[Inception] More Guides for Complete Morons, R, Ariadne/Arthur
Honestly, I don't know how this happened. I created a monster and it demanded that this be more serious (with some suspense and mystery thrown in) and longer, so here we are.
Title: More Guides for Complete Morons, Part One: Avoiding Assassins
Fandom: Inception
Ship: Ariadne/Arthur
Rating: R
Summary: Continuation of The Complete Moron's Guide to Sewing. Arthur's vacation is cut short. Very short.
The Complete Moron's Guide to Avoiding Assassins
Ariadne woke up to the late afternoon sun blazing into her small studio apartment. Her largest windows were in her bedroom, but there was little distinction between the "living room" and the "bedroom" in her apartment. She recalled the previous night when Arthur had come banging (singing) at her door to make sure the bugs in her apartment were dealt with. The gun and his very dirty clothes were still lying on her kitchen table. She remembered stitching his wound shut. Remembered the way he'd flirted with her, instructed her, and teased her (even if he didn't say it aloud). And the way he snored made her laugh (now that she wasn’t trying desperately to get some sleep) because honestly, it just sounded a little ridiculous that he'd snore. (Thankfully, he hadn't snored the entire time he'd been asleep.)
She got up and headed towards the bathroom when she noticed that Arthur was still sleeping in her bed. Mostly naked, since the bathrobe he'd borrowed seemed to be missing. She ventured closer and noticed that it was on the floor, discarded. At least Arthur knew well enough in his sleep to keep himself decent. Her entire bed was a mess and Arthur was sprawled in the middle of it, long-limbed and lean. (She saw a freckle that sat low on his hip and decided then and there that she would burn that into her memory.)The comforter was on the floor, the sheets were twisted up in his legs and one of her pillows made it as far as the foot of her bed.
It looked like a lovers' bed.
She imagined for a second that she'd helped him create such a mess and felt her belly curl delightfully low.
Ariadne curbed her thoughts as she heard him sigh and stir in his sleep. She turned to leave and made a break for the shower before he could wake up and see her ogling him as he slept. She heard the floorboards squeak in her wake.
____
It wasn't until she was clean and dripping and naked that Ariadne realized that she didn't have a bathrobe anymore. Nor had she brought something to change into before showering. Wrapped in her biggest bath towel (which luckily left much of her covered), she ventured out and silently prayed that Arthur had just happened to step out of her apartment. Her bedroom looked empty when she crept to it, so she made a quick nab for some clean clothes. She tried to stay as unnoticed as possible, but just about every floor board in her apartment creaked.
She could hear some small commotion in the kitchen and hoped Arthur would be satisfied with some cereal because that was about all she had stocked in her pantry. She made a mental note to pick up groceries and wondered how long Arthur would stay. She looked at her bed and noticed that it had been made. It was as if he'd never slept there. She grabbed her clothes and made a quick dash for the bathroom, not noticing that his clothes and gun were no longer sitting on her table.
___
When Ariadne came back out of the bathroom, freshly dressed and brushing her hair, she heard the same clatter coming out of her kitchen. Why was he still fiddling around in her kitchen when there was obviously nothing there to cook? "No matter how hard you look," she called, “food won't magically appear."
There was a pause and it was quiet. She turned around the corner to sit at the small table in her kitchen and noticed a heavy-set man in a blue work uniform standing in front of her sink. A man that was definitely not Arthur. A man that had just recognized her, it seemed. “Who are you?” and she tried very hard to sound outraged or indignant and not afraid.
Ariadne felt her mouth go dry and she took a tentative step backward. The man pulled out a gun from somewhere she couldn't see and scrambled to move around her small kitchen to get to her.
She felt too slow, even as she darted away as fast as she could. The adrenaline kicked in a moment later and it felt like the true sensation of fear (panic) had caught up with her. It spurred her down the hallway. If she could get to the bathroom and get the door between them, (if she just had three seconds) then-
Ariadne could hear the heavy footfalls of work boots behind her for a fraction of a second and she was almost dizzy with dread (and if her fingers would just stop shaking long enough for her to be quick enough-)
Her shaky fingers wrapped around the doorknob of her bathroom--desperate to open it-- just as she felt herself get lurched backwards by her hair. She cried out in pain and now that her lungs could work, she screamed a short, loud, high-pitched yelp. Her feet slipped on the floor and her fingernails dug into the arm that was pulling her by the hair. Her eyes watered at the pain and felt some of her hair rip loose as her feet tried to gather some kind of traction on the floor.
