The Way Up Is The Way Down | Part 3
Title: The Way Up Is The Way Down, Part 3
Pairing: Ariadne/Cobb, Arthur/Eames, Yusuf/Saito
Genre: Adventure, Romance
Warning: Potential dub-con, sexual content, swearing
Rating: R
Summary: Ariadne chose her fate. But when you're the one left behind, how do you hold on to sanity in the cruel world of limbo? Meanwhile, Dom Cobb and the rest of the team, now fugitives in the United States, are running out of time... soon, saving their fallen teammates will no longer be a feasible option. Cobb, however, is not willing to lose anyone else-and where there's a will, there's a way down.
Part 3: And the Dead Walk
“What is a colony
if not the brutal truth
that when we speak
the graves open.”
Eavan Boland, “Witness”
The break in at the hospital takes a significant amount of planning, and Cobb is impressed at Arthur’s ability to get information on the security system together with such rapidity. In some ways, it feels like Arthur is trying too hard, perhaps attempting to make up for his mistake during the inception job. One part of Cobb wants to tell Arthur that he doesn’t blame him for what happened to Ariadne and Saito, but another, more devious part of Cobb wants to save his friends at whatever cost necessary-and if that meant a guiltier but more efficient Arthur, then so be it.
Yusuf has had the chemicals ready for about three hours before they actually attempt the break in. Cobb hasn’t spoken to the chemist much since their conversation about Rahul, and Yusuf seems keen not to seek Cobb out for another heart-to-heart. Cobb doesn’t mind that much, as he is focused on the task at hand and doesn’t need the distraction of another teammate’s guilty conscience.
Eames is on document forgery this time around, as a forger in particular was not really necessary for the kind of extraction they had in mind. He created rather convincing costumes for the four of them: all dark blue scrubs and white jackets with very official looking ID tags attached to their front pockets. Arthur even got a surgeon’s cap as part of his outfit.
“Seriously?” he asks when Eames hands him the bright paisley cap. They’re changing in the hotel room they’re currently occupying, a mere block away from the hospital where Ariadne and Saito lay comatose.
“Oy, don’t act so offended. I made that from my favorite shirt,” Eames says, peaked. Arthur raises his eyebrows, shuts up, and ties the cap around his head. They arm themselves sparingly, as the scrubs don’t provide much wiggle room for hiding guns. Somehow Eames manages to hide a grenade launcher on his person.
“But how?” Yusuf asks, one part distracted (he is having trouble shoving a pistol in a leather strap he had tied around his ankle), one part intrigued.
“Don’t ask,” Eames grunts.
Yusuf winces. “Ugh,” he says in reply, now all parts disgusted.
“What if we need a grenade launched?!” Eames hisses. Cobb shrugs, tucking a long pistol into the back of his pants. His threshold for discretion is at a minimum.
They get in easily enough; Eames makes a joke with the security guards by the door, putting them at their ease with his silver tongue as they casually glance over the forged IDs. Arthur clutches at the tell-tale silver briefcase in his right hand, white-knuckled. Yusuf manages to tuck his chemical vials into his pockets so that his scrubs sag down around his hips; every so often he has to hike up his pants.
“Have a good one,” the guards call after them once they’re all through the door and Eames has cajoled them sufficiently. Arthur directs them beyond that point: he shuttles them all into an elevator. Cobb holds the door-close button down until the elevator shuts in front of them.
“We’re on good time,” Arthur says curtly. “She’s on the third floor, he’s on the fifth in a very protected suite. The plan is simple-grab Ariadne’s cot and bring her up to the fifth floor. The real issues will become apparent once we get upstairs.”
“That’s where I come in,” Yusuf grins, holding up a vial of blue liquid. “This should knock out the guards on the fifth floor for about an hour. Just be sure to have your gas masks on the second the elevator doors open up on the fifth.”
“Once we get into the room, we’re going to have about forty-five minutes before the guards wake up,” Arthur continues.
“And about three minutes before the police get here,” Cobb adds.
“I think we’ll be able to hold them off with the extraordinarily valuable Saito as a both hostage and collateral,” Eames grins, patting Cobb on the shoulder.
The elevator beeps.
“Showtime,” Eames murmurs.
The doors open. Cobb’s authoritative glare sends nurses both swooning and scurrying off to find out the name of the mysterious new attending. The team follows Cobb, Arthur whispering directions into Cobb’s ear subtly.
When they reach the room, their contact-a pretty brunette nurse with a fierce look about her-is already waiting.
“Claire,” she offers. Arthur shakes her hand and begins to explain exactly what she’ll be doing with the PASIV machine. Arthur slips her a check. When she reads it, her eyes widen.
“That’s half our promised price. And there’s bonus in it for you if we all get out of here alive,” Arthur tells her. She nods her head over and over again, in shock at the amount of money in her hands.
Cobb pays no attention to the nurse. His eyes are on the small woman lying in the bed before them: her hair fans out behind her head, a wispy crown encircling her visage. Her cheeks are pale; besides the breath sounds coming from her mouth, she shows very few signs of life.
“We’ve got her,” Eames says, grinning. But Cobb knows better.
“Not yet,” he tells them. “Let’s get her upstairs.”
Claire pushes Ariadne out of the room with Arthur behind her wheeling the other end of the bed. They all enter the elevator and seem to take a collective breath of trepidation as Eames presses the button for the fifth floor, entering a pass code with a deft hand and swiping his ID through a scanner next to the digit five. Yusuf is at point when the doors open, canister of knockout gas in hand. The dark skinned man nods and the rest of the team slides on gas masks. Cobb places one on the unconscious Ariadne’s face with a tender expression.
The plan goes off without a hitch-well, mostly: a bullet grazes Eames’s right leg (courtesy of one of Saito’s men) before Yusuf can knock him out. Arthur has to lug Eames into Saito’s high security hospital room while shooting tranquilizer darts over his shoulder at the men chasing them.
Ariadne’s bed is settled next to Saito’s. Cobb notes that Yusuf’s pallor seems to vanish once he gets in close proximity to the Japanese businessman. Yusuf keeps his gun pointed at Saito, but the menace is half-hearted.
“He doesn’t look good,” Yusuf murmurs, brushing a few strands of hair out of Saito’s face. Yusuf glances at a monitor to his left. “His vitals aren’t very strong. We need to be quick. He’ll recover better out of the dream.”
They settle into chairs around the PASIV device. Cobb sits himself in a chair by Ariadne’s head. He takes her hand with one of his own, then gestures toward Claire to attach the IV. She does so with an experienced hand.
“See you down there,” Cobb murmurs, before settling his head against Ariadne’s side.
Cobb finds Arthur first; he always finds Arthur first. It’s part of why Arthur makes an excellent point man-he knows how to stick with Cobb even while moving through various levels of consciousness.
“Where are the others,” Cobb says in less of a question and more of a command.
“My prediction is a couple of blocks away, but we both know how Eames likes to get lost between dream states,” Arthur growls, clicking the safety off his gun.
“I don’t know if you’ll need that,” Cobb tells him. “I don’t think this level has been inhabited, even by Ariadne’s subconscious, in a long while.” Their surroundings appear about as blank as Cobb’s gaze.
Arthur doesn’t lower his gun, but his expression is eased slightly.
“Let’s just find the others,” Arthur says at last. It doesn’t take too long-Eames has managed to forge away his leg wound, with great effort.
“Still hurts like a bitch, but I’m less conspicuous now, right?” Eames laughs, gritting his teeth all the while. Arthur steadies him with an arm. Yusuf uncorks a vial and opens the PASIV once more.
“Be careful, gentlemen,” Yusuf tells them as he hooks Eames, Cobb, and Arthur up once again. His eyes remain on Cobb as he continues: “Find them. Bring them home.”
