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The secret to a successful job, everyone keeps telling Ariadne, is to plan the exit first. Never go into a maze without a ball of string; never enter a room you can't leave; never dream a dream without a kick. Never start anything you don't know how to finish.
She knows what she'll do if things with Saito fizzle out. She's not given to false modesty any more than she's given to doing what she's told, but nor does she imagine she'll hold his attention forever. She knows what she'll do if things with Saito end with a bang, if their ears ring after the explosion with recriminations and enmity. It won't be pretty, but she has places she can go where he can't find her, and, if she needs help, she's pretty sure she'll be the one keeping Arthur.
Thinking about Saito is like swimming with flippers on. One kick for the way the corners of his eyes crease when he's about to tell a joke. One kick for the fact that his French has a Swiss accent, another because he won't tell her why. A lazy kick for the way he kisses the very tips of her fingers, unselfconscious, and suddenly she's a mile out to sea, solid ground a distant memory. The sky overhead cannot help her find her bearings.
Eames, predictably, finds the whole thing hilarious.
"I've changed my mind," Ariadne says, the third time Eames refers to Saito as "Your young man." "Can we have him deported?"
"Yeah?" Arthur asks, not looking up from his computer screen. "Try living with him."
"A joy and delight," Eames says, "I assure you."
Arthur catches Ariadne's eye and mouths, "Lies," making her half-snort with laughter.
Technically, they all have their own offices. She's never been a big fan of "technically," and anyway, Arthur's office is more than big enough for three of them.
She's sitting in a large chair, all soft black leather and state-of-the-art lumbar support, sketching out designs on the thick white pages of her current notebook. Somewhere by her kicked-off shoes is an unfinished mocha, which she'll let cool to a gloopy, sweet sludge just to watch Arthur shudder when she drinks it.
Arthur is at his desk, hacking into government databases while he drinks his coffee and pretends not to find Eames funny. And Eames? He's still got his notes from the last time he infiltrated Browning's life, and he can work through them just as easily with his feet propped up on Arthur's desk as he can in a coffee shop, or his own office, or dangling from his toes over a tank of piranhas.
She refuses to feel guilty for that last image when Eames turns to her, smirks and says, "When's the wedding?"
"When's yours?" she fires back, a little meanly. It's her mission in life -- well, one of her many missions -- to buy them a wedding present so filthy it embarrasses even Eames.
"Any day he likes," Eames says, spreading his arms in an expansive gesture, as if to capture time itself. "It's legal in the UK."
She can't help herself. "And Belgium."
Surely Eames already knew this, but his eyes light up nonetheless. "Belgium!" he says, as if this is the first time he's ever heard the word. "Belgium."
Arthur's eyes are fixed on his work. "Right."
"Sorry," she says, and almost means it.
"Picture the scene," Eames says, now down on one knee in front of Arthur. "Beer! Waffles! Chocolate! And, of course, thou."
"You're right," Arthur says. "We should have him deported."
At least it stops them talking about Saito.
===
It's 4am, and there's no way in hell he's forgotten which way round the time difference runs. She answers on the third ring.
"Hey," she says, the word heavy in her sleep-dulled mouth. She's lying with one cheek smooshed into her pillow, resting her phone on the exposed side of her face so she doesn't have to muster up the energy to hold it.
"Some days seem very long," he says. She thinks he's still in Iceland? maybe? though he said he might have to go to Paris. Either way, it should be morning where he is.
"Yeah," she says. "Yeah, they do."
Pause. Her eyes fall closed and it takes her a moment to force them open again. Her blinds aren't perfect, and the nearly full moon lets her see the dim outline of her nest of sheets and blankets, cocooning her in warmth.
"I miss you," she says, the darkness and distance making her bold. It's not that he doesn't know, obviously, but she doesn't like to say it.
"And I you," he says. Then, "How was your day?"
She sits, dislodging blankets and scrubbing her face with her free hand, and props herself up against the wall. "I don't want to trouble you," she says seriously, "but we are going to have to kill Eames."
"Yes?"
She switches to French, which has always been easier for her to curse in, and starts to give him selected highlights of yesterday's episode of The Arthur'n'Eames Show.
She falls asleep an hour later, a smile on her face. And if she has an extra two shots in her usual morning mocha? It's still worth it.
===
Now Butler and Maxwell are out of the picture -- left with the belief they tortured the truth out of Arthur, and a nasty bed-wetting habit that Yusuf assured Cobb would last for many happy years -- the frantic buzz of activity surrounding their plans for Browning has dimmed to a steady hum.
Cobb takes charge, Arthur takes point, Eames takes a smirking backseat and -- just as Ariadne readies herself to take notes -- Yusuf takes them all by surprise.
"Ah," he says, less than a minute into Cobb's speech about giving the mark what he wants.
They're in one of the big conference rooms, Cobb standing at the head of the table and the rest of them sitting -- Arthur and Eames are next to each other, almost but not quite touching, Ariadne's on the other side of the table with her phone in front of her, and Yusuf is sitting a few chairs down from her, until just a moment ago reading some sort of scientific paper and giving the impression he wasn't listening to a thing.
The room gets plenty of light, with big windows looking out onto the city below, and the dark rosewood door and panelling give the place an old-fashioned feel. The table, matching rosewood of course, is oval, allowing everyone to turn and look at Yusuf easily. They seem to startle him even more than he startled Cobb.
"None of you has ever run a long con outside dreamspace," he says. Then, cutting Eames off on the first syllable of protest, he adds, "That was a short con that ran over deadline."
Ariadne can't help the tiniest hint of a smile, bubbling up inside her like a song. Around her, the others are muttering darkly. She checks her phone quickly; Saito has sent her a link to a New York Times article with the comment, Journalism at its finest. The muttering hasn't subsided, so she checks out the article, in which the author has uncovered the shocking truth that some people earn less than others -- it takes her less than a paragraph before she's writing back, plz don't buy the nyt just to fire him
"Fine," Yusuf says, interrupting Cobb's monologue and her attempt to find an even worse article to send to Saito in return. "The first rule of a long con? Please?"
