Return to Oz - Part Two.
masterpost | one
Yusuf got to Paris early on Sunday morning and wasn't surprised to find Kate waiting for him, even though he hadn't told her any details about his arrival.
“Is everyone else here already?”
“The rest of the team is still being assembled. Cobb worked with a lot of people, ensuring anyone we work with doesn't have any lingering loyalties, and is up to the job, is taking considered effort.”
Yusuf was glad his heavy winter jacket hid the set of his shoulders as they relaxed slightly.
“I may have a suggestion for you.”
Kate pulled the passenger door open for him before sliding into the driver's seat herself. “Hmm?”
“You'll need a forger, right?”
“Probably. Who do you have in mind?”
“Eames.”
Kate laughed as she pulled out into traffic. “Not likely.”
“Why not? He's the best.”
“Best he may be, but I don't think he'd take the job.”
Yusuf twisted his bag strap in his hands. “You didn't give me much of a choice.”
“Ah, but you, Yusuf, are irreplaceable. There are other forgers, not quite to his standard, but they will suffice.”
“All I know is, eight months ago, Eames left Mombasa to do a job with Cobb. It has to be the job you're talking about, Cobb hasn't worked since. He wasn't happy when he got back.”
Kate looked thoughtful for a second, then shrugged. “I'd like to finish this job without a bullet in my back, thanks.”
- - - - -
Kate's pointwoman was tiny and blonde and tapping away at a laptop when they entered.
“Yusuf, Stephanie. Stephanie, Yusuf.”
She looked up with a wide grin.
“Jonsi says Arthur and Eames got into a fistfight last night.”
Kate's eyes flashed over to Yusuf, who shrugged.
“Who won?”
“Arthur.”
“What happened?”
Stephanie glanced down at her screen again. “Didn't say. He was in Calais for an arms drop, and he was having a quick pint when he saw them. They were arguing about music, or something, then they just started screaming at each other and then Arthur punched Eames in the face and walked out.”
“What did Eames do?”
“Last Jonsi saw, he was knocking back half a bottle of whiskey and heading out the door.”
Kate clapped her hands together. “Sounds about right, yeah. Some tree probably woke up with a black eye this morning. Did you know about this?”
This last was to Yusuf, who shrugged. “I told you he wasn't happy with Cobb. Doesn't seem to far of a stretch that Arthur'd wind up stuck in the middle. And it's not the first time he's picked Cobb, is it?”
She tapped her chin thoughtfully. “I'll make a call.”
- - - - -
Eames looked in the mirror and carefully repeated a few phrases to himself. It was always difficult to judge the exact level of hungover to go for in these situations - too much and he'll seem like he's aways away from being fit for a job of this size, too little and it won't gel with the story he and Arthur started last night.
The phone hadn't rung yet. He was waiting for Kate to call, hoping for petty vindictiveness to trump rationale when it came to putting her team together, and he knew Arthur wouldn't get in contact now but there's a part of him waiting for some form of communication there as well.
It's too risky for that though, not when they're this close to getting Eames a spot on Kate's bench. He'll have to wait until the agreed moment before he gets confirmation that Arthur's side is going to plan.
He'd kind of zoned out in concentration when then phone finally rang.
Eames flicked the phone to speaker. “What?”
He'd decided on careful over-enunciation over slurred words. Read as drunk but aware, and therefore at least somewhat together.
Kate chuckled gently. “So Jonsi wasn't exaggerating then.”
“What the fuck do you want?” He moaned.
“Heard you might be in the market for a job.”
“Heard that, did you? And do you remember the last time we worked together?”
“I seem to remember the both of us emerging from that job unscathed.”
“I seem to remember we weren't the only people on that job.”
“Still bitter about that, are we? And I'd thought that... recent events might have re-aligned your opinions on such matters.”
Eames grinned for a moment before carefully flicking a lighter on where the phone's receiver could pick it up.
“Jonsi always had a fucking big mouth.”
It wasn't a question, and Kate didn't treat it as such.
“There's a job. It's a big one - a lucrative one - and I think you're exactly what's missing.”
“Is this you wanting me for my skills, or you wanting me for some other reason?”
She laughed. “Can't it be both?”
Eames let the offer hang in the air a moment longer, before sighing deeply. “Where?”
“Paris. As soon as you can.”
“I can be there by Wednesday.”
“Excellent.”
“Do you have an architect yet?”
“It's going to be Darr -”
“Ditch him,” Eames interrupted. He shifted his eyes to the end of the table, where Ariadne had been watching the whole conversation. “I've got someone better.”
- - - - -
Eames gave Ariadne a final quick glance before the taxi got close to their meeting spot.
“You remember everyt -”
“A dream within a dream is a fascinating concept I've yet to explore. I've never heard of Robert Fischer and barely heard of Dominic Cobb. And Limbo is just a terrifying prospect I'm not sure I really believe in. That everything?”