Her bare feet kept slipping because her captor hauling her small body around like she was a rag doll. He dragged her back down the hallway, towards her bedroom. She tried to find something to hold onto-- the walls, the floor, anything. One hand scratched at his arm -the only thing she could find-- and she could feel skin gather underneath her nails.
She heard him grunt and Ariadne felt her fingers go sticky. He yanked her harder and she felt herself lurch and collide with her nightstand. She heard something fragile break. A long stripe of pain stretched out across her back and she felt the wind get knocked out of her.
Ariadne tried to push herself up off the ground on shaky limbs for what felt like minutes. She couldn't even breathe in a puff of air. She saw her attacker watch her as he stood a few feet away. His gun was in the hand at his side. For a second she wondered why he hadn't killed her yet.
When he grabbed her by the hair again and wrenched her up onto her bed, she tried to cry (sob) out and felt the tickle of tears run down her cheeks, but she couldn't muster anything other than more frantic gasps for air. He pushed her face into the mattress and she blindly groped for the edge of her bed, anything she could use to try to pull herself away, anything, ANTYHING-
She was still trying to breathe, still trying to gulp in air as fast as she could manage. Small noises erupted from her but she couldn't even scream anymore.
“Where's Arthur?” and Ariadne felt the burly man press his weight into her and she couldn't struggle, couldn't move anymore.
The weight above her smashed out what little breath she could even manage by now, but between the crying and the croaking for air, she managed a pathetic, “I don't know.”
Ariadne felt his calloused, wide fingers slide around her neck and take hold of her. It took a second for her to realize what he was going to do; before what was really happening kicked in and she twisted and clawed at the mattress, his fingers, hands, whatever she could find, but she couldn't breathe, couldn't breathe, COULDN'T BREATHE and couldn't see anything but little white explosions and she was going to die, she was going to die. She was being murdered and no one was going to help her.
And then suddenly, the hands around her throat were gone and the weight that had crushed her breathlessly into her own bed disappeared and she felt so light and weightless that she thought she might fall up to the ceiling as she lay there gasping for breath. Her throat stung and she couldn't stop coughing into the mattress because she couldn't push herself up. She had a hard enough time turning onto her side because her head hurt and her eyes were still blurry and she didn't even know how she was still alive.
Something touched her leg and she jumped and nearly screamed but her voice hadn't quite returned. She shifted as best she could to move away and then finally saw the man that had tried to kill her. Her almost murderer was pulled up and backwards, his feet to far behind Arthur to be able to stand. She saw the inside of Arthur's elbow around his throat.
Her vision was still unfocused but she could make out the pinkness of the strange man's broad face as his arms futilely tried to claw at Arthur's arms and still bruised face. Arthur placed his other hand on the back of the man's head and she watched Arthur squeeze his arm around his throat harder. She heard a gurgle and watched the assassin try to open his mouth wider but nothing more came out. He went limp and still and then (with some degree of practiced movement) Arthur took a hold of the man's chin in one hand and his shoulder in the other and wrenched them with a crackpop that reminded her of chicken bones.
Carefully, quietly, Arthur dragged the body across her floor and down her hallway.
Despite being only feet from her bed, she had never before seen Arthur from so far away. She had never seen him kill anyone without a quick bullet to the head in a dream world (projections were just projections). Last night she had seen him carry a gun in with him. Saw the bruises that he carried. Ariadne felt a little stupid that it had taken her this long to fully realize that what Arthur did in dreams was also what he did in reality. She saw him look down at the dead man before looking over at her and she thought she might have seen something familiar in him return.
“What happened?”
And now she could see the Arthur she'd spent so much time with on the Fischer job. The poker face she recognized was back. He was all rigid lines and professionalism again. Ariadne couldn't get the words out to make any kind of response. She felt her brow and mouth bend to release a sob (and she wasn't sure if she'd even made a sound at all). “It's alright,” she heard him say. “It's alright.”
