a letter in my hand."

"That said what?" Ariadne pressed.

"That Peter Browning had kidnapped my children," Cobb said. "And is holding them at a secret location. That the only way I can get them back is to perform a reverse inception on Robert Fischer."

Ariadne's mouth fell open, and her hand gripped her glass in an unnecessarily tight grip. She was staring directly at Cobb, ignoring Arthur's eyes on her.

"Fischer," she whispered. "The inception… He wants you to reverse it?"

"Yes."

"Is it possible?"

"No," Arthur interjected. "Inception on its own is difficult enough, bordering on impossible. But we'd heard of it before we tried it, and Cobb had done it before, so we went for it. But reverse inception… Now that's impossible."

Cobb shook his head. "Just because it hasn't been done before doesn't mean it can't be done."

"What happens if you don't do it?" Ariadne asked breathlessly. She didn't need a spoken answer at the look on Cobb's face.

"Oh, Cobb…" She reached across the table, gripping his hand in hers.

"Now you understand why I was so… Uh…"

"Insane?" Arthur supplied. Ariadne gave him a look but didn't question his word choice.

"Yes," Cobb admitted. He turned back to Ariadne. "I can't lose them. They're all I have left."

She nodded. "Yes, I see that… But Cobb, if it can't be done-"

"I have to try," he said. "And to give it my best, I need the best people possible. I'm trying to re-create the original team who went on the inception the first time around, though minus Saito."

"So you came to Paris for me?"

Cobb shook his head. "Not exactly. I came for Arthur; I didn't know you two were… Well."

Ariadne raised an eyebrow. "Well indeed."

"Stephen had told me that Arthur retired," Cobb explained. "But nothing about why." He paused, his unspoken question hanging in the air.

Ariadne nodded. "He knows we don't spread it around."

"In case people choose to use that connection against us," Arthur clarified. Cobb's nose twitched and he gulped down some more of his drink. Arthur kept his gaze leveled at him. He was beyond irritated with the man, but he knew Ariadne wanted to consider everything before passing judgment.

"When were you going to get me?" Ariadne wondered.

Cobb's mouth quirked. "I wasn't. I promised Stephen before the first inception that I would keep you out of the dream. As we all know, that didn't exactly pan out-" Arthur snorted, earning himself a glare from Cobb, who pressed forward "-So I decided afterwards that I would never bring you back into this again."

"You're doing great at that one too," Arthur commented.

Ariadne ignored this. "You weren't going to contact me?"

"I was going to try to find a different architect first," Cobb said. "Eames still works fairly regularly; I figured he would know someone."

"You've talked to Eames then?"

"Not yet. I'm flying to London tomorrow to track him down." Cobb's eyes swiveled to Arthur. "I was hoping you'd accompany me."

"Not for my pleasant company, I'm sure," Arthur said. "You want to keep an eye on me."

"Can you blame me?"

"Yes, actually," Arthur said heatedly, but Ariadne's hand on his knee gave him pause and he turned to her.

Her brow was furrowed, eyes somewhat distant as she thought.

"How long do you have to form a team?"

"The end of the week," Cobb murmured. She looked shocked.

"How do they expect you to find people to agree to something like this in such a short time?"

Cobb sighed, running his hands through his hair. "I don't know. Browning thinks I have enough connections to pull it off. And if I was looking for an average team, I could, easily. But I need nothing less than extraordinary for this."

"Us," Ariadne said. Cobb nodded.

"You see why I was so forceful."

"It's a bit clearer," she agreed. She removed her hand from Arthur's knee, clasping her hands together on the table. She fiddled with her thumbs, her calling card for deep thinking. It hit Arthur then as to what exactly she was considering.

"Shit, Ari-"

"You heard him, Arthur," she whispered, glancing around. Even over the loud music playing in the restaurant, a couple heads had looked up at Arthur's raised voice, but they turned away when Ariadne met their eyes. She swiveled back to gaze at Arthur. "It's his kids on the line. He's not asking us to give up anything; he just wants our help."

"Give up anything?" Arthur repeated incredulously. "We'd be sticking our necks out for him, and he knows it. You know how hard I had to work to get rid of my tails to make the last year possible. I'm only just now beginning to fall off the radar of the major corporations interested in extraction and shared dreaming. This would raise my profile again, significantly, no matter the outcome."

"We have to try-"

"Cobb," Arthur interjected fluidly, tearing his gaze away from Ariadne's and focusing on Cobb. Cobb looked up, having been watching the exchange with a tired, but hopeful, expression. "Tell her how you betrayed me. Tell her how far you are willing to go to blackmail me."

His words caught Ariadne's attention and she looked at Cobb again. "What?"

"I'm desperate," Cobb began.

