3.
~ Ariadne was underwater. Swimming upward into daylight. Her lungs burning for air and no way to get to the surface in time. Still she swam upward until her face broke the surface.
She was choking from the water she had been forced to swallow and trying to gasp in large breaths of precious air.
The water was cold and mist rolled off it's still surface. She was treading water and looked around the lake. Where was her Team? Three men she could always count on. Who she trusted.
"Hello?" She called out. Only silence came back to her. Mocking her.
Out of the mist, she saw a bright red boat. Drifting to her on its own unnatural power. For a moment, she didn't want to get into the strange little row boat, but the water was cold as death as she dared not go back under the water again.
She knew there might be things lurking under the dark waters there.
She claimed into the boat and tried to shake off the cold as the mist reached her, clouding everything.
~ She woke up in a strange bed in a strange room. It was dark outside and she didn't know where she was. She huddled under the covers for what felt like hours before her fear of the dark won out and she let out a frightened shout.
A stranger came into the room.
"Ariadne." He said turning on the lights. She didn't know this man and quickly covered her body up with her bedding.
"Where am I?" She cried as the young man came and knelt by her bed.
"Your in your room." He said trying to take her hand.
"What room? Who are you?" She said feeling a rising sense of panic.
The man sighed deeply.
"Ariadne, I'm Arthur. Don't you remember me? Were friends." He said looking at her worriedly.
"No!" She said feeling herself want to cry. "I don't know who you are. I want to go home!"
"Ariadne." He said patiently. "You are home. This is your home now."
"No!" She shouted again. "I don't know you!"
~ "She's doing alright." Arthur said as he and Eames walked from the book store. "A few night terrors, but they have stopped with the medication. She is slightly more articulate when she wakes up, but loses some vocabulary after she's been awake for a while."
"Still, you left her in the apartment alone?" Eames asked.
"I didn't have anyone to watch her. Cobb had to go back to the kids. Your always running around." Arthur said looking over the half dozen art books and water color set. "She's fine. She's been drawing all day and I left her music on. I've only been gone an hour. How much trouble can she get into?"
~ The two men arrived in the penthouse to see pages from magazines torn and ripped all over the floor. Ariadne's piano music playing eerily over the stereo. The Architect was nowhere to be seen.
"Oh, Dear." Eames said as the two men looked at the disaster of a living room.
"Ariadne?" Arthur shouted. He dropped his books and water color set and went searching for her.
"Ariadne!" Eames shouted. "Arthur." Eames said looking at the mess of papers.
The Point Man turned to look at the Forger.
"There's blood on the floor." Eames said.
"Ariadne!" Arthur shouted again running down the hallway. He saw the hallway mirror, broken and with large glass shards on the floor. Blood was on the walls and Ariadne was not in her room, her bathroom, his room, his bathroom, his closet or anywhere.
"Ariadne!" He was shouting through the empty pent house.
"Arthur!" Eames called. "I found her! She's here!"
Out on the balcony, Ariadne was crouched in a ball. Her hands were bleeding as they clutched tightly a large shard of broken mirror.
"Ariadne." Eames was saying gently. "Let me have that, Sweetheart. That's a nasty old thing, we don't want you holding that."
"No... men...they came up out … out of the floor and were... they were trying to grab me.!" She was crying. Her hand going to her face and she tried to wipe the tears away and getting her own blood all over her.
"Ariadne." Arthur said sternly. "Give that to me!"
"Get away!" She screamed waving the shard of mirror like a knife and almost cutting Arthur with it.
"Ariadne." Eames said softly. "Let go of that thing. It's a bad thing."
Perhaps it was the accent, but Ariadne seemed much more soothed by Eames' gentle coaxing. She let him take the shard away from her.
~ "She could have fallen off the ledge, Arthur. It's a long way down from here." Eames said gravely.
"I know." Arthur said coldly.
He had finally finished cleaning all the paper and glass off the floor.
"She was out there on that balcony and she could have gotten confused and fallen." Eames persisted.
"I know!" Arthur fumed.
"Okay. I know you know." Eames said. "You know she needs a nurse. She needs someone here full time or else she has to go to some kind of facility."
"She's not going into a nursing home." Arthur growled.
After they had convinced Ariadne to come back inside, Arthur bandaged the cuts on her hand as Eames gave her another shot to calm her down. The Forger had found a contact to sell him the necessary medication. No questions asked. No doctor needed.