“You know, if you're going to get this irate every time someone doubts your abilities, you're not going to last long undercover.”
She glared at him. “I'll be fine.”
“Just keep your head down, okay? We don't want to raise any eyebrows.”
“I thought she was supposed to trust you.”
“Kate doesn't quite believe in trust. She'll trust me, in that she thinks she's giving me something I want more then I want to fuck her over. She'll trust you because I'll say she can, and I don't want you to get hurt. It's complicated, so you'd better not try and parse out the details, okay? Just don't get into trouble. And you've never met Yusuf.”
Ariadne glared at him. “I'll be fine.”
They're working out of an abandoned office building. An entire floor nearly devoid of cubicle separations leaving a mostly empty space that still managed to feel divided up. Each member of the team already there seemed to cast their own little bubbles around them.
Yusuf was against the only structural wall, in front of a desk covered in vials and paperwork, and Ariadne has to force herself not to smile at the familiar face. Instead, she stepped slightly closer to Eames and turned to the room's other two occupants.
One - a tiny woman with long blonde hair - was sitting backwards on a swivel chair, her gaze flicking between two different laptops as she scribbled away at a sheet of paper. Ariadne would have guessed she was the pointwoman even if she hadn't been giving off the kind of intensely focused energy that Arthur did during a research spree.
Which meant that the woman sitting cross-legged on the other desk must be Kate.
Ariadne looked at her, trying to see a little of what caused such trepidation in the rest of the team, but nothing jumped out at her. If anything, this woman in her yoga pants and lightweight hoodie seemed far more together then other people she'd worked with. She was flicking through her phone with a calm expression when she looked up and caught Eames' eye. She immediately glanced over at Ariadne and raised an eyebrow.
“Seriously? Has she even picked her major yet?”
Eames laughed a slightly harder laugh then Ariadne was used to. “She's good. I promise.”
Kate was still disbelieving as she slid off the desk and approached them. “Where'd you find her?”
“Strictly speaking, I didn't.”
There was something in his voice Kate picked up on, and she grinned. “You stole her?”
Eames shrugged non-committally. “Let's just say I convinced her that her future lay elsewhere.”
“He always did have an eye for talent. Useless at capitalising on it though.”
“He was wasting her time,” Eames agreed.
“Let me guess, tiny closed-in worlds filled with upside-down staircases?”
“Something like that.”
Ariadne glanced back-and-forth between them. It wasn't hard to tell what - who - they were talking about, but the tension between Eames and Kate was something slightly different. Finally, Kate broke away and clapped her hands.
“Right. Stephanie's still ironing out a few details before we can begin in earnest. Tom and Jeff will be around sometimes this week - got to make sure we don't run out of anything vital at an inopportune moment. What are you on at the moment?”
Eames stuck a hand under his jacket to pat his holster “P2000.”
“Easy enough then,” She turned to Ariadne. “What do you carry?”
“Um...” Ariadne looked at Eames for corroboration, but he just shrugged.
“You don't have a gun?”
“No?”
“I shouldn't really be surprised - we all know how Arthur feels about girls with guns, don't we?”
“Do we?” Ariadne glanced at Eames, but once again, he just shrugged.
“Don't worry about it,” Kate squeezed Ariadne's shoulder gently. “I'll get you sorted.”
She dug into her pockets and started sorting out scraps of paper on to the table in front of her. “Pick any desk you want, unless it's already covered in something.”
Ariadne followed Eames to two nearly-adjoining desks as Kate moved over to discuss something with Stephanie. Eames positioned them so their backs were to the rest of the room without being obvious about it.
“What's she talking about, about Arthur not liking girls having guns?”
“Arthur doesn't have a problem with women having guns. Arthur has a problem with Kate having guns, because half the time, Arthur's the one who gets shot. But we don't really give a fuck about Arthur, so that's irrelevant, right?”
“Right.”
Ariadne had barely sat down at her desk when Kate headed for the door.
“Head out early if you need the sleep. Tomorrow, the client gets here.”
She looked at Eames and titled her head. “A word outside?”
Eames let his shoulders visibly stiffen for a second, and followed her out.
There was a quiet alleyway between their building and the next, and Eames followed Kate a few metres down it, watching as she carefully positioned them out of major sight lines.
“Yusuf told me about your last job.”
Eames sighed. “And here I was thinking you wanted me for my brilliance.”
“Amongst other things. Was he right?”
“Depends on what he said.”
Kate leaned against the wall and looked at him carefully. “That you were part of the team that extracted from Robert Fischer.”
Eames scoffed quietly, staring down at his fingernails. “Bit of an over-statement. They hired me to provide a few distractions. I don’t know what the objective was, or even if they got everything they needed. I hadn’t even thought about it until I bumped into Fischer at the gala last month.”
She looked thoughtful for a second. “I wondered if something like that had happened to trigger off the recall.”
“I wish I could tell you more. I guess they didn’t trust me very much.”