Cobb nods before falling into an induced sleep.
This time they all wake up together. Eames doesn’t even have to forge the wound away, they’re at such a deep level.
“A dream within a dream,” Eames grins. “Never fails to impress.”
“We’re not done yet,” Cobb says curtly. “She’s not here. She’s…”
“We know,” Arthur says softly, placing a hand on Cobb’s shoulder. “Let’s get the PASIV set up.”
The third time around, it’s just Arthur and Cobb going down to limbo.
“I should go by myself,” Cobb says at one point to Eames and Arthur. The point man and the forger give each other knowing looks.
“I’m going with you, and you’ll have to shoot me here and now if you want to change that,” Arthur says breezily. “Course, Eames wouldn’t appreciate having to go down in my stead.”
“Limbo’s not really my cup of tea,” Eames says with a dark chuckle. For a moment, Cobb considers Arthur’s options. Then he sighs, nodding.
“Fine,” he says gruffly. Arthur breaks a rare smile and crouches into a seated position, arm out for Eames to administer the PASIV. Cobb sits next to him and proffers his arm to Eames as well.
“Go get ‘em, boys,” Eames tells them rather lovingly as the two men slip into unconsciousness.
Once they’re both asleep, Eames lights up a well-deserved cigarette. Blowing the smoke casually into rings around the two dreamers, Eames drags a chair next to them, massaging his right leg furtively.
Cobb can feel the sea beneath him, rushing forward and backward with the awesome strength of the tide. The water is salty and bone-chillingly cold. Cobb’s lungs feel contracted, small, as if half their normal size. He opens his lips in an attempt to inhale but is met with a mouthful of ocean water. Spluttering, Cobb can’t breath. He can’t feel his extremities either, so swimming is useless. Suddenly Cobb feels a hand grasping at the back of his jacket, bringing him to his feet. He looks over his shoulder to see a doused Arthur, unnerved and shivering, staring down at him.
They approach the shore slowly, one staggering footstep at a time. Slogging through the knee-deep water for a while, they finally emerge from the salty expanse exhausted. Cobb falls to his hands and knees, coughing up water onto the sand in front of him. Somewhere in the background, he can hear Arthur doing the same. Eventually, the two stand.
“Do you recognize this place?” Arthur asks him, brushing the sand from his palms.
Cobb looks out at the landscape. “I don’t.” Arthur raises a quizzical eyebrow, so Cobb clarifies: “And that scares the shit out of me.”
They walk toward the city on their horizon.
There’s a pedestrian bridge that bears them into the main square on the edge of the city. It reminds Cobb of St. Mark’s Square in Venice: the large, open space connected to the water appears to stretch the city out infinitely. Silently, he approves of the architectural design of this novel limbo that had fallen out of Ariadne’s mind.
Aloud, he confirms Arthur’s darkest suspicions: “This hasn’t been my limbo for a long time.”
Arthur cocks his gun and takes the lead, a couple of steps in front of Cobb.
They walk in a straight line toward the heart of the city, where a tall building stands, blighting an otherwise pleasant skyline. It seems to cut the sky in two: on one side, the clouds are grey and ominous; on the other, warm sunset tones hang in the sky as if painted by an enormous paintbrush.
“How do you know she’ll be there,” Arthur calls to Cobb, keeping his head straight ahead, alert.
“That’s where I’d be,” Cobb says simply. “I’d want to be able to look on my creation from above.”
Arthur begins to shrug his shoulders in acceptance, but his body freezes mid-gesture.
“There’s someone coming toward us. Eleven o’clock,” Arthur hisses. Cobb’s eyes immediately focus on man coming toward them at a brisk pace. Cobb feels around for a gun in the back of his pants, grabbing it quickly at pointing it at the man. Arthur keeps his gun trained on the speck as it moves closer and closer toward them.
“Don’t shoot,” it calls out to them. “You’ll regret it!”
Arthur’s eyebrow quirks upward. “What the fuck is going on,” Arthur growls. “Who is that?”
When Cobb sees the man up close, the mere shock is almost enough to make him lose grip of his gun. Arthur, on the other hand, just looks dumbfounded.
Before them stands Dom Cobb: he’s got the same blond hair, the same piercing blue eyes, the same tall stature, the same blind confidence that a man like Cobb earned over years of extracting.
“This is unreal,” Cobb breathes. He shakes his head back and forth, bringing himself back to the present, where Arthur looks horrified.
“I’ve been here for hours, Arthur,” the other Cobb pleads. “Time down here works a little differently. I fell asleep moments before you-down here, that was long enough for me to get lost in this godforsaken place. You’re traveling with a projection. He’s going to kill you-look, he’s got a gun. I, on the other hand, am unarmed.”
Cobb’s gun, however, is pointed as his doppelganger.
“Arthur, don’t listen to him, he’s a figment of Ariadne’s imagination,” Cobb commands at last. Arthur’s lips press together in a firm line, his face full of uncertainty.
“What fresh hell is this,” Arthur breathes, unsure where to point his gun.
In a second, Cobb disarms Arthur. The other Cobb has no trouble figuring out where to point the stolen weapon. It happens so fast that Cobb only has time to shout out a vague, “No!” before Arthur’s corpse falls to the ground, a bullet in his brain.
“Jesus Christ!” Cobb growls, turning back to find the projection but he is gone. For a moment, Cobb jerks his head around, trying to find his attacker once again…
“Gotchya,” says a low voice in his ear. Cobb spins around quickly, knocking Arthur’s gun from his hands-but it’s too late: the other Cobb has already grabbed his gun and tossed it into a canal that edges the street. At last, the two Cobbs face each other, alone and unarmed.
For one sick moment, it’s like looking into a mirror: the replication is so complete, so precise, that Cobb is certain he’s looking into a glass, glaring at his own reflection. It’s when his doppelganger begins smiling at him that Cobb truly understands the gravity of the situation he has fallen into.
“You really shouldn’t have shot Arthur,” Cobb tells the projection.
In response, the projection tackles Cobb to the ground, and the fight commences.
The scuffle takes less than five minutes. The projection is not trained, only knows brute force and aggression-not that those two in combination are ineffective… but to Cobb, his mirror is naïve. How could Ariadne have imagined the kind of combat training the real Cobb had gone through in his youth? There are many reasons that Cobb keeps so many secrets, and this is one of them: only he truly knows himself. And sometimes, that is advantage enough.
Cobb pins his twin beneath him, pressing his knees against the doppelganger’s shoulders, letting his shins fall to the ground between the projection’s arms and torso. With a quick movement, he twists the other Cobb’s neck until he hears the tell tale break of the double’s spinal cord snapping. Breathing hard, he remains on top of the dead projection until he can hear something beyond the sound of his own heavy breathing. It is an odd feeling, killing one’s self. It gives Cobb the willies. Cobb pulls out his totem and lets it spin, perfect in its undisturbed turning, for two minutes before snatching it up again.
“Why the fuck are you here,” he whispers to the dead thing below him. Cobb pats the body down for weapons, but somehow in the scuffle the gun had been lost. The only thing he finds on the corpse is a lone chess piece: a king.
Cobb pockets it and then turns to Arthur’s body. The point man’s fingertips are cold, and his lips are blue.
“I’m sorry,” he murmurs. He folds Arthur’s arms in front of his chest, a final apology. “See you up above.”
Cobb walks away, fingering the king in his right pocket.
Arthur wakes up with the word “fuck” on his lips. He’s back on level two.
“I didn’t expect to see you back so soon. Cobb and Ari on the way?” Eames asks casually. His pants have begun to spot with blood on his right thigh.
