Porcelain, Part 2
Title: Porcelain
Fandom: Inception
Rating: R
Characters: Arthur, Cobb, Mal, Miles
Summary: Arthur struggles to make some breakthrough in the Cobb case. Cobb is cracking slowly at the edges. The most grievous hurts are those of the mind, and sometimes, keeping secrets can be a dangerous thing. Mild Arthur/Cobb.
Note: Second fic of the Ṛta series.
Miles dropped by with a change of clothes. Arthur had considered just how much to tell him, and decided the whole Mal thing had been too much. He just told Miles Cobb had called him to pick him up from a holding cell, and watched as Miles’ features firmed with quiet disapproval. “He took some Flexiril for that headache. He’s going to be out for a while. I’ll drive him back,” Arthur said, mostly to reassure Miles.
He’d even started to feel a lot more confident and in control by the time Miles had left. One thing at a time. Nice and slow, Arthur. Nice and slow. Keep an eye on Cobb first, and if nothing else happens, he was probably your one-in-a-billionth.
“Hey,” someone said quietly from behind him, and Arthur started, hand moving to. Oh, shit. It was just Cobb. He took a deep breath to calm himself. It seemed like his nerves were still a little on edge. Hell, surely he didn’t startle that easily?
“I didn’t hear you get up,” he said, neutrally.
Cobb shrugged. He looked like he was doing a lot better now. He scuffed one foot uneasily against the floor, and Arthur wondered since when was he reading Cobb so easily. “Look,” he said at last, and the look in his bright blue eyes was open and honest, if a little disarming, “I just wanted to say…I’m sorry. I don’t think I was really thinking clearly when I popped all that Flexiril. So…I just wanted to say I’m sorry for giving you a scare.”
Suddenly, Cobb looked like he’d seen a ghost. Arthur followed the direction of Cobb’s glance, to where the small brass top on the floor was spinning. “It fell out of your pocket,” he explained. He frowned. Cobb looked almost - frightened? Panicked? “Miles dropped by. Thought he’d get you a change of clothes. It dropped out of your pocket, I think.”
Cobb said nothing, pale blue eyes fixed on the top, watching. Arthur bent to pick it up, and Cobb’s hand shot out with startling speed and caught Arthur’s hand by the wrist in a tight grip. Arthur reflexively flexed his wrist, trying to break Cobb’s grip, was it - had he - was Cobb - “Don’t touch it,” Cobb hissed, his voice as sharp as cracked glass. Arthur glanced at him, surprised.
“I’m not going to,” he said, slowly and carefully. As if he was talking to a man with a bomb strapped to his body, or something. “Let go.”
Cobb looked down at his death grip on Arthur’s wrist, as if he wasn’t even aware that he’d been clenching his fingers around Arthur’s wrist. “Sorry,” he said briefly, and released his grip. Arthur flexed his fingers, wondering if Cobb had cut off all circulation. It sure felt like it.
Cobb took a few breaths to steady his breathing. The top spun, and wobbled and tipped. Abruptly, Cobb reached out and snagged it, shoving it roughly into his pocket. “I’ll go get changed,” he said brusquely, and walked away, leaving Arthur to wonder about exactly what had happened.
They settled into a kind of routine. Cobb, at least, wasn’t that much of an intrusion, and had the decency to try and help Arthur with some of the cleaning work, so that was something. Most of the frightening blankness had vanished from his eyes, and although Cobb didn’t say much, Arthur kept an eye on him, and thought everything seemed fine.
Cobb was breaking out of the shell of uneasy quiet that had blanketed him in a kind of emotional numbness, and that, at least seemed good. He made one or two jokes, laughed at them, which looked like a sign of some kind of recovery.
Mal hadn’t surfaced, and so Arthur dismissed it as his one-in-a-billionth, though there were moments when he caught sight of disconcerting flashes in Cobb. Maybe there was nothing to worry about, but the thoughtful look in Cobb’s eyes, or even a distant look as he entered the kitchen and his eyes fixed on a kitchen knife had made Arthur feel a little uneasy.
Once or twice, he caught Cobb watching him, although what for, Arthur didn’t know. For his part, he kept all sensitive files and information away at the office, and locked away anything that wasn’t. He didn’t have to report in for many hours yet as he distributed time between the Cobb and McKinney cases, but only felt confident in taking the McKinney back home.
Cobb was too personal. Arthur couldn’t let it get personal. At least Cobb proved of some help for McKinney, and why not? Cobb was qualified enough and he confirmed Arthur’s suspicions about some of the side-effects of prolonged dreamsharing. Paranoia, Cobb said, ticking the signs off on his fingers. Possible addiction, compulsive behaviour, some become immense thrill-seekers, there’s… his voice faltered.
“There is what?” Arthur prompted.
Cobb stared down at his hands. The same, shuttered expression coming across his face, the one that Arthur learned had to do with Mal. “Do you think she was the first?” Cobb asked quietly. Bleakly. “The first to kill herself because she wanted to wake up?”
Arthur swallowed. He shook his head. The originals trials. He’d put in a request for the information. He was waiting for clearance. That was Department of Defense material, and he wasn’t even sure if he could access it. How did Cobb know?
Cobb read the expression on his face perfectly. “I studied this, Arthur,” he said, in that same, terrible, quiet, and toneless voice. “I thought I knew almost everything about dreamsharing. Everything that was possible. And I’d forgotten it was like playing with fire.”
You get burned, Arthur thought. Was that it? It’d burned Cobb, burned Mal, but Cobb was the one who lived to tell the tale. Blindly, Cobb’s hand crept towards his. It’s the contact he wants, Arthur remembered.
Arthur hesitated.
The second time Mal actually surfaced, Arthur realised too late that it was a dangerous game he was playing when he heard the soft footsteps too late. He turned around, which was the only reason the knife gouged a line of deep pain along his lower back, and bit into his side, instead of maybe his kidney.
Fucking hell, Arthur thought, or maybe gasped aloud. It didn’t matter; either way, it hurt like shit. Mal smiled, the expression curiously wrong on Cobb’s mouth. “Hello again, Arthur,” she said. Arthur watched the knife, with a strange fascination. His blood was soaking his shirt. His side hurt like blazes, but for some reason, the pain wasn’t clouding his brain. His mind felt extremely clear, like someone breathing frost onto glass on a clear winter day.
Blood dripped from the knife. Ordinary kitchen knife, Arthur’s mind noted, with clinical dispassion. Cobb was heftier than him, but it didn’t matter. Don’t hesitate. Don’t be tentative, Arthur. Make your decision and then commit.
Arthur came in, leg sweeping up in a kick. He wasn’t going to give Mal another chance to stick him with the knife again. He blinked as his vision blurred and forced himself to focus. He managed a grasp on Mal’s wrist (how easy it was to think of this as Mal and not Cobb) and twisted about to put pressure on the elbow.
Arthur had the advantage of leverage, and he managed to wrest the knife free. He tossed it far to the side, and didn’t look to see where it landed. His side was increasingly damp with blood, and streaks of blood marked his hands, was probably all over the kitchen floor, and was on Cobb’s clothing. Arthur noticed Cobb’s arm was bleeding sluggishly and decided that wasn’t important.
Sorry, Arthur thought briefly, and used a quick choke hold to induce unconsciousness. He let go as Cobb’s deadweight dropped to the kitchen floor. Great. He sank down himself. Hell, but everywhere hurt like hell. He looked down at the blood-splattered tiles, and down at himself. It didn’t look good, and he wasn’t in the mood to call 911. Assault with a deadly weapon. Something Cobb could more than definitely be nailed for.
He fumbled in his pocket, and found his cell phone, and carefully tried to regain his feet. The kitchen blurred around him. Not good. Still, he should make sure Cobb was out. He wasn’t sure what he was going to do if he wasn’t. You had a gun, you idiot, you were supposed to shoot him. Reasonable use of force and all that.
He needed to keep Cobb out for a while. Maybe under for a bit.
Oh, why the hell not, Arthur thought. He fought off the wave of dizziness and tried to locate the PASIV.
Arthur dialled Jase’s number, and waited. At this rate, he thought sardonically, Jase should be on speed-dial. It was a short while before Jase picked up. “Hey. What’s up?”
“Cobb’s out,” Arthur said, just as to the point. He shifted a little and cursed silently as the movement tugged at his back. The wound was throbbing, even through the tight bandage Arthur had managed to put in place. “Whacked him up with two hundred milligrams of thorazine. He’ll be out for a while.”
There was a silence across the phone. The kind which meant that Jase would be rolling his eyes and giving Arthur a stern glare. Then, Jase muttered something which might have been a curse, or ‘you idiot’. Arthur didn’t particularly have any preference as to which he thought it was. “Two hundred milligrams? Are you crazy?”
“I don’t do crazy,” Arthur said flatly, although he evidently did, these days. “He fought off the standard dosage. And I need a favour. Two favours, actually.”