Kate turned away to glance down the alley. “And they won’t have any idea about what we’re planning?”
“I haven’t spoken to hi - them - since... you know. I’d tell you to just trust me, but...”
Kate laughed, bright and easy, just for a second. “But you know me?”
“Something like that.”
She pushed away from the wall. “No problems, right? We’re not going to have anyone sweeping in with grand declarations and derailing us?”
Eames tilted his head his head carefully, letting the sun highlight the yellowing bruise around his eye.
“Not this time.”
- - - - -
Technically, Ariadne had nothing to do until "the client" - Robert Fischer - arrived. They still only had a vague idea of whatever Kate was planning, and even though she knew what direction they were supposed to be edging the job towards - a recreation of whatever troubling dreams Fischer was having since inception - seeing as she officially had no knowledge of those dreams at all, she was somewhat at a loose end.
Eames was already elbows deep in piles of papers, but Ariadne wasn't sure he had any better idea of what he was supposed to be doing then she did. They wouldn't be able to try and push Kate towards Saito as a potential target until the job was further underway, and even then she was fairly sure Eames could forge Dom in his sleep.
In a manner of speaking.
So instead of doing anything productive, she was tapping away at her laptop, trying to email her mother yet another explanation about why she wouldn't be home for yet another few weeks. Her mother hadn't been taking the news well.
Behind her, the door opened. She could almost feel Eames tense from the next desk over, and looked around to see what was happening.
Robert Fischer was standing in the doorway, looking a little like he wasn't sure if he should be there, and Ariadne felt her throat tighten a tiny bit. She'd had barely any interaction with him in the dream, and Yusuf was sure whatever Kate had done would be more focused towards broad details then tiny ones, but if he recognised her, they were made before they'd even begun.
She ducked her head lower to her desk and continued typing away, only risking tiny glances out of the corner of her eye.
Robert Fischer looked... tired was the only word. Which made a little sense, if the nightmares were as bad as Yusuf thought they could be, but even then, it was disconcerting. Gone were the perfectly tailored double-breasted suits she remembered from before the job, and he was instead standing there in a pair of charcoal khakis and a pale blue button-down.
Tired and lost she amended.
It didn't take long before Stephanie looked up from her own laptop and spotted him. She stood up and fired off a quick text before crossing the room to great him.
"Mr. Fischer, so glad you could make it. My name is Stephanie, I... organise things for Kate. She'll be back soon, but if you'd like to take a seat, I'm sure someone could get you something to drink while we wait for her."
The way she said 'someone' with a quick glance towards Ariadne nearly made her laugh. It seems whatever Arthur and Eames would have you believe about how different Kate was, some things would always been the same. She got out of her seat and crossed over to the tiny kitchenette in the office corner.
Normally she would ask what someone preferred before making them a drink. Especially because Robert Fischer is probably the kind of person who's never had to think about what he's ordered in his entire life, just expecting whatever it was to arrive without any further questions asked. But the tiny kitchen only has a kettle and an already half-empty can of Folgers, so their options are limited. Aside from being impressed that Kate - or more likely, Stephanie - managed to track it down in Paris, Ariadne's mainly glad she's never really developed a taste for expensive coffee, and that Eames seems to always travel with enough tea to see him through.
She kept her hair covering as much of her face as she could manage when she handed him the cup, only mumbling 'sorry it's only instant' before sitting back down at her desk. She kept watching Fischer as discreetly as she could as she typed, and saw him take exactly two small sips of coffee before neatly abandoning the cup on the middle of the empty desk.
Very polite man, it seemed.
It didn't take long for Kate to arrive back.
Ariadne spent the time tapping away at her laptop, trying to instant message Eames to distract herself, but he didn't seem interested.
He looks kind of rough
his dad died eight months ago. he's trying to dissolve one of the biggest corporations in the world. and he's having nightmares where he keeps dying. of course he looks rough.
I wonder where Browning is?
considering what we did to browning in his mind god knows.
You think that stuck as well?
no reason why it wouldn't. but maybe not. maybe brownings just busy with fischer morrow, and thinks bobby here can sort himself out.
Really?
unlikely but possible.
Ariadne didn't particularly want to think about why Fischer was here alone. She didn't have to though, because Kate was back and standing in front of Fischer like she spoke for him, and in the context, it seemed she did.
- - - - -
Arthur, thought Eames, would be horrified. Inviting the client into the workspace was pretty much unheard of. The only reason Saito had been in the warehouse in Paris was by his own unwavering insistence, and because that had still technically been Cobb's job. Eames didn’t like tourists because they got in the way, Arthur didn’t like them because half the world’s police would cut them loose with a warning if they turned over dream criminals. He’d seen Arthur turn down jobs before when the client wanted a closer look at the action, and there was no way he'd have let Fischer - someone risky, someone who was just as likely to turn them all in as to work with them - this close to the action. Even Fischer looked freaked out as Kate introduced him to the rest of the room, throwing out terms that he probably didn't understand and she made no attempts to explain. Finally, they got to Eames, and Kate grinned.