His hands tenderly pushed her hair out of her face. She squeezed her eyes shut. “Look at me, Ariadne,” he said and took her face into his hands.
His fingers felt cool and steady as they touched her cheeks and the places just below her ears. “Arthur,” she croaked, feeling so grateful that he'd shown up just in time.
She felt fresh tears well up in her eyes as she opened them and her body throbbed painfully in so many different places. His eyes dipped down to her neck and she knew there must have been marks there now. “Take a deep breath,” he prompted her, still cupping her face and keeping her field of vision on him. “What happened?”
She took a few deep but shaky breaths and found her voice a little better. “I got out of the shower and-and he was just there.”
She saw Arthur glance around her apartment, and she could almost hear him listing the possibilities in his head. “Where-” but there was a knock on her door that made Arthur freeze.
He pulled her onto her feet, shaky as they were, and planted her next to the dining table. She felt a stinging soreness stretch across her back when he pulled her behind him.
Arthur grit his teeth together, but then walked over to her fridge and pulled out some ice and wrapped it in a towel. “Put this on the back of your head,” he commanded, then took one of her kitchen chairs and broke off the back two legs with little difficulty. “It's a good thing you have cheap furniture.”
Ariadne wasn't sure if she was offended or not. Not shortly after Arthur had left the broken chair on the floor that an old woman's voice asked, in French, “Are you alright, miss? I heard someone scream.”
She looked at Arthur and watched as he answered the door. “Oh, who are you?” the elderly lady at her door asked when she saw Arthur. “What happened?”
“Oh, she just hit her head. I kept telling her to buy a new chair. Now she's one less dining chair and a good bump on the head.”
It was a little disconcerting how easily Arthur could become a congenial gentleman in a situation like this. And speak perfect French while doing so. Ariadne rubbed the tear stains from her cheeks and readjusted the small scarf around her neck before standing next to Arthur in the doorway, still holding the ice to the back of her head. It genuinely stung, but not from a supposed bump on the head. She mustered a small smile for her neighbor, who looked so genuinely concerned. Ariadne was thankful that she was still wearing a scarf around her neck. “Oh, thank goodness it wasn't something serious! This neighborhood isn't what it used to be, you know.”
Arthur and Ariadne listened to the woman talk for a bit so as not to seem suspicious (and to be at least a little polite), but Arthur was very eager to shut the door by the time that he did. She saw Arthur grind his teeth together and take a breath to collect himself. “We need to get out of here,” and he looked toward her bedroom and then at her. “But I need to know everything that happened.”
“He was in the kitchen.”
“Where in the kitchen?” and his voice somehow boomed inside her ears. She watched his mouth bend into a very angry frown.
“By the sink,” was her response and he was looking through her cupboards and checking any surface he could find. She watched him shuffle through her pots and pans, then suddenly stop.
At this point she saw the result of Arthur's intervention peeking out of her bathroom doorway with sightless eyes.
Ariadne felt sick just looking at him, so she looked at the broken things that had been knocked off of the table beside her bed: a cheap lamp she'd never really liked and a framed picture of the Eiffel Tower she had taken herself.
She turned and took a seat at the table. She saw the lines of Arthur's back as he braced himself against her kitchen counter, his head bent forward. She heard him curse, saw his whole body tense and she wondered if there was something important that she was missing. When Arthur turned around, he tossed something he'd been holding onto the ground and when she heard an audible crunch, she realized that Arthur had missed one of the bugs in her apartment last night.
A Point Man's job was to be thorough, precise and efficient. And he had failed to find the last bug in her tiny apartment.
She watched him pace back and forth a few times in her living room. And she finally noticed that he had managed to find some clothes to replace the destroyed ones from earlier this morning. Somehow, he had managed to find a dress shirt, slacks and a not-so-well-tailored suit jacket. (All of it looked about a size too big.)
“Arthur.”
His hands were clenched and he looked like he wanted to break something. He didn't respond so she tried again, “Arthur-”
She had wanted to tell him that it was all right, but he glared at her because it really wasn't. “ My job is to make sure things like this don't happen.”
Ariadne collected herself as best she could and in all seriousness told him, “Look, we have more important things to deal with right now. There is a dead man in my bathroom.”
He nodded minutely, jaw still tight with fury. She watched him stare at the grain of her wood floor. “Tell me what happened after you saw him,” and his voice carried too much false tranquility.
