A/N: So yikes- I haven't forgotten about this story! In fact, I started writing this chapter almost as soon as I posted the last. Then I caught the flu which turned into pneumonia. I'm still bed-bound after a couple of weeks and I've only just now started to be able to sit up and even stand up for a few minutes at a time. Little goals are good, right?

Anyway, I'll try to write more in the next few weeks but I'll be off my feet for a good amount of time. It's crazy how tired this thing makes me- reading and typing are enough to make me want to take a nap.

In any case, thanks for sticking with the story. As always, I appreciate all your reviews, and even the folks who just drop in to read!

P.S. The Nader study on memory and the "memory erasing pill" is real. I've just tweaked it to fit the story.

Chapter 14

"I was going to tell you," Eames said, finally breaking the silence.

He rubbed at his mouth and took a step back. Ana felt herself relax slightly; he'd been crowding her and she hadn't realized how tense it made her until he moved away.

"I just wanted to make sure you were ready to hear it."

I would have seen it earlier but I was distracted.

I was distracted by Arthur.

She studied Eames, trying to imagine her state of mind after Arthur's denial of her feelings: he had introduced her to dreaming but it sounded like Eames had been her next, closest connection to that world. It would make sense that she'd turn to him afterwards but it didn't feel right to her. How could she have made the leap from Arthur to Eames?

He was attractive but so different from Arthur's steady, constant presence. They looked and acted nothing alike. And yet–

His books, his paintings.

–yet he was solid. He could put down roots; the entire safe house was evidence of that. And despite the unsettling way he changed his emotions, his appearance, in the blink of an eye there was something undeniably stable about him. As if transformation came easily to him because he was unchangeable at his core.

Or maybe I'm grasping at straws, Ana thought. Maybe it was always about Arthur to begin with.

"Hear what?" Ana asked.

"You know what," Eames said. He gestured around him and then narrowed his eyes as he looked at her. "You'd do that before. Do you notice how you always push people to tell you what they mean, even though you've already worked it out for yourself? And in such a disarmingly sweet tone. It worked beautifully for you as an extractor."

His words stung but Ana swallowed down her defensiveness. She nodded at the clothes hanging in the wardrobe.

"Those are mine," she said. "They're too big now but then again I was healthier before, wasn't I? You didn't need to go out and buy me new clothes because I already had them here. But you knew my measurements in Paris. You bought that coat for me. It fit perfectly because you knew my original size and guessed down."

Eames' expression shifted and his shoulders lowered slightly. "It was cold. You had nothing else with you."

Something caught in her throat at the look on his face and she turned away.

"Your books… Not all of them are yours. You favor modern fiction, introspective prose, but even your non-fiction is…"

Ana trailed off as she remembered walking through the library. Eames had a decent assortment of books, carefully curated and placed according to topic and author. He was a collector; at first glance it seemed his tastes were all over the map but she'd had time to look closely at each shelf and flip through many of the titles.

"I'm good at seeing trends and connections. You prefer a specific cadence in the narrative that I…"

She stopped again, feeling once more the way her heart had stopped when she'd come across the small group of books that had bothered her the night before. It was the deviation from the pattern that made what she'd come across jump out. The exception to the order she found in his books. The ones she had pulled out were different, so different that when she found them, they seemed almost offensive in their distinction.

"That you what?"

Ana sighed tiredly.

"It doesn't matter," she said. "I kept my books here. Some of them were old textbooks but the marginalia was in my handwriting. It's how I knew for sure. I must have brought them here myself and… Why would I do that, Eames? Why would I keep my clothes here, my books… Why would you keep the food I like, if I didn't live here before?"

You said I had a sweet tooth. I saw the rest of the groceries you bought last night.

Why did you keep my things for so long?

Eames clenched his jaw so tightly that for a moment, Ana was reminded of Arthur.

"Who were you to me?" she asked. "Why do you have my things here?

"Do I really have to say it?" he asked, solemn and almost grim.

"How long were we…?" The words seemed to die on her lips.

Whatever it was we were.

Ana took a deep, fortifying breath and pushed on. "Was it serious? Will you at least tell me that?"

"It was serious enough for you to leave your things here," Eames said, "but not serious enough for you to stay. You didn't live here permanently, just for a few days at a time but each time, you left a little more of yourself. In the end, when you walked away from this business, you walked away from everything."

"Including you," Ana said.