"And this is Eames. I believe you might have met before, though again, you may not remember it."
They'd gone over this, him and Yusuf and Arthur and Cobb. He'd mainly been Browning in the dreams, or The Blonde, and the tiny bit of face-to-face interaction they'd had had been at a time when Fischer wasn't particularly paying attention to anything that wasn't directly involved in the giant safe (or the gun in his face), but there was still a chance he'd be recognised. He knew what to say, of course, but he'd very much rather it didn't come to that.
Fischer's eyes scanned over his face for a longer moment then he'd taken with anyone else, before smiling ruefully.
"Sorry, but I'm not really seeing anything. Am I correct in understanding that you were part of the original extraction team?"
Eames relaxed a little. It was so much easier to lie to someone's face if they didn't really know who you were.
"'Part of the team' might be exaggerating it a bit, mate. They hired me to do a couple of things they couldn't quite pull off themselves, but they never told me what they were after, unfortunately."
"If they had, we wouldn't need to do any of this." Kate pointed out.
"Exactly." Eames held out his hand to Fischer to shake. "Pleased to meet you though. It'll be a pleasure to try and reverse whatever they might have been up too."
Fischer shook his hand and smiled gently. "Thank you."
Kate lead Fischer over to Stephanie's desk to discuss a few more details, leaving Eames to relax slightly against his desk and let out a breath he'd been hiding. Ariadne looked at him, one eyebrow raised.
"Okay?" She mouthed.
Eames shrugged. "As good as can be expected."
But he looked over to the other side of the room, where Robert was standing between Kate and Stephanie as they showed him a couple of their preliminary plans. There was still something off about this whole thing.
- - - - -
Saito looked around the room a second time before carefully getting to his feet. He walked over to the wall and ran his fingers along the plaster before he moved over to the bookcase to check the various titles.
"This is a dream." He announced.
Arthur entered the room. "Excellent. We've still got three minutes left on the clock, so we'll just sit it out here."
Saito nodded and returned to his seat.
"So we are making progress."
"Yes. We've established that you can quickly identify a dream when it's mimicking something you are familiar with, which means that you are becoming more used to the effects of Somnacin and more aware of the smaller details surrounding you. However, we're not sure what kind of dream they'll drop you into first - whether Stephanie will be able to come up with enough research to make Kate attempt to recreate something true-to-life. They might decide instead to create a dream that's not entirely familiar to you, but not so unfamiliar as to put you on your guard."
Saito nodded again. "You are thinking of a hotel room."
"Or an airport, yes. Somewhere large and anonymous and safe enough that you won't question being there, but with varying enough details that you won't be thrown of by imperfections. Knowing Ariadne, she'll try and insert clues as to the false nature of the dream somewhere to tip you off, but I'd rather not rely on that when we can't be sure she'll succeed. Instead, we need to get you used enough to constructed dreaming that you'll hopefully be able to realise you're dreaming as soon as you begin. Then it only becomes a matter of locating Dom and myself - and Eames, whatever form he is taking at that moment - and securing yourself as the rest of the dream plays out."
Non, Je ne regrette rien
For a second, Saito's eyes flashed around the room as if searching for a speaker, before he caught himself and looked back at Arthur.
Arthur grinned. "It happens to the best of us."
Saito nodded stiffly and waited for the dream to end.
- - - - -
There was a loud crash from the doorway, and Ariadne turned around to see two men enter with large metal suitcases. One was dark haired and in a suit, the other blond in pants and a shirt with the top two buttons undone. They walked into the room like they were meant to be there.
“Kate!” The dark-haired one yelled. “We're busy men carrying explosives, we're on a timeline here.”
“With the amount I'm paying you, you'll sit the fuck down and wait.” Kate yelled from somewhere on the other side of the floor, before emerging from behind a cubicle wall.
“You both know Eames, and Stephanie. This is Ariadne, she's new. This is Jeff -” the blond “-and Tom. They sell guns.”
If either of the men were surprised to see Eames there, they didn't let it faze them for long, running Kate through a long list of things they had for her, before she waved them off and pointed at Ariadne.
“First sidearm. Thoughts?”
The both stared at her for a second.
“XR9. Easy to use, she won't end up shooting herself in the face.” said Tom. “Or maybe a PX4.”
“No. You want to get her something a little louder. G30. Unless she's got the time to put in a serious amount of practise, you want something that'll cause a little bit of destruction even when she misses.” said Jeff.
Ariadne tried not to bristle under the three contemplative stares, and turned back to Eames and her desk as soon as she could.
“Why do I need a gun at all?”
“She wants you to be able to protect yourself.”
“How bad is she expecting things to get? I can't just stay out of the line of fire?”
“Kate tends to assume bullets will be flying at some point. You see her gun?”
In the heat of their office, Kate's jacket was off and her pistol was obvious.
“Hard not to.”