He could all but see Jase’s eyes narrow, as he bent over a stack of papers or maybe ran another test to do with brain chemistry. Toxicology. Or something along those lines. Arthur swayed a little. He felt dizzy from the blood he’d lost, and he placed his hand against the wall to steady himself and just breathed and focused on his breathing. He hadn’t cleaned all the blood off, and the contact left a smear of his blood (or maybe Cobb’s?) on the wall.
Cleaning was going to be a pain.
He reached back and felt for the bandage. It was damp to the touch. The blood was soaking through, then. “You’ve got medical training? I think I need you to help me stitch up something.” As an afterthought, he added, “A pretty long cut.”
“Okay,” Jase said. That was one thing about Jase. He saw the immediate problem, and prioritised his responses. He didn’t argue about how 911 would be a lot faster. Or how Arthur should take this to the ER. Which meant his mind was already working; was already thinking. The staff at the ER were supposed to report this sort of injury. Arthur took a deep breath and tried to think why the hell he was bothering protecting Cobb anyway when Cobb was so damn determined to dig a mess for himself.
Screw that. This whole situation was a mess. His head ached. His side throbbed. He needed an aspirin except it was a bad idea right now.
Arthur gave Jase his address for good measure, even though he was fairly certain Jase knew it, and found a nearby chair, sitting back down. Jase, he knew, was good for his word. And discreet about things. “Describe the wound.”
“Hurts like fuck,” Arthur said, into the unamused silence. “There’s a lot of blood.”
That was definitely Jase rolling his eyes.
“Specificity, you idiot,” Jase retorted. He sounded faintly testy but did not pursue the point further. He hung up. Arthur fought off the wave of dizziness and leaned back, letting the chair support him. His head was starting to throb as well, and his hand went up to massage his temples.
Sedated, Cobb looked strangely peaceful and untormented. “Well, that makes it one of us,” Arthur told his sleeping friend, but then took the hint from Cobb’s lead and closed his eyes for a bit, deciding to take a bit of a rest until Jase got here. He ignored the sharp jabs of pain from the wound in his back and tried to keep a steady pressure on it.
He must have forgotten something. Oh. He hadn’t cleaned the blood off the floor. And the bloodied knife was still in the sink. Arthur decided that could wait.
“That,” Jase said, “Is going to be one hell of a scar. A very long scar. And it’s going to match the one that Gardner was so determined to carve into you.”
“Very funny,” Arthur said sarcastically. “Can you draw a line of symmetry through them or something?”
Jase studied him like he wasn’t sure whether Arthur was joking or not. “Keep taking aspirin,” he said finally. “I brought some antibiotics. Keep taking them too. Aspirin should reduce the fever. Expect some inflammation. Any problems, come back to me.”
“Thanks,” Arthur said. He tried to stand too fast, and the room and Jase did a crazy loop-the-loop around him.
Jase’s hands pressed down on his shoulders. “Stay down,” Jase told him, tossing Arthur’s jacket towards him. Arthur caught it, one-handed. “You’re going to feel cold, and shiver a bit. That’s normal. You lost quite a bit of blood there. Don’t make quick, jerking motions, or you’ll tear the stitches. You’re probably going to have some dizziness. A lot of dizziness. Get something warm to drink. Make yourself a cup of coffee or something.”
“Got it.”
“What are you going to do about him?” Jase wanted to know. They both turned and looked at Cobb, whom Jase had shifted onto the couch. Sleeping off the rest of the thorazine.
“I don’t know,” Arthur said. “I know, I should have brought him in and gone to the ER.”
“Mmmhmm,” Jase said. He was making two cups of coffee in the kitchen, locating the coffee grounds and using the last of the boiling water from the kettle. “So, what’s your excuse?”
Arthur sighed. “This isn’t an easy case,” he said, after a bit of thought. “Any outbreak of violence on his part, whatever the reason, and he just makes the case for his being the killer that night…a great deal stronger. No jury’s going to buy the whole ‘she killed herself’ story if this got out. If the ER reported this in …well, he’s in for it.”
“Okay,” Jase said. He slipped into the opposite chair, holding out a cup of coffee. Arthur took it, and held it, just grateful for its warmth. “You’re supposed to bring him in, you know. Like this, he could be a danger to himself, his family…and he’s already attacked you.”
Arthur sighed. He’d asked himself the very same questions. Told himself that he was well within his rights to drag Cobb down to for a psychiatric evaluation, with or without Cobb’s agreement.
“So, why do you care? I mean, I guess I’m just asking why you’re going to all these lengths to make sure this doesn’t happen.”
Arthur shrugged. “Well, if he didn’t do it…”
“You really think he didn’t do it?”
“You really think he did?”
Jase shrugged. “I don’t know,” he said eventually. “That’s your job, isn’t it?”
Arthur sipped his coffee, and wondered if Jase was trying to make some kind of point. Maybe he wasn’t in the state for this, right now. “Yeah,” he said, agreeing. “That’s my job.”
He stared at the cup, too drained to even consider putting the jacket on.
“Did what?” Cobb asked, raising his head, his voice blurred by sleep. He made the mistake of trying to sit up too soon, and groaned, sagging back against the armrest that his head was pillowed on.
Arthur handed him the glass of water. Cobb drained it in almost one gulp. “Steady. You’ve been out for a bit.”
Cobb blinked. “What?” His eyes flicked to Arthur’s shirtless stage and the neat dressing taped to Arthur’s back with surgical tape. Narrowed with concern. “What the hell happened to you?”
Oh, nothing much. Got cut up by your psychotic wife-personality. All in a day’s work.
Jase had long packed up the medical kit and excused himself from the place. “Encounter with the sharp end of a knife,” Arthur said bluntly. “At least twenty stitches. Hurts like hell too.”
Cobb had to know. The only thing was, Arthur couldn’t think of a good way to put it. Just get to the point, Arthur.
Cobb frowned, sitting up slowly. “You went out?” Arthur wondered that he wasn’t picking up the sharp, lingering smell of detergent or disinfectant.
Arthur took a deep breath and said, “Maybe I’d better tell you about Mal.” There. He’d said it. Maybe he should have said it the first time it had happened, to begin with. Hesitation, he thought with a grim smile. Pierce was right. He always was. Arthur had always been a hesitator, had always needed certainty to galvanise him into action. Well. He’d done it now. Cobb’s eyes moved back to the tight dressing on Arthur’s back.
He asked, “What about Mal?” His blue eyes were chips of ice; the same, closed look had come back on his face, and there was a painful tightness in his voice that Arthur was beginning to pick up on. He popped an aspirin and swallowed it down with the coffee. His head was still throbbing, and he wasn’t even sure how to start telling Cobb.
Cobb, you start acting weird and kind of like your wife - no, I don’t mean your wife is weird, I just mean that whoever it is you become answers to ‘Mal’ so I’m assuming that’s your wife and yeah, she’s some kind of violent, psychotic personality in your head…
Pretend you’re giving a report to Ellis. Strict. Professional. Formal. Pull yourself together, Arthur, godamnit. “Remember what you said about the negative side-effects of dreamsharing?”
Cobb nodded slowly. Arthur found himself thinking about the PASIV again. For some reason, something about the way he’d left it was tugging at his mind, demanding his attention. Something was wrong. He just couldn’t seem to remember what it was. When had he last used it, for that matter? Arthur set aside the question for now.
“You’ve been having violent outbreaks,” Arthur said quietly. “You don’t seem to remember any of them. It’s someone else out there. I…she answered to Mal. The last time, she attacked me. Was probably trying to go for a kidney stab, but I was moving. So I got cut across the back.” Dispassionate. Calm. Just-Stating-The-Facts-Ma’am voice.
Cobb’s eyes flicked back to the bandage. The ice cracked, fractured, as Cobb looked aghast, disturbed, unhappy, horrified…so many emotions flooded Cobb’s features at that moment, a sharp contrast to how tightly wound-up he had been a few moments before. “Arthur…” Cobb breathed. His voice trailed off, as his mouth worked, but he couldn’t seem to think of what to say. “Sorry about your back.”
Arthur gave a weak attempt at a light smile. It faltered. He pretended it didn’t. “Don’t worry,” he said lightly, trying to pretend he hadn’t been unsettled by the brief struggle against Mal. “Nothing serious.”
Cobb gave a breathless, incredulous laugh. “Twenty stitches?”
“I’m trained for this,” Arthur said, with a confidence he didn’t quite feel. “You were going for my kidneys, remember? I managed to head you off.” He couldn’t quite help the shiver. He was so damned cold. He tugged at the jacket and managed to slip it on, masking the wound dressing from sight.
Cobb’s mouth tightened. He took a deep breath and shook his head. “I don’t believe you,” he said, his voice painfully quiet. “It’s crazy. People try to kill you that often?”