"Find out what the mark wants," Cobb says, frustrated. "We already--"
Yusuf makes a shushing gesture with his hands, like Cobb is a small child or a stray cat. Ariadne's smile may no longer be quite so tiny. "Arthur?"
"Know your enemy." Arthur's trying and failing to sound bored. It's cute, and from the way Eames is smirking, Ariadne's not the only one who thinks so.
Yusuf's look of sympathetic disappointment is hilarious, but by the time Arthur decides to be insulted, Yusuf's already moved on. "Ariadne?"
Saito has written back: Excellent point. It will be cheaper to have him killed.
She looks up from her phone, knowing she looks stupid-happy and not caring one bit. "Plan the exit first?"
At that one, Yusuf actually winces. "Good try?" he offers, sounding pained. "And Eames?"
"Yes?" Eames says, motioning for Yusuf to go ahead. "Put us out of our misery."
As they all watch him, Yusuf gives a quick, apologetic smile. "The first rule is: Decide what you want."
Arthur and Cobb exchange a look. "We--" Arthur starts.
"No, you don't." Yusuf's voice is mild, like a professor waiting on a class of particularly dim students. Ariadne has a flash to a different life, in which Yusuf teaches pharmacology to ungrateful undergraduates, and she's still in Paris, working on her thesis. She writes to Saito, if you're looking for someone to talk you down from this, you're looking at the wrong person
"But--" Arthur tries again.
"He's right," Cobb says. "We don't."
Arthur can't be silenced that easily. "We've been running cons for years," he says, petulant.
"You've been running heists for years," Yusuf corrects him.
"We always called them cons."
Yusuf's brow furrows. "I assumed you just did that to pain me."
And just then, Saito writes back again: Never.
===
Ariadne blows the clouds away, leaving the sky a brilliant blue. Mission over, she takes two deep breaths to focus and then stops her heart. In dreams, she can now do this as easily as she can close her eyes.
It's not the most pleasant way to go, but after the Butler-Maxwell clusterfuck, she never wants to be dependent on a gun to get her out of a dream.
Secrets in well-guarded lock-boxes are so passé. Better to spin it into the fabric of the sky, let it hide among the wisps of clouds.
===
There's a car waiting for her when she leaves the office that evening. Saito had warned her -- the first time, he hadn't, and she'd perfectly reasonably refused to get in, and really, no one had been seriously hurt, it wasn't a big deal -- but she still finds herself reaching for her totem.
Henri is driving, which makes her smile. He's the only one who ever accepts her offer of coffee when they stop by her apartment, and one day she's sure she'll wrangle a surname out of him.
"Hey," she greets him in French.
He returns the greeting, leaning against the door of the sleek black Jaguar. Then, following her cue, he stays in French: "Your place first?"
Saito being Saito, he's probably given all his drivers strict orders on the precise level of informality with which to address Ariadne, but with Henri it doesn't sound forced. One of the others -- George, also no surname supplied -- actually slapped both hands over his mouth when he'd forgotten and called her "Miss", which probably would have been more amusing if it hadn't occurred in the middle of a busy intersection.
He holds the door open for her with an easy smile.
"Please," she says. "Or, no--" She gives him the address of a store she passed the other day. "Do we have time?"
Henri doesn't even check his watch. "But of course."
===
The one before her, Ariadne knows, was married. Everyone on the team knows about that, and about the damned rug. The one before that was a model. Ariadne doesn't care to know past that, even though Arthur probably -- no, who is she kidding? certainly -- has it all on file.
What stops her feeling like she's the latest one in a very long line to be wined and dined in this restaurant, however -- apart from the fact that the married woman couldn't be seen in public, and the model didn't like to eat -- is that she sincerely doubts Saito has been seen anywhere this ugly since he made his first million.
The decor is like watching neo-modern design choke to death in a puddle of its own vomit. There's sleek chrome where no sleek chrome should be, hyperbolic curves taking up both too much and too little room at once, and an almost admirable in its doggedness belief that ice-white paint is a reasonable substitute for elegance. At least the messy spareness leaves a clear path way out.
She was never the sort of girl who had her pigtails pulled, but she's finding she kind of likes it.
Saito arrives ten minutes after her, giving her and her wine ample time to note the offensive detailing in the coving. Interior design has never appealed to her -- why design a room when you could design a city? -- but you don't need extensive training to judge this monstrosity, you just need eyes.
Saito walks into the room and her knees, honest to god, feel like they've been hit from behind with a baseball bat. She's just grateful she was sitting. The way he walks is-- He commands the room. It's not money, it's not power, it's just raw confidence, a sense of self so rock solid she forgets for a moment that he's the same man who sends her Oreo cookies and books them in to restaurants he knows she'll hate, and remembers only that this is a man who spent a lifetime in Limbo and came out whole.
Lust and awe and a fierce, possessive pride combine to take her breath away. She stands to meet him, knees under firm orders not to embarrass her, and strides forward into a kiss.
"This place is offensive," she says on breaking the kiss, pulling back enough to see his face and no further. "If I didn't think you'd do it, I'd ask you to buy it and raze it to the ground. Don't do that, by the way."
"You have only to ask," he says in return. His eyes are dancing -- she never understood the term before, but there's no other way to describe the innocently wicked joy she sees there.
She kisses him again, quick and impulsive, then sits down before he can get her chair for her. Two can play at pulling pigtails.
"I got you a present," she says.
"Yes?" He smiles at her. "Should I be worried?"
She reaches into her purse to fish it out. "Probably."
She hands it over to him, and he looks at it with honest puzzlement.
"It's a Weeble," she explains, taking it from his hand and setting it on the table between them. "It wobbles--" She demonstrates. "--but it won't fall down."
His eyes flick from her face to the Weeble, from the Weeble to her face. When he laughs, her heart stutters with joy.