She nodded, swallowing the lump in her throat. “He was in the kitchen, then he came after me,” she paused, felt the ice aggravate the sting of her scalp where her hair had been so violently pulled. “He...dragged me to the bed-”
“Did he say anything? Ask you anything?”
She nodded, but remembered that Arthur was doing his best not to look at her right then. “Yeah. He wanted to know where you were. I said I didn't know.” She gingerly touched her neck, remembering how she thought for sure that she was going to die.
Arthur seemed to digest this information. “He had a gun,” she added, “but he didn't even shoot. He just-”
“He was here to get information out of you,” he interrupted, looking around. “But this is a sloppy job. He had plenty of time to kill you before I got here.”
Ariadne didn't want to think about what would have happened if Arthur had showed up only a few moments later. Thinking about it made her less aware of the aches and pains she had acquired and right now the pain was what was keeping her thinking straight. She watched Arthur walk over to the dead man and search him. After a few seconds, he came up with the gun her assassin had been carrying (which still had the safety on) and a fake ID.
A thought occurred to her. “Arthur, does all of this have to do with the job you were finishing?”
He looked over at her briefly. “Possibly,” he admitted lowly, then promptly changed the subject: “I'm going to need your laptop and your credit card. And you're going to need to pack some clothes. We're leaving Paris."
He grabbed her laptop from the living room. She didn't try to steer the conversation back to Arthur's last job. As she had said before, there were higher priorities. Like getting out of France.
"Where are we going?" and she asked partly to keep some semblance of a conversation going.
She tossed him the wallet out of her purse and started pulling things from her closet to pack a small duffel bag. “Boston,” he replied plainly.
“What's in Boston?”
“Possibly information about why someone is trying to kill us. And protection, if I need it. And you most certainly need it.”
Ariadne couldn't help but frown at his dour mood. His features were neutral except for slivers of anger that slipped out now and again (a tight jaw, a clenched fist). Ariadne had worked beside Arthur during the Fischer job. He had been focused and alert, much like he was now. She respected him and the work he did, but she couldn't help but think of the differences between the Arthur she was familiar with and the Arthur from the previous night. It was the first time she'd ever seen Arthur relaxed, or at least exhausted and beaten (and drunk) enough to have let his guard down. She couldn't blame him for being upset now, even if he was keeping it mostly to himself.
She packed clothes, grabbed her passport and then stared at the gun on her bed, next to the dead man. “What do we do about...” and she gestured toward her bathroom.
“Right now, nothing,” he typed away at her laptop. “By the time anyone notices, we'll be gone.”
And then she realized that no matter what happened, this apartment wasn't going to hers anymore. And to think, yesterday she'd been interviewing for a job at an architectural firm. Now she was leaving the country, leaving a dead body that she hoped no one noticed long enough for them to flee. Ariadne went to the pair of jeans she had been wearing yesterday to retrieve her totem. The bishop felt lighter than it would have normally, due to the hollowing out she'd done when she'd made it. She ran her thumb over the bishop cut nervously. This wasn't a dream.
The sooner they left, the sooner she'd be able to deal with all of this better.
It must have shown. “Fidget while you can,” he told her sourly. “You're not going to do it once we leave. You'll draw attention.”
She forced herself to be still a few minutes later when Arthur shut her laptop and stuffed it into a bag. “We have two hours until our flight leaves.”
“You've done this before,” she pointed out.
Arthur gave her a dose of that neutral expression she'd seen so much already. She was beginning to hate it now. "I have," he replied blithely. "And you're welcome, by the way."
Ariadne felt anger and guilt settle in her. "Look," she said and hoped that he would give her his attention again. He did not.
Arthur didn't stop gathering what he was planning on taking with him. "Don't worry about it," and he didn't even look in her direction. "This is part of what I do. Even if I don't do it often."
"Thanks. For saving my life," because even if he was shutting her out and they were going back to being coworkers, she needed to make sure he knew she was thankful, at least. "I doubt this is the kind of vacation you wanted."
He ignored her and she felt that much more angry at him for it. Fine. If he wanted to ignore her, she could do the same to him.