“Fucking-fucker! There was a projection down there,” Arthur finally gets out. Eames raises an eyebrow.
“Woah there, darling, you encountered a projection? While dreaming? How shocking,” Eames says with a laugh.
“It was a projection of Cobb, you imbecile,” Arthur hisses, now pacing back and forth in front of Eames.
Realization hits Eames like a truck, knocking the wind out of his chest.
“Fuck,” he breathes.
“He shot me,” Arthur elaborates emotionally. “And now Cobb’s down there with no damn idea what’s going on. If we lose him because I’m the world’s shittiest point man, I swear, Eames-”
“Arthur,” Eames says slowly, trying to calm the point man down. Arthur looks positively stricken with fear and self-loathing.
“What if he doesn’t come back?” Arthur asks Eames plainly.
“We’ll jump that hurtle if and when we meet it,” Eames replies calmly.
“If he dies because of me, I don’t know if-if I’ll-“ Arthur says, his words stopping and starting.
“I know,” Eames says kindly in understanding. “Which is why he better bloody well come back.”
Eames turns his back while Arthur wipes his face, ignoring the sound of the point man’s erratic breathing in favor of Ms. Piaf’s lovely voice singing the kick.
He finds her alone: a wisp of a waif facing the wide expanse of window, stacking a house of improbably balanced cards impossibly high. She is in the penthouse of the building Cobb had immediately suspected her of inhabiting. Her back is turned to him, and he can see the sun setting on the horizon. He doesn’t know or recognize this limbo, this bizarre place from his architect’s subconscious imagination. She is thin, thinner than he remembers her: he imagines this is how she wants to see herself, what her mind’s eye wants most desperately to become. She wears a worn cardigan unbuttoned over a pair of faded jeans. A scarf hangs loosely around her neck, a sight so common that Cobb almost laughs at its appearance. He doesn’t interrupt her, merely savors the feeling of relief that bubbles through his being-she is here. The search is over.
“I know you’re there,” she chuckles, the sound of her voice radiating warmth through Cobb’s core. The extent to which he missed her is a little staggering, and Cobb finds himself off-balance, stumbling.
In a few strides, Cobb has captured her in his arms. He holds her to his body, resting his chin atop the crown of her head, pressing her hair down with a caress of his palm. For a moment, Ariadne is startled-then she relaxes into his grip.
“You’re feeling affectionate today,” she says. Cobb thinks that he can detect an odd sadness in her voice; a melancholy that he realizes has come to define her world.
“I found you,” is what he responds.
“I never go too far,” she murmurs, pulling away from him. Cobb can feel his eyes welling with emotion.
“Sometimes-sometimes, you do,” he whispers, half to himself. Ariadne quirks an eyebrow at him, then shakes her head briskly.
“You’re acting strangely,” she remarks. “My brain must be getting a bit rotted.” She lets a finger trail up Cobb’s chest, an act that surprises him. Cobb feels a deep-rooted shame at his sudden arousal.
“Why don’t you wake up then,” he asks her, burying his guilt, while pressing her hands away from his person.
She looks at him for a long moment and finally answers, “I am awake.”
“But you just said-” Cobb begins.
“You’re confusing me,” she cries out, hands gripping her temples. “You’re not supposed to do that.” Her eyes are filled with tears when she looks up at him. “You’re supposed to make me happy.”
Cobb can feel his resolve breaking underneath what little composure he has left. “I just want to save you,” is what he tells her, raking a hand up and down her arm. She shudders into his caress.
“Don’t need any saving.” He flinches at the lie. She curls into his chest, wrapping her arms around his torso, cheek against his sternum. He reciprocates, pulling her in close. She makes a soft contented sound against his shirt. “Don’t need anything but you.”
“Don’t say that,” Cobb chokes out. He can’t come this close and lose her again. “Come back with me, Ariadne.”
“I’m right here,” she murmurs, looking up into his eyes. “Now kiss me.”
“You need to understand something first,” Cobb says, taking her face in his hands. “You’re not where you think you are. I’m here to bring you back home.”
“Stop it,” Ariadne whimpers, trying to twist her head away from him. “You’re hurting me.”
“I’m trying to help you,” he pleads, forcing her to make eye contact with him by steadying her head with a strong grip.
“Then stop,” she hisses, wrenching her head away from him sharply. “If you can’t love me, then you don’t belong here. So just get out.”
Cobb takes a moment to assess his options. He sees that she’s clearly been affected by her time in limbo-exactly how long had she been down here, in her time, anyway?-and to shatter her misconceptions could be deadly. She thinks you’re the projection you killed, Dom, Cobb thinks to himself. What exactly was he doing with her here?
“Ariadne,” he whispers. “Come here.”
He would pretend, for her. Of all the people in the world, Ariadne is one of the few he would do this for: Cobb thinks for a moment that perhaps for Arthur, he’d make the exception as well. He would take part in this make-believe life until he could convince her of its falseness without shattering her sanity.
He leans down to kiss the girl standing on her toes. When their lips touch, the world stops: literally, the sun stops in its path. Ariadne’s mind has a wicked sense of humor.
How long is this masquerade going to last? Cobb thinks. He feels a two-fold shame that stems from both the idea of deceiving her, and also the fact that he could sense that some sick part of himself was enjoying their intimacy. Then the nausea hits him, like a sucker punch to the gut. It takes a great deal of strength just to remain standing.
“We have all the time in the world,” she laughs against his lips, pressing another kiss against his cheek, and then dropping down onto the soles of her feet to press her lips against the fabric covering his chest in the area near his sternum. She takes him by the hand to a bedroom down the hall. He wobbles in her wake, horrified; he takes in the surroundings cursorily, paying little attention to much else besides the warm body beside him. Taking advantage of a mentally distressed and distraught young adult had not been in the cards for Dominic Cobb, but it also appears that a lot of things are not going according to plan.
This isn’t what he wants-he isn’t even sure how he feels about the girl in reality. In the dream, however, the line between wanting something subconsciously and consciously is blurred to the extent that perhaps, the line never existed at all.
“Stay with me, Dom,” Ariadne murmurs in his ear. “Are your thoughts really more interesting than I am?” She shifts under the covers and Dom groans.
“No, not really,” he relents, rolling himself on top of her. For a moment he holds her there, clutching at her. She feels so solid and real under his fingertips.
“I missed you,” he whispers.
“Don’t leave me, then,” she tells him softly. “Then you won’t miss me so much.”
He kisses her hard now, hands playing with the bottom of her shirt. She encourages him with a moan, letting him slip off her top easily. She shimmies out of her pants with a smirk, and then goes to work on his shirt. Small fingers glide in the space between his shirt and his skin-Cobb shudders in response.
“I can’t do this,” he finally blurts out. Ariadne looks at him, shocked. “I can’t do this with you.”
She sits up on the bed, tucking her arms around her naked person.
“It’s me, isn’t it,” she says softly. “I always knew you’d get tired of me eventually. I’m not close to what Mal was.”
“No!” Cobb says in an almost shout. “Ariadne, you can’t believe that I could ever compare the two of you-“
And it’s true: he could never compare the incandescent, radiant dark haired woman he had fallen in love with so many years ago, the mother of his children, the woman that had slowly lost her mind in the real world to a fantasy… to a dark haired girl just old enough to be called a woman, a girl that has also, slowly lost her mind to a fantasy…
Perhaps they are similar than Cobb had originally thought. Perhaps Cobb has a type.
“I’m sorry I’m not enough,” she says, attempting to escape the confines of the covers.
He grabs her arm.
“You are,” he whispers. “Enough, I mean.” He pulls her back down to his half naked form. “You are.”
When he slips off her panties, he feels the guilt begin to set in. She lets him do the work now, unsure after his latest outburst. Cobb presses a kiss against the edge of her cheek, letting his nose trail against the skin of her neck as he slips downward.
