Author's Note: A little later than usual, my apologies for that. This chapter's extra long to make up for it. Thank you, Kitty Quasar for the usual. I love your little 'essays' for me, haha, please don't stop. This chapter's got a bit of a different feel to it, just in terms of pacing and the scenes themselves... hopefully the chapter isn't different for the worse, though.
Disclaimer: Obviously, Inception does not belong to me.
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Chapter Six
Arthur was livid the that evening when Cobb told him and Eames that Ariadne was flying over from Paris the following day. Eames found Arthur's anger greatly entertaining, which didn't help Arthur's mal humour. He ended up muttering something about going out before leaving the meeting room somewhat noisily to take a break from both Eames and Cobb.
Cobb glanced at Eames once Arthur was gone. "Layout off him a bit, would you? We need him to be with us if Ariadne is going to host the top dream level."
Eames shrugged, not really giving Cobb his full attention. He moved over to the PASIV and began to prime it. "Arthur knows what he does or doesn't like. My comments aren't going to sway his opinion of anything, or his feelings."
Cobb frowned at Eames at his implication that Arthur and Ariadne's relationship might be anything more than business colleagues. "No, I've talked to him. He promised me there isn't anything going on between them."
"Oh, Arthur, he says a lot of things," Eames said as he inserted some of Yusuf's vials into the cradles of the PASIV.
"He's a man of his word."
Eames moved on to adjust the dosage of the sedation and lock the timer. "True, but that isn't to say he doesn't twist the truth a little for convenience."
"What are you saying?"
Eames stopped and turned to face Cobb, his tone slightly more serious. "Just because there isn't anything going on doesn't mean Arthur doesn't have feelings for Ariadne."
"Because you're the expert on the subject," said Cobb, annoyed. "How could you-"
"Look, I'm just warning you incase it jeopardises the job," Eames said, sitting in the chair by the PASIV and swabbing at his wrist with disinfectant. "When any kind of feelings exist between two team members it never goes well, you know that as well as I do. You and Mal didn't end up too well off, as one of the many examples."
Cobb stiffened slightly, but shook his head none the less as Eames gently inserted the needle at the end of the IV line into his own wrist. "I trust Arthur's judgement," Cobb said. "Things won't become complicated."
"Yeah, but that's just the thing," Eames said, settling back in his chair. "Arthur's judgement is that he doesn't want Ariadne on this job."
Cobb rubbed a hand over his forehead. "I thought you were all for having Ariadne on board, Mr. Eames. What changed?"
"Oh, I'm still all for it," Eames said, smiling briefly. "I just wanted to make sure that you're aware of everything that may happen. We all need to plan for any possible complications, from any eventuality, and we don't need you or anyone else losing it halfway through the job."
Cobb nodded. "Alright." He gestured at the PASIV, changing the subject. "Let me know how it goes." Eames nodded back before pressing the middle injection button. His eyes closed as the PASIV hissed out the compound into the tube and he was asleep.
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Arthur left to pick up Ariadne from the airport the next afternoon, an annoyed shake of the head his only answer to Eames' charming request of accompanying him to get the architect. He arrived in the early afternoon in a navy blue, rented Sedan. He parked and headed into the international airport. The line wasn't long at security, so he headed through it, brushing through the security guards quickly, barely looking or talking to them. He checked the board to see which gate Ariadne's plane was landing in before seeing that it was due any second at the opposite end of the airport. He arrived just as the passengers were leaving the plane. He spotted Ariadne as she stepped out of the shoot and through the sliding metal gateway. She was dressed somewhat plainly in dark jeans, a beige jacket and a red scarf with a matching purse. When she saw him, however, her smile seemed to make her radiate.
"Arthur," she said, walking over to him, rolling her suitcase behind her and giving him a one-armed hug.
He took her suitcase for her as they began head for the parking lot after she told him that the carry-on suitcase and purse were all she'd brought. "How've you been?" he asked.
"Good, you know," she said, comfortably falling into step beside him."Studying."
He nodded. "How was the flight?"
She shrugged. "Customary. Long."
He smiled down at her, and was surprised as he realized how much he'd missed her since he'd last seen her. She looked back up at him, her eyes locking momentarily with his. They reached security and headed through it once more.
"And how about you?" she said, turning her attention back to him once they were past the security personnel. "How have you been?"
"Fine," he said as they continued down the hallway. "I had a job I was working on in Austria for a few weeks, in Vienna."
"Just by yourself?"
"Yeah, it was a pretty straight-forward job."
"Can you tell me about it, or is it top secret and you're not supposed to tell anyone?" she asked, her eyebrows slightly raised teasingly at him.
