2 more chapters to go, I hope! (:
I love Inception. I wanna watch it again! :D
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She wants to shake him.
She cannot believe he is still sitting there so calmly, almost as if he is carved out of stone, and she fights the urge to rush toward him, shake him, and smash to bits that calm veneer that he's exuding. She feels her anger, as clearly as she can feel the sting of her fingernails cutting into her palm, but she pushes it down. She tries to keep control, and so it is with her voice lowered to hide the trembling timbre it's taken on that she asks, "Why can't I be involved? I've done the Fischer job; this won't be any much harder. You know I can do it."
He hates himself for making her question her self-worth. She's probably one of the most efficient, the most capable team members you could have on an inception team- any man worth his salt and with eyes can see that. Which was precisely why Eames requested for the both of them to work with him on this job that he'd recently been pulled into. And yet, even though he knows she's perfect for this job, he hesitates. He doesn't want her to get sucked into this dreamscape which has consumed his whole life- he wants to her to enjoy the normality of her own without being touched, damaged again by this whole mess. He wants her happy, protected and safe. With him.
And yet seeing her furious self standing over him makes his heart twist in a way and question himself if he's done the right thing by saying no to Eames on her behalf.
"I don't doubt that," he replies slowly to her unspoken question. "I really don't Ari." He pauses, hoping the familiar nickname will calm her down and when it has no visible effect on her, he forges on. "I just want you to be safe. I just…" He falters slightly, trying to piece together the right words. "I just don't want you to get hurt. I can't have you in my work scope, not now and not like this- it'd hurt too much for me to lose you."
He sees her eyes falter over their anger then, soften and she sinks down on the couch beside him, and automatically his hands reach for hers, fingers tangling together in perfect symmetry and that simple action seems to calm both of them down and they fall silent.
"Arthur," She likes calling him by his first name- she thinks it's cute that he actually has a nickname for her, but the formality of a full name feels more like him. "I'm not a kid. I promise, I'll take good care of myself while we're in there, stay close behind Eames and you." She sighs then. "But you do know, you can't protect me from everything."
Everything.
His mind flickers back like a badly lit bulb, back down the hallways of memories just from that simple word and he remembers, his last conversation with Mal as clearly as he remembers yesterday.
"Hey Mal." He lets himself through the sliding door, pulling it shut behind him. "Have you seen…?" His voice trails off even as he sees his best friend's wife, sitting at the table, staring at her hands. And what she holds is a knife, the sharp edge so tantalizingly poised against the skin of her delicate fingers.
"Mal!" His voice is unusually sharp even as he takes lightning quick steps across the room to yank the knife out of her clasped hands and tosses it across the room. "What're you thinking?" He chastises her softly, pulling out a chair to sit beside her. He has never really been close to his best friend's wife, close enough anyway, but he senses rather than knows that the woman who he knows as Dom's wife- beautiful, vivacious and entirely creative- is not the same woman sitting in front of him. She feels now, like an empty shell- a shell that could just break away, its fragments being washed away and lost in the sea. While he understands the distractedness now that Dom has been showing at work, he also feels fear, slowly wrapping its tendrils like ivy around his heart at how, how in the world, smart, beautiful Mal could have become like this. How it could happen to him.
She turns to him with a hazy smile and eyes that aren't really there, making her beauty all the more chilling. "Oh Arthur, you're here too. In this dream."
Instinctively, his hand slides into his pocket to touch his totem- and the hard solid weight of it assures him of the reality he's in. He speaks gently, like he would to a child, "Mal, this is reality. This isn't a dream."
She laughs then, a light tinkling laugh that feels like it could shatter glass and sets his nerves on edge. "No wonder why you're here then. Dom is always so dedicated to his work. I see you even show up in his dreams." She speaks as though to an invisible, silent, third party and it makes him feel very afraid that she not even takes heed of what she is saying- almost as if he himself is not real.
"Mal." He can no longer stop the hard edge that his voice has taken on. "Please, listen to me. You're in reality. This is life. This is not a dream. I'm real. So are you."
"Why, Arthur," She turns surprised eyes on him. "You've never been angry at me before." Emotions flicker across her face; hurt, puzzlement, astonishment- and finally a bemused little expression that makes him feel even more afraid. "I must tell this to the real Arthur when I wake up. He won't believe he got angry at me." Her expression melts then into confusion. "Then again, Dom has been getting upset with me too lately." She looks bewildered, frightened, a kid trapped in an adult's body.