===
They hold hands as they walk into Saito's hotel lobby. It surprises him every time she slips her hand into his, so she does it as often as she can get away with. If he's ever held hands with another lover, she doesn't want to know -- it makes the corner of her mouth twitch up just slightly to think this might be something just for the two of them.
They step into the elevator, and she kisses him, sloppy and dirty, with her breasts pressed tight against his chest. Even in heels, she has to reach up, hands cupping the back of his neck, pulling him down to meet her.
He kisses back with slow ease, letting her take control, and want shoots through her. She wants to see him helpless before her, she wants to get him messy and filthy and urgent, she wants him to make those soft, desperate sounds that are better than porn. She shudders with desire, and his arms are around her, pulling her close, as the kiss turns into a promise.
The elevator opens into the penthouse suite, and they don't break the kisses as they move through into-- Oh, that's new. Saito is guiding them to the conference room, with its floor-to-ceiling windows and mahogany table. There's only one door, and the windows are bulletproof. He starts to trail kisses from her mouth to her jaw and down her throat, hoisting her up onto the table even as she arches back, giving him better access.
Just as he reaches the line of her dress, she puts her hands on his shoulders and pushes him away, making him stumble and let out a short, rough breath.
He's straining against the fabric of his pants, giving the lie to his schooled calm. "Yes?" he says, voice perfectly even. Imperious is second nature to him, but here it's shot through with humor, lust and what she hopes is fondness, all messed together like the sloppy kiss she can still feel against her jaw.
"Ariadne," he says. Then: "Anything."
It's a blur of clothes and kisses and one long, shuddering moan she can't hold in, and he's naked, lying back on the floor of the conference room, straining mouth and cock towards her, as she slips her panties off, hoists up her skirt, and slowly, so slowly, lowers herself onto his mouth.
The first touch of his lips draws a groan from both of them. His is short and desperate, cut off almost as soon as it starts. Hers-- Hers is an almost laugh, the startled happiness of getting exactly what she wants, from exactly who she wants, in a life far too short on such moments.
He starts gentle, building up to firm strokes of his tongue with a methodical care that would make her laugh if it weren't making her ache, the good, solid ache of almost, of longing soon to be rewarded. What gets her, though, more than the touch, is the sight of his arms, spread wide and tense as he forces them not to reach up to her, and his hips, unable not to jerk towards her, his cock flat against his stomach, every part of him wanting her.
He stops for just long enough to press a gentle, tender kiss to her clit, incongruous and charming, before starting again in earnest. It's a few short, perfect strokes of his tongue before she's gasping and shuddering, feeling pleasure ripple through her one intense shock after another.
"Fuck," she breathes.
And then, there it is, one soft, urgent breath: Saito's desperation, his want.
She pulls off him, moves so their mouths are lined up and she is just inches from his cock. Her taste in his mouth is too good not to enjoy, and she licks his lips, slow, dirty, just the way he likes it.
"Fuck?" he asks, echoing her. It's meant to be light, she knows, a joke, but he misses his target, and all she can think is yes.
She rides him. He's hot and thick in her, he's beautiful beneath her, eyes screwed shut and chest rising and falling with the sounds he fights to keep in. She could watch him like this forever. Her breasts brush against his nipples, and his breath hitches and stutters, out of his control.
He moans, soft and low, and then he's coming in her, and she wants nothing else.
===
That night, she wakes screaming. Saito's gone, and in the morning she won't remember this, so no one will know the secret she cried out in terror, anything to get the voices to stop.
There's blood on her hands, and a stranger with sad, kind eyes tries not to weep.
===
The next morning, Arthur texts her an address. She shows up before him, gets their drinks in -- flirts with the girl behind the counter to get a free shot of strawberry syrup in her own drink, a strong black coffee for him -- and waits, sketching bridges from the photos on her phone.
He sits down without a word, lifting his mug to inhale deeply, and waits in turn for her to finish working.
"Hey," she says, smudging a shadow with one finger. She's going more from memory now, trying to capture the feel of leaning over the edge, watching the world below. In a dream, she'd know what to do -- how to nudge another imagination into filling in the details -- but here, with only pencil and paper, it's flat and uninspired. Nothing like precise enough for a design, nothing like evocative enough for art.
He tries to take a look, and she closes the notebook. "Yes?"
"Thanks," he says, and raises his mug to her.
"Yeah." She's paying attention to him now, and he looks-- Frayed, almost? Not tired, not as such, but worn down. "What's wrong?"
Arthur doesn't answer, instead looking down into his half-empty mug.
"Right," she says. "So it's like that?"
He gives her a far too grateful smile. "It's like that."
Five things make Arthur smile without fail: Really, really, really good coffee, which this is not; James and Philippa, who, okay, aren't things, but still; beating Cobb at cards; and Eames absentmindedly touching his, Arthur's, wrist. Everything else is hit and miss. One day something might get a slow, private smile, the next a worried frown, the next a resolute poker face. But only one thing, one person, makes him look like this.
"What's wrong with Cobb?"
Arthur shakes his head. "If I knew--"
Which is fair enough. He doesn't want to talk about it, he just wants her to know, so they can carry this one together. Which is also fair enough, but means he owes her.
"I think I'm in love with Saito," she says, calling in that debt immediately. It's the first time she's admitted it to herself, and doing it out loud, in public, with two tables between her and the door, is no more terrifying than the idea itself.
Arthur's actually surprised. He looks at her in confusion for a moment, then: "Yes?"
Ariadne closes her eyes. When she opens them again, Arthur's still there, still looking politely baffled.
There's this moment where they both visibly readjust their expectations for this conversation -- Arthur shrugs off his confusion, and she actually feels herself shaking her head to clear away the disconnect.
"You're in love with Saito," Arthur says firmly.
"It's been less than a month," she says, equally firmly. "Not all relationships are five years of pining, two weeks of fooling-no-one-by-pretending-to-be-casual sex and one evening of adrenaline-fueled declarations of mutual obsession followed immediately by, and don't think I'm not judging you, moving in together."