“You are extraordinary,” he tells her.
“You’re just saying that because I’m a good architect,” she says, trying to brush off the compliment.
“No. You’re a damn good architect, but I can think of one better,” Cobb says with a smile, clearly indicating his own work. Ariadne grins and crinkles her nose in response. “You are extraordinary. You’re a survivor, Ariadne. You know what it takes to keep going. It’s a strength I wish I had more of.” He leans forward so that their bodies are perfectly aligned. “If you remember nothing about this night, remember this-you are going to get through this.”
Ariadne shakes her head back and forth, smiling sadly. “We’ve done this a thousand times, Dom… don’t be silly.’” She pulls him inside her, gasping at the sensation.
He moves within her soundlessly, save the few moans that erupt from his mouth every so often. It’s only after they’ve both come that he encounters that sinking feeling in full force.
“That felt real,” Ariadne whispers to Cobb, both staring up at the dark ceiling.
“It was,” Cobb says simply.
“I love you,” she sighs, spent and exhausted. In response, he kisses her temple. Content, she snuggles against his side.
Cobb barely sleeps that night. Contrition keeps his eyes open till daybreak.
Cobb and Ariadne wake up tangled in each other. Cobb’s legs are haphazardly strewn along with Ariadne’s, his knee nicely tucked between her thighs. His arms have wound themselves protectively around her naked chest. His chin rests atop the crown of her head.
It would be easy to live this way.
Cobb considers waking her immediately and telling her the truth: that he was here to bring her back to the real world, that he had impersonated her imaginary version of him, that he had taken advantage of her in her weakest moment, and that she should be well rid of him once she had her full faculties again. Instead, he slips out of bed and makes coffee.
The smell of it seems to wake her. She approaches him from behind, naked, save a thin light blue robe.
“Morning,” she says softly, nuzzling her nose in the space between his shoulder blades. Cobb inhales sharply, reveling in her touch.
“Morning,” he replies, turning and handing her a mug of steaming coffee. She places it on the counter untouched.
“Not necessary for what I had in mind,” she says archly. Cobb squints down at her. She lifts the hem of her robe suggestively.
“Oh really,” he laughs, the innuendo unmissed. A sudden barrage of guilt hits him and the smile fades from his face.
“Really, really,” she grins, taking him by the hand toward the bathroom. “The shower’s already running.”
Dom stops himself before he goes any further.
“No, you go on in first,” he tells her. “I need to find something.” Ariadne looks at him strangely before heading to the shower alone.
Cobb finishes his coffee while he listens to the sounds of the shower running and the hum of Ariadne’s voice singing along to a nameless tune. What he really, truly fears is that in telling her he would shatter some deep, inner image of him that would send her spiraling into an abyss of falsehood that limbo tends not to discourage but to cherish and cultivate. To wake her, he would have to make her realize the dream on her own.
He decides then and there that finding her totem is the first thing on his agenda.
Cobb wanders into the living room of Ariadne’s self-constructed apartment and wonders if it looks anything like the place where she lives in the real world. On the coffee table in the center of the room is a chess set. Cobb gulps as he hears the sound of the shower turning off.
Taking a seat on the couch in front of the board, he waits for her to emerge from the bathroom. When she does, it takes a great deal of strength to remain sitting and not to take her into his arms and reintroduce her to the bedroom.
“Is it time for chess already?” Ariadne laughs, curling up next to him. “We could play a different game instead.”
Cobb takes her hand that has been slowly gliding up his chest and sets it down gingerly by her side.
“No, not-not really in the mood for that right now,” he says awkwardly.
Ariadne stiffens her back and leans away from him.
“Well, I suppose you could do with another loss,” Ariadne sighs, pushing forward a bronze pawn. “You always let me win, I don’t know why we even play anymore.”
Cobb raises an eyebrow, his interest peaked. “Maybe this time will be different,” he says in a deliberately slow voice. Ariadne laughs, looking at him rather pityingly.
“Alright, Dom… if you say so,” she laughs as he moves a knight forward two spaces and over one.
Cobb thinks back on the time during his youth that he spent playing chess: how he had grown up playing the game with his paternal uncle, learning the all the tricks necessary to deceive his opponents. In a lot of ways, to Cobb, chess was very similar to extraction-but Cobb had never talked to Ariadne about his past as a chess player. She couldn’t know about his expertise, thus her subconscious image of him would not have the skills to beat her.
But Cobb-the real Cobb-certainly did.
Ariadne stands up sharply, backing away from Cobb with a staggered gait.
“This is wrong,” she tells him angrily. Cobb is standing now as well, having just played a well-constructed checkmate strategy flawlessly. She feels like the walls of her chest are caving in, like the room is not big enough to contain her rage and confusion.
“Ariadne, you need to breath,” Cobb tells her, trying to stop her panic attack before it begins. He reaches out a hand towards her, but she swats it away.
“Don’t touch me!” she shrieks. “Don’t touch me.”
“Alright!” Cobb yells back, hands up. “Alright, you win. Just-just listen to me. You’re confused right now, and-”
“I’m confused? You’re the one who’s acting so strangely, Dom!” Ariadne hisses at him, one hand placed bracingly over her heart, as if to shield it from him. “You’re horrible at chess.”
“No,” Cobb says slowly. “You only thought I was.”
Ariadne freezes. “Now I’m really lost.”
“Ariadne,” he says, gazing into her eyes helplessly, “where’s your totem?”
“Totem?” she asks. “Non-sequitor much?”
“Let me refresh your memory,” Cobb offers, pulling out his own top. “A totem is generally a small object that one can use to differentiate between reality and dreams. You once called it-“
“An elegant solution for keeping track of reality,” Ariadne blurts out. Clapping her hand over her mouth, she stares at him with wide eyes.
Excited, Cobb starts toward her. Ariadne takes as many steps backward as he takes forward.
“Stay where you are,” she says in a low voice. Cobb doesn’t move an inch.
“You are dreaming right now, Ariadne,” Cobb tells her firmly. “If you could find your totem, it would prove to you the thing that I will never convince you of: that this place isn’t real.”
“Shut up,” she says, tears flooding her eyes. “Shut up. You’re not Cobb. You’re different. You’re lying to me!”
“I’m not the man you thought I was,” Cobb says. “You created a projection of me down here, Ariadne-I’m real. I’ve come here, to limbo, to bring you back to reality.”
Ariadne’s face contorts into a sob. She sinks to her knees, emotionally spent. Cobb approaches her cautiously, but she remains on the floor, desolate.
“Tell me you’re lying,” she pleads. “Tell me this was real. That I didn’t just waste the last three years of my life living a lie.”
He cradles her once again in his arms, but this time she stiffens in revulsion at his embrace.
“You were acting strange last night,” she says slowly in realization. “You-you switched with my… my projection, last night.” She gazes up at him accusatorily. “And you still had sex with me.” She comes to a stand. “You took advantage of me.”
Cobb does not refute her words. There’s little he can say to justify his actions.
“How dare you,” she growls at him, pushing him aside and walking toward the door. “How dare you. You-you disgust me, Dom Cobb.”
When she leaves, Cobb does not expect her to return, but he also feels that he has lost the right to go after her. Instead, he waits.
She returns three days later.
“I want to find my totem,” is all she says in greeting. Cobb nods his head curtly, letting her direct the conversation. “You’ve done little to inspire my trust, Mr. Cobb,” she goes on. “In fact, you’ve dug yourself a deep hole out of which I doubt you’ll emerge. How can I know if this world is truly, as you claim, fake, without my totem to tell me?”