"Well, technically speaking it is secret, but that doesn't mean I won't tell you," Arthur replied.
The doors to the parking lot came into sight and Arthur paused. It had taken him less than fifteen minutes to reach the airport in the Sedan at this time of day. An over-priced coffee shop caught his eye on the other side of the hallway. "Are you tired from your flight?" he asked.
"Yeah, a little."
"Do you want to grab a coffee?"
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Eames' dream the previous evening had gone customarily well. He had mainly worked on the image of Maurice Fischer, perfecting the layout of the man's wrinkles and the colouring of his skin and eyes. He'd worked in front of a mirror in the quite plain private apartment he had built himself. He spent that morning dreaming again, still working on the physical appearance of Maurice, still perfecting it so it matched seamlessly with the footage of Maurice from the recordings he had sustained.
Meanwhile, Cobb made calls, talking to various people and planning out the details of the way they would perform the eradication. Around mid-afternoon, he checked his watch and frowned. Arthur and Ariadne should have been back by now.
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"So why did you come back?" Arthur asked eventually, one hand around his half-finished coffee. They were sitting in a somewhat dark corner of the coffee shop at a small, circular table, the farthest from the busy brightness of the airport hallway.
"Because I missed it," Ariadne answered simply. "After I went back to school, I couldn't think of anything else. It was like I was consumed by the need to dream again, to... create."
Arthur nodded, listening, watching her intently. When he didn't interrupt her, she continued to elaborate with her explanation, her hands held loosely around her Styrofoam coffee cup, her fingers tracing the outline of the shop's logo on the front.
"I wanted to talk to Miles about it, but he was away on leave," she said. "And all the while, the sketching, the models, it all seemed so... mundane. There I was in class, day after day, reading about the structure of a certain type of building, when if I could just dream again, I could build an entire city experimenting with that same structure. It wasn't enough for me anymore. It still isn't."
She looked up at him, catching his eyes and holding them. "Does it ever get better?" she asked. "I mean, when you first started dreaming, was it the same for you?"
He didn't say anything for a moment, then broke her gaze, looking away. "It gets better over time," he said. "But, yes, when I started dreaming it was a long time before I could settle with reality again. I still have trouble being away from dream sharing for a long period of time."
She nodded slowly. He saw that she had finished her coffee, and inclined his head towards the airport once more. "Do you want to go now?"
She nodded and stood up, throwing her cup in the recylcing on the way by, Arthur throwing his in the garbage as it was still half-full of coffee.
Their conversation moved to lighter topics as Arthur drove them to the hotel. They pulled into the loop by the front doors, and a valet hurried out to take the car. Arthur handed him a bill as he pulled Ariadne's suitcase from the trunk and took it into the hotel for her. They rode up to the hallway their suites were on in comfortable silence. Arthur led the way down to their rooms as the doors opened with a small ding, carrying her case as it wouldn't roll properly on the carpeted hallway.
"That's Cobb's room," he said, gesturing at it with his free hand. "Eames is across from his, and I'm beside Cobb's."
Ariadne nodded, continuing to walk down the hallway to the room on the other side of Arthur's. "I'll take this one," she said.
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Ariadne settled back into things quite well once she was immersed with the team and the job once more. Over the next few days, she went over each level of the dream with Eames and Arthur privately once more. They changed a few minor things in each level, but they all agreed that they didn't want to make any other changes incase it significantly changed the dream level from the one in Fischer's memory. She worked quite a bit on her own as well, working on what was formally Yusuf's level. She talked to him over the phone to perfect the tiny details and to make sure she was aware of any changes he had made to the layout she had originally taught him in the lead-up to the inception job. She spent quite a while with the PASIV, working on her level, as well as just entertaining herself in her dreams. Creating whole new worlds when she was alone (to ensure no hostile projections from the other dreamers), bending the physics, experimenting with every aspect of the dream she could.
Meanwhile, Eames was nearly finished perfecting his impersonation of Maurice Fischer. Browning had been very helpful to him in any way, even giving Eames supervised dream-sharing access with some of the low-level, retired executives of the company who had known Maurice. He had thereby been able to interact and study their projection of Maurice through their shared dreams. Eames also kept revising his dream level with Ariadne to ensure everything was the same as in the original dream level. He helped Cobb and Arthur quite a bit in the actual planning of the eradication as well, never quite trusting them completely to have the plan as plausible as possible.
Arthur spent a good deal of his time with Ariadne, helping her with her continuous questions about dream sharing, as well as accepting her help in recreating his hotel dream level. He and Eames also began training her in dealing with militarized projections, mainly focussing on artillery. When not immersed in work with her, he worked on his own research into Fischer. He was checking and double checking everything that had occurred within the past few weeks that could factor into their job, and anything else that he may have missed in his research from the inception.