Quietly, they gathered up their few things and when they stood out in the hallway, she locked the cheap deadbolt of what was once her home and hoped that Arthur knew what he was doing. For both their sakes'.
Title: More Guides for Complete Morons, Part One: Avoiding Assassins
Fandom: Inception
Ship: Ariadne/Arthur
Rating: R
Summary: Continuation of The Complete Moron's Guide to Sewing. Arthur's vacation is cut short. Very short.
The Complete Moron's Guide to Avoiding Assassins
Ariadne woke up to the late afternoon sun blazing into her small studio apartment. Her largest windows were in her bedroom, but there was little distinction between the "living room" and the "bedroom" in her apartment. She recalled the previous night when Arthur had come banging (singing) at her door to make sure the bugs in her apartment were dealt with. The gun and his very dirty clothes were still lying on her kitchen table. She remembered stitching his wound shut. Remembered the way he'd flirted with her, instructed her, and teased her (even if he didn't say it aloud). And the way he snored made her laugh (now that she wasn’t trying desperately to get some sleep) because honestly, it just sounded a little ridiculous that he'd snore. (Thankfully, he hadn't snored the entire time he'd been asleep.)
She got up and headed towards the bathroom when she noticed that Arthur was still sleeping in her bed. Mostly naked, since the bathrobe he'd borrowed seemed to be missing. She ventured closer and noticed that it was on the floor, discarded. At least Arthur knew well enough in his sleep to keep himself decent. Her entire bed was a mess and Arthur was sprawled in the middle of it, long-limbed and lean. (She saw a freckle that sat low on his hip and decided then and there that she would burn that into her memory.)The comforter was on the floor, the sheets were twisted up in his legs and one of her pillows made it as far as the foot of her bed.
It looked like a lovers' bed.
She imagined for a second that she'd helped him create such a mess and felt her belly curl delightfully low.
Ariadne curbed her thoughts as she heard him sigh and stir in his sleep. She turned to leave and made a break for the shower before he could wake up and see her ogling him as he slept. She heard the floorboards squeak in her wake.
____
It wasn't until she was clean and dripping and naked that Ariadne realized that she didn't have a bathrobe anymore. Nor had she brought something to change into before showering. Wrapped in her biggest bath towel (which luckily left much of her covered), she ventured out and silently prayed that Arthur had just happened to step out of her apartment. Her bedroom looked empty when she crept to it, so she made a quick nab for some clean clothes. She tried to stay as unnoticed as possible, but just about every floor board in her apartment creaked.
She could hear some small commotion in the kitchen and hoped Arthur would be satisfied with some cereal because that was about all she had stocked in her pantry. She made a mental note to pick up groceries and wondered how long Arthur would stay. She looked at her bed and noticed that it had been made. It was as if he'd never slept there. She grabbed her clothes and made a quick dash for the bathroom, not noticing that his clothes and gun were no longer sitting on her table.
___
When Ariadne came back out of the bathroom, freshly dressed and brushing her hair, she heard the same clatter coming out of her kitchen. Why was he still fiddling around in her kitchen when there was obviously nothing there to cook? "No matter how hard you look," she called, “food won't magically appear."
There was a pause and it was quiet. She turned around the corner to sit at the small table in her kitchen and noticed a heavy-set man in a blue work uniform standing in front of her sink. A man that was definitely not Arthur. A man that had just recognized her, it seemed. “Who are you?” and she tried very hard to sound outraged or indignant and not afraid.
Ariadne felt her mouth go dry and she took a tentative step backward. The man pulled out a gun from somewhere she couldn't see and scrambled to move around her small kitchen to get to her.
She felt too slow, even as she darted away as fast as she could. The adrenaline kicked in a moment later and it felt like the true sensation of fear (panic) had caught up with her. It spurred her down the hallway. If she could get to the bathroom and get the door between them, (if she just had three seconds) then-
Ariadne could hear the heavy footfalls of work boots behind her for a fraction of a second and she was almost dizzy with dread (and if her fingers would just stop shaking long enough for her to be quick enough-)
Her shaky fingers wrapped around the doorknob of her bathroom--desperate to open it-- just as she felt herself get lurched backwards by her hair. She cried out in pain and now that her lungs could work, she screamed a short, loud, high-pitched yelp. Her feet slipped on the floor and her fingernails dug into the arm that was pulling her by the hair. Her eyes watered at the pain and felt some of her hair rip loose as her feet tried to gather some kind of traction on the floor.