"For God's sake, Cobb," Arthur snapped. "You can't worm your way out of this. Explain to her how you were willing to watch her and me die to get your way."

Ariadne's eyes widened. "What?"

"You were right earlier when you said he was threatening to hurt you," Arthur said, leaning forward towards Cobb.

Cobb sighed. "Fine, Arthur." He turned to Ariadne, looking her straight in the eye.

"Arthur is still wanted, dead or alive, in certain parts of the world," he explained in his lowest voice yet, aware of the people around them. It was one thing to discuss inception in a public place (where the average restaurant goer would have no idea what it was); it was a whole other thing to talk about a wanted criminal. "The highest price on his head comes from Cobol Engineering. 2.5 million dollars dead, five million alive. To put it in context, most extractors are valued at $250,000."

Ariadne's eyes were huge in wordless shock. Arthur straightened his tie for lack of something to do.

"If he wasn't going to agree, I was going to go to Cobol to tell them that Arthur Thorne was living in Paris; that's the name they know him as," Cobb added, misreading Ariadne's expression as confusion. Arthur knew it was actually horror.

"You were going to sell him out?" She asked open-mouthed.

"Not just me," Arthur muttered.

"Cobol has wanted Arthur for a year and a half now," Cobb continued reluctantly. "And they haven't found him, even though he's remained in the same place for a year of that time. He's unmatched at evading people he wishes to avoid. Everyone in the industry recognizes him as not just an unparalleled point man, but as a master of secrecy. To them, he has no attachments and no weaknesses. So Cobol keeps its price, but without much of a hope of ever hunting him down.

"Of course," Cobb continued. "What they don't realize is that Mr. Thorne here is in a long-term relationship."

"Oh," Ariadne breathed. "Oh." She turned to Arthur, eyes wide in realization. "That's why you didn't want him to see me. And…" She returned her gaze to Cobb, face full of indignation. Arthur almost smiled at it.

"You weren't going to just tell Cobol where to find Arthur," she hissed. "You were going to tell them where to find me."

"Cobol would jump at the opportunity to seize the one attachment Arthur hasn't severed," Cobb confirmed. "Arthur can move without a trace, but you might not be able to, and not nearly as neatly. Your whole life has been in the real world; his hasn't for almost ten years. And he's a point man; his nature would ensure him stopping at nothing to find you and bring you back. Or, if that didn't work, his first response would be to give himself up in exchange for you."

Ariadne clenched her jaw. "You are a sick bastard." Arthur nodded, and unable to help himself, grasped her hand. She entwined her fingers with his in response.

"I really want nothing more than to slap you," she told Cobb.

He nodded. "I deserve it, yes."

Ariadne stood, pulling Arthur up with her. "We're leaving." Arthur was none too happy to allow her to lead him through the crowded restaurant, her small hand warm and reassuring in his.

They stepped out into the cool Parisian night and Ariadne automatically turned in the direction back to their apartment. They made it three steps before Cobb caught up with them.

"Ariadne, Arthur; please, wait-"

"Jesus Christ," Arthur swore. He dropped Ariadne's hand and spun around, grabbing Cobb by the collar of his dirty shirt. Aware of the gawking passersby, he yanked Cobb into the side alley, stepping past the dumpster until he could slam him against the wall.

"Leave us alone," he growled, shaking Cobb by the front of his shirt for emphasis. "We want nothing to do with you anymore." He glared at Cobb for a moment before letting go, sending the older man sprawling into the cold cement of the alley floor. Arthur turned back to Ariadne, seizing her hand again to take the lead home. Just as he picked up the pace and turned his head to search for a taxi, Cobb spoke.

"Cobol has a team of assassins in Paris."

Arthur froze, Cobb's words sinking in. He spun around, Ariadne hesitating at his side.

"Excuse me?" Arthur asked in a voice like ice.

Cobb coughed, straightening against the wall. "They keep a team here year-round for the same reason I come here; some of the most promising dreamers in the world can be found in this city." He sighed, standing to his full height and pushing away from the wall. "I can make one phone call, and they'll be at your apartment before you get there yourselves."

Arthur inhaled tightly through his nose. "You're bluffing."

"You remember Cobol. You know I'm not. Enough of their most wanted frequent the city."

"He's telling the truth?" Ariadne asked in a hushed voice.

"You can't run from that," Cobb continued, speaking only to Arthur. "A car wouldn't be fast enough. It'd be too easy for someone to slip on at a train station. You could take a plane, but you don't have the documents you need to get out of the country at such short notice. Well, you might. But we both know she doesn't, and you won't leave her."

Arthur gripped Ariadne's hand more tightly, treating it as a lifeline, a stark reminder that this was reality and not, in fact, a nightmare.