“Exactly. That's a gun for killing people.”
Ariadne rolled her eyes. “All guns are for killing people.”
“No.” Eames pulled his own gun out of his holster and showed it to Ariadne. It was smaller and older.
“This is gun for protecting myself and the people around me who don't have their own guns. If people get killed, that's a consequence, not an objective.”
“Seems like you're splitting hairs.”
“When you get down to it, everything's splitting hairs. Now quiet.”
Ariadne shut her mouth as Tom approached. He obviously knew Eames, leaning across the desk to shake his hand.
“Y’know, when Kate said Eames was on the job, it took me a few minutes to figure out there wasn’t someone else running around calling themselves the same thing.”
Eames smiled sharply. “Perhaps my loyalties have shifted.”
Tom raised an eyebrow and glanced over at Kate. “That's a pretty big shift, mate.”
Eames sighed. “It's a long and complicated story that we are not going into.”
“Is it really that different to the last time? Or before that, even.”
He studiously avoided meeting Tom’s eyes.
“Don’t you think you’re burning your bridges a little fast?”
“You really don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about, okay?” Eames glared at him. “Just give me my ammunition and get lost, alright?”
Tom grinned and lifted his hands up in defeat. “This boy's touchy today, Jeff.”
“Unsurprising.” Jeff replied stoically.
Tom glanced over at Ariadne for support. “He like this with you all the time?”
She smiled up at him, trying her best for naively positive. “Sometimes? I guess.”
Jeff grinned and patted her shoulder. “He just needs to work off all his emotional pain with something aggressive, then he’ll be fine. Have fun with the Glock. Once you've got a little more experience, we'll sort you out with something a bit more powerful.”
Ariadne blinked for a second. “I'm sure I'll be fine.”
He smiled. “Never said you wouldn't be. But things can be way better then just fine.”
They were gone almost as quickly as they'd arrived, and suddenly Kate was in front of Ariadne, holding out a pistol.
“It's not loaded. Yet. Just see how it feels.”
She took the gun and turned it over in her hands, risking a tiny glance at Eames to get his opinion. But he was very specifically not making eye contact.
She looked up at Kate and smiled. “I suppose it feels good? I don't really know how it should feel.”
Kate grinned and pulled her to her feet. “C'mon. I know a place where we can get you started.”
- - - - -
Ariadne didn't ask any questions as Kate ushered her from the car into a blank building. They walked down a corridor, then down two flights of stairs, before finally emerging into a long room.
She looked around. "I didn't think they had shooting ranges in Paris."
Kate grinned and dropped her jacket on a chair. "They have everything everywhere if you look hard enough."
She gestured Ariadne over to the lane and held out the gun to her.
"Still not loaded."
Ariadne took the gun and held it carefully in both her hands. It was heavy, but no so bad as she's thought it might be. She looked over at Kate and tried to tell if she was doing anything wrong, but Kate was just watching her carefully.
"What would you do, if you were going to shoot it?"
Ariadne thought back to the times she'd seen someone fire a gun, in real life or on TV, and to the last time she'd held a gun herself, in limbo.
It hadn't been real that time - hadn't felt real either - but this time she could feel the weight and the grain of the gun in her hands, and she turned to face the target and held the gun out.
Kate laughed gently. "You've been watching too many films."
Ariadne dropped her arms. "What's wrong?"
"Well firstly, you don't need to stand with your legs that wide. Just far enough apart that you feel steady. And loosen your shoulders, you don't want to be too tense or the recoil will fuck you over. Here."
Kate turned to face the targets herself and stood as if to fire. "You need to be comfortable. Try again."
Ariadne did, shuffling her feet closer together and trying bleed some of the tension out of her upper body.
"Better. Give me the gun."
She held the gun out to Kate, who smiled again and twisted it in Ariadne's hand so she was holding the barrel and offering the handle.
"Just like a knife."
Kate slid some ammunition into the gun and handed it back. "Time to try for real."
Ariadne took the gun - heavier now - and turned to face the row of targets. She settled her feet, shook some tension out of her shoulders, and fired.
It went wide. She slouched in defeat.
Kate came up to stand directly behind her. "Not so bad, actually. For a novice. Here."
Laying her hands on Ariadne's shoulders, Kate carefully moved her body into a different stance, explaining as she went. Finally, she slid her hands down her arms to cup at Ariadne's elbows.
"Not too tight. Your body needs to be able to move with the gun, or you won't be able to control it. Try again."
Ariadne blinked her eyes slowly, relaxed slightly into the knowledge of Kate behind her, and fired.
It went wide again, though not as much.
"See, you're good at this." Kate grinned into her ear. "I don't know what he was playing at, not arming you. The kind of people he hangs around with, you'd need to protect yourself."
Ariadne stiffened slightly and took a tiny step forward, away from Kate.
"You mean Arthur?"
Kate rolled her eyes. "Of course. He's who you used to work with, right?"