Her bare feet kept slipping because her captor hauling her small body around like she was a rag doll. He dragged her back down the hallway, towards her bedroom. She tried to find something to hold onto-- the walls, the floor, anything. One hand scratched at his arm -the only thing she could find-- and she could feel skin gather underneath her nails.
She heard him grunt and Ariadne felt her fingers go sticky. He yanked her harder and she felt herself lurch and collide with her nightstand. She heard something fragile break. A long stripe of pain stretched out across her back and she felt the wind get knocked out of her.
Ariadne tried to push herself up off the ground on shaky limbs for what felt like minutes. She couldn't even breathe in a puff of air. She saw her attacker watch her as he stood a few feet away. His gun was in the hand at his side. For a second she wondered why he hadn't killed her yet.
When he grabbed her by the hair again and wrenched her up onto her bed, she tried to cry (sob) out and felt the tickle of tears run down her cheeks, but she couldn't muster anything other than more frantic gasps for air. He pushed her face into the mattress and she blindly groped for the edge of her bed, anything she could use to try to pull herself away, anything, ANTYHING-
She was still trying to breathe, still trying to gulp in air as fast as she could manage. Small noises erupted from her but she couldn't even scream anymore.
“Where's Arthur?” and Ariadne felt the burly man press his weight into her and she couldn't struggle, couldn't move anymore.
The weight above her smashed out what little breath she could even manage by now, but between the crying and the croaking for air, she managed a pathetic, “I don't know.”
Ariadne felt his calloused, wide fingers slide around her neck and take hold of her. It took a second for her to realize what he was going to do; before what was really happening kicked in and she twisted and clawed at the mattress, his fingers, hands, whatever she could find, but she couldn't breathe, couldn't breathe, COULDN'T BREATHE and couldn't see anything but little white explosions and she was going to die, she was going to die. She was being murdered and no one was going to help her.
And then suddenly, the hands around her throat were gone and the weight that had crushed her breathlessly into her own bed disappeared and she felt so light and weightless that she thought she might fall up to the ceiling as she lay there gasping for breath. Her throat stung and she couldn't stop coughing into the mattress because she couldn't push herself up. She had a hard enough time turning onto her side because her head hurt and her eyes were still blurry and she didn't even know how she was still alive.
Something touched her leg and she jumped and nearly screamed but her voice hadn't quite returned. She shifted as best she could to move away and then finally saw the man that had tried to kill her. Her almost murderer was pulled up and backwards, his feet to far behind Arthur to be able to stand. She saw the inside of Arthur's elbow around his throat.
Her vision was still unfocused but she could make out the pinkness of the strange man's broad face as his arms futilely tried to claw at Arthur's arms and still bruised face. Arthur placed his other hand on the back of the man's head and she watched Arthur squeeze his arm around his throat harder. She heard a gurgle and watched the assassin try to open his mouth wider but nothing more came out. He went limp and still and then (with some degree of practiced movement) Arthur took a hold of the man's chin in one hand and his shoulder in the other and wrenched them with a crackpop that reminded her of chicken bones.
Carefully, quietly, Arthur dragged the body across her floor and down her hallway.
Despite being only feet from her bed, she had never before seen Arthur from so far away. She had never seen him kill anyone without a quick bullet to the head in a dream world (projections were just projections). Last night she had seen him carry a gun in with him. Saw the bruises that he carried. Ariadne felt a little stupid that it had taken her this long to fully realize that what Arthur did in dreams was also what he did in reality. She saw him look down at the dead man before looking over at her and she thought she might have seen something familiar in him return.
“What happened?”
And now she could see the Arthur she'd spent so much time with on the Fischer job. The poker face she recognized was back. He was all rigid lines and professionalism again. Ariadne couldn't get the words out to make any kind of response. She felt her brow and mouth bend to release a sob (and she wasn't sure if she'd even made a sound at all). “It's alright,” she heard him say. “It's alright.”
His hands tenderly pushed her hair out of her face. She squeezed her eyes shut. “Look at me, Ariadne,” he said and took her face into his hands.