Eames let out a mirthless chuckle. There was an odd twist to his mouth as he looked down at the space between his feet. "Oh, I was the first thing you discarded. There was nothing here you wanted to keep. These little remnants were the only things I had left. You said not to bother sending them back to you so I didn't."

You didn't throw them away either.

Ana closed her eyes briefly. Eames had kept her things. He had washed her clothes and hung them with care. Her books had a home in his library, even though his own books were spilling over in piles on the floor.

She opened her eyes. "How did it start?"

Eames looked up at her sharply. "It?"

She gestured between them awkwardly with one hand. "The thing between us. Was it just physical?"

His expression flattened. Ana could see a muscle in his jaw twitch.

"You mean were we just fucking?" he spat out. "Did we travel three thousand miles a few times a month just for a quick shag? Just to be clear, I want to make sure that's what you meant by physical."

It was as if he'd slapped her.

"Don't be crude," she snapped back. "I'm not stupid. You wanted me to find out, otherwise you would have hidden everything better. If you know me as much as you say you do, then you'd know that I'd see these things and figure it all out."

And then a thought came to her and she drew in a cold breath.

"But that's what you wanted, right?" she asked, feeling almost breathless at the realization. "Everything you said in Paris. You wanted me primed, prepared, to find this out for myself. God, Eames, that's… It's cruel. You wanted me to be surrounded by proof so that I couldn't deny any of it, is that it?"

Ana knew Eames wasn't a liar, not really. He was flash and heat, smoke and illusion, playing with reflections to distort the truth. But it was always the truth he presented. Eames was simply the best, and the worst, kind of con; the kind that used the truth as a weapon.

"You always did think the best of me," Eames said sarcastically. "That's something else you seemed to have carried over. You think I planned all of this, somehow got Gideon after us, manipulate you into escaping so that we have to work under a deadline as well, just to get you here? That's a bit too complicated a plan even for me, Ana."

"Then why are we here? We could have gone anywhere else. Another hotel maybe, we could have–"

"Because I thought you'd feel safest here." Eames cut her off. "Because this was the closest to home, to a home, I could offer. That's all, that's it. You always… You liked it here. I thought maybe…"

He ran his fingers through his hair, frustrated, and he began to pace in the small space between the door and the bed. He was angry, that much was clear, and Ana suddenly felt a wave of guilt come over her. He looked like an animal in pain, shoulders high and bunched together, posture stiff and curled in as if to protect the vulnerable parts of his body and Ana realized that he was hurt.

He was too exposed, too vulnerable and so far away from his easy confidence Ana had come to recognize.

How many times did you let me see this side of you?

Why would you ever allow me in like that?

"I worked with you after I left… After I stopped working with Arthur," Ana said carefully. Eames glanced at her but continued to pace. "How did that begin? Us working together, without him."

Because whatever happened between us came after St. Petersburg.

She watched Eames walk back and forth a few times and then he pulled something out of his pocket and rubbed it between his fingertips.

It was round and red and flat like... Was it his totem? He played with it as she watched. His watch flashed in the light as he moved.

"The rumor was you'd dropped out," Eames said. "No one had seen nor heard from you in over a month and Arthur began to work solo again. I knew he'd not tolerate any questions so I came to you directly. You loved dreaming, that much I knew for sure, and I thought that perhaps you'd had enough after a recent spate of trouble."

"Did you know about St. Petersburg?" Ana studied his face closely, looking for any signs that Eames had been aware of her feelings for Arthur.

"I knew your architect was a traitorous bastard. He'd had his head done in by a few rounds," Eames said flippantly. "Arthur had been shot and you'd barely been able to leave the country. But that was just the last straw, Ana. Even before then you were beginning to crack under the pressure of it all. I told him you needed something lighter but Arthur just kept dragging you down into the foulest minds–"

"We had a deal," Ana said. Eames stopped and looked at her. "You got it half right, Arthur did choose our jobs but only if they were to the standard that I held him against. I wouldn't take just any job. It had to be because someone needed real help."

Eames shook his head. "He still should have vetted better. Arthur could have done much more to protect your mind, he knew bloody well how things in dreams could affect reality. Some things cross over, ideas can… Linger in dreams. They can fester and infect your waking thoughts."

"You felt like you were becoming contaminated."

"He told me that some of the dreams started to make me look at myself differently," she said. "Did I… Did you notice that too?"

Almost as if against his will, Eames nodded. "I worked two jobs with you before St. Petersburg and you were showing signs of strain. You hid it from everyone well enough but I've been in the business long enough to spot the signs."

"What did you notice in me?"