That wins her a flicker of happiness in Arthur's eyes, even as he tries to look annoyed. "Eames would say only the best ones."
She wonders what an Arthur without worries would look like.
"Eames would also say," Arthur continues, "that when you have got to the point where I'm telling you not to over-think things, you might want to reconsider certain life choices."
Now, she wonders what Arthur would look like wearing the rest of her drink.
She dips a finger into her strawberry mocha.
"Too hot to throw at me?" he asks.
It's not, but. "Yeah."
===
When she gets into their building an hour later, three things meet her straight out of the elevator: The sound of Cobb and Arthur arguing; the sight of Yusuf listening, out of their field of vision, raising his finger to his lips when he catches her eye; the smell of cinnamon, nutmeg, chocolate and hazelnut rising out of a cup Yusuf is holding towards her.
Yusuf mouths, From Arthur, and motions for her to join him.
Cobb's voice is raised. "Damn it, Arthur. You have no room to talk about subconscious manifestations."
She doesn't have to see Arthur to know his eyes are narrowing. "Seriously? You want to get into who has the moral high ground?"
"Lockers," Cobb says, nonsensically. "Silver-grey lockers."
"Which never shot you in the fucking knee." Arthur's voice is raised now, too. "Which never stabbed Ariadne. Which never drove a freight train through a job."
"You have no idea--"
But Arthur cuts him off. "What it's like to watch someone you love spiral into self-destructive madness? What it's like to follow helplessly, terrified of being dragged along and terrified of being left behind?" He sounds like he's been storing that one up for years. "I have no idea."
Ariadne wants desperately to see their faces right now, but more than that, she wants them to keep on talking.
Yusuf, next to her, nudges her with his notepad. On it he's written, I am glad I am at peace with my voyeuristic nature. He's not smiling.
She takes his proffered ballpoint -- Arthur's still not speaking, nor is Cobb, but she can hear the sound of their breathing, harsh and controlled -- and writes, wry and unamused, Better than TV.
Cobb's the first to break the silence. "Arthur, I--"
Again, Arthur cuts him off. "God, no! Not everything's about sex. You're family, Dominic Cobb, and you cannot control your subconscious."
"That's why it's called the subconscious," Cobb says, and that's the wrong answer.
Are you having nightmares? Yusuf writes. After yesterday, he means. They've started setting things in motion.
She shakes her head.
Two angry footsteps are the only warning before Arthur appears in view. "Your turn," he says to her. "You can't do any worse." He doesn't even wait for the elevator, instead walks past them to the stairs and lets the fire door slam behind him.
Yusuf raises his eyebrows at her in encouragement. She winces good-naturedly, then goes to face Cobb.
"Don't," he says, not looking in her direction. His eyes are fixed on his totem, which spins and falls, spins and falls.
"Is she appearing again?" Ariadne asks.
"No."
"Do you want her to?"
His fingers stutter, knocking his totem away and off the table. "That's not relevant."
Ah. Right. "Tell me," she says. She's spent years using make up, clothes and posture to fight the fact she looks young for her age, but with Cobb, it's the best card she can play. She's not a threat, she's not a peer, she's not old enough to understand. He can let her inside, because her judgment doesn't count.
Cobb lets out a breath. "Arthur's worried," he says, because the obvious will always need stating. "He thinks it's not safe for me to be in the Browning job; he thinks they'll be able to extract from me."
She continues to look at him with big eyes.
"He doesn't trust me," Cobb says. The confession sounds like it is being ripped out of him. There are few certainties in Cobb's life -- which is an understatement on the scale of calling Saito rich -- and Arthur's trust has been one of them for years longer than Ariadne has had any place in their lives.
"He's worried for you," Ariadne finally settles on. "We all are."
Cobb shakes his head. "We'll adapt Yusuf's plan. I won't go under."
===
Yusuf is going to betray them. "Fear, maybe," he says, testing out the idea. "Or greed?"
"Fear," Eames says, at the same time as Cobb says, "Greed."
Ariadne would have bet on the other way round. "Fear?" she asks.
"Cobb's a scary man," Eames says, keeping it light.
"Greed?" She turns to Cobb.
He shrugs. "Money can buy a lot of things."
"Pleasant as it is to know your measures of my character," Yusuf says, "I think maybe a thirst for knowledge will tip the balance. I am an amoral experimentalist, desperate to know how Butler and Maxwell wrecked their havoc on your dreamscapes."
Arthur nods approvingly. "You have your suspicions, but you want to know."
"I thought that might appeal to you," Yusuf says, and Eames snorts a laugh. "He doesn't have to believe me. He just has to listen to me."
Eames nods, getting it before the rest of them. "And what are you going to oh-so-accidentally let slip?"
Yusuf gives him a nod of professional recognition. "Now that Cobb's recused himself, I thought I might give up Ariadne."
The two of them have already discussed this, and even started putting things in motion; Ariadne notes the others' reactions before deciding to reveal her own. Cobb, predictably, is appalled, and Arthur, equally predictably, is considering it. Eames is watching her for her reaction, and Yusuf waits patiently for them to come round to his perfectly reasonable point of view.
"No," Cobb says.
"Go on," Arthur says.
Ariadne and Eames stay silent.
"That's the convincer: the genuine prize. Normally money, but we're playing for higher stakes."
"What about drugs?" Cobb pushes. "Technology?"
"Not if we want it to be convincing." That's Arthur, the words slow and measured, final.
"It has to be something I'd never give him willingly."
"Someone," Ariadne corrects.
"That," Yusuf agrees. "When Ariadne gets taken, I get angry and desperate. I never meant it to go this far, I didn't understand what betrayal was."
"You think he'll fall for that?" Arthur asks.
Yusuf and Eames exchange a look. "Yes," Eames says.
"No," Cobb says again. "We can't risk it. You know what he's capable of."
They all do. Ariadne bets she's not the only one trying to bury those memories.
"I'm a target anyway," she says, thinking out loud. "It's no secret that we're sleeping together. At least this way we know where and when, and at least this way it's for a reason."