Arthur cleaned the blood off her but knew he would need help. He would need to hire a nurse to give her a proper bath and take care of her. Her bandaged hand meant she could barely do anything now.
Arthur was faced with the sobering reality that he couldn't take care of her.
~ There were plenty of nurses in the city who had a great deal of experience. Arthur finally selected an older lady named Erma.
"I've worked about 40 years in nursing." Erma said. She was sitting on the chair opposite him. "I've mainly worked with the elderly. Altimeters and the like." She said.
"Why did you leave it?" Arthur asked.
"Got too old. It's a lot of work taking care of them. One person is much easier." Erma said.
"You know this is a live-in arrangement. You need to be here at all times, except for your day off. I don't want her to have to get used to strangers anymore then she has to."
"Sir, is she your wife?" Erma asked.
"No, she's a friend of mine." Arthur said looking over her resume. Erma looked at Ariadne.
"May I ask what happened?" She asked.
"She had a stroke." Arthur said reading the letters of references.
"I've worked with stroke victims before. Never seen one like that before." Erma said watching Ariadne paint with her water colors. "I had thought she was on seizure medication or had some kind of accident. Brain damage or something."
Arthur looked up at the older woman.
'Why didn't we think to say that was what happened?' Arthur thought.
"Have you had experience working with people like um... like Ariadne?" Arthur asked looking over at his friend.
"Yes." Erma said simply. "Their a lot more like children then anything else."
"Well, lets try it for a week and see how Ariadne likes you." Arthur said.
"That will be fine. But I need to tell you now, since your not her husband and she's like this, my first priority is to protect her. If I see you being more then gentlemanly around her, if I see you talking advantage of her condition, I'll report it. Understand?" Erma said soberly.
Arthur only nodded as Erma stood up.
"Come with me little one." She said to Ariadne. "We need to give you a nice hot bath and wash your hair. I'm gonna put some nice soap in the bath just for you. Fix your hair pretty." She said taking Ariadne's uncut hand.
Arthur watched as the Architect went trustingly with her new nurse. Only looking back at him once as Erma took her to the bathroom.
Arthur wrote a note to himself to give Erma a larger salary then he promised.
~ "So the nurse is working out?" Eames asked as the older lady and the Architect were sitting at the dinning room table.
"Yes, Erma fixes her food, makes sure she get a bath and wears clean clothes." Arthur said catching a quick glance as Ariadne doing more of her water colors.
Boats. Always a solitary red row boat on a still lake, surrounded by a heavy fog. None of her paintings held any of the skill Ariadne normally had in painting, but it was still very pretty work.
She seemed quieter now. She spoke very little and Erma was the one who did most of the talking for her.
"Ariadne, are you hungry? Do you want to paint? Do you want to take a nap? Do you want to listen to your music?"
Arthur was pleased that Ariadne seemed very attached to the motherly nurse.
"It's very nice that you bought our girl new clothes to. Aside from paying for her care now." Eames said with a knowing little smile.
~ Arthur had ordered the former Architect several changes of clothing that he told Erma to dress her in everyday. Very flattering dresses, skirts, blouses and ballet flats. Her wardrobe was impressive even if Ariadne didn't acknowledge it.
"Never see clothes this nice for a someone in her state. Normally, it's all wash and wear." Erma said looking over the care instructions for a pencil skirt.
"I want her dressed nicely and her hair combed." Arthur instructed Erma. The Point Man put a lot of value on appearances and he wanted Ariadne looking her best.
The nurse complied beautifully. Ariadne was tended by the older lady like a living doll. Her dress, hair and light make-up made her look more put together then before she was lost.
~ "Cut it out Eames. Were responsible for what happened to her." Arthur growled.
"I know, a lesser gentleman would have just put her in a home." Eames said. "Not put her up in his home."
Arthur scowled over the chess pieces. Eames was a capable player and didn't even try.
"Very bighearted of you." The Forger added. "Keeping a pretty, confused girl in your pent house."
"Check." Arthur said moving his piece to knock out Eames'. "Don't waste your breath, Mr. Eames. Erma, the nurse, already has me on watch. She's making sure I stay a gentleman." Arthur said with an appreciative laugh.
"I think the flowers in her room are very nice to." Eames whispered stealing a glance at Ariadne. She was now looking over a puzzle book Arthur had gotten her. Finding hidden things in pictures.
"She's afraid to go outside. All the traffic and people." Arthur explained. "Putting flowers in her room is the best we can do. But she's doing a lot better."
~ The next night, Ariadne woke up screaming.