"Odd behavior, your little tells. You weren't sleeping properly and it showed. You tensed up right before you plugged yourself in." Eames looked off to the side and said in a quieter voice, "You stopped smiling as much. You drew away from people.

"So when you stopped showing up at Arthur's side, I knew dreamshare wasn't the problem. It was the kind of dream that was the issue. Arthur had dropped you into the minds of serial murderers and pedophiles, people with deep psychosis. It would be enough to chip away at an experienced dreamer; you should never have been exposed to that. Not without significant training or practice."

"So you what?" Ana asked. "Offered me a job stealing corporate secrets? Something light and fun?"

Eames huffed out a small laugh. "Our first job together was entering the mind of a little boy, at the behest of his parents. It wasn't exactly a light matter; he'd witnessed an attack and they needed us to pull the information from him since the boy had gone mute."

Ana considered it for a moment before asking, "Did we help them?"

Eames' face softened slightly. "Yes, Ana. You did quite well that day. Very well."

"But not all jobs were like that though."

His smile faded slightly and he made the chip dance across his knuckles. "Not all, no. Some were more complex than others, perhaps not as interesting as the ones Arthur used to draw but you seemed to enjoy them well enough. Especially since…"

He paused and Ana could see the hesitation in his face before he spoke next.

"You were my point."

Ana blinked in surprise. "What?"

"Think about it, pet," Eames said. She said nothing about the endearment but she noted that it seemed to come easily to him. He had to think about holding it back, instead of the other way around. "It's instinctive to you, finding things out about people, pinpointing their weaknesses. You absorb information like a sponge. And you had connections. I just used that to our advantage. I was the architect for most of our jobs, and of course a forger if need be but for the most part, it was just you and me with expenses paid to a chemist."

Arthur said she wouldn't take any jobs in the states so that meant she was likely overseas with Eames alone, working closely together.

"So was that how it started?" she asked, forcing her voice to stay steady. "Is that how we started?"

"You sound so surprised. Is it so difficult for you to imagine now, Ana?" She found she couldn't look away from his eyes; his intense, searing gaze.

"We created worlds together," he said. "I built anything you wanted, nothing was too fantastical or impossible. That's what dreaming is about. You just never really had the chance to play. You became confident without Arthur to lean on for every little detail or direction. You began to live, to truly enjoy the life you were leading and you did that with me. Not with Arthur nor anyone else. Me."

He said the last vehemently, with barely controlled passion, and she faltered under the weight of his words. She wasn't sure of herself anymore – not just of who she had been, but of how she felt now.

She still felt pulled towards Arthur but Eames was an undeniable force. He couldn't be ignored or dismissed, not when he didn't want to be. She might have needed something different after Arthur since his rejection would have cut deep.

Deep inside she must have had some reason to hope for something more with Arthur or else she wouldn't have confessed to anything at all. For the first time, she wondered at how painful it must have felt to tell him she loved him only to be pushed away, her childhood friend, the man she trusted and risked so much for…

But then Eames had come along. How good did that make her feel then, knowing that Eames was there for her? Having him reach out to her and call her back into dreams must have been a comfort, a soothing balm over any wounded feelings she harbored over Arthur.

Did I use you for comfort?

Or had she come to care for him as she had for Arthur?

She'd started something with Eames even though she must have known that Arthur loved her – because it was obvious that he did. It shone through in the way he looked at her and his every action and deed made it fact.

And that's why I took a chance, why I dared to hope.

But with Arthur, it hadn't been enough. And knowing that he loved her and still had turned her away must have felt like a betrayal then.

"Did you love me?" Ana asked in a quiet voice. She took a step forward and stopped, genuinely unsure of what she wanted to hear.

Did I love you?

Eames stared down at the poker chip in his hand and ran a thumb over the edge. She saw him draw in a deep breath before looking back up at her.

He said softly, "More than you ever let yourself believe."

"So why did I leave?"

"Why indeed?" he asked. There was a faintly mocking tone in his voice but Ana didn't think it was directed at her, at least not fully so. "Part of it was that you couldn't bear to be away from your brother. Not permanently, at least. Turning your back on your family, the way our lifestyle often demands… It never sat well with you. You lived between worlds and that was difficult."

"You kept a draft of your resignation letter on hold for months."

"But you thought you could convince me, didn't you?" Ana stared into his eyes, watching the emotions flit across his face. "You thought you could take me from one life into another. So what happened, Eames? Did you push too hard? Did I get tired of running around the world? Was it a bad job that made me go? Why did I leave you? Why did I walk away from dreaming for good?"

