A bit of a longer chapter, I apologize, but it was fun XD I want to thank you all officially, again, for the reviews! They mean a lot!
/-\
The phone receiver crackled. In a dimly lit room, smelling strongly of wood and plaster, a short, fat man lit a cigarette. It brightened the wide, thick bust of his face, the strangely circular, dark-rimmed glasses that framed his eyes, the phone cradled between ear and shoulder.
Three figures lay asleep on low cots surrounding him. In the midst of them, lying unceremoniously on the floor, was a silver briefcase holding the dream mechanism device, PASIV; thin silver cords ran from the briefcase and into the waiting wrists of the sleepers, and the clock-time ticked down from 02:07:11.
The fat man had dialed an unusually long number into the phone, and was listening to the ring. It stopped, suddenly, and there was a muted hush as the correspondent picked up the other end.
"How're things on your end?" the fat man did not sound particularly interested.
"...Flynn. Flynn's dead."
"Arthur?"
"Yeah..."
"Good," the fat man took a deliberate drag of his cigarette and exhaled a heavy smoke.
"What?" the other man did not seem at ease with that response. "Flynn was our Extractor! He was the one who had the information from the girl -"
"Flynn has already debriefed us on what the girl knows," the fat man responded lazily, flicking the cigarette. "We're putting it to good use. For now, keep everything on the same track."
"But - who's going to -"
"Draw straws. You've all researched Nash - he's an idiot. It won't be that difficult for you."
/-\
"Yusuf, find a pair of forceps -"
But Arthur's eyes shut, tight with pain, and he hissed, lolled forward on the examination table. Ariadne caught him; he was firm and heavy, almost too heavy for her to support, and she could feel his blood seeping slowly into her shirt as he rested forwards on her shoulder. The Chemist began to pull out drawers, thrust apart cabinets in a half-tipsy, adrenaline-numbed state of panic, searching for the surgical instrument.
They were in a veterinary clinic. It was supposed to be closed - it was past seven on the weekend, and appointments were over, the doors locked up. Yusuf had broken in on Arthur's order. The clinic alarm was a cheap Belgian thing, rigged only to sound if one of the doors or front windows was broken open. As it was, they came in through a slim, back window that hung over the kennel, and remained undetected in the darkened building.
They were in the examination room, Arthur seated on the cold slab of metal, the air smelling heavily of dogs and drugs and bleach. There was a trail in the hallway of Arthur's blood, splattered red on the tiled floor.
Silent fear was strangling, paralyzing Ariadne. She was aware of Arthur's body, trembling, of his hammered, irregular breathing. He'd buried his face in her hair, momentarily, as though to escape the reality of the pain. Both of them wet with sweat and blood.
"...Oxycodone," Arthur said, and his voice broke slightly. "Behind the counter... find a bottle. Oxycodone."
She was reluctant, so reluctant to pull away - she was convinced he would collapse to the floor if she did - but he was nodding, vigorously, for her to go, cradling his bloody arm.
She found the counter in a daze, and began to search the shelves. Everything around her seemed dim and far away. She was clumsy; she dropped bottles and clanged cabinet doors, had to force herself to read, re-read labels three times, just to figure out was written there.
Finally, Ariadne clutched the white bottle in her hands. Oxycodone HCI with Acetaminophen. She brought it to the Point Man, open, before realizing he'd need something to chase it. A half-gallon of water was resting beside a mostly empty water cooler in the adjoining room - but by the time she brought it back to Arthur, he was swallowing pills.
She didn't know how many he took, and she didn't ask. If Ariadne had ever studied in the medical field, she'd be worried about the dosage; Arthur was taking a drug hauntingly similar to morphine.
"I found some -" Yusuf held a pair of surgical forceps in his right hand. Arthur tore off the remains of his shirt - Ariadne gasped at the brilliant road-rash, blood-streak - and shoved his arm towards the Chemist.
"Do it. Get it out."