Arthur shrugged. “Do you want to see a psychiatrist?” he offered, instead, shifting to another line of conversation. Make it personal, the cold little voice at the back of his mind noted. It was the best way to shut down a conversation. Bring it back to their own little personal warning areas, the ones they always danced around by mutual agreement, to distract Cobb from the issue at hand. He felt a tiny stab of guilt at what he was doing.
Cobb’s mouth was a thin, firm line. His eyes were hard and sharp and angry. He looked like he wanted to say something, but he wasn’t sure what. Finally, he said, “Not yet. I need to…I need to think.”
He walked out of the apartment, and briskly shut the door behind him. Well done, Arthur. You didn’t just get him to back off, he’s run off. Now, hope that Mal only likes stabbing you.
Arthur sat there, staring at his second cup of coffee and wished his head didn’t hurt so much.
Calls to Cobb’s home were picked up by Marie, who confirmed in a voice that Arthur thought of as steel sheathed in a coating of ice that Cobb had shown up for a while, but had left again. No, she didn’t know where he could have gone.
Kevin wasn’t too sure, but didn’t think anyone had picked up Cobb again. So that possibly left trouble out of the whole equation. There was always the chance that Cobb had gone off to see a psychiatrist, after all, but for some reason, Arthur didn’t find that likely at all. Cobb had always divorced the emotional aspects of what had happened that night from the events themselves, or at any rate, had always done so in the telling. To find a psychiatrist was to admit there was a problem.
Oh, for Christ’s sake, Arthur, there is a problem.
Maybe he was looking at the whole thing from the wrong angle. What he had to do was to find something that could conclusively determine if Cobb and Mal hadn’t been in the same room in the same window of time. Or, his mind reminded him, if they had.
Reasonable doubt.
Arthur sighed. He wasn’t even a lawyer. He could probably get away with a search that was a lot less thorough than what he was doing right now. He didn’t work that way though. Didn’t just settle for doing the minimum. With all the people who’d been in and out of the opposite suite, he’d have been lucky if LAPD had managed to pick up anything that forensics could have used to place Mal in that room.
Bullshit, Arthur. Every contact leaves a trace. He stood in the hallway outside the room, key card in hand. It wasn’t his field. It was too late to find something, and yet Arthur had still come back anyway, trying to picture what had happened. Trying to see if there was something he had missed out on. That the series of officers who’d worked the case had missed out on.
The problem was that latent prints weren’t useful. Too much room for error. And it wasn’t as if hotel rooms didn’t see a great deal of activity. Things missed by cleaning staff. Traces from the cleaning staff themselves. Whoever who had previously occupied the room before Mal had gotten hold of it.
No one had reoccupied the room yet. Pushing open the door, Arthur glanced around. The window here had been open. He frowned, trying to guess at his best reconstruction of that night. So Mal had entered this room. No pause, nothing had been disturbed, or he’d have seen a note of that in the report. Nothing significant, in any case. There was none of the signs of a struggle that had taken place in the opposite room. No blood. (He’d found that odd, it was exceedingly unlikely that with the broken glass and the whole room turned upside down, no blood had been drawn.)
Arthur pushed doubt out of his mind, and focused on his purpose. At some point, she’d opened that window. She’d climbed outside the window, and to the ledge outside. He walked up to the window, feet making little sound across the carpet. This could go two ways. Either there’d be an article in the newspaper about the suicidal Fed who’d gone in over his head and fallen off an easily thirty-storey ledge. Keith would show up to his funeral and then kill himself laughing. Or he’d actually make it. Or maybe someone would see him out there and freak out.
Arthur set the kit down on the writing desk, and walked over to the window, studying it. He slid the window open with a gloved hand, and winced as a blast of strong wind hit him in the face. Arthur studied the ledge very carefully before he climbed out and onto it. He braced himself against the window, and made the mistake of looking down. He swallowed, hard. Screw it. That was one hell of a drop. So she’d climbed out, onto that ledge. He suspected it was to stop Cobb from stopping her. He couldn’t have reached across that empty space, not without plummeting to his death on the pavement below.
Did she brace herself? Contact. A slim hope, a fool’s mission, but better than nothing. He had to find areas of contact. When had the hotel last cleaned the ledge? Had anyone even gone outside to try dusting for prints? He glanced down at where his hands met the window frame, and wondered if she’d touched it.
The wall to the side of the window frame. Maybe she’d touched it. Any traces of dirt on the ledge? Any scuffed and mostly-faded prints?
There, sitting on the ledge so many storeys above the city, and trying not to shiver, another idea suddenly occurred to Arthur. It was the answer he needed.
CCTV. The gap was too wide. Mal would have had to access the room from within the hotel, surely. If she hadn’t, he’d be picking up something. Arthur studied the ledge, eyes watering as the gust of cold wind blew straight into his face, trying to see if he’d missed out anything. No. Maybe there were shoe prints he wasn’t picking up, but this high, it wasn’t likely to be anyone else but Mal.
Which meant Mal had taken the corridors within the hotel. And when she’d had to access the room from within the hotel, one of the CCTVs would have picked her up. Complete with date and time stamp. And Cobb would have been on the CCTVs, of course. Arthur even had an almost-definite timeline for when Cobb had entered that room. And if the hallway CCTV picked up on Mal leaving, then Cobb entering…
Perfect.
Arthur smiled, and very carefully made his way back into the room to get his kit, conduct a quick dust, and then head for hotel security.
There.
Footage saved onto a thumbdrive and slipped into his pocket, Arthur left the hotel feeling very pleased with himself. There it was. Exactly what he needed. He tried calling Cobb’s number, but received no response. Marie confirmed the same thing. Cobb had come back a while ago and left again.
Well, the next thing he needed to do was to submit all of this. Maybe make a final report sketching out what he believed corroborated Cobb’s version of events. The DA could decide what to do with all of them.
His mood changed when he reached his home and caught sight of switched-on lights from the ground. That was his unit, wasn’t it? He’d left them switched off. By the time he reached the door, the alarm bells were ringing. Forced entry, Arthur thought, studying the door. He reached for his Glock, and took a few deep breaths. Lights meant the intruder was probably still there.
Stop hesitating, Arthur.
Grim smile, he shouldered open the door and called out, “Federal agent. Put your hands up, over your head where I can see them.”
Ability, opportunity, jeopardy, Arthur’s brain chanted, as the silent figure in his living room took a step forward. As he realised that he was staring at the muzzle of a gun. As he threw himself down as fast as he could and pulled the trigger.
He heard the loud sound of the guns discharging. For a few moments, time seemed to slow down, enough for Arthur to catch the quick rhythm of his heartbeat pounding in his ears and the harsh, scraped sound of breathing. Eerily quiet, now. He rolled and tried to come up, dimly noting his leg hurt. He frowned, eyes narrowed to shallow slits, and tried to put another one through the intruder.
Time crashed back into him, then, and Arthur’s leg gave way, sending sharp splinters of pain up his nerves. He glanced down at it. Oh. Shit. He’d been shot too. For the second time in too short a period, he was bleeding out in his own home. Now his brain actually recognised the intruder: Cobb.
“What the hell are you doing here?” Arthur snapped. Cobb was bleeding at the shoulder - he staggered towards a chair and sank down. He’d dropped the gun; Arthur thought he recognised it as his back-up. Had Cobb tried to break into his safe? He thought back to the irregularities with the PASIV and wondered, for that matter, if Cobb had been using it. That was how he’d gotten to that gun.
One shot in the shoulder, and the other shot in the thigh. Wonderful. Both of them were abysmally bad shots. If he kept this up, he’d fail the next time he had to qualify. Considering the circumstances, Arthur figured he should be very much grateful. He reached into his pocket for his cell phone and called 911, giving his address and telling them two people were shot. He left the rest out. The police were going to find out soon enough.
“I don’t know,” Cobb said honestly. For a moment, he looked almost frightened. “I swear I don’t remember coming here.”
Silence. The sound of their breathing, harsh, as they waited for the EMTs. “I know,” Arthur said. He left out the I told you so, but Cobb flinched, just as if he’d said it.
“Are you okay?”
Arthur tried to bite back the sardonic laugh, but it came out anyway. “No. I’ve been shot and it’s hurting like hell. And candy and teddy bears are raining down from the sky. So yes, I’m okay.”
“I didn’t know you liked teddy bears.”
“Shove it,” Arthur told him, testily. He took a deep breath, and relaxed his clenched grip on the Glock. Set it down carefully, easily within reach. Cobb’s eyes followed his movement, and smiled. Bitter, edged.
“Not that big on trust?”
“Well,” Arthur said carefully, “No sense in being stupid.” He wondered if the dispatcher had heard the wrong address or something. Or when the EMTs were going to get here. Cobb gave him a tight nod, and the rest of the time passed in complete silence.