“You can’t. That’s why Mal invented them,” Cobb says. His voice is ridden with guilt, an emotion that he’s become rather accustomed to.
“I think-I think my totem was a chess piece,” Ariadne says in an attempt to recall her past life.
“It was. You hollowed it out, made it so that only you knew its heft,” Cobb tells her. An odd gleam appears in his eye. “I have an idea.”
He puts all the chess pieces away, save the two bronze bishops, which he does not touch.
“The point of having a totem is that only you should know how they work. Only you should know how they feel-and you should, deep down, know this already,” Cobb explains slowly. “I know what your totem is-a golden bishop, that you hollowed to make unique. Now, feel these two pieces.”
Ariadne grasps each bishop in her hand, a wary look on her face. “One is heavier,” she says at last.
“I’m going to try to take your totem now, Ariadne,” Cobb tells her. “You should be able to stop me.”
“But how?” Ariadne asks in exasperation. “If I don’t know which is which-“
“You’ll know,” Cobb says shortly. Slowly, he lets his hands approach both chess pieces.
Just before his fingers can enclose on the left hand bishop, Ariadne snatches it away.
“Oh my God,” she breathes. “Oh my God.”
It is like a damn breaking-at first, a trickle of memories begin to drip down through her mind’s eye-her grandfather telling her sailor stories, teaching her how to tie the boat to the dock; her mother, reading Keats on her deathbed until she couldn’t hold the book up any longer-and then they come faster and faster-schoolwork until three in the morning; old friends who laugh until they cried; “A kind of work placement?”; extraction; PASIV; inception, limbo oh God oh God oh God-until the dam has burst, and all Ariadne can think about is the past and how she has so conveniently chosen to ignore it… until now.
Cobb smiles, eyes glassy with emotion.
“I remember,” she breathes. She holds out her empty hand to Cobb, and he grips it tightly. “I told you I could find Saito on my own.” Tears well up in her eyes. “I shot you. I’m sorry.”
“You thought you were saving me,” Cobb says softly. He clears his throat. “This conversation should be continued at a later date. Right now, we need to find Saito-his vitals in reality are dropping fast. We’re his only chance at survival.”
“And your only chance at a happy ending,” Ariadne murmurs. Cobb nods his head only slightly. “Then let’s get going,” she says.
“You know the way?” he asks. She nods.
“Though I haven’t trod that path in some time,” she adds.
They climb the crag together. Each foot steps in tandem with that of the other. They don’t talk about the events of the previous night, but their actions hang over them like a dark cloud, ominous of the fall out yet to occur. Ariadne may have taken his hand earlier, but Cobb still has a huge mistake to account for. He isn’t sure he can explain himself. He hopes she will forgive him.
They take another step upward.
She doesn’t want to think about the amount of time she spent pretending. She wants to believe it never happened, and in a way, it hadn’t. But was that not just another sort of pretending? A deep shame bubbles within her at how easily her mind had betrayed her, how easily she succumbed.
When they finally reach the top, Cobb pulls Ariadne up with a single arm. Before they begin to approach the mansion, Ariadne lets her hand grab a chunk of Cobb’s shirt before she can rethink her decision.
“We don’t tell them about last night,” she says softly. “Arthur, Eames, and the rest. We won’t say what happened.”
“Ariadne,” Cobb begins, but she places a small finger on his lips to shush him.
“If we tell them, that will make it real,” she murmurs. “I don’t want it to be real. This place-this goddamn, forsaken place… it’s not real. Nothing that happens here is real, then. End of story.”
“We should tell them,” Cobb disagrees. “The guilt of not-I just. I don’t know-“
“That’s your punishment, then,” Ariadne says, almost cruelly. “Live with the guilt, Cobb… you seem to be good at that.”
Silence rings between them for a long moment. Cobb feels as though his limbs are being chopped off one by one.
“You found me. That’s what we’ll tell them,” Ariadne says firmly.
“Arthur knows about the projection,” Cobb chokes out.
“Then we’ll tell them about the projection too,” Ariadne adapts. “Nothing more.”
“They’re going to ask,” Cobb trails off.
“Let them,” she finishes. Her eyes lock with his. “If you care about me, you’ll do me this small favor, Cobb. Save me the embarrassment of being the victim. Let me stand on my own two feet.”
All Cobb can do is nod in agreement.
A hundred feet away, a Japanese sniper takes out two figures on the verge of crossing the threshold of Saito’s estate. Two clicks of a tranquilizer gun later, the intruders are prostrate on the ground, unconscious. The sniper murmurs into a walkie-talkie attached to the fabric on his shoulder, and five men emerge from the surrounding rocky terrain to collect their quarry.
When Ariadne wakes up, she’s tied to a chair. Next to her is a conscious Cobb, who is staring at the man sitting across from them. Saito’s grey streak across his temple has become more prominent since the last time Ariadne laid eyes on him.
“Awake, I see,” Saito announces to the room. Cobb’s eyes dart toward her for a brief instant, then flick back to Saito.
“Saito,” Cobb says. Saito leans forward across the table.
“You remind me of someone I used to know, stranger,” Saito says, slightly confused. “Someone I used to employ. Someone I trusted to complete an important job.”
“So you do remember,” Cobb says softly.
“That was years ago,” Saito dismisses with a wave of his hand. “Too long ago to be real.”
“But it was real!” Ariadne blurts out. Cobb and Saito turn to stare at her.
“You had your chance, little girl,” Saito says after a moment’s awkward silence. “Don’t think I forgot our encounter.”
Ariadne’s mouth is left hanging open while Cobb tries a different approach.
“Somewhere up there,” Cobb says in an authoritative tone, “you are comatose. Down here you may be in control, but up there you are so incapacitated they’ve got you hooked to a respirator. You’re dying, Saito. You need to save your own life-by waking up.”
Cobb stands. A guard at Saito’s left lifts a gun, but Saito waves him down. The Japanese man’s eyes seem to be tied to Cobb.
“Let us be young men together again,” Cobb pleads. “Let’s wake up from this nightmare.”
Saito clears his throat. Cobb’s sincerity is palpable.
“You are much more confident that this world is… false, than the girl was,” Saito admits, clearly unnerved.
Ariadne feels her eyes burn at her failure.
“And where does she fit in?” Saito asks suddenly in a coarse voice. Ariadne doesn’t realize who he’s talking about for a moment; then she realizes Saito is referring to her.
Ariadne looks to Cobb to answer. Cobb clears his throat.
“I came for her, too,” Cobb responds, as if that was all the explanation necessary.
Saito stands.
“If this is true, how do you propose we ‘wake’?” he asks derisively.
“We need to die. Some people say it’s as easy as falling asleep,” Cobb says in a low voice. “I escaped once by gunshot. Once by train.”
“By train?” Saito asks inquisitively.
“I don’t like trains,” Cobb says automatically. “We won’t be taking that route again.”
“What about jumping?” Ariadne asks. “Seems easy enough.”
“You go first,” Saito sneers. Cobb shrugs.
“Okay,” he says.
“Not you,” Saito corrects. He points a finger at Ariadne. “Her.”
They climb to the top of a steep cliff that Ariadne can see from her apartment on the horizon. Guards surround Saito, but at the same time Cobb walks with him in tandem, trying desperately to convince the guarded man that he is asleep.
Ariadne breathes in slowly as she steps to the precipice. The cliff is tall, tall enough for a fatal impact. She begins to feel her breathing quicken and suddenly she feels Cobb standing behind her.
“I’ll be right behind you,” he murmurs in her ear. “Do you have your totem?”
She nods, hand clutching at it within her pocket.
“Concentrate on that,” he tells her. He reaches out to grab her hand, but she snatches it away.
“Don’t,” she says in a low voice. “Don’t.” She can’t be close to him right now. She has to do this on her own.