"I don't know if I'd say that."
"Yeah." Kate cut her off. "You've only been doing this about eight months, right? Ever since Arthur started working alone again."
"I guess? I thought he always worked alone."
Kate laughed. "No. He used to work with Cobb, and sometimes with Eames, though I guess that's over now. Whatever that was, anyway. Not that Eames is any better, really - no offense - but there's a certain honesty to forthright dishonesty, maybe. Anyway."
"So, you don't like each other?"
"I don't like him. I assume he doesn't like me, we don't exactly talk about it."
"Why?"
Kate took a step closer to frame Ariadne's body again, resting her hands on her shoulders. "It's probably because I shot him. Try again."
- - - - -
Ariadne was doodling on the edges of her sketchpad when Kate brought Fischer over.
"Stephanie and are are heading out to get some things sorted out, and Eames is doing some research across town. Can you start working with Robert, try and see how close to his dreams we can get?"
Fischer was standing half a step behind Kate, his hands shoved deep into his pockets. He looked up at his name and smiled slightly at Ariadne. She brushed her charcoal-y hands off on her pants and stood up.
"Of course, Mr. Fischer. Do you want me to grab you a chair?"
"I can get it myself, thank you. And it's Robert, please."
Kate smiled at the two of them before snapping her fingers at Stephanie, who rolled her eyes and followed her out the door.
Ariadne and Fischer were now alone in the office.
He coughed slightly and pulled a chair over to the other side of her desk.
"Where would you like to begin?"
She picked up her sketchpad and tried to sit properly in her seat.
"Um, we can go from wherever you want. Maybe we can just start at your clearest memory of the dreams? What's the first thing that struck you about them?"
Robert ran his hand through his hair. "The rain? But is that something you guys can control? I'm not really sure how all this stuff works."
Ariadne smiled warmly. "Yeah, it can be a little hard to get your head around. I'm still working half of it out myself. Rain... I don't know if I can build that into the design itself, but we can probably figure out a way to get it in there. Maybe a more experienced dreamer can add that in themselves? Or we can just make them drink a few liters of soda before we start, force them to be thinking about it."
Robert smiled back. "Is that how it works?"
She shrugged. "I guess? I mean, I haven't been doing this that long, but it makes sense, yeah? If some of the things happening to the dreamer affect the dream, then it makes sense that all of them would."
Robert pulled one of his legs up under himself on his chair. "Makes sense."
"Cool. So, we can worry about the rain next time. Just concentrate on the actual physicality of the dream for now, okay?"
"Okay." Robert closed his eyes for a second, before opening them and looking over at Ariadne, blushing slightly. "This isn't as easy as Kate makes it look."
"Yeah, well." Ariadne laughed. "Kate's really good at her job. It makes sense that she'd be quicker at this. Don't worry about it, just think of the strongest thing you can remember. Through the rain, if that's possible."
"I don't know." He laughed. "When you're outside, it's pretty hard to think of anything other then the rain."
She smiled back. "It's a good thing we're indoors then."
"Okay." Robert closed his eyes again. "It felt like downtown. Downtown in a big city, I mean. Lots of big, glassy buildings in squared off streets."
As he spoke, Ariadne picked up her sketchpad again and started drawing.
- - - - -
Arthur carefully scanned through the list of personal ads. Trying to co-ordinate activities across two teams under complete radio silence was difficult, but not something that was going to defeat him. They just had to come up with other - more old-fashioned - methods of communication. Arthur's plans had involved dead-letter drops and the assistance of one or two helpful Parisian teenagers. Needless to say, the personal columns had been Eames idea.
Finally, he found the ad he was looking for.
Are you Rachmaninov for me?
So they were still there, still unsuspected. Or at least they were yesterday. Was there any wonder he thought this method of interaction was somewhat lacking? He'd have to call Yvette to try and get a more concrete idea of their activities. He knew Fischer was in Paris already, and every day he was in the same room as Eames and Ariadne, maybe even going under with them, was another day when another one of his memories of the inception might be triggered.
Hopefully, this wouldn't last much longer. He didn't like to think of ... either of them in that situation for much longer.
- - - - -
Ariadne looked down at her sketches and nibbled at her fingernail. She glanced around the room and watched as Kate and Stephanie packed away a few papers and books and left the room, and as Yusuf stared at another line of chemical notation on his whiteboard and frowned. Finally, when she was sure that the other women were far enough away she reached across the conjoined desks and poked Eames in the arm.
Something classical drifted out of his earphones as he pulled them out to look at her.
“What?”
“She still wants to extract from Dom.”
“She does, yeah.”
“So... when are you going to change the plan?”
“I'm not.”
Ariadne blinked. “You're... not?”
Eames grinned. “No, I'm not. You are.”
“I am?”
Eames reached across the desk to pat her shoulder. “She likes you, she'll listen.”
“I thought she liked you.”
“Not really. Me and Kate, we're more of an enemy of my enemy kind of thing. You though, she thinks you've got something.”