Cobb worked with Arthur on this quite a bit, researching the exact training of Fischer's mind so they could go about deciding the best way to defend themselves against them this time around. Like Ariadne, he also spent a good deal of his time dream sleeping. In his dreams, he spent his time with his changed projection of Mal. They spent hours and hours together in the dreams, varying between focussing on the job and on recreating their romantic time together. She helped him fill the hole the absence of James and Philippa had created in his chest, and when he was with her, he sometimes had to remind himself of what was a dream. But despite his happiness of being with her, deep down, a part of him warned him of her, warned him that this projection wasn't as wonderful as it appeared. But he pushed that part of his thoughts away, not wanting to have to contemplate that possibility.
He spent most of his time in reality devising their main plan, deciding the best way to plant the new idea in Fischer's mind and eradicate the old idea. Along with the input of Eames and Arthur, he decided that, as they had originally thought, the best way to plant the new idea in Fischer's mind was the most straight-forward way: break into the vault in his mind (unbeknown to him), and replace the information in the vault. If they did this properly, hopefully Fischer wouldn't be able to trace the true genesis of the idea since they would have planted it so deep into his mind at that point.
And so, nearly two weeks after Cobb had left his home and arrived at The Duke and Duchess, their plan was finalized and Cobb phoned Browning to let him know they were ready. They planned a date and time the team could go over to the Fischer-Morrow buildings where they would meet Browning. Fischer would be drugged prior to their arrival, so everything would be set up when they arrived and they would have to do minimal work once they were actually with Fischer.
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It was two nights before they were scheduled to perform the job and Cobb was lying on his bed in the main room of his suite. The television was turned onto a news station, but he wasn't watching it. He had a few photos of James and Philippa that he kept in his wallet out and in his hands; he was fighting the urge to go down to the meeting room and spend a few hours dreaming with Mal before he went to bed. He didn't have to make up his mind, however, as a soft knocking came at his door. He sat up, quickly tucking the photos of James and Philippa back into his wallet.
"Come in," he called.
Ariadne stepped into the room. "Sorry to bother you, Cobb," she said softly. "I know you have a lot on your mind."
"Don't worry about it," he smiled at her. "Come in and sit down."
She sat on the edge of the bed, turning to face him. "Eames was just telling me about Mal," she said.
She had only shared a dream with Cobb a couple times over the past week or so, and those had both been shared with Eames and Arthur in addition to her and Cobb. Mal had not appeared in those dreams, so she hadn't known about his projection of her at the time.
He didn't reply now, as she gazed at him steadily. "You weren't planning on telling me about her, were you," she said. It wasn't a question.
Cobb looked away from her unwavering gaze, uneasy. "No," he said simply.
"Why not?"
"Because it's not a problem anymore, Ariadne," he said. "The opposite. She could help us; she wants to help us... and she will."
"And you believe her?"
"Yes."
Ariadne fell silent for a moment. "Cobb," she said at last. "Are you sure you're not just seeing what you want to see?"
"Yes, I am." He didn't want to have this conversation right now. Not two days before the job.
"Because if she endangers the job again-"
"She won't."
Ariadne stared at him for a moment. "How is she going to help us?"
"She's dealt with militarized projections before, just like the rest of us have. She knows how to deal with them, and if she dies in the dream, it doesn't jeopardize the job," he said. "She can help us fight Fischer's projections, she can keep us safe. She will."
Ariadne frowned. "I still don't-"
"I know what I'm doing, Ariadne."
She hesitated, then finally gave in, nodding slowly. "Alright. But if there's ever any doubt in your mind, if you're ever not sure of anything, promise to come talk to me. I think that's one of the real reasons you called me about this job, Cobb. Deep down, you don't trust her, and you want someone to help you deal with her." She waited for Cobb to reply, but when he didn't say anything, she continued, reaching out and putting a hand on his wrist. "If anything happens during the eradication, I need you to let me know. Someone else needs to know."
Cobb nodded, her contact making him look up at her. "I promise."
They lapsed into silence again as they both watched the tv, neither of them actually paying attention. Finally, Ariadne broke the silence. "There's still one thing I don't understand."
"What?"
Ariadne leaned forward slightly. "Why are you here, Cobb? Why are you doing this job?"
He considered for a moment, watching her. After a pause, he also leaned forward slightly and said, "Because they have my children."
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Cobb and Eames were in the middle of a dream the next day; the day before the Fischer job, sharing the dream merely for convenience's sake. Eames had wanted to test his projection of Maurice on someone else's subconscious, and Cobb had wanted to reassure himself that his projection of Mal would work with all of the members of the team.