Yusuf was a chemist - not any sort of doctor - and he was still swaying on the cheap Belgian wine. A sick, green look came into his face as he held the surgical forceps, the tweezer-like object he'd never seen before. It was clear what the Point Man wanted him to do - wanted him to shove the forceps into his still-bleeding wound and draw out the muted stud of lead bullet.
It took the Chemist a moment to gather himself, to ignore the impulse to vomit, to place the forceps steadily in his hand. Ariadne, standing on the other side of the examination table, felt Arthur's good arm reach out, reach out and grab her, pull her to him. He placed his face into the nook of her neck, of her chest, his good arm gripping her so hard his fingers dug in and hurt.
Ariadne watched as Yusuf inserted the forceps into Arthur's arm - the swell of dark red blood the bloomed around the cold metal as it slid into the Point Man, as Arthur exhaled a horrible sound into her chest -
She shut her eyes and clutched Arthur, her one hand buried in the messed, slick strands of his hair, her other arm wrapped like a shield around his head. She heard his agony, realized she could feel it.
"It's ok. It's ok. It'll be over - It'll be over soon - it's ok baby, it's ok -"
She hardly knew what she was saying, but Arthur didn't stop her, just breathed, groaned irregularly into her chest as Yusuf sought the bullet.
It seemed like an eternity before she heard the relieving sound - chink - of Yusuf dropping the bloody bullet into the trash can.
"Celox. Find it."
Precious minutes of tearing through drawers, of emptying shelves, as Arthur's arm griped Ariadne so tight she knew there'd be a bruise. Then there was Yusuf, holding up a packet that read: Celox - Haemostatic Granules. He tore off the top of the package and pressed it against the open, dark-red bullet hole in Arthur's arm. The bleeding slowed. Arthur pulled away from the Architect, just long enough to grasp at the bottle of water she'd brought in with her.
The Point Man was pale, pale as he desperately guzzled down the half-gallon of water and another innocently white, 30mg oxycodone pill.
"Good. Good," Arthur exhaled a guttural sigh; the oxycodone was taking effect. "Watch the front. Yusuf - watch the front."
/-\
Cobb was in bed. He felt the sheet around him, cool and endless, and blinked, staring up at the paneled wood ceiling. He was in bed at home, the morning light coming in softly through the windows.
And Mal was still there, beside him. She was sitting up, half of her face lighted in the warm orange glow from the window, the other half in darkness.
He leapt up to sitting position, startled at her presence, suddenly remembering the train - the dream - her insane words - and felt a strange tug at his arm. He looked down at his wrist; there was a silver chord, running into his wrist, from within an open silver briefcase.
"It's ok, take it out," Mal's voice was soft, clear, and so different from the haunting tone she used down in the dream. She began to undo the strap on his arm. But no - you left us - you're waiting for a train -
"I'm still dreaming -"
Cobb began, but silenced by a high bout of laughter from down the hallway -
And image of James, blowing bubbles on the porch.
"No, Dom, no. Look."
She held up something small, metal - and Cobb's eyes recognized the delicate spinning-top, the one he'd spun so often in dream and in reality, the one he'd found in the depth of her subconscious.
"Watch, Dom. Watch."
She leaned slightly across him, and he was struck by the fact he couldn't remember what she smelled like - it'd been so long, so long since he'd been so vividly aware of her. The dreams had faded and dulled her memory to a Shade, but now she seemed new, brilliant, real -
Mal dropped the top onto the nightstand, and it began to spin.
They both watched it, watched it for what seemed an eternity. Glimpses of memories passed in Cobb's head; of holding a gun against his temple as the top spun, the steady thumping of his heart as he waited and wondered will this be the time I pull the trigger? Of Mal sitting at the kitchen table, fiddling with the top between her fingers, inches from the butcher's knife, and was he so sure of his reality?
The top spun. Spun.
It wobbled.
It fell.
His heart was drumming in his ears, in his eyes, in his throat. He stared at the top, fallen over on the nightstand.