Eames' smile was bitter and sad.

"You should sit down for this, Ana."

###

Did you know about Stockholm? Of course you did, didn't you? You always kept such good track of everyone.

On the flight home, all I could think about was you and how you would have never done what Eames did. I wanted so badly to call you, to hear your voice again. What would you have said to me? Maybe 'I told you so'? Would you have come to see me again?

Or would you have gone after Eames?

I was afraid of that last possibility – because we both know what would have happened if I had come to you – and so I sat alone on the flight home, knowing that I was done, absolutely and completely done, with dreaming.

I wish I could say Eames' actions came as a surprise. I always knew what he was, who he was, deep down inside. There was always a voice in my head that told me it was only a matter of time.

You can tell Eames that he, at least, never disappointed me.

###

"Give me some good news," Arthur said tiredly into his phone. He pressed his hand against his closed eyes and leaned back in his chair, tilting far enough backwards so that only the tips of his toes touched the floor.

Ana was gone but he could still feel her soft hands on his face. After he'd told her about St. Petersburg, she'd stared at him with large, pale eyes but she hadn't been surprised. There'd been no anger, no disbelief in her face but Arthur thought she looked sad. It shook him down to his core, that expression on her face; it was so close, too close to the way she looked at him in the hospital room.

Her voice then, in the hospital, had been quiet and soft and broken, "I know you, Arthur."

She'd been confused at first, as if she couldn't understand what he just said. With dawning realization came the heavy sadness, the darkening of her eyes and sudden slump of her entire body.

"I know you're lying. Why would you lie to me?"

"How are you holding up?" Dom's voice was kind and Arthur opened his eyes, feeling a small measure of comfort at the familiar sound.

This was Dom, the old Dom, the man who took him under his wing after Project Somnacin shut down and offered him a place in his world. Arthur had been closer to Mal and her absence in his life still made him ache but Dom reminded him of Matt Tremont. They both were quick and clever and prone to moments of fancy.

And they were both undeniably devoted to their families.

After all, Dom Cobb had been willing to sacrifice the lives of his team in exchange for his children; Matt Tremont had offered his life in place of his sister.

"It doesn't matter," Arthur muttered. "I'll be fine. I just want to know what you've come up with."

"Listen, you can't help anyone if you don't-"

"God, please don't finish that sentence." Despite himself, he smiled slightly at Dom's fussing. "Seriously, what'd you find out?"

He heard Dom sigh heavily. "Arthur, it's not… It's not good. Your friend reached out to almost every dream expert in the field. She followed every possible lead available to her and she was very, very committed."

Arthur felt his stomach drop though he wasn't surprised. "Yeah, that's one way to describe her."

Dom went on. "I've read through most of her work. I showed parts of her writing to a former colleague of mine – don't worry, I left out the circumstances and Ana's identity – and Arthur, you have to know. Ana was disturbed. She was probably clinically depressed, that much would have been obvious to you, but she was showing clear signs of PTSD."

Arthur opened his eyes and dropped back down to the floor. He knew Dom was right. Ana had been stuck, for lack of a better word. Her later entries were disjointed pieces, as if she couldn't think about anything else but Matt's death. She had become angrier and more anxious, the nightmares coming with more frequency as time passed.

And while it wasn't explicit, Ana likely hadn't reached out for help. Not in any way towards true recovery–

But she sought help for revenge.

"I know," Arthur said quietly.

"She was fixated," Dom said. "Whatever she did to herself, she did it with the aim to hurt you specifically. I don't think it's a good idea to go into her mind."

"Duly noted. Now what do you have for me."

Another heavy sigh. "Alright, I get it," Dom said. "I don't think it counts as good news but I think I know what she did and how she did it. Do you remember the Nader-LeDoux trials a few years ago? With the memory erasing pill?"

Arthur did. Karim Nader and Joseph LeDoux were neuroscientists who found that blocking certain chemical reactions, while in the act of recall, could erase specific memories. They'd done years of tests on rats: inducing fear and anxiety in their external environment and then "erasing" the memory with an injection of a chemical that inhibited protein synthesis.

It had been groundbreaking work and the first human trials had taken place only four years prior.

"She didn't write anything about going to see them," Arthur said, frowning deeply. "She only–"

"Ana saw Janus, remember?" Dom said. "He was a consultant in the second wave of the trials, which took place last year. He must have told her about his involvement. I did some digging and it turns out that out of the thirty subjects, four dropped out."

