Author's Note: Thanks to The anamalous for your review, it made me feel really great. And as always, thanks to you, Kitty Quasar.
Chapter Twelve
It was a calm, warm day in the upper levels of the Fischer-Morrow conglomerate main offices. Peter Browning sat in a huge leather armchair several paces away from where the team and his godson lay asleep, working. The rays of sunlight from the windows along the one wall streamed in, his chair caught in one of those streams. The heat felt warm and relaxing on his face, and he could feel himself becoming drowsy. The news played on the television in the corner but the words just blended together seamlessly in the background of his mind. It had been a while now since Cobb's team had gone under. He closed his eyes lazily for a moment against the sunlight then found he couldn't open them again. He was drifting...
"Excuse me, Mr. Browning."
The words jerked him out of his reverie with a snap. He grunted slightly, sitting up straight and temporarily shaking off his drowsiness. "Yes."
The dark-haired woman in the pin-striped suit looked somewhat uncertain about whether she should have waken up. "Is it alright if I start the music now? They'll hopefully be awake in a couple of minutes."
Rita, Browning reminded himself of her name. She was his assistant's cousin, someone who never saw Robert, and probably never would again.
"Sure, whatever they told you to do," Browning mumbled back a reply, feeling his eyelids begging to droop again.
She nodded. "Alright, they should be awake shortly, then."
Browning watched as she placed the headphones carefully over the youngest dreamer's head. The dreamer was barely more than a girl; he couldn't imagine what she was doing in the dream-sharing business. He felt his attention dwindle as Rita pressed play and the music presumably began in the headphones. The heat of the sun was hypnotizing, and his attention was lost again as he slouched back into the folds of his armchair.
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Ariadne was lying flat on her stomach when she finally made out the dull pounding of music in the background. She was nearing the end of the time they had alotted themselves on this level.
Bullets whizzed over top of her, and she pressed herself further to the nook between the rails and the cement on the side of the bridge, willing the music to hurry up. The others lay next to her, no more than a foot from the edge of the bridge, but their presences offered her little reassurance. She fired a few shots in the projections' direction, but her targets were still too far away and none made contact. And meanwhile they were still advancing towards her.
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Cobb had initially become aware of the music a while ago, but as he looked at Mal, he could see she wasn't about to just let him go. Her words echoed in his mind, bouncing around, refusing to leave him. And that nagging doubt that never seemed to go away, it was growing and festering, fed by her.
"Let me go, Mal," he said softly.
She shook her head. "No. You deserve this."
"But the others don't."
"I don't care."
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It took Arthur a fair time to set the explosives. He was quite careful about the projections, making sure to take out the majority of them from behind before they could see him. As he ran around the complex, he could feel his leg steadily beginning to weaken again, as it had in the hotel level.
Standing underneath one of the towers in a fairly blind spot, he set an explosive carefully at its base then activated it. Concentrating on setting the charge, he didn't see the projection that had come down from the top of the tower until the nearly inaudible sound of crunching snow behind him gave the man up. Not waiting to turn around, he threw himself to the ground just as gunfire erupted in the spot where his head had been milliseconds previously. Throwing his arms up to protect his neck and head instinctively, he frantically rolled to one side towards the edge of a small ravine, feeling the bullets peppering around and behind him. Two seconds later, he had managed to roll himself off the edge of the small, though steep hill. He slid down it in a rush of snow and ice, bringing up his gun as he skidded to a stop near the base. The projections appeared at the top of the hill at the same time as he nailed him in the shoulder. The man fell forward, tumbling face-first down the hill. He came to a stop several paces underneath Arthur and didn't move.
Arthur stared at the body for a second, then took a second to catch his breath. As the pounding of his heart slowed, he became aware instead of the distant pounding of Edith Piaf. He took a moment to calculate what part of the song it was before pushing himself up off his stomach. The music must have been playing for a very long time, unnoticed by him over the wind.
Suddenly a weight crashed onto him from behind, causing his arms to give out as he collapsed to the snow again, the weight onto top of him grinding his body back into the snow. He felt an arm lock around his neck, forcing his head up and he choked as the projection tightened his hold. He attempted to fight back, but was unable to make hard enough contact with the man on top of him to loosen his hold. He continued to struggle for a moment before he was finally able to tilt his gun back far enough to shoot the man in the upper arm once more. The projection yelled, temporarily distracted, and Arthur was able to throw the man off him. His breath returning in aching gasps, he aimed swiftly, and shot three bullets into the projection's head. Not taking the time to let the panic fade from him this time, he hurriedly forced himself to his feet. He struggled up the small ravine, ankle-deep in ungroomed snow. Near the top he felt his knee give out again and was thrown face-first into the cold snow. He shoved himself up once more, brushing the flakes out of his eyes with his equally wet gloves, and forced himself to continue to the next spot to set the next charge.
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Ariadne shook her head as the song continued on and on through the mp3 player in Cobb's ears. Only fifteen seconds had passed since she had first pressed play, but it seemed like an eternity ago. The projections sent a round of gunfire at her again, the bullets closer to her this time. She wasn't going to have enough time for the song to finish. She crawled the few feet over to Cobb, staying as low to the rough cement as she could. She fumbled with the controls of the mp3 player, skipping forward ten seconds in the song.