Clean entry and exit wound, through the thigh. No major vessels severed, or Arthur would have been in for it. Instead, he was in Ellis’ office, about a week after the incident, and limping. Cobb hadn’t had too much trouble, or so it seemed. But the charges had stuck, and there was more of them. Breaking and entering. Assault with a deadly weapon.
Arthur waited, shifting a little in the chair, and hiding his grimace as his injury protested against the movement by pain. He didn’t function well when drugged up to his eyeballs with painkillers, or he’d have already popped some.
Finally, Ellis sighed and looked up the file he was studying. If Arthur craned his neck, he thought he could see his name in there. His incident report? “Well,” Ellis said evenly, “That’s one resolution to the Cobb case.”
“I only know he left,” Arthur said, very carefully. “And that he was still being charged with murder.” Despite sufficient doubts cast upon those ideas by the evidence. The CCTV footage. He didn’t say that aloud, but Ellis must have read it straight off his face. Arthur was too tired to hide anything much.
Ellis raised a dark eyebrow and said, “That’s the DA’s problem. Not yours.” The rebuke was clear, and Arthur straightened up a little in his seat in acknowledgement. After a pause, Ellis added, “He fled right before they came to take him into custody. At least a day’s head-start. Some of them thought you might have some idea of what happened.”
Arthur shook his head. Nothing to hide here. How Cobb had managed it was another question. How he’d gotten wind of it was something Arthur didn’t know either. “You didn’t think so. Or I’d be talking to someone from Security.”
A tight smile. “Yes,” Ellis said, point-blank. “Medical says light duty. You’re not quite on your feet yet. Still,” he steepled his fingers, glancing back at the report, “There are some concerns. Officer-involved shooting, for one. That should be cleared up quickly, but procedure demands an investigation, while you’ll be on administrative leave.”
Arthur nodded. He already knew that.
“But there are other things. What the hell was Cobb doing in your home?”
“He broke in.”
“Before that,” Ellis said, sharply. “He was using your PASIV. I don’t think I need to stress how many problems his access to your home caused. You took him home from a night in the holding cell, and then he was living in your home.”
Arthur was quiet for a while. He took a deep breath. “No excuse.”
Ellis snorted. “Well,” he said, “At least you’re honest.” He added, as an afterthought, perhaps meant to be vaguely conciliatory, “You’re not the first person to get too close to a case. You won’t be the last. Still. There are doubts that will have to be looked into. Questions about how you handled this investigation.”
“Sir?”
“Two weeks administrative leave,” Ellis said. “Two weeks suspension. Once the investigation is done, I will decide on the appropriate disciplinary action. More likely than not, you’ll be spending a period on report.”
Arthur let out his breath, slowly. It was less harsh than he had been expecting. He wasn’t sure if it was a good thing, or a bad thing. “Did my involvement in the investigation cast doubt on my findings?” It was a bold question, but Arthur knew Ellis didn’t mind. Whether he would answer it was another matter, however.
Ellis looked slightly startled, perhaps a little impressed. “Perhaps,” he said. It was clear no answer was forthcoming, as he bent his head down and studied the file again. “Dismissed.” As Arthur slowly got out of the chair and headed for the door, Ellis added, “Get out of the country for a while, Arthur. Do something. Anything. I don’t care. You’re not allowed back here until the investigation is over. Have I made myself clear?”
“Crystal,” Arthur said. He left, closing the door quietly behind him.
It was an overcast day when Cobb showed up. The sky was iron-grey, seamless, with no clouds in sight. There came a knock on the door of his rented flat, and Arthur frowned. He wasn’t sure who it could be. The landlord would have called before he came down.
He opened the door. Cobb stood there, looking a little haggard, a little careworn, and a little worse for the wear. Arthur couldn’t even make out if his left shoulder was still bandaged beneath the material of the faded teal jacket. Arthur didn’t know whether to kill him, to apologise, or to invite him in. For that matter, he didn’t even know how Cobb had found his address.
“I’m sorry,” Cobb said, meeting Arthur’s eyes. His eyes were the bright blue, the colour of a piece of sky that had yet to be touched by rain. Edged with clouds. “I…” he hesitated, shifting his weight from one foot to the other.
Arthur waited silently, blocking the doorway. Wasn’t sure what to do. What to say.
Cobb took a deep, shuddering breath, and dropped the pretence of casualness, and then said, “I can’t do this. I need your help.”
Arthur should have thought about it. Had thought about it. Cobb was now wanted for the murder of his wife. For a few other charges, some of which Arthur had even stuck around for. He wasn’t supposed to do this. Wasn’t supposed to help Cobb. For some reason, it seemed helping Cobb had become too much of a habit to break now.
Or maybe he’d made his decision so long ago, at a cemetery, or even a few moments right before Miles had asked him. Maybe he’d made up his mind at a train station, and a chance meeting.
He stepped aside. The doorway lay open. Inviting. “Come in,” Arthur said.
And Cobb did.
“A totem,” Cobb said, as they watched the brass top spin around and around on the ground. Some of the tension hadn’t left his frame, as he studied its movement with a kind of anticipatory anxiety. “Mal came up with the idea. A way to tell if you were awake or dreaming. A small object, something personal, maybe. Something you can easily carry with you, all the time. See, ideally, there’s a property the totem possesses that only you know about. That way, every time you test it…” his breath hitched, as he glanced at the rotating top. Arthur watched Cobb, concerned. “…you know beyond a doubt that you’re not in someone else’s dream.”
Suddenly, Cobb’s hand snatched up the spinning top. He shoved it fiercely into his pocket. “This was Mal’s,” he said quietly. “Her totem. Her touchstone. I…I still dream about her, you know. When I still dream. She’s always there. Even when I’m under, and hooked up to a PASIV. She’s still there. She’s always there.”
“What does she want, Cobb?” Arthur asked. Gently. Compassionately. Intuition told him that this was going to be ugly. This was going to be personal.
A shuttered look came across Cobb’s eyes, he said nothing. He twisted at the fibres of the carpet with his free hand, thinking. Aloud, he said, slowly, “I think she’s breaking free. When I dream, she’s…she’s a powerful projection. I think when I sleep, she’s breaking out of my subconscious.”
Into Cobb’s consciousness. It made a warped kind of sense, when Arthur thought the implications through. Projections were just that - aspects of consciousness given fleeting form. Sometimes, they embodied emotions. He didn’t ask what powered the Mal projection. What he said was, “You think she’s powerful enough to override part of your consciousness.”
Cobb exhaled in a long, drawn out breath. He studied his hand. “Yes,” he said softly. A tentative, brittle edge to his voice that Arthur had long come to recognise, long come to think of as broken glass. “I think I can’t trust my mind. I need structure, Arthur. Some sort of cage, some sort of…prison. Something to keep her in my subconscious and not in my conscious.”
“Not possible. It’d have to be strong enough,” Arthur said, biting back the reflexive protest that it’d never been done before. Maybe Cobb could do it. Maybe Cobb had to do it. The psychiatrist option lay between them, heavy and unspoken. Heavy with the sullen promise of another disagreement, another fight.
“Memories,” Cobb said, with an odd smile. “They’ll be strong enough.” There was something about the closed tone of his voice that said he wasn’t open for questions on that front. Arthur did not pursue that line of conversation.
He thought it through. Maybe it was possible. Maybe. But if it was the best shot they had…
“Where do I come in?”
Cobb fished the totem out of his pocket again, spun it across the floor, watched it. Arthur watched it too, unconsciously drawn in by the almost-hypnotic spinning rotations of the brass top, the way the light fell on it in fluid, moving patterns. Cobb’s voice jerked him out of it. “I never had a totem,” Cobb admitted quietly.
There was a shift in his expression, and he looked so completely open, lost and vulnerable that Arthur wasn’t sure what to make of it. He’d never seen that much expression on Cobb’s features before, had never seen Cobb seem to so completely drop his guard before. The words caught in his throat, and he wasn’t sure what to say. What was he supposed to do, reassure Cobb?
And then Cobb’s fingers curled around Arthur’s wrist. “Help me,” Cobb breathed. “I need a touchstone. Someone to trust.”
Arthur didn’t pull away. Funny how it had come to this, he thought. He didn’t ask, why me? Maybe because he rather suspected that the answer would be that he was the only person Cobb had left, right now.
Hesitation, Arthur. You need to commit. Make up your mind.
Out loud, he said, “Okay.”
Maybe it really was going to be okay, even though Arthur didn’t have the faintest idea what to do. He felt Cobb relax. Fingers lightened their grip on his wrist, but didn’t entirely pull away.
One moment, as fragile as porcelain. Arthur breathed, and felt the tiny web of cracks, hairline thin stress-fractures, form. It was clear, like breathing on a pane of glass on a cold day. Like a patch of ice that had frozen over a still pond. That sharp quality, and that incisive clarity permeating everything.