“What do I say?”
“You'll think of something.”
“What?”
Eames picked his headphones up. “She knows a bit about how I think, she might spot it. You'll figure it out. I'll help you out tomorrow if you can't.”
He stuck his headphones back in and looked back down at his papers. “It'll be fine.”
- - - - -
Kate was standing at the front of the room, gesturing with her markers when Ariadne slowly raised a hand.
“What?”
“Dominic Cobb, right? Back when I worked wi... um, he said that Cobb's been doing this for a long time.”
Kate looked at her. “And?”
“So, isn't he probably militarised by now?”
“Almost definitely,” Stephanie agreed. “I haven't been able to track down who did it - he's got too many connections - but I'm opperating under the assumption that he has.”
“We always do,” Kate said. “So what's your point?”
“Well, if we think that whatever job Cobb pulled, he pulled for Saito... Wouldn't it make more sense to extract from him, instead?”
“Saito is definitely militarised,” Kate said.
“By Richardson, as far as I could tell.” Stephanie said.
“But still,” Ariadne pressed on. “There's no way he's got as much experience dreaming as Cobb does. Even if Saito is militarised, he's still going to be a better mark then Cobb, right?”
Kate tapped her marker against her lip while she thought, before glancing over at Stephanie.
“Look into it.”
Stephnie huffed for a moment, but made a note in front of her. “Fine.”
Kate looked back at Ariadne and smiled slightly. “We'll see how it pans out.”
Ariadne smiled back.
- - - - -
Eames was waiting on a street corner for nothing much. His forge for the dream was going to be Cobb, and he'd already convinced Kate he could pull it off, so he was somewhat adrift for the moment. Ideally, he'd be off somewhere, trying to get his forge of Saito down better, but seeing as he couldn't really let Kate in on that part of the plan, he was stuck.
Not that Kate had ever met Saito, so as long as he got it physically right he'd be fine, but when it came to his job, Eames was as much of a perfectionist as Arthur.
Of course, he couldn't be left entirely to his own devices, so he was nominally staking out the hotel they were planning on using for the job. Saito had an upcoming series of business meetings in Paris, and Stephanie was already on target to access - and potentially alter - his reservations for the week he'd be in the city. Eames technically needed to know the patterns of security guards and CCTV cameras the hotel had in operation, but he was already pretty sure he had them down. Sometimes, he just didn't want to be stuck in a room with Kate for any longer then was strictly necessary.
He felt someone brush against his arm and his hands immediately went to his pocket - he'd been doing this for long enough to know a pickpocket when he felt it - but instead of a missing wallet or mobile phone, he found a folded-over scrap of paper with a seemingly innocuous phrase on it.
I'm Liszt-less without you.
Eames folded the paper up small and sliding it into the lining of his sleeve. Even if someone did find it, the random phrase in clear script would be easy enough to explain away as a handwriting experiment. But for now, it meant that Arthur - and the rest of the team - were on-target.
He smiled before sticking his arm out for a taxi. That was enough surveillance for today.
- - - - -
Ariadne was working carefully at her models, trying to eliminate any obvious aspects of the design that Robert hadn't remembered, when Kate approached her.
"Looking good, Ari."
"Thanks."
"We're on track?"
Ariadne pushed her hair back from her forehead and looked at the model for a moment. "Yeah, I should say so. So long as Robert doesn't remember anything else major, and Eames can't contribute any more then he has, there isn't really much else that I can do, until we're ready to go.”
"Excellent." Kate checked her watch. "Stephanie and are are going to head out for something to eat. Want to join us?"
She was hungry.
"Yeah, that'd be great. Should I call Eam - "
"Nah, leave the boys be, yeah? Just the three of us."
Stephanie was already waiting at the door, eyes glued to her blackberry in as close as she got to leaving the work on her desk. Kate slung her arm around Ariadne's shoulder as they left the office.
"I know you used to live in Paris, so you've probably been there before, but there's this place a couple of blocks from here that I'm absolutely in love with."
Kate lead them to a hole-in-the-wall cafe about five minutes away from the office building. They didn't even need to order, just sat down and waited as they wait staff brought "everything" to the table, at Kate's request. It took about fifteen minutes before the conversation moved on from basics like "pass me... that."
The eating lulled and Stephanie turned to Ariadne, an oddly familiar inquisitiveness in her eyes.
"So, this is your first job without Arthur?"
Technically that was true, so Ariadne didn't have to worry about the lie showing on her face.
"Yes."
"How do you like it?"
"It's... good. Different. Interesting."
"It's a whole world of firsts, this job." Stephanie grinned. "Your first without him, our first extraction."
"This is not my first extraction." Kate pointed out.
"Just your first illegal extraction, then."
Ariadne turned to Kate. "You've never extracted before?"
"Of course I've extracted before." she snapped. "I would have hired someone else to do it if I didn't think I could."