Arthur heard the rustling of paper on the other end. "I was able to track them down and here's the thing: they all said they sent back their samples. It was a requirement of the trials. Out of the four, only three of the samples made it back to Nader and LeDoux. The last sample went missing."

"You think she intercepted it," Arthur said flatly. "Stole it somehow?"

Dom's voice became cautious. "I spoke with some of the people Ana met with. She had access to chemists and labs and research databases that even I had trouble getting into. Do you know what the second wave of the Nader-LeDoux trials were looking into? Memory reconsolidation. They were trying to create a drug that didn't completely erase memories but simply made them inaccessible to the patient until they could be fully dealt with. Full memory erasure was deemed too dangerous and unethical but compartmentalizing memories… Well, that's just another form of therapy, right?"

"So the drug…" Arthur trailed off as he realized the implications of what Dom was saying.

Ana, what have you done?

"She's still in there," Dom said. "I was wrong earlier. I don't think she ever intended to forget reality, Arthur. I think she meant to change it. Can you imagine that? How many lives she must have lived by now but knowing consciously that it wasn't real. It would be enough to break someone's mind."

Arthur heard what Dom was saying without words.

Mal.

Mal had to forget that limbo wasn't real in order to just cope.

"I think that she had someone take the original drug and add a sedative to it," Dom continued. "You said she wasn't good at building so she likely only wanted to go down one level. Any more than that, the dream would have collapsed and she would have been forced out."

"If she mixed it with Miron's compound then she could only go down one level anyway," Arthur said.

Dom made a soft murmuring noise. "So on the first level, she starts to recall certain memories in order to consolidate them. I think I was right about that part: the drug is triggered by the very act of remembering. It takes the pathways created and recreated by the brain and blocks them until another chemical is introduced that removes those blocks."

Arthur raised his head. "It can be reversed?"

"No, not yet," Dom said. "Nader and LeDoux are still working on that part of it but nothing's been perfected yet. The third wave of their trials begins in eighteen months, with the same subjects from the second wave."

"Okay so, first level. Why would she only want to remember certain memories?"

"Because she didn't have enough time to bring up a lifetime's worth," said Dom. "The mind is good at filling in gaps. She knew that she only needed to bring up pivotal points in her life. Everything between could be reimagined."

Arthur's head spun. Ana had played a dangerous game with herself. What if Miron's formula had reacted badly with the Nader-LeDoux pill? What if she hadn't fully created the first level and it had collapsed – then her memory loss would be permanent.

And maybe that's a blessing.

It was what she wanted, after all.

"In any case, I think it's safe for you to use a Somnacin mixture with a sedative," Dom was saying. "If she wanted you to go into her mind, she wouldn't have put up any barriers at least initially. Build one level, something safe she was familiar with and drop straight down. I think she would have placed Gideon's code somewhere on the first level anyway. Whether or not you go beyond that point is up to you."

"You know I have to do this," Arthur said softly. "I owe it to her. My pound of flesh, right?"

"Her brother's death wasn't your fault. Eames was the one who killed him. He was the one who made that choice."

"But I was the one who promised that nothing would happen to Matt." Arthur closed his eyes again and took a deep, albeit shaky breath. "She blames me, Dom. She says it outright, over and over again in her notes. If it hadn't been for me, for my projections…"

"I know what that feels like." Dom's voice was firm. "Of all people, I know how dangerous projections can be."

"She knew that Lewis found her through me," Arthur said. He couldn't keep the tremor out of his voice. "He wanted blood and he got it. If I hadn't introduced her to all of this in the first place, if I hadn't-"

"Stop it," Dom cut him off. "It's over and done with. Look at what Ana's guilt, her regrets have turned her into. You have to remember this, Arthur, that if you do decide to go deeper into her mind, she won't be your friend. The person you'll find down there will be nothing like the Ana you knew once. If she hasn't gone insane then she's had years to cultivate that anger, all that hate, however misguided it may be. And it will be all directed at you."

A troubled mind, a poisoned heart.

"She had an affair with Eames," Arthur said. The words burned as he said them but it was only the truth. "I knew… I knew it was going to happen. When she stopped working with me, I could… I just knew he'd step in and she'd…"

"She barely wrote about him," Dom said. "And when she did... Arthur, I don't think she loved him. At least not as much as she loved you. I think part of the reason she's so angry was because she loved you so much."

Arthur said nothing for a long time.

###

Please read/review- thanks!