And the desperate, careful way they didn’t look at each other, didn’t acknowledge whatever had passed between them in that moment, and most certainly did not glance at the top on the tiled floor, spinning, spinning…
Fandom: Inception
Rating: R
Characters: Arthur, Cobb, Mal, Miles
Summary: Arthur struggles to make some breakthrough in the Cobb case. Cobb is cracking slowly at the edges. The most grievous hurts are those of the mind, and sometimes, keeping secrets can be a dangerous thing. Mild Arthur/Cobb.
Note: Second fic of the Ṛta series.
Miles dropped by with a change of clothes. Arthur had considered just how much to tell him, and decided the whole Mal thing had been too much. He just told Miles Cobb had called him to pick him up from a holding cell, and watched as Miles’ features firmed with quiet disapproval. “He took some Flexiril for that headache. He’s going to be out for a while. I’ll drive him back,” Arthur said, mostly to reassure Miles.
He’d even started to feel a lot more confident and in control by the time Miles had left. One thing at a time. Nice and slow, Arthur. Nice and slow. Keep an eye on Cobb first, and if nothing else happens, he was probably your one-in-a-billionth.
“Hey,” someone said quietly from behind him, and Arthur started, hand moving to. Oh, shit. It was just Cobb. He took a deep breath to calm himself. It seemed like his nerves were still a little on edge. Hell, surely he didn’t startle that easily?
“I didn’t hear you get up,” he said, neutrally.
Cobb shrugged. He looked like he was doing a lot better now. He scuffed one foot uneasily against the floor, and Arthur wondered since when was he reading Cobb so easily. “Look,” he said at last, and the look in his bright blue eyes was open and honest, if a little disarming, “I just wanted to say…I’m sorry. I don’t think I was really thinking clearly when I popped all that Flexiril. So…I just wanted to say I’m sorry for giving you a scare.”
Suddenly, Cobb looked like he’d seen a ghost. Arthur followed the direction of Cobb’s glance, to where the small brass top on the floor was spinning. “It fell out of your pocket,” he explained. He frowned. Cobb looked almost - frightened? Panicked? “Miles dropped by. Thought he’d get you a change of clothes. It dropped out of your pocket, I think.”
Cobb said nothing, pale blue eyes fixed on the top, watching. Arthur bent to pick it up, and Cobb’s hand shot out with startling speed and caught Arthur’s hand by the wrist in a tight grip. Arthur reflexively flexed his wrist, trying to break Cobb’s grip, was it - had he - was Cobb - “Don’t touch it,” Cobb hissed, his voice as sharp as cracked glass. Arthur glanced at him, surprised.
“I’m not going to,” he said, slowly and carefully. As if he was talking to a man with a bomb strapped to his body, or something. “Let go.”
Cobb looked down at his death grip on Arthur’s wrist, as if he wasn’t even aware that he’d been clenching his fingers around Arthur’s wrist. “Sorry,” he said briefly, and released his grip. Arthur flexed his fingers, wondering if Cobb had cut off all circulation. It sure felt like it.
Cobb took a few breaths to steady his breathing. The top spun, and wobbled and tipped. Abruptly, Cobb reached out and snagged it, shoving it roughly into his pocket. “I’ll go get changed,” he said brusquely, and walked away, leaving Arthur to wonder about exactly what had happened.
They settled into a kind of routine. Cobb, at least, wasn’t that much of an intrusion, and had the decency to try and help Arthur with some of the cleaning work, so that was something. Most of the frightening blankness had vanished from his eyes, and although Cobb didn’t say much, Arthur kept an eye on him, and thought everything seemed fine.
Cobb was breaking out of the shell of uneasy quiet that had blanketed him in a kind of emotional numbness, and that, at least seemed good. He made one or two jokes, laughed at them, which looked like a sign of some kind of recovery.
Mal hadn’t surfaced, and so Arthur dismissed it as his one-in-a-billionth, though there were moments when he caught sight of disconcerting flashes in Cobb. Maybe there was nothing to worry about, but the thoughtful look in Cobb’s eyes, or even a distant look as he entered the kitchen and his eyes fixed on a kitchen knife had made Arthur feel a little uneasy.
Once or twice, he caught Cobb watching him, although what for, Arthur didn’t know. For his part, he kept all sensitive files and information away at the office, and locked away anything that wasn’t. He didn’t have to report in for many hours yet as he distributed time between the Cobb and McKinney cases, but only felt confident in taking the McKinney back home.
Cobb was too personal. Arthur couldn’t let it get personal. At least Cobb proved of some help for McKinney, and why not? Cobb was qualified enough and he confirmed Arthur’s suspicions about some of the side-effects of prolonged dreamsharing. Paranoia, Cobb said, ticking the signs off on his fingers. Possible addiction, compulsive behaviour, some become immense thrill-seekers, there’s… his voice faltered.
“There is what?” Arthur prompted.
Cobb stared down at his hands. The same, shuttered expression coming across his face, the one that Arthur learned had to do with Mal. “Do you think she was the first?” Cobb asked quietly. Bleakly. “The first to kill herself because she wanted to wake up?”
Arthur swallowed. He shook his head. The originals trials. He’d put in a request for the information. He was waiting for clearance. That was Department of Defense material, and he wasn’t even sure if he could access it. How did Cobb know?
Cobb read the expression on his face perfectly. “I studied this, Arthur,” he said, in that same, terrible, quiet, and toneless voice. “I thought I knew almost everything about dreamsharing. Everything that was possible. And I’d forgotten it was like playing with fire.”
You get burned, Arthur thought. Was that it? It’d burned Cobb, burned Mal, but Cobb was the one who lived to tell the tale. Blindly, Cobb’s hand crept towards his. It’s the contact he wants, Arthur remembered.
Arthur hesitated.
The second time Mal actually surfaced, Arthur realised too late that it was a dangerous game he was playing when he heard the soft footsteps too late. He turned around, which was the only reason the knife gouged a line of deep pain along his lower back, and bit into his side, instead of maybe his kidney.
Fucking hell, Arthur thought, or maybe gasped aloud. It didn’t matter; either way, it hurt like shit. Mal smiled, the expression curiously wrong on Cobb’s mouth. “Hello again, Arthur,” she said. Arthur watched the knife, with a strange fascination. His blood was soaking his shirt. His side hurt like blazes, but for some reason, the pain wasn’t clouding his brain. His mind felt extremely clear, like someone breathing frost onto glass on a clear winter day.
Blood dripped from the knife. Ordinary kitchen knife, Arthur’s mind noted, with clinical dispassion. Cobb was heftier than him, but it didn’t matter. Don’t hesitate. Don’t be tentative, Arthur. Make your decision and then commit.
Arthur came in, leg sweeping up in a kick. He wasn’t going to give Mal another chance to stick him with the knife again. He blinked as his vision blurred and forced himself to focus. He managed a grasp on Mal’s wrist (how easy it was to think of this as Mal and not Cobb) and twisted about to put pressure on the elbow.
Arthur had the advantage of leverage, and he managed to wrest the knife free. He tossed it far to the side, and didn’t look to see where it landed. His side was increasingly damp with blood, and streaks of blood marked his hands, was probably all over the kitchen floor, and was on Cobb’s clothing. Arthur noticed Cobb’s arm was bleeding sluggishly and decided that wasn’t important.
Sorry, Arthur thought briefly, and used a quick choke hold to induce unconsciousness. He let go as Cobb’s deadweight dropped to the kitchen floor. Great. He sank down himself. Hell, but everywhere hurt like hell. He looked down at the blood-splattered tiles, and down at himself. It didn’t look good, and he wasn’t in the mood to call 911. Assault with a deadly weapon. Something Cobb could more than definitely be nailed for.
He fumbled in his pocket, and found his cell phone, and carefully tried to regain his feet. The kitchen blurred around him. Not good. Still, he should make sure Cobb was out. He wasn’t sure what he was going to do if he wasn’t. You had a gun, you idiot, you were supposed to shoot him. Reasonable use of force and all that.
He needed to keep Cobb out for a while. Maybe under for a bit.
Oh, why the hell not, Arthur thought. He fought off the wave of dizziness and tried to locate the PASIV.
Arthur dialled Jase’s number, and waited. At this rate, he thought sardonically, Jase should be on speed-dial. It was a short while before Jase picked up. “Hey. What’s up?”
“Cobb’s out,” Arthur said, just as to the point. He shifted a little and cursed silently as the movement tugged at his back. The wound was throbbing, even through the tight bandage Arthur had managed to put in place. “Whacked him up with two hundred milligrams of thorazine. He’ll be out for a while.”
There was a silence across the phone. The kind which meant that Jase would be rolling his eyes and giving Arthur a stern glare. Then, Jase muttered something which might have been a curse, or ‘you idiot’. Arthur didn’t particularly have any preference as to which he thought it was. “Two hundred milligrams? Are you crazy?”
“I don’t do crazy,” Arthur said flatly, although he evidently did, these days. “He fought off the standard dosage. And I need a favour. Two favours, actually.”