"It's just her first without a willing victim." Stephanie raised a grinning eyebrow. "Every other time had a volunteer. And was nearly ten years ago."
"You can stop listening to her, as she attempts to malign my abilities." Kate said to Ariadne before waving the waiter over to order some more wine. "Just because they had signed up to be extracted from doesn't mean they were compliant, or easy, or anything she's implying."
"She doesn't like to admit she's not the best at everything." Stephanie stage-whispered to Ariadne. "But it has been a while."
Ariadne looked back and forth between the two women. "What happened?"
“Everything gets worse when the fucking military gets involved.”
Ariadne looked at Kate and tried her best to seem blandly inquisitive. “What’s wrong with military involvement? Didn’t it push a lot of dream sharing technology forward?”
“Of course he’d say that. The military changed the objective, pushed people to develop dreaming the way they wanted it, and then...”
She trailed off and stabbed angrily at the remaining food on her plate.
“Dominic Cobb,” Stephanie added.
“Exactly. And then people like Dominic Cobb become so obsessed with reaching the edge they end up throwing their own wives off it.”
Ariadne swallowed. “Oh.”
“Arthur never told you about that, did he? About how Mal died and he spent two years following Dom around the world, helping him escape, tearing other people apart to do it.”
Kate took a large gulp of wine. "Extraction is fucking immoral."
There was a silence at the table, before Stephanie laughed. "Never let it be said you weren't one for the sweeping statements."
"You can't say that going into someone's mind and taking something from them - something they may not even have fully articulated to themselves - isn't wrong."
"Isn't that what we're doing now?" Ariadne asked.
"This," Kate poured them all more wine, "is revenge. There is nothing wrong with punching someone in the face once they've already punched you."
"That," Stephanie agreed, "or she's just mad someone managed to break through her defenses."
"He was sedated." Kate argued. "I couldn't have known they'd be using that level of sedation on him, or they would all have been blown up the second they set foot in there."
"But that!" Ariadne interrupted. "How is that different? I mean, you're going into someone's mind and actively changing them. Why is that okay? I mean, in extraction, at least they don't lose anything."
"Are you sure you don't know Dom Cobb?" Stephanie asked.
"The difference is," Kate said, "is that what I do, people volunteer for. I'm protecting them against people like Cobb and Arthur. And the only reason they don't remember me is that there's always a chance their subconscious can reject it if they do. It's the same reason inception has never worked, you can't force the brain to accept a change it's not ready for, not if you want the person to be aware of what that change is."
"So... Saito deserves to have his brain messed with, then?" Ariadne asked.
"You fuck with someone else, you accept the consequences. Saito's a big boy, he knows the rules."
Kate drained the end of her glass of wine. "We should head back."
- - - - -
A shadow fell across Ariadne's sketchbook, and she looked up to where Robert was standing by her desk.
“Kate has instructed me to stay out of her way, and I really can't handle another cup of instant coffee, so I'm going out. Would you care to join me?”
She looked around the room. Eames and Yusuf were both out, and Kate and Stephanie were in deep conversation in the corner.
She smiled up at him. “Of course.”
There was a busy but still quiet cafe a few streets over from their office, and they made their way there. When the waitress brought their coffee to the table, Robert took a deep inhale of his before sipping.
“I really don't see how Kate can drink that stuff day in, day out.”
“It's not so bad.”
Robert smiled. “But you're barely out of college. You wouldn't know refined tastes if they hit you.”
“Hey!” But she was smiling too. “I'll have you know I developed a very discerning palate towards instant ramen when I was an undergrad.”
“I have no doubt.”
They sat in silence for a moment, before Robert started talking again.
“I had my first cup of coffee when I was fourteen. My dad was there - that's probably the only reason I remember it, he wasn't at breakfast often - and my uncle Peter gave me some. I nearly choked on it, it was so strong and bitter. I wanted to pour piles of sugar and cream in, but my dad said that if I was going to drink coffee”- his voice shifted into a slightly throatier tone - “I was 'going to drink it like a man'.”
He smiled sadly and fiddled with his spoon. “That's probably what they were looking for, right? Something to do with him?”
“We can't be sure.”
“But we can be pretty sure. I mean, he's the only thing about me that anyone's ever had any interest in.”
“That's not tr -”
“It is.”
There was silence again. Finally, he smiled thinly.
“I don't mind that much. I mean, he was brilliant, it's no wonder everyone's still fascinated by him. I really don't mind. I loved him, I did -do - did, but still...”
He looked at her for a moment. “You know, the moment I decided to break up the company, it was the first moment in my life where I felt like I was someone, like I was me, instead of just a part of the Fischer Morrow machine. But even now, all everyone wants to talk about is what he would have thought about it.”
Ariadne felt useless. “These things just take time.”
“I know. And I'm sorry about this. Just needed to vent, I guess.”
“Well, this is the most politely I've ever been vented at.”
Robert smiled again, wider this time. “Good to know.”
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