"Sorry, you're going to have to do your best down there," she whispered a frantic apology as another bullet streaked past, narrowly missing Fischer on the ground.
She grabbed Arthur's hand in one of her's, then Cobb's (who was the closest) in her other. A bullet hit the ground an inch from her foot and she jumped slightly, before taking a breath and kicking Fischer and Eames over the edge of the bridge. She pushed herself off the cement a millisecond after them, pulling Arthur and Cobb over with her. And then the gunfire was ripping through the air above them and they were falling.
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The music suddenly changed in the background of the changing room as Cobb continued to stare down at his wife. It seemed to skip, and all of a sudden he realized he had less than a minute to initiate the kick as the music had jumped forward three or four minutes in the song.
He lept away from Mal, back into the showers and shoved the headphones hurriedly over Eames' ears.
"Dom, stop."
A gun clicked behind him, and he turned to see Mal with it up again.
"Put it down, Mal."
"Step away from the dreamers then," she replied.
He hesitated, then stood up slowly, obligingly. "Alright."
She walked him back into the changing area, her gun still levelled on him the whole time. "I thought you might listen to me," she whispered.
"I did," he replied.
"Then why haven't you changed your mind?"
He walked over to her slowly, ignoring the gun, and put a hand to her cheek, looking into her familiar eyes which were slowly starting to mist over. "I love you, honey," he said softly. "You know that. More than anything... And I'm so sorry."
Abruptly, he smashed his elbow down on her wrist. She cried out in pain, dropping the gun instinctively and he dived for it as it slid away across the floor. Grabbing it, he wheeled around just as she managed to raise another Glock she'd had on her. His bullet hit her square between the eyes, and she was dead before she hit the ground.
There was an abrupt, eery silence that followed. Cobb dropped the gun to the ground as he realized what he'd done. He stepped forward slowly, kneeling down beside his wife's prone form once more. Why did all this have to be so familiar?
"I'm so sorry," he repeated quietly, half to Mal, but also half to himself. "But you're not my real wife."
He kissed her gently on the cheek, then stepped back. He knew he was never going to go back to dream-sharing again. Not if this was what would be awaiting him every time. And he knew, he would never be truly rid of Mal.
He made his way back to the dreamers and bent down next to Eames, pressing play on the mp3 player. He leant back slowly against the tiles of the shower wall, closing his eyes as he listened to the slow beating of the music in his mind, counting down the beats until the song ended on the mp3 player and the song ended on the level above in his mind. He gripped the detonator in his hand, focussing on the familiar sounds and rhythms. "Non, Je Ne Regrette Rien." It had always been one of Mal's favourites. And as he thought of her and of James and Philippa, he felt a sudden overwhelming, crushing need for them. The job was so close to over. He was so close to going home.
Like the song, he couldn't regret anything, he told himself. Because if he did, then he would never be able to continue, never be able to move on.
So he pressed the detonator.
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Arthur sprinted back into the room where Fischer's vault was just as the final chords of the song began agonizingly slowly. He guessed to have roughly four minutes before the kick.
He began to head for the doors of the vault at the far end of the room, but before he could reach them they slid open by themselves and Fischer hurried out, looking distraught.
"Please, you have to help my father," he begged, his eyes somewhat misty.
Arthur nodded hastily. "I need you to stand guard out here," he said. "I don't think there are any projections left on guard around here, but even if there are, I don't think they'll want to hurt you. Just keep them out of the vault."
Fisher nodded uneasily, and Arthur hastened into the vault without a backward glance. The doors clicked shut loudly behind him as he hurried over to Eames, who had morphed back into himself now.
Three minutes left before the kick.
He could see Eames was still breathing, but only just, and it was shallow and laboured. His pulse, too, was light and racing, as if his heart knew of the inevitable death it was racing towards. A quick glance down at his chest told Arthur that the bullet from the projection had punctured at least one of his lungs, not counting what other eternal damage it had done.
Two and a half minutes. He could make it.
Arthur slapped Eames sharply across the face. "Hey, Eames. Listen to me. Hey." He slapped him again, harder this time, and Eames' eyelids flickered slightly as he let out a groan.
"You're not going down to Limbo, you here me? You've got two minutes before the kick. You can make it."
Eames' eyes managed to focus on him as Arthur sat down beside him.
"Two minutes. Hold on."
He reached out and grasped Eames' shoulder. They weren't honestly all that close; they'd never really worked together all that much before the inception, and when they had they'd spent most of their time arguing or teasing one another over little things. But the mutual respect was still very definitely there for each of them, and Arthur knew that if there situations were flipped, Eames would do no less for him. So he stayed there, gripping the other man's shoulder, counting down the seconds slowly for him over his laboured breaths and gasps, forcing him to stay awake despite everything.
And finally, finally, Arthur was able to count out the last few dragging bars of the song. He pressed the detonator, the ground beneath their feet exploded, and he knew that they would be alright.
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Just another chapter or two to go! Hope you enjoyed reading it, as always I would love from you.
~kat