Cobb's next line of attack hits closer to home. "You realize you can't tell Saito."
And everyone's looking at her now, apart from Yusuf, who is staring into the middle distance. "Why?" he asks, in much the same way and with much the same effect as yesterday's Ah.
There are two questions he could be asking, and no one seems to want to guess which one.
"Why couldn't she tell Saito?" Yusuf clarifies. "If you want to, that is," he says to her.
"He'll never go along with it," Cobb says. "And if he does, he'll want to put measures in place. We can't have him tipping our hand, not with so much at stake."
Ariadne first met Saito a handful of weeks ago. They've been together less than a month. Cobb was in Limbo with the man. He knows things about Saito she'll never discover.
"Right," Eames says, making it sound like the British for You moron. "Have you met Saito? Japanese guy, about so high," he says, raising his hand above his head. "Buys airlines for shits and giggles?"
Yusuf is smiling like Miles used to -- probably still does -- when a bright student gets the answer before he's finished asking the question.
"We're not just taking on a man who had the four of us damned-near helpless in dreamspace -- you remember, the place that's supposed to be our turf? -- we're taking the fight to him." Eames counts the points out on his fingers. "Why wouldn't we bring Saito in on this?"
Yusuf spreads his hands wide. "That too."
===
and she can't wake up and she can't wake up and she can't wake up and
===
She exits the elevator walking backwards, trusting no one will get in her way while she's busy setting Saito to rights. "No," she says, her voice only a little louder than normal. They've switched back into English because talking about the internet always sounds awkward in French. "There's no way--"
"Before I met Mr. Cobb," Saito says, low and dangerous, "there were only two people in the world who could say no to me."
"And now there are three," she snaps back, "and I'm right."
"You cannot possibly--"
"We've tested it, and--"
"--just rule it out without--"
"--if it could be done, we would do it, but--"
"--getting a second opinion from--"
"From who?" she says, stopping firm with her back to her office door. "If Yusuf can't make it work, it's not going to."
"This is defeatist, short-sighted--"
"We don't have time!"
She passes Arthur his coffee as he steps out of her office.
"I see you've told him," Arthur remarks dryly.
"What?" she asks, distracted. "Yes." And damn it, when she meets Saito's eyes she smiles first again, with Saito's echoing twist of his lips coming a deliberate few seconds later. One day, one day soon, she'll get him to crack first.
It takes her another good five seconds of amused eye-contact with Saito before her brain catches up with Arthur's side of the conversation.
"Wait, no," she says. "We're not arguing about that." That was a thirty second conversation -- Yusuf is going to use me to get to Browning. We want you in on this. // Of course. Interesting. -- whereas this is an argument they've been having since about halfway through their early morning slow, lazy sex, when Saito had an idea and she could not get him to admit he was wrong.
Then, because this is important: "Tell Saito there is no way in hell we can get the speed necessary to enable remote dreaming via TCP/IP."
"I think Yusuf is still--"
"See?" she says to Saito, at exactly the same time as he says, "Precisely."
Arthur and his coffee disappear back into Ariadne's office, the cowards.
===
It takes two hours and fifteen minutes to go from Ariadne and Saito's arrival to the whole team's meeting in the conference room.
Arthur spends the first two of those hours holed up in Ariadne's office not letting anyone -- including Ariadne -- in to speak to him, and the last fifteen minutes arguing furiously with Cobb. (Still, of course, in Ariadne's office.)
Yusuf appears briefly about twenty minutes after she and Saito arrived, listens to them talking over each other for the precise amount of time it takes for his electric kettle to boil, and then strolls away with a mug of tea in one hand and a thoughtful expression on his face.
Eames shows up with Cobb just after Ariadne and Saito emerge from Saito's office, trying not to adjust their clothes too obviously; he winks at them, then shoves Cobb into Ariadne's office.
While Cobb and Arthur argue in low voices, Eames stands guard at the door. "Cobb's not sleeping," he says.
"Ah," Saito says.
"Right," Ariadne adds. She shifts, feeling a pleasant ache between her legs.
"Please," Eames says, "try to contain your surprise."
They try, and as a reward, Eames shows them a card trick from what he likes to call his misspent youth, and what Arthur likes to point out was no more misspent than the rest of Eames's life. As far as Ariadne can tell, he started doing them again the day after he moved himself into Arthur's apartment.
Ariadne likes to work out how they're done -- back in Paris, she had a friend, Lili, who taught her the basics. Saito likes to be surprised.
Eames is just in the process of loading a second palmed card -- while Saito deliberately follows the misdirect -- when Arthur and Cobb exit Ariadne's office, the silence heavy between them. The five of them walk together to the conference room, where Yusuf is waiting with an open notepad and another thoughtful expression.
They sit, Eames and Arthur, her and Saito, Cobb and his totem.
Cobb speaks first. "What are we going to do if Browning holds you hostage?" he asks Yusuf.
"There's at least a month's supply of anything you could need in my lab," Yusuf says. "Clearly labeled, of course. And Hyun Joo said she'd step in if you need a chemist, but for my sake, please, only if you have to."
Arthur and Cobb exchange a look.
"Hyun Joo?" Cobb asks, having lost their unspoken argument.
Yusuf looks puzzled. "My partner?" He frowns at Arthur. "I know you have surveillance pictures of the two of us in Panama, because I sent her a copy of the one with both of us and the--" He gestures to his left ear. "--thing."
Largely because she thought he wouldn't do it, Ariadne and Saito are holding hands under the table, allowing her to detect his slight twitch of amusement. Eames, as ever, sees no need for such restraint, and his grin only makes Arthur scowl harder.
"Is that a problem?" Yusuf asks.
Cobb frowns. "No."
"I thought of following your examples and dating within the team, but that would leave me with Cobb." Yusuf pauses. "No offense."
Ariadne will be kept warm for a long, long time by the look on Cobb's face before he forces himself to say, "None taken."