His fingers felt cool and steady as they touched her cheeks and the places just below her ears. “Arthur,” she croaked, feeling so grateful that he'd shown up just in time.
She felt fresh tears well up in her eyes as she opened them and her body throbbed painfully in so many different places. His eyes dipped down to her neck and she knew there must have been marks there now. “Take a deep breath,” he prompted her, still cupping her face and keeping her field of vision on him. “What happened?”
She took a few deep but shaky breaths and found her voice a little better. “I got out of the shower and-and he was just there.”
She saw Arthur glance around her apartment, and she could almost hear him listing the possibilities in his head. “Where-” but there was a knock on her door that made Arthur freeze.
He pulled her onto her feet, shaky as they were, and planted her next to the dining table. She felt a stinging soreness stretch across her back when he pulled her behind him.
Arthur grit his teeth together, but then walked over to her fridge and pulled out some ice and wrapped it in a towel. “Put this on the back of your head,” he commanded, then took one of her kitchen chairs and broke off the back two legs with little difficulty. “It's a good thing you have cheap furniture.”
Ariadne wasn't sure if she was offended or not. Not shortly after Arthur had left the broken chair on the floor that an old woman's voice asked, in French, “Are you alright, miss? I heard someone scream.”
She looked at Arthur and watched as he answered the door. “Oh, who are you?” the elderly lady at her door asked when she saw Arthur. “What happened?”
“Oh, she just hit her head. I kept telling her to buy a new chair. Now she's one less dining chair and a good bump on the head.”
It was a little disconcerting how easily Arthur could become a congenial gentleman in a situation like this. And speak perfect French while doing so. Ariadne rubbed the tear stains from her cheeks and readjusted the small scarf around her neck before standing next to Arthur in the doorway, still holding the ice to the back of her head. It genuinely stung, but not from a supposed bump on the head. She mustered a small smile for her neighbor, who looked so genuinely concerned. Ariadne was thankful that she was still wearing a scarf around her neck. “Oh, thank goodness it wasn't something serious! This neighborhood isn't what it used to be, you know.”
Arthur and Ariadne listened to the woman talk for a bit so as not to seem suspicious (and to be at least a little polite), but Arthur was very eager to shut the door by the time that he did. She saw Arthur grind his teeth together and take a breath to collect himself. “We need to get out of here,” and he looked toward her bedroom and then at her. “But I need to know everything that happened.”
“He was in the kitchen.”
“Where in the kitchen?” and his voice somehow boomed inside her ears. She watched his mouth bend into a very angry frown.
“By the sink,” was her response and he was looking through her cupboards and checking any surface he could find. She watched him shuffle through her pots and pans, then suddenly stop.
At this point she saw the result of Arthur's intervention peeking out of her bathroom doorway with sightless eyes.
Ariadne felt sick just looking at him, so she looked at the broken things that had been knocked off of the table beside her bed: a cheap lamp she'd never really liked and a framed picture of the Eiffel Tower she had taken herself.
She turned and took a seat at the table. She saw the lines of Arthur's back as he braced himself against her kitchen counter, his head bent forward. She heard him curse, saw his whole body tense and she wondered if there was something important that she was missing. When Arthur turned around, he tossed something he'd been holding onto the ground and when she heard an audible crunch, she realized that Arthur had missed one of the bugs in her apartment last night.
A Point Man's job was to be thorough, precise and efficient. And he had failed to find the last bug in her tiny apartment.
She watched him pace back and forth a few times in her living room. And she finally noticed that he had managed to find some clothes to replace the destroyed ones from earlier this morning. Somehow, he had managed to find a dress shirt, slacks and a not-so-well-tailored suit jacket. (All of it looked about a size too big.)
“Arthur.”
His hands were clenched and he looked like he wanted to break something. He didn't respond so she tried again, “Arthur-”
She had wanted to tell him that it was all right, but he glared at her because it really wasn't. “ My job is to make sure things like this don't happen.”
Ariadne collected herself as best she could and in all seriousness told him, “Look, we have more important things to deal with right now. There is a dead man in my bathroom.”
He nodded minutely, jaw still tight with fury. She watched him stare at the grain of her wood floor. “Tell me what happened after you saw him,” and his voice carried too much false tranquility.