"My death - Inception - Saito - it's all a trick. It was all a trick, and you're finally awake -" Mal's voice like sobbing music -
The top fallen over. The top fallen over.
"Please, Dom - don't you see me? Can't you feel I'm real?"
And her hand brushed across his brow, and he turned and looked into his real wife's eyes, and -
"Oh Jesus Christ, Mal -"
He kissed her, crying, the whole of him flooding out into her like a tidal wave. She captured him as he cried, her beautiful, unmarred form complementing his exactly, two together making perfection from imperfection.
He kissed her constantly, repeatedly, deeply, desperately. He sobbed and said things against her skin. She cried, too, out of relief, out of vanished fear, out of love.
/-\
The road-rash had transformed Arthur's skin to the texture of mangled sandpaper. The blossom of raw, pink-red burn streaked across his side, the vague, upwards slanting shape of a feather. All around its frayed edges, the wound grew a jagged black and purple; gravel was still embedded in the shredded mess of his flesh, the thin red lines of blood dripping down from a dozen lacerations.
He didn't flinch as she cleaned it, the odor of hydrogen peroxide staining them both. The oxycodone was coursing through him now, and it was giving him varying sensations of euphoria that he was struggling to stem and control. He swayed oddly on the examination table.
"Arthur?" Ariadne said his name for about the sixth time. She had wrapped his arm in gauze and bandage, and was starting to do the same for his side. He'd lifted his arms awkwardly in the air, so she could could wrap the bandage around his torso.
"I'm alright," he lied so smoothly, she almost believed him.
He ran a massaging, lazy hand over his face. Ariadne almost had to smile - he was more relaxed now than she'd ever seen him before, absolutely high on the painkiller.
"Yeah, I bet you're up in the sky with Lucy," Ariadne joked aside. Arthur gave a half-laugh, halted by the way his body shook (with pain, if he could have felt it) when his diaphragm moved. "...Jesus, I don't know what you were thinking. He could've -"
But she stopped before she could say it. He could've killed you. The Architect looked up at the Point Man, and was startled to find him staring at her. There was more expression in his stone-chiseled face than she thought possible.
"I said you'd be safe with me. I failed at that once. I won't again. I have to protect you."
And his voice was steady again, even under the driving influence of the painkiller. Her heart beat, muted, in her chest.
"Why do you... why do you have to protect me?" A dangerous, beautiful, half-formed idea.
"I have to," he repeated, and his eyes - glazed, filled with something she couldn't quite name - something dreamy, filled with desire and doubt and urgency.
"Why?" she blinked away a hot feeling in her eyes, and shook her head. "God - you know, I wish - I wish I knew why -"
Shakily, but immediately, swiftly, his hand was in her hair, against the back of her neck.
A half-second, and his lips like fire.
It ended as quickly as the first. But he didn't draw away this time. His forehead touched hers, and she was bathed in the smell of hydrogen peroxide, the musk of his skin and sweat... his fingers kneaded the hair against the back of her head. She let out a soft, involuntary noise of surprise and - something that couldn't be...
"...Imagination. You make things I can't even... beautiful... you're... a maze. A maze. And I want to know... what's at the end..."
His eyes closed, pinched shut, as a wave of tangled euphoria shot up through his body, numbing him entirely. He swayed, and Ariadne caught him before he could fall from the examination table.
/-\
Eames, limping, paler than usual, clutched the license plate number of the black van, scribbled on a diner napkin. It was not coincidence that he remembered the image of the license plate: part of being a flawless Forger was a talent for photographic memory. The ability to see a man's signature once, and duplicate it with a significant amount of skill, was par for the course. Eames had been at the game long enough to know the skill set that kept you alive - a fast, tricky tongue, a good distraction, an attention to detail. He'd been wanted dead by enough gamblers and casino-owners in his time, and had developed an impressive habit of talking his way out of almost any situation.
His forging skills had come in handy when he'd glanced the black van, pulling Cobb into the back seat. AVN-802.