He could all but see Jase’s eyes narrow, as he bent over a stack of papers or maybe ran another test to do with brain chemistry. Toxicology. Or something along those lines. Arthur swayed a little. He felt dizzy from the blood he’d lost, and he placed his hand against the wall to steady himself and just breathed and focused on his breathing. He hadn’t cleaned all the blood off, and the contact left a smear of his blood (or maybe Cobb’s?) on the wall.
Cleaning was going to be a pain.
He reached back and felt for the bandage. It was damp to the touch. The blood was soaking through, then. “You’ve got medical training? I think I need you to help me stitch up something.” As an afterthought, he added, “A pretty long cut.”
“Okay,” Jase said. That was one thing about Jase. He saw the immediate problem, and prioritised his responses. He didn’t argue about how 911 would be a lot faster. Or how Arthur should take this to the ER. Which meant his mind was already working; was already thinking. The staff at the ER were supposed to report this sort of injury. Arthur took a deep breath and tried to think why the hell he was bothering protecting Cobb anyway when Cobb was so damn determined to dig a mess for himself.
Screw that. This whole situation was a mess. His head ached. His side throbbed. He needed an aspirin except it was a bad idea right now.
Arthur gave Jase his address for good measure, even though he was fairly certain Jase knew it, and found a nearby chair, sitting back down. Jase, he knew, was good for his word. And discreet about things. “Describe the wound.”
“Hurts like fuck,” Arthur said, into the unamused silence. “There’s a lot of blood.”
That was definitely Jase rolling his eyes.
“Specificity, you idiot,” Jase retorted. He sounded faintly testy but did not pursue the point further. He hung up. Arthur fought off the wave of dizziness and leaned back, letting the chair support him. His head was starting to throb as well, and his hand went up to massage his temples.
Sedated, Cobb looked strangely peaceful and untormented. “Well, that makes it one of us,” Arthur told his sleeping friend, but then took the hint from Cobb’s lead and closed his eyes for a bit, deciding to take a bit of a rest until Jase got here. He ignored the sharp jabs of pain from the wound in his back and tried to keep a steady pressure on it.
He must have forgotten something. Oh. He hadn’t cleaned the blood off the floor. And the bloodied knife was still in the sink. Arthur decided that could wait.
“That,” Jase said, “Is going to be one hell of a scar. A very long scar. And it’s going to match the one that Gardner was so determined to carve into you.”
“Very funny,” Arthur said sarcastically. “Can you draw a line of symmetry through them or something?”
Jase studied him like he wasn’t sure whether Arthur was joking or not. “Keep taking aspirin,” he said finally. “I brought some antibiotics. Keep taking them too. Aspirin should reduce the fever. Expect some inflammation. Any problems, come back to me.”
“Thanks,” Arthur said. He tried to stand too fast, and the room and Jase did a crazy loop-the-loop around him.
Jase’s hands pressed down on his shoulders. “Stay down,” Jase told him, tossing Arthur’s jacket towards him. Arthur caught it, one-handed. “You’re going to feel cold, and shiver a bit. That’s normal. You lost quite a bit of blood there. Don’t make quick, jerking motions, or you’ll tear the stitches. You’re probably going to have some dizziness. A lot of dizziness. Get something warm to drink. Make yourself a cup of coffee or something.”
“Got it.”
“What are you going to do about him?” Jase wanted to know. They both turned and looked at Cobb, whom Jase had shifted onto the couch. Sleeping off the rest of the thorazine.
“I don’t know,” Arthur said. “I know, I should have brought him in and gone to the ER.”
“Mmmhmm,” Jase said. He was making two cups of coffee in the kitchen, locating the coffee grounds and using the last of the boiling water from the kettle. “So, what’s your excuse?”
Arthur sighed. “This isn’t an easy case,” he said, after a bit of thought. “Any outbreak of violence on his part, whatever the reason, and he just makes the case for his being the killer that night…a great deal stronger. No jury’s going to buy the whole ‘she killed herself’ story if this got out. If the ER reported this in …well, he’s in for it.”
“Okay,” Jase said. He slipped into the opposite chair, holding out a cup of coffee. Arthur took it, and held it, just grateful for its warmth. “You’re supposed to bring him in, you know. Like this, he could be a danger to himself, his family…and he’s already attacked you.”
Arthur sighed. He’d asked himself the very same questions. Told himself that he was well within his rights to drag Cobb down to for a psychiatric evaluation, with or without Cobb’s agreement.
“So, why do you care? I mean, I guess I’m just asking why you’re going to all these lengths to make sure this doesn’t happen.”
Arthur shrugged. “Well, if he didn’t do it…”
“You really think he didn’t do it?”
“You really think he did?”
Jase shrugged. “I don’t know,” he said eventually. “That’s your job, isn’t it?”
Arthur sipped his coffee, and wondered if Jase was trying to make some kind of point. Maybe he wasn’t in the state for this, right now. “Yeah,” he said, agreeing. “That’s my job.”
He stared at the cup, too drained to even consider putting the jacket on.
“Did what?” Cobb asked, raising his head, his voice blurred by sleep. He made the mistake of trying to sit up too soon, and groaned, sagging back against the armrest that his head was pillowed on.
Arthur handed him the glass of water. Cobb drained it in almost one gulp. “Steady. You’ve been out for a bit.”
Cobb blinked. “What?” His eyes flicked to Arthur’s shirtless stage and the neat dressing taped to Arthur’s back with surgical tape. Narrowed with concern. “What the hell happened to you?”
Oh, nothing much. Got cut up by your psychotic wife-personality. All in a day’s work.
Jase had long packed up the medical kit and excused himself from the place. “Encounter with the sharp end of a knife,” Arthur said bluntly. “At least twenty stitches. Hurts like hell too.”
Cobb had to know. The only thing was, Arthur couldn’t think of a good way to put it. Just get to the point, Arthur.
Cobb frowned, sitting up slowly. “You went out?” Arthur wondered that he wasn’t picking up the sharp, lingering smell of detergent or disinfectant.
Arthur took a deep breath and said, “Maybe I’d better tell you about Mal.” There. He’d said it. Maybe he should have said it the first time it had happened, to begin with. Hesitation, he thought with a grim smile. Pierce was right. He always was. Arthur had always been a hesitator, had always needed certainty to galvanise him into action. Well. He’d done it now. Cobb’s eyes moved back to the tight dressing on Arthur’s back.
He asked, “What about Mal?” His blue eyes were chips of ice; the same, closed look had come back on his face, and there was a painful tightness in his voice that Arthur was beginning to pick up on. He popped an aspirin and swallowed it down with the coffee. His head was still throbbing, and he wasn’t even sure how to start telling Cobb.
Cobb, you start acting weird and kind of like your wife - no, I don’t mean your wife is weird, I just mean that whoever it is you become answers to ‘Mal’ so I’m assuming that’s your wife and yeah, she’s some kind of violent, psychotic personality in your head…
Pretend you’re giving a report to Ellis. Strict. Professional. Formal. Pull yourself together, Arthur, godamnit. “Remember what you said about the negative side-effects of dreamsharing?”
Cobb nodded slowly. Arthur found himself thinking about the PASIV again. For some reason, something about the way he’d left it was tugging at his mind, demanding his attention. Something was wrong. He just couldn’t seem to remember what it was. When had he last used it, for that matter? Arthur set aside the question for now.
“You’ve been having violent outbreaks,” Arthur said quietly. “You don’t seem to remember any of them. It’s someone else out there. I…she answered to Mal. The last time, she attacked me. Was probably trying to go for a kidney stab, but I was moving. So I got cut across the back.” Dispassionate. Calm. Just-Stating-The-Facts-Ma’am voice.
Cobb’s eyes flicked back to the bandage. The ice cracked, fractured, as Cobb looked aghast, disturbed, unhappy, horrified…so many emotions flooded Cobb’s features at that moment, a sharp contrast to how tightly wound-up he had been a few moments before. “Arthur…” Cobb breathed. His voice trailed off, as his mouth worked, but he couldn’t seem to think of what to say. “Sorry about your back.”
Arthur gave a weak attempt at a light smile. It faltered. He pretended it didn’t. “Don’t worry,” he said lightly, trying to pretend he hadn’t been unsettled by the brief struggle against Mal. “Nothing serious.”
Cobb gave a breathless, incredulous laugh. “Twenty stitches?”
“I’m trained for this,” Arthur said, with a confidence he didn’t quite feel. “You were going for my kidneys, remember? I managed to head you off.” He couldn’t quite help the shiver. He was so damned cold. He tugged at the jacket and managed to slip it on, masking the wound dressing from sight.
Cobb’s mouth tightened. He took a deep breath and shook his head. “I don’t believe you,” he said, his voice painfully quiet. “It’s crazy. People try to kill you that often?”