"You can't go to the police," Cobb murmured, his voice husky. "France doesn't protect wanted criminals. If you could even get them to believe the reason you require asylum is for a dream heist."

"Why wouldn't I just go to Cobol and tell them where to find you instead?" Arthur demanded.

"They're no longer interested in me," Cobb said softly. "I squared things with them six months ago. A job in New Orleans. You're their number one now."

"You would do that to us?" Ariadne whispered brokenly.

Cobb turned to her, his expression full of apologies and broken denials. "I have to, Ariadne. I need you to help me."

That was too much for Arthur. Without a word, he launched himself at Cobb, slamming his fist into the extractor's jaw. Cobb swayed, but Arthur didn't give him a chance to recover, instead continuing to pummel the man like his life depended on it. Which it did.

"You fucker," he hissed at Cobb. "Give me one good reason to not kill you on the spot."

"I wasn't born yesterday," Cobb spat, coughing out a mouthful of blood. Arthur heard Ariadne's intake of breath at the sight of the red liquid dripping onto the ground but she didn't comment. "I have insurance. I told Cobol I was looking for you. They know where I've been and where I was planning to go. If I suddenly stop in Paris and disappear… I called them earlier when I was in your apartment, telling them I had a lead, that you have a weakness now. If I don't call back tonight, they'll realize something went wrong. It won't take them long to realize I found you, and that you weren't alone."

Arthur got to his feet, staring down at his former best friend, his blood frozen with horror.

"So that's it, then," he murmured. "You've taken my life out of my hands. You're fucking giving me to them on a silver platter."

"My kids-"

"It won't work, Cobb!" Arthur yelled, losing all his composure in one fear-filled moment. "What do you think Cobol will do when they find out you not only found me, but that I worked with you on another job?"

"The price on my head will be back, and bigger than ever," Cobb said. "They'll come after me."

"They'll still know I live here!"

"No they won't," Cobb interjected. "If you agree, I'll call them and say my lead was dead, and that I'm flying to Cairo tomorrow to look there. Once the job with Browning is done, I'll tell them I found you in Saint Petersburg. You hate Russia."

Arthur stared down at the broken man in fury. "You haven't exactly given me a goddamn choice."

"So you'll work with me?"

"Work 'with' implies that I'm going into this freely. I'm working for you."

"I know," Cobb said. He got to his feet, wobbling a little and wincing at the bruises Arthur's unrelenting punches had created. "I'm truly sorry about this, Arthur."

"Save it for someone who believes it," Arthur snapped.

Cobb looked away from Arthur towards Ariadne. Arthur turned around with him. She was still standing several feet away, her arms wrapped around her chest, hands clenching her arms in fear. She was staring solely at Arthur.

"Ariadne," Cobb croaked. "You know I'm not here to force you into this. You can walk away. I won't chase you."

"I know," she whispered. Her eyes were glistening, filled with unshed tears at the predicament Arthur was in. "But Cobb… What if you have a tail?"

"A tail?" Cobb repeated, confused. "I don't have a tail."

"Do you? It sounds like Cobol is watching your every move closely. It would be silly of them to not have someone following you."

Cobb's breath caught, recognizing the truth in her words. Arthur automatically glanced around, searching for someone or something…

"You have a point," Cobb conceded.

"So what's the use of me staying here?" Ariadne asked. "You have to leave Paris to help the illusion you're still hunting Arthur. If Cobol senses something is wrong, they'll focus on the last place things were right, the last place you had a supposed lead…"

"And they'll still hunt you down," Arthur finished for her. "Yes, you're right." He whipped his head around to face Cobb, eyes blazing. "God dammit. You've really done it, Cobb."

Cobb nodded in agreement. "I'm so sorry, Ariadne-"

"Don't," she whispered. "Don't apologize to me. I can't forgive you for ruining my life." She reached her hand out and Arthur took it without hesitation. She stared up into his face, and for a single blissful second, Arthur could pretend Cobb wasn't there, that this was just a normal night out with her. But she spoke to Cobb again, and the illusion was shattered.

"Not to mention his," she finished.

"You're going to London tomorrow?" Arthur asked Cobb, refusing to look away from Ariadne. His hand ghosted over the side of her face; it felt cold.

"Plane leaves at seven a.m."

"Get us two seats in first class," Arthur said monotonously. He finally looked away from Ariadne to face Cobb again. "I can't risk leaving her alone here."

Cobb took a long breath. "Thank you."

"Fuck you." Arthur rolled his eyes in exasperation to face Ariadne again.

She nodded once at Cobb. "We'll meet you at the airport tomorrow."

Without another word or glance at Cobb, Arthur and Ariadne walked out of the alley, where Arthur hailed a taxi to take them home.

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