He is very afraid now and though he knows it is a cowardly move, he stands from the table- only to have her grip the side of his coat.
"Arthur?" Her voice is kitten weak and he cannot bring himself to look into her eyes full of terror. "Can you please convince Dom that we should go back to reality? He seems," she gulps here and he cannot shake the horror that is slowly seeping into his system like a poison. "Convinced that this is reality and he doesn't want to leave." She loosens her hold on his coat, looking down into her lap then. "I want to go home."
He nods curtly then, not trusting his voice, and making sure there's no more sharp knives nearby or anything potentially dangerous, he leaves.
That's the last time he saw Mal.
"Arthur?"
He snaps back to reality then, and his eyes refocus on the girl sitting in front on him. They travel over her soft brown her, her slim hands wrapped in his and the dark, expressive eyes that emanate so much life, so much emotions and he knows, he does not want to risk another Mal. He knows he would rather die than let her come close to losing control her grip on reality. He loves her too much. And if he loses her in the process, which is an unthinkable prospect in itself- it would be so much better than putting her close to that horrific scenario.
And with that thought in mind, he stands, disentangling their hands.
She looks up at him then and she wonders just what is it he was thinking of just a few minutes ago- something unpleasant no doubt, from the way shards of what she can only call fear shadow across his usually calm and stoic face. It too makes her scared- since Arthur has always been the calm, invincible one- so it must be something very bad to make him afraid too. He is entirely too silent, too silent for her liking and it heightens the sense of foreboding in her. "Arthur?"
Her prompt seems to jolt him to life and there is something new in his eyes- determination. "Ariadne. I can't let you do this job." His eyes meet her, lock on hers and she sees the intensity of his certainty; he is not going to budge. And for some inane reason, that causes anger to flare up in her anew again.
"Can't or won't?" She stands too then, all too acutely aware of how much taller he is as compared to her and she plants her hands resolutely on her hips to give her something to hold onto even as she fights back.
"Won't." His voice is steely now, and she can hear anger buzzing just barely beneath the controlled tone he's adopting. "I won't let you do it."
"And if I insist?" She's really pushing it now, she knows. She's never seen Arthur get angry with her before, but right now, she wants him to crack. She wants him to yell at her, to lose it in a big way.
And he seems to take the bait. She sees him gearing up for a fight; from the way his chest rises sharply, and how he draws himself up, ostentatiously to yell at her and suddenly, it's almost as if another thought occurs to him and all the fight seems to leave him and his arms drop to his sides. Suddenly, she is cold and even more afraid of what is going to come next.
"Then," he lets out his breath, slowly and yet he cannot disguise how his whole body is shaking at what he will say next. "I want you to leave."
The words are said so softly that she barely hears them, can barely believe them. And when they do sink in, she feels the floorboards reeling beneath her. "Excuse me?"
Her voice makes him flinch and he can hear the hurt that taints her voice, as well as the disbelief. But he swallows back all else and pushes on. "I said, I want you to leave." He raises his gaze to meet her eyes briefly before addressing a spot just above her head. "I'm your only link to this world of inception. If you insist on taking this job with me, I'll insist that you leave. Or… I will leave you."
His words are matter-of-fact but he hurts with each word that he says. He makes them deliberately cold, unfeeling- designed to push her away when it's all he can do not to leave her alone. He wants her with him so bad. But he can't, and he doesn't want her to become like Mal. And so it is with a breaking heart that he watches her wilt under the sting of his words although she tries to hide it.
"You want me to leave?" Her voice is clear, high, cold and shaking and he winces at the pain that underlines her every word. "Fine. I will."
She moves around the apartment then, pulling out that same first messenger bag she brought and stuffing whatever random articles she can find into it. Her actions are frenzied; almost animal like in their grief but she keeps her head down, not wanting him to see the tears that are forming and building in her eyes. She decides that's enough- she cannot bear to be in their apartment, yes their apartment anymore, she will come back for the rest another day- and heads towards the door, the fact that he has just been standing there for the past few minutes, watching her, not even stopping her, giving her great pain.
She pulls on the same sneakers that she arrived in, reaches for his coat so instinctively, but instead, pulls her scarf from the coat hanger and winds it around her neck with trembling fingers and before she can say one last thing that she will regret, she is gone, banging the door behind her and letting in the cold November air.
And he sinks down onto the couch, burying his head in his hands, knowing it is entirely his fault, wanting to run after her but yet too proud in the thought that he has done the right thing despite the tears that he's aching to cry.
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