Arthur shrugged. “Do you want to see a psychiatrist?” he offered, instead, shifting to another line of conversation. Make it personal, the cold little voice at the back of his mind noted. It was the best way to shut down a conversation. Bring it back to their own little personal warning areas, the ones they always danced around by mutual agreement, to distract Cobb from the issue at hand. He felt a tiny stab of guilt at what he was doing.
Cobb’s mouth was a thin, firm line. His eyes were hard and sharp and angry. He looked like he wanted to say something, but he wasn’t sure what. Finally, he said, “Not yet. I need to…I need to think.”
He walked out of the apartment, and briskly shut the door behind him. Well done, Arthur. You didn’t just get him to back off, he’s run off. Now, hope that Mal only likes stabbing you.
Arthur sat there, staring at his second cup of coffee and wished his head didn’t hurt so much.
Calls to Cobb’s home were picked up by Marie, who confirmed in a voice that Arthur thought of as steel sheathed in a coating of ice that Cobb had shown up for a while, but had left again. No, she didn’t know where he could have gone.
Kevin wasn’t too sure, but didn’t think anyone had picked up Cobb again. So that possibly left trouble out of the whole equation. There was always the chance that Cobb had gone off to see a psychiatrist, after all, but for some reason, Arthur didn’t find that likely at all. Cobb had always divorced the emotional aspects of what had happened that night from the events themselves, or at any rate, had always done so in the telling. To find a psychiatrist was to admit there was a problem.
Oh, for Christ’s sake, Arthur, there is a problem.
Maybe he was looking at the whole thing from the wrong angle. What he had to do was to find something that could conclusively determine if Cobb and Mal hadn’t been in the same room in the same window of time. Or, his mind reminded him, if they had.
Reasonable doubt.
Arthur sighed. He wasn’t even a lawyer. He could probably get away with a search that was a lot less thorough than what he was doing right now. He didn’t work that way though. Didn’t just settle for doing the minimum. With all the people who’d been in and out of the opposite suite, he’d have been lucky if LAPD had managed to pick up anything that forensics could have used to place Mal in that room.
Bullshit, Arthur. Every contact leaves a trace. He stood in the hallway outside the room, key card in hand. It wasn’t his field. It was too late to find something, and yet Arthur had still come back anyway, trying to picture what had happened. Trying to see if there was something he had missed out on. That the series of officers who’d worked the case had missed out on.
The problem was that latent prints weren’t useful. Too much room for error. And it wasn’t as if hotel rooms didn’t see a great deal of activity. Things missed by cleaning staff. Traces from the cleaning staff themselves. Whoever who had previously occupied the room before Mal had gotten hold of it.
No one had reoccupied the room yet. Pushing open the door, Arthur glanced around. The window here had been open. He frowned, trying to guess at his best reconstruction of that night. So Mal had entered this room. No pause, nothing had been disturbed, or he’d have seen a note of that in the report. Nothing significant, in any case. There was none of the signs of a struggle that had taken place in the opposite room. No blood. (He’d found that odd, it was exceedingly unlikely that with the broken glass and the whole room turned upside down, no blood had been drawn.)
Arthur pushed doubt out of his mind, and focused on his purpose. At some point, she’d opened that window. She’d climbed outside the window, and to the ledge outside. He walked up to the window, feet making little sound across the carpet. This could go two ways. Either there’d be an article in the newspaper about the suicidal Fed who’d gone in over his head and fallen off an easily thirty-storey ledge. Keith would show up to his funeral and then kill himself laughing. Or he’d actually make it. Or maybe someone would see him out there and freak out.
Arthur set the kit down on the writing desk, and walked over to the window, studying it. He slid the window open with a gloved hand, and winced as a blast of strong wind hit him in the face. Arthur studied the ledge very carefully before he climbed out and onto it. He braced himself against the window, and made the mistake of looking down. He swallowed, hard. Screw it. That was one hell of a drop. So she’d climbed out, onto that ledge. He suspected it was to stop Cobb from stopping her. He couldn’t have reached across that empty space, not without plummeting to his death on the pavement below.
Did she brace herself? Contact. A slim hope, a fool’s mission, but better than nothing. He had to find areas of contact. When had the hotel last cleaned the ledge? Had anyone even gone outside to try dusting for prints? He glanced down at where his hands met the window frame, and wondered if she’d touched it.
The wall to the side of the window frame. Maybe she’d touched it. Any traces of dirt on the ledge? Any scuffed and mostly-faded prints?
There, sitting on the ledge so many storeys above the city, and trying not to shiver, another idea suddenly occurred to Arthur. It was the answer he needed.
CCTV. The gap was too wide. Mal would have had to access the room from within the hotel, surely. If she hadn’t, he’d be picking up something. Arthur studied the ledge, eyes watering as the gust of cold wind blew straight into his face, trying to see if he’d missed out anything. No. Maybe there were shoe prints he wasn’t picking up, but this high, it wasn’t likely to be anyone else but Mal.
Which meant Mal had taken the corridors within the hotel. And when she’d had to access the room from within the hotel, one of the CCTVs would have picked her up. Complete with date and time stamp. And Cobb would have been on the CCTVs, of course. Arthur even had an almost-definite timeline for when Cobb had entered that room. And if the hallway CCTV picked up on Mal leaving, then Cobb entering…
Perfect.
Arthur smiled, and very carefully made his way back into the room to get his kit, conduct a quick dust, and then head for hotel security.
There.
Footage saved onto a thumbdrive and slipped into his pocket, Arthur left the hotel feeling very pleased with himself. There it was. Exactly what he needed. He tried calling Cobb’s number, but received no response. Marie confirmed the same thing. Cobb had come back a while ago and left again.
Well, the next thing he needed to do was to submit all of this. Maybe make a final report sketching out what he believed corroborated Cobb’s version of events. The DA could decide what to do with all of them.
His mood changed when he reached his home and caught sight of switched-on lights from the ground. That was his unit, wasn’t it? He’d left them switched off. By the time he reached the door, the alarm bells were ringing. Forced entry, Arthur thought, studying the door. He reached for his Glock, and took a few deep breaths. Lights meant the intruder was probably still there.
Stop hesitating, Arthur.
Grim smile, he shouldered open the door and called out, “Federal agent. Put your hands up, over your head where I can see them.”
Ability, opportunity, jeopardy, Arthur’s brain chanted, as the silent figure in his living room took a step forward. As he realised that he was staring at the muzzle of a gun. As he threw himself down as fast as he could and pulled the trigger.
He heard the loud sound of the guns discharging. For a few moments, time seemed to slow down, enough for Arthur to catch the quick rhythm of his heartbeat pounding in his ears and the harsh, scraped sound of breathing. Eerily quiet, now. He rolled and tried to come up, dimly noting his leg hurt. He frowned, eyes narrowed to shallow slits, and tried to put another one through the intruder.
Time crashed back into him, then, and Arthur’s leg gave way, sending sharp splinters of pain up his nerves. He glanced down at it. Oh. Shit. He’d been shot too. For the second time in too short a period, he was bleeding out in his own home. Now his brain actually recognised the intruder: Cobb.
“What the hell are you doing here?” Arthur snapped. Cobb was bleeding at the shoulder - he staggered towards a chair and sank down. He’d dropped the gun; Arthur thought he recognised it as his back-up. Had Cobb tried to break into his safe? He thought back to the irregularities with the PASIV and wondered, for that matter, if Cobb had been using it. That was how he’d gotten to that gun.
One shot in the shoulder, and the other shot in the thigh. Wonderful. Both of them were abysmally bad shots. If he kept this up, he’d fail the next time he had to qualify. Considering the circumstances, Arthur figured he should be very much grateful. He reached into his pocket for his cell phone and called 911, giving his address and telling them two people were shot. He left the rest out. The police were going to find out soon enough.
“I don’t know,” Cobb said honestly. For a moment, he looked almost frightened. “I swear I don’t remember coming here.”
Silence. The sound of their breathing, harsh, as they waited for the EMTs. “I know,” Arthur said. He left out the I told you so, but Cobb flinched, just as if he’d said it.
“Are you okay?”
Arthur tried to bite back the sardonic laugh, but it came out anyway. “No. I’ve been shot and it’s hurting like hell. And candy and teddy bears are raining down from the sky. So yes, I’m okay.”
“I didn’t know you liked teddy bears.”
“Shove it,” Arthur told him, testily. He took a deep breath, and relaxed his clenched grip on the Glock. Set it down carefully, easily within reach. Cobb’s eyes followed his movement, and smiled. Bitter, edged.
“Not that big on trust?”
“Well,” Arthur said carefully, “No sense in being stupid.” He wondered if the dispatcher had heard the wrong address or something. Or when the EMTs were going to get here. Cobb gave him a tight nod, and the rest of the time passed in complete silence.
Clean entry and exit wound, through the thigh. No major vessels severed, or Arthur would have been in for it. Instead, he was in Ellis’ office, about a week after the incident, and limping. Cobb hadn’t had too much trouble, or so it seemed. But the charges had stuck, and there was more of them. Breaking and entering. Assault with a deadly weapon.
