Ariadne approached slowly, watching him. He was different now. His sleeves were rolled up and face was smudged; he looked relaxed and boyish. The windows of the house cast buttery yellow light on his face.
Inside the house, Miles was setting up for dinner. Philippa chased James through the kitchen and Miles scooped him up in his arms. Cobb leaned against the car and smiled at the happy scene.
Ariadne thought that maybe he spent a lot of time out here, just watching them. She needed to leave or say something. It wasn't right to stand here and watch him like this.
"Hey stranger," she said.
He looked up at her and froze. His hand paused in midair. She stepped closer and he slowly lowered his hand to the car.
"How did you find me here?" he said at last.
She stuck her hands in her pockets and scuffed the ground with her boot. "I didn't come here on purpose. Do you have time for a long story?"
He glanced toward the window. "Give me the cliff notes."
She laughed nervously. "I think I'm on a break from reality."
"In what way?" he said, crossing his arms.
She stepped closer and looked up at him searchingly. "I… travel from place to place. Without even trying. I was in a bar in Paris ten minutes ago, then I walked through a room that was a glass of beer, climbed up through a tile in the ceiling, and wound up here in the woods. I meet different versions of the same people." "And Mal," she thought.
He reached out as if to touch her, but seemed to think better of it and pulled his hand back. "Come in for dinner. We can talk about this once the kids are in bed."
"I have one big question." She pulled the note from her pocket and smoothed it out. "'Once in a while, the paths of that labyrinth converge: for example, you come to this house, but in one of the possible pasts you are my enemy, in another my friend.' What does that mean?"
"Coming from a surprise visitor, that's strangely relevant," he said dryly.
"It's your line. I found it in your pocket when you were asleep." There was a long moment of silence between them.
Suddenly he pushed her to the ground. They tumbled to the rough gravel behind the car. By the time she registered the noise of the gun, the bullet had already lodged in the wall behind her. He gripped her arm tightly; his hand was warm.
Their eyes met. "You were followed?" he said incredulously.
"I didn't know," she said.
"That's the whole point of a tail, you don't see them. You have to pay attention to your surroundings." He ran a hand through his hair. "My kids are in the house."
"I'll make a distraction. You get them out of here."
He nodded curtly and made a dash for the house. He kept low and ran in a zigzag pattern. Bullets lit up the ground behind him.
Ariadne imagined a grenade launcher and it appeared in her hands. For a second she thought of Eames, which made her smile.
A bullet ricocheted off the car and she fired a grenade in the direction of the gunfire. There was an explosion and a ball of flame. The night went eerily quiet.
There was a crunch of gravel ahead of her. She peered over the hood of the car but couldn't see anything in the fading light.
She heard a car's ignition and more gravel crunching further off in the woods, like the movement of a heavy object. Good. It was probably Cobb idling a car away from the house with Miles and the children. She scanned the area for movement again.
Something grabbed her arms from behind. The grenade launcher clattered to the ground. She elbowed the attacker in the hard in the gut and he cried out, clutching his stomach. She turned around and got a look at her him: a well-built young man with light brown hair and a neat beard. She recognized him.
She aimed a kick at his groin, but he caught her foot and hauled it upward. She fell hard on her back and frantically twisted to reach the weapon. He lightly kicked it away. She hooked her free foot around his ankle and he crashed to the ground.
She brought her thumbs to his eyes and applied pressure. He grabbed her wrists and pried her hands away. Keeping a firm grip on her wrists, he slowly stood.
"I don't want to hurt you," he said. There was the zip of a silenced gunshot, and he crumpled to the ground.
Ariadne glanced down at the dead man. Half his face was gone. She felt sick.
Cobb stood on the porch holding a handgun. There was a heavy duffel bag slung over his shoulder.
"Come on, let's go," he said.
Tracks:
Zoe Keating- We Insist
Well, so far I've written ten chapters, and it's taken me longer to get to Cobb than I thought. I had the whole plot kind of blocked out before I started, and scenes that I thought would only be a paragraph or two turned into chapters. I also didn't update for like three months. Now I have everything through the ending in script form, just waiting to be turned into a readable story. If you're still reading, I really appreciate your patience!
(By the way, I manage a little gourmet store. We sell wine, cheese, fancy chocolate, and we do catering. Apparently people REALLY want this stuff during the holidays, so I've been putting in 60 hour weeks for about the last 3 months. D: It's been crazy, and I'm really sorry for the long break.)
I'm also going to go through and change a few things earlier in the story. Some of the lines seem clunky now that I go back and read them, and then there's that ham-fisted title drop. Hopefully I can get it all smoothed out.