He'd stitched himself up, partially, with a first-aid kit he'd found lodged in the back staff-room of the diner - where he'd also written the number on the napkin. Patching up a freshly-bleeding gash with thin gauze and white tape was not the most efficient treatment, and Eames was bending heavily to one side. He was lucky, in one respect; the gash was flesh only, no ribs pierced, nothing punctured - but that didn't make the experience any less annoying.
From there, it was a matter of locating Cobb, but that job in itself did not pose much difficulty. Believing he was dead, their assailants would not be too careful to cover their tracks. Besides this, Eames knew how dream-agents behaved, and it took only a few hours of perusing the city in a taxi cab to locate the van. Crowded areas were out of the question; low-traffic quarters, factories, barren city borders - those were the sorts of places you brought someone, if you wanted to hold them under for any extended period of time. If Eames hadn't been so content and willing in the illegality of his Forger job, he actually would've made a fairly decent sort of psychiatrist. The Brit had an elegant talent of divulging the nature of subjects and how to emotionally manipulate them; this was convenient when trying to predict the actions of others, specifically of enemy dream-agents trying to Eradicate him.
The van was parked out front of an abandoned meat factory. The windows were boarded up and layered with dust; but the slim side-door, a faded grisly green from years of disuse, was wedged open with a scrap piece of wood.
Eames had no gun, no defense against whatever awaited him inside the meat locker. He remained near the door for a long, long time, listening intently to whoever, whatever dwelled inside the dark building - but after nearly a half hour of waiting, listening, he'd heard only the rustle of the wind, and his patience wore out.
The door opened with a very subtle, metallic whine. Eames froze as light flooded in, and he saw -
- no one. The room was empty. Eames walked in, haltingly, still limping from his torn side. He glanced uncertainly at the rusted meat-hooks, the old chopping boards and blocks, the cold metallic surfaces and shadows hanging in the corners.
In the back, wedged into the wall, was the door to an old meat locker.
The Forger crouched slowly down beside the rust-covered counter, glancing at the iron door. There was a dim, but flickering light coming from within, shining out the door porthole.
He searched for some sort of weapon. A number of broken pieces from the ceiling had found their way to the floor; he picked up a rather large, fractured piece of cement, and tried to think. What plan of action did he have? Did he even know what kind of people he was dealing with?
Come on, Eames, think around it - who in all God's world wants Cobb Eradicated?
The Forger poured over every possible scenario in his mind. A member of Fischer's entourage - Browning, maybe? No - Browning had gotten away with a good share of the former Fischer enterprise, and had no financial reason to pursue such a dangerous course of action. Another enemy of Saito? He had put them all on the radar, but - but why now? It'd been four months since Saito's blunder at the wedding. Why would the Eradicator wait so long to attack Saito, to attack them? And why Saito, first? He was the least dangerous, the least experienced. Why not go after Cobb, and then follow with the rest of the team as it fell apart, devoid of a leader?
He shook his head, disappointed at his inability to make sense of the situation. Who was pulling this job? Why were they being targeted? Could it really be all because of Inception?
The meat locker door opened with a low creak. Eames' eyes darted to the door, clenched the cement rock in his hand.
The man was short, and fat, with thick round glasses. He looked more like a squirrelly cubicle-worker than a dream-agent, and definitely did not resemble Eames' vision of an Eradicator. He'd come outside to light a cigarette, striking a match ever so pleasantly and impartially, his eyes cast downwards.
The cement slammed into his shoulder, but the fat man hardly seemed to notice. He turned and looked, impassively, in Eames direction. The Brit had a significant notion he had just dived in well over his head, but decided - to hell with it.
"Cheerio, gorgeous," he grinned, and began backing up.
The fat man spat out the cigarette and launched into Eames.
/-\
The matter of where to sleep fell to Yusuf's discretion; he opposed the chairs in the waiting room, for obvious reasons - too vulnerable beneath the large, front windows, and too uncomfortably hard. The second suggestion was to sleep in the veterinarian's office, but it was locked, and they feared setting off some alarm solely for acquiring the random comfort of a leather desk chair. The last option had been the kennel runs - and while this was not a particularly endearing idea, they were located in the back of the clinic, and relatively safe.