Arthur waited, shifting a little in the chair, and hiding his grimace as his injury protested against the movement by pain. He didn’t function well when drugged up to his eyeballs with painkillers, or he’d have already popped some.
Finally, Ellis sighed and looked up the file he was studying. If Arthur craned his neck, he thought he could see his name in there. His incident report? “Well,” Ellis said evenly, “That’s one resolution to the Cobb case.”
“I only know he left,” Arthur said, very carefully. “And that he was still being charged with murder.” Despite sufficient doubts cast upon those ideas by the evidence. The CCTV footage. He didn’t say that aloud, but Ellis must have read it straight off his face. Arthur was too tired to hide anything much.
Ellis raised a dark eyebrow and said, “That’s the DA’s problem. Not yours.” The rebuke was clear, and Arthur straightened up a little in his seat in acknowledgement. After a pause, Ellis added, “He fled right before they came to take him into custody. At least a day’s head-start. Some of them thought you might have some idea of what happened.”
Arthur shook his head. Nothing to hide here. How Cobb had managed it was another question. How he’d gotten wind of it was something Arthur didn’t know either. “You didn’t think so. Or I’d be talking to someone from Security.”
A tight smile. “Yes,” Ellis said, point-blank. “Medical says light duty. You’re not quite on your feet yet. Still,” he steepled his fingers, glancing back at the report, “There are some concerns. Officer-involved shooting, for one. That should be cleared up quickly, but procedure demands an investigation, while you’ll be on administrative leave.”
Arthur nodded. He already knew that.
“But there are other things. What the hell was Cobb doing in your home?”
“He broke in.”
“Before that,” Ellis said, sharply. “He was using your PASIV. I don’t think I need to stress how many problems his access to your home caused. You took him home from a night in the holding cell, and then he was living in your home.”
Arthur was quiet for a while. He took a deep breath. “No excuse.”
Ellis snorted. “Well,” he said, “At least you’re honest.” He added, as an afterthought, perhaps meant to be vaguely conciliatory, “You’re not the first person to get too close to a case. You won’t be the last. Still. There are doubts that will have to be looked into. Questions about how you handled this investigation.”
“Sir?”
“Two weeks administrative leave,” Ellis said. “Two weeks suspension. Once the investigation is done, I will decide on the appropriate disciplinary action. More likely than not, you’ll be spending a period on report.”
Arthur let out his breath, slowly. It was less harsh than he had been expecting. He wasn’t sure if it was a good thing, or a bad thing. “Did my involvement in the investigation cast doubt on my findings?” It was a bold question, but Arthur knew Ellis didn’t mind. Whether he would answer it was another matter, however.
Ellis looked slightly startled, perhaps a little impressed. “Perhaps,” he said. It was clear no answer was forthcoming, as he bent his head down and studied the file again. “Dismissed.” As Arthur slowly got out of the chair and headed for the door, Ellis added, “Get out of the country for a while, Arthur. Do something. Anything. I don’t care. You’re not allowed back here until the investigation is over. Have I made myself clear?”
“Crystal,” Arthur said. He left, closing the door quietly behind him.
It was an overcast day when Cobb showed up. The sky was iron-grey, seamless, with no clouds in sight. There came a knock on the door of his rented flat, and Arthur frowned. He wasn’t sure who it could be. The landlord would have called before he came down.
He opened the door. Cobb stood there, looking a little haggard, a little careworn, and a little worse for the wear. Arthur couldn’t even make out if his left shoulder was still bandaged beneath the material of the faded teal jacket. Arthur didn’t know whether to kill him, to apologise, or to invite him in. For that matter, he didn’t even know how Cobb had found his address.
“I’m sorry,” Cobb said, meeting Arthur’s eyes. His eyes were the bright blue, the colour of a piece of sky that had yet to be touched by rain. Edged with clouds. “I…” he hesitated, shifting his weight from one foot to the other.
Arthur waited silently, blocking the doorway. Wasn’t sure what to do. What to say.
Cobb took a deep, shuddering breath, and dropped the pretence of casualness, and then said, “I can’t do this. I need your help.”
Arthur should have thought about it. Had thought about it. Cobb was now wanted for the murder of his wife. For a few other charges, some of which Arthur had even stuck around for. He wasn’t supposed to do this. Wasn’t supposed to help Cobb. For some reason, it seemed helping Cobb had become too much of a habit to break now.
Or maybe he’d made his decision so long ago, at a cemetery, or even a few moments right before Miles had asked him. Maybe he’d made up his mind at a train station, and a chance meeting.
He stepped aside. The doorway lay open. Inviting. “Come in,” Arthur said.
And Cobb did.
“A totem,” Cobb said, as they watched the brass top spin around and around on the ground. Some of the tension hadn’t left his frame, as he studied its movement with a kind of anticipatory anxiety. “Mal came up with the idea. A way to tell if you were awake or dreaming. A small object, something personal, maybe. Something you can easily carry with you, all the time. See, ideally, there’s a property the totem possesses that only you know about. That way, every time you test it…” his breath hitched, as he glanced at the rotating top. Arthur watched Cobb, concerned. “…you know beyond a doubt that you’re not in someone else’s dream.”
Suddenly, Cobb’s hand snatched up the spinning top. He shoved it fiercely into his pocket. “This was Mal’s,” he said quietly. “Her totem. Her touchstone. I…I still dream about her, you know. When I still dream. She’s always there. Even when I’m under, and hooked up to a PASIV. She’s still there. She’s always there.”
“What does she want, Cobb?” Arthur asked. Gently. Compassionately. Intuition told him that this was going to be ugly. This was going to be personal.
A shuttered look came across Cobb’s eyes, he said nothing. He twisted at the fibres of the carpet with his free hand, thinking. Aloud, he said, slowly, “I think she’s breaking free. When I dream, she’s…she’s a powerful projection. I think when I sleep, she’s breaking out of my subconscious.”
Into Cobb’s consciousness. It made a warped kind of sense, when Arthur thought the implications through. Projections were just that - aspects of consciousness given fleeting form. Sometimes, they embodied emotions. He didn’t ask what powered the Mal projection. What he said was, “You think she’s powerful enough to override part of your consciousness.”
Cobb exhaled in a long, drawn out breath. He studied his hand. “Yes,” he said softly. A tentative, brittle edge to his voice that Arthur had long come to recognise, long come to think of as broken glass. “I think I can’t trust my mind. I need structure, Arthur. Some sort of cage, some sort of…prison. Something to keep her in my subconscious and not in my conscious.”
“Not possible. It’d have to be strong enough,” Arthur said, biting back the reflexive protest that it’d never been done before. Maybe Cobb could do it. Maybe Cobb had to do it. The psychiatrist option lay between them, heavy and unspoken. Heavy with the sullen promise of another disagreement, another fight.
“Memories,” Cobb said, with an odd smile. “They’ll be strong enough.” There was something about the closed tone of his voice that said he wasn’t open for questions on that front. Arthur did not pursue that line of conversation.
He thought it through. Maybe it was possible. Maybe. But if it was the best shot they had…
“Where do I come in?”
Cobb fished the totem out of his pocket again, spun it across the floor, watched it. Arthur watched it too, unconsciously drawn in by the almost-hypnotic spinning rotations of the brass top, the way the light fell on it in fluid, moving patterns. Cobb’s voice jerked him out of it. “I never had a totem,” Cobb admitted quietly.
There was a shift in his expression, and he looked so completely open, lost and vulnerable that Arthur wasn’t sure what to make of it. He’d never seen that much expression on Cobb’s features before, had never seen Cobb seem to so completely drop his guard before. The words caught in his throat, and he wasn’t sure what to say. What was he supposed to do, reassure Cobb?
And then Cobb’s fingers curled around Arthur’s wrist. “Help me,” Cobb breathed. “I need a touchstone. Someone to trust.”
Arthur didn’t pull away. Funny how it had come to this, he thought. He didn’t ask, why me? Maybe because he rather suspected that the answer would be that he was the only person Cobb had left, right now.
Hesitation, Arthur. You need to commit. Make up your mind.
Out loud, he said, “Okay.”
Maybe it really was going to be okay, even though Arthur didn’t have the faintest idea what to do. He felt Cobb relax. Fingers lightened their grip on his wrist, but didn’t entirely pull away.
One moment, as fragile as porcelain. Arthur breathed, and felt the tiny web of cracks, hairline thin stress-fractures, form. It was clear, like breathing on a pane of glass on a cold day. Like a patch of ice that had frozen over a still pond. That sharp quality, and that incisive clarity permeating everything.
And the desperate, careful way they didn’t look at each other, didn’t acknowledge whatever had passed between them in that moment, and most certainly did not glance at the top on the tiled floor, spinning, spinning…