And if only the whole meeting could go like this, light and cheerful, with fond looks exchanged and everyone knowing each other too well. But it can't, and they know it can't, and it's left to Saito to break the mood.
"I understand your desire to maintain trade secrets," he says. Everyone is immediately serious, attentive.
"But?" Cobb asks.
"But if Arthur has concerns, it might be in the best interests of the team that they be shared."
Arthur looks as betrayed as Cobb. It's up to Eames to say, "He has a point, love. We could hardly miss your little tête-à-têtes." His accent is deliberately atrocious.
Cobb and Arthur both look to Yusuf then, who shrugs. "It might help if you thought of sharing a dream with someone as being like having unprotected sex with them." He pauses, surveys their faces. "Or it might not."
"Our secrets are what make us who we are," Cobb says. "We cannot hide from them, but we have to hide them from others. I-- I have not always been able to do that," he continues, a slight tip of his head to acknowledge the understatement. "But now, I am not just spilling my own secrets, I'm spilling yours."
Arthur nods. "We were running some tests, and out of nowhere, a projection started telling me that--" He cuts himself off. "Something I didn't need to know." He and Eames exchange a quick series of coded glances, and Ariadne wishes she didn't need a PASIV to read minds.
"Something I didn't know," Cobb says, picking up the story where Arthur left off. "Not consciously, at least. We think when I've been sharing dreams, I've been picking up information. And if I don't know I have it, I can't begin to protect it."
Ariadne's mouth goes dry at the thought of what ten minutes in Cobb's brain would let her discover.
===
The way they awkwardly navigate the age difference is both funny and not. Saito has lived almost twice her lifetime in the real world and almost twice his own in Limbo. He works hard not to patronize her, and she in turn crushes down all hint of wide-eyed ingénue when she is around him.
Every time one of them tries to make light of it, the joke falls flat.
And sometimes, it just needs to be acknowledged.
"What would you do?" Ariadne asks as she settles herself against his side. He has one arm around her, and they are sitting together on a bench in his rooftop garden, feeding the fish. "If you were me, what would you do?"
He's never going to give her advice unprompted, any more than she's going to let him see when she's impressed by his power, but she wants to know, and she knows he wants to say something.
In front of them, two golden fish dart in front of a dappled red and silver one. Saito gave her the look he reserves for westerners when she called them koi. Behind them, there's a door down to the penthouse, and another to the fire escape.
"I would stop looking at our Mr. Cobb as if he is a particularly delicious meal," Saito says.
She snorts, then elbows him (very gently) in the side. "You're right. I think I'm making him nervous."
"Indeed."
Saito throws another sprinkling of fish food on the pond, and each flake as it lands makes its own pattern of ripples.
His voice goes from faux-serious to serious. "I am wary of giving you advice."
"I know." She thinks for a moment. "Would it help if you knew I probably won't take it?"
They're pressed together close enough she can feel his amusement.
"Oddly, yes."
It's her turn to throw a pinch of food towards the fish. A second silver and red one appears, one splotch of red almost in the shape of a diamond.
"You have secrets too," Saito says at last. "Learn to protect those."
It's good advice -- it's excellent advice -- and so Ariadne twists round to kiss his cheek. "That's really good advice."
She's not going to follow it, and when Saito pulls her closer, tilting his head down to kiss her on the mouth, she knows that he knows.
===
Why can't she shake the conviction that her parents are dead?
===
"Your heart-stopping trick disturbs me," Eames says as he wakes from the dream seconds later.
Saito is not the only one who thinks they should be working on protecting their own secrets, and now Yusuf has perfected the technique from the ill-fated Butler-Maxwell double extraction, Cobb has them trying to extract from each other in pairs.
"I don't like being reliant on guns," Ariadne says, not for the first time.
"I think it's the way you smile just as your face goes glassy," Eames muses.
"Endorphins," Ariadne lies.
Eames gives her a skeptical look. "You should know something."
In the dream, Ariadne had Eames trapped in a four dimensional maze lined with mirrors, where destroying any of the mirrors was as useless as trying to break out of a normal three dimensional room by peeling paint off the walls. The only thing he can possibly have extracted from her subconscious was pride at a job well done.
Now, Eames looks almost apologetic. "I want to give you relationship advice."
She braces herself. The absolute worst thing about this new type of dreamshare, is that for a few minutes after waking, the dreamers can read each other with a deeply inconvenient ease. Yusuf says he's working on it, but in that way that means he thinks it's really funny.
"Christ, no!" Eames exclaims. "I'm not going to. But I want to, and that, believe me, is not a good sign."
Five, six minutes ago in the real world, Eames mined every part of the dreamscape he could. In the dream, she counted sixteen projections -- four she recognized as hers, three she recognized as Eames's -- get blown apart before she made her first tentative step. It was pure luck that she survived long enough to make her second.
Now: "You really want to go there?" she asks.
"No." He holds up his hands to ward off whatever choice words she can throw his way. "No advice. I'm sure I just said that. You and I, dear Ariadne, are -- and, I sincerely hope, will continue to be -- an uncomfortable home truths free zone."
In the dream, after the second step, she decided that she'd rather risk attracting the projections' attention than put one more foot on the ground. She built a tangle of staircases and, just like Arthur had taught her, sent images running up each of them, drawing the projections' fire.
Eames likes firepower, and Arthur likes not to get caught. And she likes going where she's not allowed.
"That was a neat trap," she says, firmly changing the subject.
"I thought it might appeal," he says, letting her.
"The 'No Entry' signs were a nice touch."
"Really?" he asks. "Not too much?"
No one but a complete idiot -- and she includes herself in that list --- could possibly have fallen for that. "It seems not."
At that he gives her a long, considering look. It says, clear as day, Oh. Hey. You are in love with Saito.
That mine went off without any warning at all. Ariadne takes a moment to check she's not still dreaming, and then another moment to regroup.
While she's doing all that, Eames says, "Shit, sorry, ignore that." He sounds mildly embarrassed; he hadn't meant to let any of that slip.