She nodded, swallowing the lump in her throat. “He was in the kitchen, then he came after me,” she paused, felt the ice aggravate the sting of her scalp where her hair had been so violently pulled. “He...dragged me to the bed-”
“Did he say anything? Ask you anything?”
She nodded, but remembered that Arthur was doing his best not to look at her right then. “Yeah. He wanted to know where you were. I said I didn't know.” She gingerly touched her neck, remembering how she thought for sure that she was going to die.
Arthur seemed to digest this information. “He had a gun,” she added, “but he didn't even shoot. He just-”
“He was here to get information out of you,” he interrupted, looking around. “But this is a sloppy job. He had plenty of time to kill you before I got here.”
Ariadne didn't want to think about what would have happened if Arthur had showed up only a few moments later. Thinking about it made her less aware of the aches and pains she had acquired and right now the pain was what was keeping her thinking straight. She watched Arthur walk over to the dead man and search him. After a few seconds, he came up with the gun her assassin had been carrying (which still had the safety on) and a fake ID.
A thought occurred to her. “Arthur, does all of this have to do with the job you were finishing?”
He looked over at her briefly. “Possibly,” he admitted lowly, then promptly changed the subject: “I'm going to need your laptop and your credit card. And you're going to need to pack some clothes. We're leaving Paris."
He grabbed her laptop from the living room. She didn't try to steer the conversation back to Arthur's last job. As she had said before, there were higher priorities. Like getting out of France.
"Where are we going?" and she asked partly to keep some semblance of a conversation going.
She tossed him the wallet out of her purse and started pulling things from her closet to pack a small duffel bag. “Boston,” he replied plainly.
“What's in Boston?”
“Possibly information about why someone is trying to kill us. And protection, if I need it. And you most certainly need it.”
Ariadne couldn't help but frown at his dour mood. His features were neutral except for slivers of anger that slipped out now and again (a tight jaw, a clenched fist). Ariadne had worked beside Arthur during the Fischer job. He had been focused and alert, much like he was now. She respected him and the work he did, but she couldn't help but think of the differences between the Arthur she was familiar with and the Arthur from the previous night. It was the first time she'd ever seen Arthur relaxed, or at least exhausted and beaten (and drunk) enough to have let his guard down. She couldn't blame him for being upset now, even if he was keeping it mostly to himself.
She packed clothes, grabbed her passport and then stared at the gun on her bed, next to the dead man. “What do we do about...” and she gestured toward her bathroom.
“Right now, nothing,” he typed away at her laptop. “By the time anyone notices, we'll be gone.”
And then she realized that no matter what happened, this apartment wasn't going to hers anymore. And to think, yesterday she'd been interviewing for a job at an architectural firm. Now she was leaving the country, leaving a dead body that she hoped no one noticed long enough for them to flee. Ariadne went to the pair of jeans she had been wearing yesterday to retrieve her totem. The bishop felt lighter than it would have normally, due to the hollowing out she'd done when she'd made it. She ran her thumb over the bishop cut nervously. This wasn't a dream.
The sooner they left, the sooner she'd be able to deal with all of this better.
It must have shown. “Fidget while you can,” he told her sourly. “You're not going to do it once we leave. You'll draw attention.”
She forced herself to be still a few minutes later when Arthur shut her laptop and stuffed it into a bag. “We have two hours until our flight leaves.”
“You've done this before,” she pointed out.
Arthur gave her a dose of that neutral expression she'd seen so much already. She was beginning to hate it now. "I have," he replied blithely. "And you're welcome, by the way."
Ariadne felt anger and guilt settle in her. "Look," she said and hoped that he would give her his attention again. He did not.
Arthur didn't stop gathering what he was planning on taking with him. "Don't worry about it," and he didn't even look in her direction. "This is part of what I do. Even if I don't do it often."
"Thanks. For saving my life," because even if he was shutting her out and they were going back to being coworkers, she needed to make sure he knew she was thankful, at least. "I doubt this is the kind of vacation you wanted."
He ignored her and she felt that much more angry at him for it. Fine. If he wanted to ignore her, she could do the same to him.
Quietly, they gathered up their few things and when they stood out in the hallway, she locked the cheap deadbolt of what was once her home and hoped that Arthur knew what he was doing. For both their sakes'.