Cobb exhales and steps back.
“T.S. Eliot wrote once that the way up is the way down,” he tells her. “Remember those words. By jumping, you’re going to emerge from this haze of horror. You have to dirty yourself to be reborn, Ariadne. You’ve got to be brave.”
She doesn’t respond, but his words hold a truth that gives her strength. She inches forward and waits. She always waits.
“Do it,” Saito commands. “Or is this place more real than you say?”
“Ariadne-” Cobb calls.
She lets herself fall. The wind rushes between her limbs, and for a moment, she feels as though she’s flying-
Ariadne wakes up gasping for air. Eames, Arthur, and an unknown woman are all standing over her, looking excited.
“That bloody brilliant idiot,” Eames exclaims rather paradoxically to Arthur, who looks bemused, but pleased. “He did it, that cheeky bastard.” He directs his attention to Ariadne, a grin nigh splitting his face in two. “Hello, love. Welcome back to the waking world. Did you miss me?”
“She’s awake?” calls Yusuf from Saito’s bedside.
Ariadne opens her mouth to respond, but all that comes out of her throat is a deep choking sound. She splutters and tries again.
“Hi guys,” she whispers hoarsely.
“Hey yourself,” Arthur says with a smile. Ariadne feels a weight against her side; she looks down to see a still unconscious Cobb.
“They should be coming soon,” Ariadne informs them. As if on cue, Saito’s monitor starts blinking rapidly. The woman-a nurse, clearly part of the operation-attends to him, taking the man off the respirator. Saito begins choking out words: “That-rat-bastard!”
“Must be talking about Cobb,” Arthur laughs.
In a moment, Cobb stumbles into consciousness-literally: he slides off the side of Ariadne’s bed and onto the linoleum hospital floor.
“Shit,” he murmurs. Glancing around, he grants Saito a guilty stare. “Sorry, Saito, but I had to get you off that cliff somehow.”
“You didn’t push him,” Eames questions with a gasp. When Cobb doesn’t deny it, Eames has a rather impressed look on his face. “You did. Nice. Very classy.”
Once Saito recovers his faculties, he does thank Cobb for a job well done, albeit begrudgingly.
“If I ever need to be pushed off a cliff, I know whom to call,” he wheezes with a laugh. Even Arthur chuckles. Yusuf makes no noise at all, merely clutches at Saito’s arm for dear life.
It’s when Saito requests a phone that the nurse objects.
“Sir, you are too weak-” she cries out, but Saito raises a hand, and that’s all the admonishment she needs to back off.
“I have strength enough to make one phone call,” Saito wheezes. Cobb’s heart feels as though it’s about to fly from his chest as Saito takes his cell phone and begins to dial. Ariadne grasps his hand, squeezing it so tight as to make indentations in his skin from the edges of her nails.
A few short words in Japanese, and Cobb is a free man.
When Saito gives Cobb a nod, Cobb turns to the corner of the room and heaves a great sob. The rest of the team graciously elects to turn away from the scene of the man breaking down long enough for Cobb to compose himself. Clearing his throat curtly, Cobb finally turns around, a grateful expression etched upon his face.
“Thank you,” he says vehemently. “Thank you.”
“Thank you, Mr. Cobb,” Saito says, grinning. “Now let me take care of those guards.”
“The police, too,” Arthur adds with a grin. Saito nearly rolls his eyes.
“You all really know the definition of discrete,” Saito sighs, holding out his hand for a cell phone.
Yusuf doesn’t leave Saito’s side while Saito explains to both his bodyguards and the LAPD that these men who had broken into his room were not the men who had broken in, but had arrived, he says with a wheeze, “just in time, to administer a special medicine for my heart condition. Now leave them alone, you absolute vultures.”
After Ariadne and Saito are discharged from the hospital, the whole team takes up camp in the Cobb household (save Saito, who conveniently finds a hotel room for only two, which he, also conveniently, offers to Yusuf who, even more conveniently, graciously accepts).
When Cobb sees his children for the first time, even Eames sheds a tear or two (which he later on denies vehemently).
“Daddy! Daddy, we missed you!” they tell him, ecstatic, jumping up into his arms.
For a few minutes, all Cobb can mutter are sweet nothings-declarations of love seem to spout from him lips every three seconds, as if to make up for lost time. Reluctant to put them down, he carries them around the house until his arms ache-and still he does not let them go. Arthur follows immediately after Cobb. The kids clearly recognize him and credit the point man for bringing their father home.
“Arthur is the best uncle in the whole world! He brought Daddy back to us!” James pronounces to the room. Arthur laughs, shaking his head back and forth.
“I’m happy to take the credit,” Arthur laughs, “but you need to be thanking your new Uncle Saito.”
“Uncle Saito?” Eames asks, eyebrows raised.
“He probably deserves the title more than I do,” Arthur admits.
“I appear to have many brothers,” Cobb laughs. “You too, Eames. Consider yourself an Uncle.”
“I’m too young to be an uncle,” Eames sniffs, and the whole room cracks up, save a quiet young woman in the corner of the room, nursing her wounded heart.
Ariadne had walked into the Cobb household of her own volition, but it remains clear throughout the day that she is wary of the place. Hours later, long after the kids have fallen fast asleep, she says her first words since entering the house.
“I need to be alone,” she tells them all. They watch her leave, the padding of her feet growing faint with distance. Eames turns to Cobb expectantly.
“What?” Cobb asks, perturbed. Arthur sighs and starts busying himself with the coffee pot. Eames takes Cobb to the corner of the room, one hand on the small of his back directing him.
“The last thing that girl needs right now is space,” Eames advises softly. “She’s had years of space down there. What she needs is someone to tether her to reality. What she needs… is you,” Eames says, almost all in one breath. Cobb raises his eyebrows.
“I think the last thing she needs is me, Mr. Eames. And since when did you get so philosophical?” he asks in surprise.
Eames’s eyes flick toward Arthur before returning to Cobb. “Since I realized that there are people in my life that I’d go to limbo and back for,” he admits in a murmur.
Cobb’s eyes widen briefly in realization. “Oh,” he says softly. “Oh. Well.” Cobb does nothing for a moment. Eames is looking at him like the weight of the world hangs in his reaction. Cobb puts a hand on Eames’ shoulder in support and walks purposefully out of the room.
“This damn machine will be the death of me,” Arthur growls from across the room.
“Need help, darling?” Eames drawls. “From an imbecile like me?”
“Oh, shut up,” Arthur hisses. “And get over here.”
Eames attempts not to glow as he approaches Arthur and the dreaded coffee maker.
Cobb opens the door to the guest room to see Ariadne sitting on the bed, alone. She looks worse for the wear, and Cobb can’t help but think that a large part of the blame for her condition should be directed toward him.
“Please leave,” she begs, her voice cracking.
“I can’t do that,” Cobb says. “If I thought that I could make things better if I just left you alone, trust me, I would. But letting things fester is never a good idea. You know that.”
“I thought you’d do me the decency of letting it go,” she hisses, unexpected anger roaring up from deep inside her. She claps her hand over her mouth, shocked at her own outburst. Cobb puts a hand over his eyes briefly.
“I’m sorry,” Cobb says at last, emotion clouding his voice so that his words come out sob-like. “I’m sorry, Ariadne. What I did was inexcusable. If I were a better man, you would never have been violated in that way. Not by me. Not by anybody.”
Ariadne has a steady stream of tears dripping from her eyes. She doesn’t seem to notice.
“When I first saw you, the only thing running through my head was She’s here. I’ve found her. But you were so confused… and I knew that I couldn’t shatter your mirage. I failed once to bring a woman I loved back from limbo, I wasn’t about to fail again.”