"I hate dreamshare remnants," Ariadne says, because she needs something to distract her from the temptation to tell Eames exactly what she thinks of his and Arthur's trust issues.
Eames winces at whatever he sees in the set of her jaw. "Take it up with Yusuf."
And then, because now he does this, he takes a worn deck of cards out of his pocket and shuffles it in a showy blur of hands. It's a cheap trick, but it shatters the tension better than a grenade.
She smiles at him in open gratitude, and then they both take a moment just to breathe.
"I don't know about you," Eames says, ratcheting his accent up a notch, "but I could murder a drink."
"Mr. Eames," she says, taking his arm like they haven't just skirted a very deep drop. "You have all the best ideas."
===
Cobb and Arthur try to insist that Yusuf do a dry run, with Eames reprising his role as Browning.
"Yes," Yusuf says, "because this will go over best if I sound rehearsed."
Eames is with Yusuf, Saito is unconvinced by both sides, and Ariadne just wants this over with.
Yusuf begins ticking points off on his fingers. "Hello, Mr. Browning, I am a craven and amoral scientist seeking knowledge at all costs. I would like to play into your hands by offering up the man who introduced Robert Fischer to the joy of antitrust laws. Let me try to buy your favor with inept gifts of drugs you already have and information you do not want." His voice is dry as dust. "Oh, what have I casually let slip about Ariadne? Horrors, you have abducted her! I never imagined it could come to this." He claps his hands to face. "To get her back, I will give away all of Saito's secrets. Please, don't let her find out it was my fault."
Ariadne picks up her cue, saying mechanically, "Yusuf betrayed us? Oh no."
"I'll do anything," Yusuf continues. "I'll set up a trade. Ariadne for Saito."
Saito inclines his head slightly in agreement.
That makes Eames laugh, and Arthur's expression softens marginally in response. Ariadne feels Saito's thigh press against hers under the table, and watches as Eames kicks Arthur's foot with his own, a gentle tap. From the looks of things, Ariadne isn't the only one finally remembering to breathe.
===
It's her turn to buy dinner.
Last time she ordered bad, overdone pizza from the awful chain two blocks down from her apartment that -- amazingly -- still manages to arrive cold. Her poker face has nothing on Saito's, though, so she couldn't bluff him into eating a slice before revealing the steak she'd taken out of the fridge an hour ago, waiting to be lightly seared and served with blanched asparagus, baby new potatoes and smug, smug grin. Not that it could even begin to rival the cooking Saito was used to, but at least it made him smile.
The next morning her bed was missing a tall, infuriating multi-billionaire, and the pizza was missing a slice; she laughed her way to work.
But it's her turn to buy dinner, and the bluff that didn't work the first time won't even be funny the second, so she has to come up with a new plan.
She thinks vaguely of taking him to some faux-Japanese place, in direct retaliation for the ugly chrome monstrosity from a few days ago, but she thinks the joke would -- at best -- fall flat.
Of course, her bank balance is more than healthy these days. She could take him somewhere nice, somewhere good, and play at Pretty Woman. It would be a combination of hot and amusing, hopefully a little more of the former.
She's going to save the eating dinner off her naked body plan until she's really out of ideas.
There's a place near her apartment that does amazing burritos. You couldn't get a single burrito in the whole of Paris -- and more than once, while very drunk, she'd gone on a mission to find one. More than once, sober, she'd gone on a mission to find one, too; that was back when "important" was her latest project deadline and "deadly" was Miles's raised eyebrow of disapproval.
The advantage of carrying through that plan -- the taking Saito to the burrito place plan, not the finding a burrito somewhere reachable by Métro plan -- would be that next time she wants to bluff, she'll have this to back her up. The most obvious disadvantage would be the severely decreased likelihood of the burrito place still existing tomorrow.
The eating dinner off her naked body plan is sounding remarkably appealing right now. Or -- why not? -- off his naked body. She loves it when he's stretched out, taut and powerful beneath her, not moving until she gives him his cue. She could lick her way across his body, letting her lower lip drag against his skin, tasting everything.
Then there's a pressure on the back of her neck, and that's the last thing she remembers for a while.
===
She wakes up in a dream. She doesn't need her totem to tell her that. She doesn't need the five men pointing guns at her to tell her that, either.
She's in an anonymous hotel room, tied to a chair with her hands bound together behind her back and her feet pulled under and tied against the back chair legs, leaving her uncomfortably off-balance. There are five men with guns, one man without a gun, and no exits. The windows, she knows without looking, are brick, and there's not going to be a door before the unarmed man -- Browning, it's Browning -- decides he wants there to be. Stupidly, she wishes she could see the sky.
"Good morning," Browning says. He's standing, hands clasped together in front of him, ready for the best she can throw at him. His smile could cut diamonds.
Briefly, very briefly, she toys with stopping her heart right now. It would get her out of here, but then she'd have to put up with this James Bond crap in the real world.
"Good morning," she says.
"I understand you're to be my convincer," Browning says, eyeing her like she's a bad cut of beef. "I do prefer to cut out the middleman, so to speak."
Ariadne prefers to cut out the being kidnapped, put under and tied to a chair while a man who's already had her tortured once tells her he's one step ahead of her team. She also prefers her eggs over-easy, and her men interesting enough to hold her attention. She's aware she may be panicking, just a little.
"Let me tell you what's going to happen now." Browning looks comfortable in his own skin. Ariadne considers stopping his heart, instead. See if he looks so comfortable then.
"Please," she says.
"First, you're going to tell me everything you know about this plan to infiltrate my security. Then, you're going to tell me everything you know about our mutual friend, Mr. Saito. Then, we'll see."
Ariadne suspects what they'll see is how quickly they can dispose of her body. There's a grim satisfaction to this thought, a hope that even after death she will inconvenience these fuckers.
"Don't make me hurt you," Browning says, as if he's offering her advice on which coffee shop to go to, or how crowded the subway gets at 5:30pm.
"Sorry." She shrugs as much as her restraints allow. "I can't help you there."
The pain begins.
