"All the things that one has forgotten scream for help in dreams." –Elias Canetti
Ariadne- Just Outside the Warehouse on Washington St.
Arthur, Cobb and I were back in the Honda Civic, trailing Jason and Nathan. Arthur was sitting in the back with me. He wasn't saying anything, but he looked angry. I had to figure that it was Jason.
"Arthur?" I asked. I kept my voice low. Cobb might have been able to hear us, but he turned up the radio to give us what privacy he could. He finally looked at me. He didn't look angry, as I had expected. He looked miserable.
"Ari, what the hell's up with you and Jason?" He said. I realized what he must have thought.
"Oh my god, Arthur- no. No, no, no." I laughed at the idea of me and Jason. Arthur looked shocked.
"Wait- what?" He asked. There was some tentative relief in his expression.
"Oh my God, Arthur? I used to know Jason. We went to high school together. It's just… It's been crazy seeing him now… like this." I laughed. Jason had been my best friend's little brother. Arthur froze for a moment before laughing in relief. When he finished, he was smilling broadly.
"Was there ever anything going on-."
"Eww, Arthur, no way. Jason was like the little brother I never had when I was in high school. That never happened," I assured him. Then I added, "Nor will it ever happen." He sighed in relief and flopped backwards in the seat.
"Thank God," he said, smiling at me. I rolled my eyes.
"Did you honestly think that I'd be looking at anyone else? After what happened with us?" I asked. But it was an honest question.
"I hoped not," Arthur said. He gave me this look. I had sudden déjà vu from our dream. He had been looking at me like that all night.
"Because, honestly, I'm not really sorry that it happened." I said this without really thinking about what I was saying, but after I said it, I wondered if it was out of line. I might have seen Cobb flinch, his head slightly inclined towards us now. He was listening. Arthur didn't really seem to notice.
"Really?" He asked. He looked at me a little uncertainly. "Because I'm not really sorry either." We looked at each other and Arthur took initiative. He leaned in and kissed me, a little more fiercely than I had expected. But it was in no means unpleasant. We only pulled apart when we Cobb stopped the car outside a big brick building. It looked like a factory.
"Come on kids," Cobb said, a little tiredly. He clearly hadn't missed a thing in the rear-view mirror. I felt myself blush, but Arthur looked unabashed. We exited and watched as Jason and Nathan got out of the other car. Arthur was clearly seeing Jason in a new light- like maybe the kid wasn't the spawn of Satan.
"We're here, seven minutes to spare," Nathan said. He had several duffel bags stuffed with cash. Jason took some of them off his hands, and then in turn, Arthur took a couple of them off of Jason's hands. Jason didn't look surprised. He probably figured that I'd filled in Arthur about our pre-existing relationship.
"Well let's go. We need to get them out of there," Cobb said. He looked anxious- more so than the rest of us. He led the group as we lifted up the garage-style door and walked in. It was empty, dusty, and dark. Cobb strode in quickly.
"Hello?" He called. He turned to face us. "There's no one here." There was a hissing noise, and then he fell motionless on the ground.
"Shit!" Nathan yelled. Arthur pushed me to the ground and covered me with his own body, but then I felt him go limp on top of me. I screamed, unable to run or hide. There was a sudden sting in my side, just above my hip. Then, I felt myself succumbing to an overwhelming sleepiness.
Eames- First Level, Dream State
I swore to myself that I wouldn't let myself go near that crazy bitch again. Once it started raining, I reminded myself to ensure her financial downfall once we escaped this dream. I started to walk in the opposite direction, to get as far away from her as I could. And then I heard her scream, and the rain stopped.
It wasn't the angry type of screaming, she wasn't just proclaiming to the world how pissed off she was. She sounded scared. She sounded hurt. So I turned back around, and ran towards the sound of her voice. My heart rate escalated when her screams cut off suddenly. I could only pray that she hadn't gone down to limbo.
As I broke through the brush into another clearing, I saw my subconscious in a huddle in the form of primitive chocolate-brown natives, probably Darcy's impression of what Africans would look like. I only assumed that they were converging on the thief.
"Hey, get off!" I yelled at my subconscious. Of course, they didn't listen, so I pushed them aside roughly. I only stepped back when one grown man jabbed a spear at me, squawking at me in a foreign language. I pretended be scared off, backing up two steps. When he turned around, I grabbed his spear out of his hand and pushed my way through the crowd.
Darcy was on her back on the ground, the shaft of a spear protruding from her chest, a long gash across her forehead. Both were bleeding profusely. She looked at me, but her eyes were glazed over.