Cobb was the dreamer, and he had built them an elegant passenger train that was winding through beautiful Scottish fields and moors. They awoke to reassure Arthur that everything had gone according to plan. Cobb left for his suite, for what was hopefully to be the last night in it.
Eames and Arthur were left alone in the meeting room, Ariadne being upstairs on the ninth floor like Cobb.
"So everything went well, then," Arthur said as he packed up the PASIV properly for the next day.
"Yes, yes, it was fine," said Eames distractedly. "My impression's done to perfection, as usual, though god knows how I was able to pull it off."
"Good to hear," Arthur said. "And Mal?"
"Different," Eames said. "I swear, she's the opposite of Cobb's original projection of her. But lovely, of course. Sweet, charming, smart. But there's just something about her, I dunno."
"Are you having second thoughts about having her on our team in Fischer's mind?"
"No..." Eames trailed off. "I don't know what it is. Just seeing the two of them together again, it makes me feel... uneasy."
"It's probably just making you realize how alone you really are, Eames."
One corner of Eames' mouth twitched up into a smile. "Probably, Arthur."
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It was later that evening that Eames went down to the hotel bar for a break to ease his tension. He ordered a drink and sat waiting for it to arrive. There was a game of football on the television behind the counter, and another tv beside it with poker on. He watched the two for a few moments, but he wasn't really paying attention. His thoughts were wandering, and for the first time in a long time, he felt alone. He pulled out his cell phone and played with it in his hands, considering making a call. There was no harm in just saying hello, in seeing how she was doing...
"Here's your drink, sir."
His beer was placed in front of him, and instead of dialling the number, he grabbed the drink. He told himself that she was fine. A phone call would just make her worry about him. He stared into the amber liquid, lost in his thoughts.
"Eames."
He looked up, startled, as Ariadne sat down beside him. She gestured to the bartender. "I'll have one, too, please."
He cleared his throat roughly, shaking himself out of his thoughts. "Ariadne, what a lovely surprise. I thought you'd gone to bed for the night... Big day tomorrow."
"I couldn't sleep, I'm too worked up," she said. "So I thought I might come and find a distraction. You were looking pretty pensive. That's unusual."
He smiled. "I know, you think I'm so clever I never need to think."
"No, not smart enough to think," she replied, smiling back so he would know she was joking. He gave a short, rather forced laugh for her benefit, and took a swig of his beer as the bartender placed her's in front of her. She turned sideways to face him as he put his beer back down, her elbows on the counter. "So, what's on your mind?" she asked seriously.
"Nothing that would interest you."
"You never know. Besides, it's not like there's anything else to talk about. But only if you want to."
Eames sighed, puffing out his cheeks slightly, then shrugged. "Alright, then." He turned to face her, directing his attention off the televisions finally. "I miss my family."
Ariadne's eyes didn't waver. "They're the reason you're doing this job, aren't they," she said.
Eames blinked, looking down at his beer again. "Yeah."
"They blackmailed you, like they blackmailed Cobb," she said quietly. "You're not doing this for the money, you're doing this because you have to."
"Come on, Ariadne," Eames said. "You must have realized by now that none of us are doing this for the money. Neither Arthur or I would have agreed to re-enter Fischer's mind with Cobb if that had been our only incentive."
Ariadne frowned, her brows pulling together slightly in confusion. "Arthur?" she asked in confusion. He hadn't mentioned anything to her in the week or so.
"Oh," Eames said, seeming to stop mid-thought. "He didn't say anything to you, did he."
"Why is he doing this job, then? He told me he was doing a favour for Cobb."
Eames groaned. He drained his beer, looking back at Ariadne after a moment to find her still staring at him. "Oh, alright then dammit," he said, turning slightly to face her again. "But you didn't hear this from me, got it?"
About half an hour later, Ariadne had finished her beer and left the bar for the night, somewhat unsteadily. Eames stayed where she had left him, and felt himself beginning to get lost in his thoughts once more. His cell phone still lay on the counter from where he had dropped it earlier, and as he thought back to what Ariadne had been saying to him, he make a split-second decision. He picked up the phone and dialled the number.
A voice answered him on the other line, a woman in her mid-twenties that he hadn't seen in over five years, that he hadn't even talked to in at least four. "Hello?"
Eames took a breath, feeling it catch slightly in his throat at the familiar voice. "Hey, baby sister."