“But you brought Mal back,” Ariadne says softly.
“No. Not all of her,” Cobb corrects, wiping his eyes on his sleeve. “So I didn’t tell you that I was the real me. I let you believe that I was the person you had conjured. And I don’t think I will ever forgive myself for it.”
Ariadne doesn’t interrupt this time when Cobb pauses.
“Some part of me thought that if I told you right then and there, you would reject me. Reject the freedom that I was going to offer you. Reject reality. I told myself I couldn’t risk that. But to say that I made the decision without ulterior motives in mind would be a lie. And I won’t lie to you again, Ariadne. I made you that promise, albeit silently, when I disguised myself as your figment.”
Ariadne unlatches the door and lets Cobb inside. She sits on the bed, looking at him with teary eyes.
Cobb closes the door behind him.
“After you shot me,” Cobb says softly. Ariadne winces, but Cobb puts up a hand as if to soften the words. “Afterwards, I was unbearable. Ask the rest of the team-I was behaving so erratically, they put me on suicide watch.” Ariadne covers her mouth with an open palm, eyes wide. “It wasn’t because I lost my kids-I lost them when I lost Mal. That loss had grown so familiar that it felt almost comfortable.” He smiles sadly to himself for a moment. “It was losing you, Ariadne, failing you. You made yourself a part of my life, and I let you. I had to get you back… by whatever means necessary.”
He sits next to her on the bed. Ariadne covers one of his clenched fists with an open palm.
“I don’t know if I will ever forgive you for what happened down there,” she says at last. “But I do know that it wasn’t all you. I practically begged you to have sex with me, and honestly, if you hadn’t… given in, I don’t know how I would have reacted. You sacrificed your integrity for me.”
“I sacrificed my integrity to defile you,” he whispers. “Not one of my brightest moments.”
“You saved me from limbo. Not a lot of guys can do that,” she says, a small smile on her lips. “And I also know,” she says, a hitch in her breath, “that I love you.” She squeezes his hand to emphasize her point. “Let’s call it even.”
Dom exhales a breath he hadn’t realized he’d been holding.
“It would be a little redundant to tell you that I love you, as my actions have all been pointing in that direction,” Cobb says in a rather word-vomit-y fashion. “But I do. Love you, I mean. With what’s left of my heart, I do love you.”
“Well that’s a shit ton of qualifiers… but still. Good to know,” Ariadne says with a teary grin.
Cobb pulls her into a hug. She shudders.
“How can this be real,” she breathes into his neck. “If everything I want is at my fingertips… couldn’t this be a dream?”
Cobb shakes his head. “Where’s your totem?”
Ariadne lifts it up.
“How does it feel?” he asks her.
She doesn’t answer for a moment.
“It feels real,” she says finally. “That has to count for something.”
He nods as she untangled herself from his embrace.
“The only way that I’m going to really, truly buy into this reality,” Ariadne tells him, coming to a stand, “is to live. Really live. Explore the new, rediscover the old…”
She extends a hand back toward him.
“And that all starts with you. If you’ll have me,” she adds. A sweet blush appears on her cheeks.
“I’ll always want you,” he says, taking her hand. She tugs at his hand and he also stands.
“Also good to know,” she says with a laugh. He pulls her into his arms and presses a light kiss against her brow: a promise. She rests her forehead against his for a long while, the two simply sitting together, breathing.
“Now, let’s go and assure Eames and Arthur that we’re both alright,” Ariadne says, breaking the silence. Cobb nods.
They exit the guest room and enter the kitchen with smiles on their faces, which are duly replaced by shocked expressions when they see Arthur and Eames kissing each other frantically against the kitchen counter. Cobb’s mouth hangs open in shock, and Ariadne barely suppresses a giggle.
“Back to the guest room, then?” Ariadne whispers after a moment of quiet staring. Cobb nods, slightly perturbed, and the two of them leave to kitchen hastily, off to the guest room to where they give their story a real happy ending.
Pairing: Ariadne/Cobb, Arthur/Eames, Yusuf/Saito
Genre: Adventure, Romance
Warning: Potential dub-con, sexual content, swearing
Rating: R
Summary: Ariadne chose her fate. But when you're the one left behind, how do you hold on to sanity in the cruel world of limbo? Meanwhile, Dom Cobb and the rest of the team, now fugitives in the United States, are running out of time... soon, saving their fallen teammates will no longer be a feasible option. Cobb, however, is not willing to lose anyone else-and where there's a will, there's a way down.
Part 3: And the Dead Walk
“What is a colony
if not the brutal truth
that when we speak
the graves open.”
Eavan Boland, “Witness”
The break in at the hospital takes a significant amount of planning, and Cobb is impressed at Arthur’s ability to get information on the security system together with such rapidity. In some ways, it feels like Arthur is trying too hard, perhaps attempting to make up for his mistake during the inception job. One part of Cobb wants to tell Arthur that he doesn’t blame him for what happened to Ariadne and Saito, but another, more devious part of Cobb wants to save his friends at whatever cost necessary-and if that meant a guiltier but more efficient Arthur, then so be it.
Yusuf has had the chemicals ready for about three hours before they actually attempt the break in. Cobb hasn’t spoken to the chemist much since their conversation about Rahul, and Yusuf seems keen not to seek Cobb out for another heart-to-heart. Cobb doesn’t mind that much, as he is focused on the task at hand and doesn’t need the distraction of another teammate’s guilty conscience.
Eames is on document forgery this time around, as a forger in particular was not really necessary for the kind of extraction they had in mind. He created rather convincing costumes for the four of them: all dark blue scrubs and white jackets with very official looking ID tags attached to their front pockets. Arthur even got a surgeon’s cap as part of his outfit.
“Seriously?” he asks when Eames hands him the bright paisley cap. They’re changing in the hotel room they’re currently occupying, a mere block away from the hospital where Ariadne and Saito lay comatose.
“Oy, don’t act so offended. I made that from my favorite shirt,” Eames says, peaked. Arthur raises his eyebrows, shuts up, and ties the cap around his head. They arm themselves sparingly, as the scrubs don’t provide much wiggle room for hiding guns. Somehow Eames manages to hide a grenade launcher on his person.
“But how?” Yusuf asks, one part distracted (he is having trouble shoving a pistol in a leather strap he had tied around his ankle), one part intrigued.
“Don’t ask,” Eames grunts.
Yusuf winces. “Ugh,” he says in reply, now all parts disgusted.
“What if we need a grenade launched?!” Eames hisses. Cobb shrugs, tucking a long pistol into the back of his pants. His threshold for discretion is at a minimum.
They get in easily enough; Eames makes a joke with the security guards by the door, putting them at their ease with his silver tongue as they casually glance over the forged IDs. Arthur clutches at the tell-tale silver briefcase in his right hand, white-knuckled. Yusuf manages to tuck his chemical vials into his pockets so that his scrubs sag down around his hips; every so often he has to hike up his pants.
“Have a good one,” the guards call after them once they’re all through the door and Eames has cajoled them sufficiently. Arthur directs them beyond that point: he shuttles them all into an elevator. Cobb holds the door-close button down until the elevator shuts in front of them.
“We’re on good time,” Arthur says curtly. “She’s on the third floor, he’s on the fifth in a very protected suite. The plan is simple-grab Ariadne’s cot and bring her up to the fifth floor. The real issues will become apparent once we get upstairs.”
“That’s where I come in,” Yusuf grins, holding up a vial of blue liquid. “This should knock out the guards on the fifth floor for about an hour. Just be sure to have your gas masks on the second the elevator doors open up on the fifth.”
“Once we get into the room, we’re going to have about forty-five minutes before the guards wake up,” Arthur continues.