"Eames?" She asked, her voice wet and raspy. Immediately I swung the spear around, scaring my subconscious into backing up.
"Darcy, what have you gone and done?" I muttered. My voice wasn't calm anymore, it wasn't reassuring. But honestly, when I saw the blood running between her fingers as she put a hand over her chest wound, I couldn't quite keep my composure. It had taken her maybe thirty seconds alone for my subconscious to detect her and attack.
I took another swipe at the natives to warn them to stay back before bending down. I heaved Darcy up over my shoulder in a fireman's carry. She coughed and cried out when I did this. I shushed her, trying to calm her down.
"Darcy, darling, you're going to be alright, you hear me?" I said. I tried to fight the rising panic as I found that her blood was staining my shirt. I kept swinging the spear around like a madman, and eventually, fought through the hoards of my subconscious. I hardly noticed when one brave projection took a swipe and slashed my tricep. All that mattered was that the breath kept going in and out of Darcy's chest, that her heart continued beating.
I didn't stop when I emerged on the other side of the forest. I found the baobab that we had been at the whole time, and laid her down so she was propped up against the trunk of the tree. She was pale and she had a faraway look in her eye. Somehow I knew that she had retreated to some recess of her mind to avoid the pain. But then her face became intensely lucid.
"Eames… Oh my god, Eames, I'm sorry, you're… you're bleeding!" She gasped. She acted like there wasn't a gaping wound in her own shoulder.
"No, no Dar, don't you worry about me," I scolded her gently. She nodded and her eyes rolled back in her head for a moment as she tried to get a handle on the pain.
"But you're hurt," she said, her breathing ragged.
"It's not really so bad," I assured her, examining the gash on the back of my arm. "Just a scratch." She sat back and swallowed hard, closing her eyes momentarily. While she tried to calm herself, I pulled her shirt down so I could properly see the wound on her left shoulder. It looked deep, and the skin around the wound was purple and green.
"You know, your subconscious… is kind of a bitch," Darcy said, looking up at me, a weak smile on her lips. God dammit. She was trying to lift my morale.
"I'm sure yours is a real bastard, can't wait to meet it," I countered, trying to keep things light. She laughed, but it sounded more like a wheeze. I took off my jacket and held it desperately to her shoulder, glancing between her wound and her eyes. She was watching me, her eyes strangely disconnected, like the first time we met.
"I lied, Eames." She said. Her voice was hollow, her face expressionless. I shifted my jacket on the wound in her chest.
"That's alright, Darcy, it's okay," I said, my tone lax. She looked at me, her face blank.
"No, it's not. I lied… and I had no right. Raj… he had a right to be angry. We framed him," Darcy said, her pale eyes searching my face for a reaction. I didn't say anything. So she swallowed and continued.
"Cobb… and I. We were the one's obsessed with limbo. In fact, we experimented with it on ourselves first, actually. When I was eleven, we both went in. We went in using sedatives that were heavy enough to send us to limbo. We spent two months down there, just us two. We decided that my father had to see it. We killed ourselves to escape." She let her eyes close momentarily. I noticed the bleeding on the wound had slowed. But I was still listening intently to what she was saying to me.
"We hadn't known how long our two months under had been. So we gave him five minutes of real time. When we let him out, it had been more than a year of solitude for him. It did stuff to his head. He told us he would never teach us again and he banished us all. The public story that Cobb and I told was that it was Raj who did it." Her face twitched and contorted fearfully.
"Darcy, we can sort this out later." I said, trying to calm her. When she panicked, the blood flowed from her wound more heavily.
"It's my fault he's angry. Me and Cobb. We're the reason why he kidnapped you. It's our fault that you're going to end up in limbo," she said. Her eyes were wide and her face was suddenly cogent again. She looked at something over my shoulder for a moment before she lifted her hands up to my face. It was only slightly distracting that they were red and wet. Because then she leaned in and gently put her lips to mine.
I took in everything at once. Suddenly it didn't seem like she was dying anymore. There wasn't anything to worry about. All there was in this whole damn world was just her and me. Her breath was sweet and cool on my mouth when we pulled apart.
"Forgive me," she said, her voice quiet, yet desperate. "Forgive me, Eames, please forgive me." Her eyes focused on that same spot behind me and then, with a sharp bang, Darcy was dead on her side, a bullet wound in her chest. I turned around, and Raj was standing in front of me with a .45 Colt. He smiled wickedly.
"Time's up."
A/N: Admittedly, that one was a little shorter than some of the others, but the action is finally kicking in now! I won't be able to post for the next few days, but I promise I'll get the next part up soon! Thank you for reading- and please review!