===
They're clever. The dream is double-shared -- hers and someone else's -- so they can extract from her while still holding a controlling stake in the surroundings. They're ripping apart the place, looking for hidden panels and well-guarded fortresses. They're ripping her apart, piling the pain upon pain.
She can feel it the second they find it, an awareness that tugs at the hidden part of her, the one aspect of herself she could keep away from the pain.
And that, that is when the sky falls in.
===
The first rule of a long con is: Decide what you want.
What they want is to annihilate Browning. There must be nothing left of him afterwards to pick up the fight, nothing left of him to let anyone else believe they might have a chance of taking on Cobb's crew and walking away, much less winning.
Ariadne has changed a lot over the last month. She's gone from a woman who creates painstaking models of industrial sewage systems to a woman who builds worlds upon worlds. She's gone from a woman who thinks flying first class is an impossible luxury to a woman who sends stupidly fond texts to a man who owns an airline. And she's gone from a woman who tries to do the right thing to a woman who will do this.
The men with guns who surround her have fallen to the ground. It would be fairer, almost, if they were thrashing and moaning, if there were some clue as to what was going on in their minds, but instead they lie in messy, undignified heaps, losing.
The hotel room is shaking. That, at least, is fair. She can trust the architecture to reflect what's going on, even as the people let her down.
For days, now, they've been binding this into her dreams. Woven into the sky, tangled up with the clouds and the sun's glare, they've hidden in her mind awful, awful things that scare her even to look at out of the corner of her eye.
Eames gave them the murder of his parents, wrapped up in a bow of guilt and shame so powerful she cannot scream loud enough to drown it out. She remembers now, as the fallen sky finally allows her to think these things again, that they'd both been crying when they woke up.
Cobb gave them Mal, of course.
Yusuf gave them every person he's ever killed, their choked final breaths echoing through Ariadne's sky like birdsong. They have names, and families, and lovers who make them smile softly. One mother, a woman with sad, kind eyes, tells Yusuf she forgives him, again and again and again.
Saito gave them the assaults he'd witnessed but hadn't stopped, the wrongs done that he had the power to right. The whimpering is drowned out by the smell of fear. Ariadne's hands shake.
Arthur gave them war, pervasive and violent and loud and awful and immanent, hell with a gun and a cause that's a lie. He has a lover's dog tags in his hand, the metal wet and silver-grey.
Ariadne gave them her best friend's suicide, threading into the sun's rays the note left behind.
They mixed it together, seasoned it with voices at the edge of hearing, stripped bare every raw nerve, and left nowhere to hide.
And if sharing a dream is like having unprotected sex with someone, then Ariadne is Patient Zero with a vengeance. The moment Browning tied his mind to hers, he let this in, and now it won't let him out.
Ariadne is protected from it, just barely. She's not protected from the knowledge of what she's doing, but that, like the trembling architecture, seems only fair.
===
The kick comes in the form of a bucket of ice water, and she wakes up with her hand in Saito's.
"Success?" she asks, but she doesn't need to. Browning has woken up next to her, and the side-effect of double-dreaming, the dreamshare remnants that let her read the other dreamer's face, they're working. Never has she wished more fervently that they didn't.
It's Yusuf who maneuvers himself to block her view of Browning. He mutters something about checking the PASIV, but he's not fooling anyone, and Ariadne notices it's not just her who shoots him a grateful glance.
Saito gently makes her stand, folds her into his arms and just lets her breathe for one, two, three, four long moments. In the back of her mind she thinks perhaps this is embarrassing and weak, that you don't see the others -- the men -- falling apart after a job. But in the back of her mind she has Arthur shooting over the dead body of another man, blinded by tears; Eames two days and four hours after his parents' murderer's acquittal; Yusuf attending funeral after funeral, hiding his face; Saito walking away from a child crying for help, his body numb; Cobb and Mal and Cobb and Mal. She lets Saito hold her. She clings back.
"Success," Cobb confirms.
It doesn't feel like it
===
It's stupid, but she really, really, really wants to go to that burrito place near her apartment. She wants to eat something that doesn't taste of her new life. She wants comfort food from back when she needed to be comforted about homesickness or getting a B-. She wants something that will settle her stomach.
Saito has just made $19 million out of a complicated hostile takeover of the company that makes Weebles. The meal will be, he insists, his treat.
She wants to say something light and easy. What comes out, after three silent bites of a pork burrito that tastes of better days, is: "I love you."
They're sitting in one of the booths, backs against hard plastic and elbows resting on a mildly stained formica table, seven feet from the door.
Saito blinks slowly.
"I know this isn't--" she tries. "I'm not trying to pretend we're something we're not. But I'm twenty-four and stupid and I love you, and you should know that."
If she were a different person, this might be harder than what's come before. The rest of the day had a plan to it, at least, whereas this has not been hashed out with Yusuf and Arthur scrapping for control of the whiteboard.
But she's not a different person, and this is easy compared to destroying another man's mind. This is just love, and whatever comes next, she will know that she has done one honest thing today, one thing to be proud of.
"You know that I am not--" Saito pauses. "I am not a good person. You have seen that."
It's true.
"Nor am I," she says. That's true too.
He looks like he wants to argue with her, but he saw Browning being led away by Arthur and Eames. He saw the five men with guns who'd signed up to kill or be killed, but not this.
"Perhaps, when you have finished eating, I can take you home. You can, if you wish, tie me down and refuse to touch me." Either Saito finished his burrito in the time it took her to savor three amazing mouthfuls, or he threw it away while she was too busy communing with hers to notice. It is something to ponder, at least, while she deliberately doesn't think about anything else.
"Perhaps," she says.
He leans forward and takes her hand. "And perhaps, before then, I can tell you that you have truly outdone yourself; you have picked the ugliest restaurant in the world in which for me to tell you that I love you too. Don't presume there will not be retaliation."
It's like fireworks going off in the troubled night sky. For just a second, she ignores everything else and focuses on the fact that the colors are beautiful.
===
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