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Not longer after Ariadne left Cobb's room the previous night, he had gone over to the desk in his room and sat down with stationary and a pen. He had written three letters, one to each of his children, and one to Miles and Marie. Now, as he lay on the bed in his suite the night before the eradication, he stared at those letters. Makin a decision, he picked them up and headed into the hallway. He knocked on Arthur's door and Arthur opened it a few quick seconds later.
"Cobb," he said, looking mildly surprised due to the late hour. "Come in."
Cobb shook his head. "No, that's alright. I just wanted to ask you a quick favour."
"Yeah?"
Cobb swallowed and handed the sealed envelope to Arthur. Inside were separate, smaller envelopes, each one of which was labelled.
"If anything happens, Arthur, I need you to deliver this to my family."
Arthur didn't take it. "Cobb, it won't come to that-"
"But just incase it does, Arthur," Cobb interrupted. "I know, like you said, it probably won't, but please, take them anyways. Just incase... promise me."
Arthur hesitated, then nodded, taking the envelope. "I promise."
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They were due to arrive at the Fischer-Morrow offices the next day at noon. Despite her late night at the bar with Eames, Ariadne had still been unable to sleep when she finally returned to her room. This left her not only tired the next morning, but also with a headache from the alcohol. She had finally dozed off around four thirty in the morning, and woke about two hours later from an uneasy, restless sleep.
Unable to fall back asleep, she had got up, had a shower and took a couple of aspirins for her head. Feeling better as she stood in the white bathroom now, drying her hair with a hotel blow-dryer, her thoughts went back to her conversation with Eames from the previous night. It had kept her awake all night as she had tried to sort out her emotions, understand her feelings and her possibilities. She had always known, always suspected it, but now that she finally knew, really knew... things were different.
Flicking the blow dryer off, she stared into her reflection in the mirror for a moment, before hurrying out of the bathroom. She didn't bother grabbing her jacket as she walked to the door, didn't bother putting shoes or even socks on, didn't bother checking the time because she didn't want to know how early it still was.
She reached the door to the adjoining room and unclasped the chain that locked her side of it. She knocked loudly, impatiently, and waited. After a long pause and the muffled noise of movement, she heard the chain on the other side of the door being unlocked, and Arthur opened the door.
He had apparently just woken up, as he had obviously hastily just gotten dressed at the sound of the knock. He didn't have his belt on, his shirt was untucked, he had no shoes or socks on like her, and the few buttons of his shirt he had managed to do up were buttoned crooked. But as he stood in front of her, his hair not yet back out of his face, looking confused and still half-asleep, she felt a sudden surge of something rush through her. She found her arms going around his neck, her chin going above his shoulder as she jumped up to reach his height. His arms went instinctively around her waist to prevent her from falling, and they stayed there for a long moment, her feet not touching the ground, her arms still tight around his neck. Finally, he let her down slowly, but she stayed close to him, her hands still resting on the front of his shirt, her eyes locked up on his.
"Thank you," she said softly.
He looked slightly more confused than he was already.
"Eames told me what you did," she said in explanation. "With Browning, for me. I'm so sorry you're having to do this."
The confusion left his face and he gave her a small smile, enough to bring out the dimples in his cheeks. "It's not all bad."
She sighed, finally looking away from him, her eyes going past him. "I'm... scared for the job, Arthur. I'm scared that something's going to happen to one of us." She realized, as soon as she had said it, that she had never admitted that before to anyone, not even during the inception.
But she had never been so close to someone on the team before. Not even Cobb. And she wasn't expecting Arthur to give her some miracle answer, some way of ridding all of her fears. Instead, what he told her was all the reassurance she needed to hear.
"I know," he said softly, then he leaned down slowly, and gently, questioningly, pressed his lips to hers.
She closed her eyes for a second before she responded to his touch. Her hands went up to the back of his neck, to his hair; his arms tightened around her waist once more. She reassured him that he wasn't moving too fast, and he tasted vaguely of spearmint, of toothpaste from hours ago.
This wasn't another stolen kiss like the one in the hotel lobby of the inception job. This one was something more, something meaningful, and she could feel that now. And for those few moments, she forgot about her fears, about her stress and her worries as she focused on him, and only him.
But there were still those few thoughts that clouded the back of her mind, the constant reminder of the dangers that they would be facing in Fischer's mind in a few short hours. A constant reminder that, in a few short hours from then, she might lose him.
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I decided it was time to get the ball rolling on this story, so here we go now, things are finally set and beginning to get underway. I dunno if you liked the AriadnexArthur scenes or not... I wasn't sure whether it seemed forced, and how in character Ariadne seems. If you hated it, just tell me, and I'll make sure not to put any more in, but if you liked it, let me know and I'll add more scenes with them in. Please review, it helps so much!
~kat