Ariadne covered the floor of the kennel with the red and yellow towels they used for boarding animals. They smelled strongly of dogs, but they created a better bed than the cold floor of the run. When she believed she'd assembled a half-decent, semi-thick towel-cot for Arthur to lay on, she brought him into the back room. He glanced uncertainly at the make-shift bed, and turned towards her.
"Where are you going to sleep?"
She'd never seen his eyes this way before - filmy, drug-hindered, trying so hard to focus but unable to do so.
"I hadn't thought about it," she admitted. He blinked at her.
"You... have this. I'll make my own."
"Arthur!" she grabbed his good arm - the one without the bullet hole - before he could reach up and pull down another towel. He eyes widened, looked at her, glazed and surprised like he hadn't expected her to move so fast. "Arthur... come on. Lie down. Jesus, let me... you don't have to be completely rigid all the time, you know..."
It could've been the drugs - she was almost definitely sure it was the drugs - but her comment made a grin break on his face that seemed completely unlike him. It was wide, and loose, and almost laughing.
He laid down on his left side, with his back to the kennel wall. Ariadne got down on her knees, tucking a rolled up towel under his head. His hair was frayed, messy, out of place. Gently - without even knowing she did it - Ariadne touched it with the palm of her hand, smoothing it down.
It stirred Arthur. He reached out, oddly, instinctively, and put his hand on her jean-covered thigh. It was the arm with the bullet-hole, and it was shaking.
"...Where are we going?" his voice still deep, still resonating, but - vulnerable, and it made Ariadne's skin prickle, made her heart swell and push outwards, reach to him from within her chest. "...I hear the ocean."
He didn't hear the ocean, Ariadne knew. What he heard was the clinic's heating system, springing to a hum of life as Yusuf turned it on. He was high on oxycodone, and imagining things.
She could have told him that. She could have told him it was just the heating. That he was probably hallucinating, or hearing things, or what is real - do you think he is - ?
...But maybe she was tired. She became dreamy, distant when she was tired, a side-effect of her over-imagination, of what made her a great Architect.
"...We... you're right. We're going to the ocean. We're standing in the water."
What was happening? She thought she saw it, as she said it. Not lying in a dark kennel, on a bed made of towels that smelled of dogs and bleach; but on sand, soft, white, forming the sweeping, endless shore of crashing waves and barren land that swept forever just waiting to be built, imagined, shared -
"The tide is coming in," Arthur's voice dimming, fading away into sleep.
The rush of the heater had swelled - not nearly warm enough for the Chemist from Mombasa, Kenya, used to the blaring humidity - and it sounded almost like a wave crashing, striking Ariadne like a brilliant and terrible and half-formed idea. Arthur's cologne washed away by the scent of dogs, bleach, hydrogen peroxide, sweat - but she imagined she could smell it still.
"...and if you stay where you are, you could be lost in the water."
The idea itself, not completely unwelcome. Lost in a tossing ocean until you washed up on shore, in a reality that didn't exist but felt so real...
"...I'm not afraid..."
Quiet now. Overcome with the stress of the day - the panic and excitement and what couldn't be fear. Did they know what was happening anymore? Did it matter? His hand on her thigh, and her hand in his hair, and the darkness of the kennel.
"You aren't?"
"No. Not if you're lost with me."
Arthur's eyes shut, finally. He'd given his last shred of strength to utter these words, and now he succumbed to exhaustion.
Ariadne had a feeling, then, like she understood. Understood something very deep inside herself, as she lay looking at his hard-lined face, his hand still resting on her leg, keeping her near him - how can it not matter to you where this train will take you -?
She laid down next to him. His hand kneaded her thigh in his sleep. She lightly pressed her forehead onto his, closed her eyes, drifted away.
The idea, now fully formed.
Beautiful.
Dangerous.