“And about three minutes before the police get here,” Cobb adds.
“I think we’ll be able to hold them off with the extraordinarily valuable Saito as a both hostage and collateral,” Eames grins, patting Cobb on the shoulder.
The elevator beeps.
“Showtime,” Eames murmurs.
The doors open. Cobb’s authoritative glare sends nurses both swooning and scurrying off to find out the name of the mysterious new attending. The team follows Cobb, Arthur whispering directions into Cobb’s ear subtly.
When they reach the room, their contact-a pretty brunette nurse with a fierce look about her-is already waiting.
“Claire,” she offers. Arthur shakes her hand and begins to explain exactly what she’ll be doing with the PASIV machine. Arthur slips her a check. When she reads it, her eyes widen.
“That’s half our promised price. And there’s bonus in it for you if we all get out of here alive,” Arthur tells her. She nods her head over and over again, in shock at the amount of money in her hands.
Cobb pays no attention to the nurse. His eyes are on the small woman lying in the bed before them: her hair fans out behind her head, a wispy crown encircling her visage. Her cheeks are pale; besides the breath sounds coming from her mouth, she shows very few signs of life.
“We’ve got her,” Eames says, grinning. But Cobb knows better.
“Not yet,” he tells them. “Let’s get her upstairs.”
Claire pushes Ariadne out of the room with Arthur behind her wheeling the other end of the bed. They all enter the elevator and seem to take a collective breath of trepidation as Eames presses the button for the fifth floor, entering a pass code with a deft hand and swiping his ID through a scanner next to the digit five. Yusuf is at point when the doors open, canister of knockout gas in hand. The dark skinned man nods and the rest of the team slides on gas masks. Cobb places one on the unconscious Ariadne’s face with a tender expression.
The plan goes off without a hitch-well, mostly: a bullet grazes Eames’s right leg (courtesy of one of Saito’s men) before Yusuf can knock him out. Arthur has to lug Eames into Saito’s high security hospital room while shooting tranquilizer darts over his shoulder at the men chasing them.
Ariadne’s bed is settled next to Saito’s. Cobb notes that Yusuf’s pallor seems to vanish once he gets in close proximity to the Japanese businessman. Yusuf keeps his gun pointed at Saito, but the menace is half-hearted.
“He doesn’t look good,” Yusuf murmurs, brushing a few strands of hair out of Saito’s face. Yusuf glances at a monitor to his left. “His vitals aren’t very strong. We need to be quick. He’ll recover better out of the dream.”
They settle into chairs around the PASIV device. Cobb sits himself in a chair by Ariadne’s head. He takes her hand with one of his own, then gestures toward Claire to attach the IV. She does so with an experienced hand.
“See you down there,” Cobb murmurs, before settling his head against Ariadne’s side.
Cobb finds Arthur first; he always finds Arthur first. It’s part of why Arthur makes an excellent point man-he knows how to stick with Cobb even while moving through various levels of consciousness.
“Where are the others,” Cobb says in less of a question and more of a command.
“My prediction is a couple of blocks away, but we both know how Eames likes to get lost between dream states,” Arthur growls, clicking the safety off his gun.
“I don’t know if you’ll need that,” Cobb tells him. “I don’t think this level has been inhabited, even by Ariadne’s subconscious, in a long while.” Their surroundings appear about as blank as Cobb’s gaze.
Arthur doesn’t lower his gun, but his expression is eased slightly.
“Let’s just find the others,” Arthur says at last. It doesn’t take too long-Eames has managed to forge away his leg wound, with great effort.
“Still hurts like a bitch, but I’m less conspicuous now, right?” Eames laughs, gritting his teeth all the while. Arthur steadies him with an arm. Yusuf uncorks a vial and opens the PASIV once more.
“Be careful, gentlemen,” Yusuf tells them as he hooks Eames, Cobb, and Arthur up once again. His eyes remain on Cobb as he continues: “Find them. Bring them home.”
Cobb nods before falling into an induced sleep.
This time they all wake up together. Eames doesn’t even have to forge the wound away, they’re at such a deep level.
“A dream within a dream,” Eames grins. “Never fails to impress.”
“We’re not done yet,” Cobb says curtly. “She’s not here. She’s…”
“We know,” Arthur says softly, placing a hand on Cobb’s shoulder. “Let’s get the PASIV set up.”
The third time around, it’s just Arthur and Cobb going down to limbo.
“I should go by myself,” Cobb says at one point to Eames and Arthur. The point man and the forger give each other knowing looks.
“I’m going with you, and you’ll have to shoot me here and now if you want to change that,” Arthur says breezily. “Course, Eames wouldn’t appreciate having to go down in my stead.”
“Limbo’s not really my cup of tea,” Eames says with a dark chuckle. For a moment, Cobb considers Arthur’s options. Then he sighs, nodding.
“Fine,” he says gruffly. Arthur breaks a rare smile and crouches into a seated position, arm out for Eames to administer the PASIV. Cobb sits next to him and proffers his arm to Eames as well.
“Go get ‘em, boys,” Eames tells them rather lovingly as the two men slip into unconsciousness.
Once they’re both asleep, Eames lights up a well-deserved cigarette. Blowing the smoke casually into rings around the two dreamers, Eames drags a chair next to them, massaging his right leg furtively.
Cobb can feel the sea beneath him, rushing forward and backward with the awesome strength of the tide. The water is salty and bone-chillingly cold. Cobb’s lungs feel contracted, small, as if half their normal size. He opens his lips in an attempt to inhale but is met with a mouthful of ocean water. Spluttering, Cobb can’t breath. He can’t feel his extremities either, so swimming is useless. Suddenly Cobb feels a hand grasping at the back of his jacket, bringing him to his feet. He looks over his shoulder to see a doused Arthur, unnerved and shivering, staring down at him.
They approach the shore slowly, one staggering footstep at a time. Slogging through the knee-deep water for a while, they finally emerge from the salty expanse exhausted. Cobb falls to his hands and knees, coughing up water onto the sand in front of him. Somewhere in the background, he can hear Arthur doing the same. Eventually, the two stand.
“Do you recognize this place?” Arthur asks him, brushing the sand from his palms.
Cobb looks out at the landscape. “I don’t.” Arthur raises a quizzical eyebrow, so Cobb clarifies: “And that scares the shit out of me.”
They walk toward the city on their horizon.
There’s a pedestrian bridge that bears them into the main square on the edge of the city. It reminds Cobb of St. Mark’s Square in Venice: the large, open space connected to the water appears to stretch the city out infinitely. Silently, he approves of the architectural design of this novel limbo that had fallen out of Ariadne’s mind.
Aloud, he confirms Arthur’s darkest suspicions: “This hasn’t been my limbo for a long time.”
Arthur cocks his gun and takes the lead, a couple of steps in front of Cobb.
They walk in a straight line toward the heart of the city, where a tall building stands, blighting an otherwise pleasant skyline. It seems to cut the sky in two: on one side, the clouds are grey and ominous; on the other, warm sunset tones hang in the sky as if painted by an enormous paintbrush.
“How do you know she’ll be there,” Arthur calls to Cobb, keeping his head straight ahead, alert.
“That’s where I’d be,” Cobb says simply. “I’d want to be able to look on my creation from above.”
Arthur begins to shrug his shoulders in acceptance, but his body freezes mid-gesture.
“There’s someone coming toward us. Eleven o’clock,” Arthur hisses. Cobb’s eyes immediately focus on man coming toward them at a brisk pace. Cobb feels around for a gun in the back of his pants, grabbing it quickly at pointing it at the man. Arthur keeps his gun trained on the speck as it moves closer and closer toward them.
“Don’t shoot,” it calls out to them. “You’ll regret it!”
Arthur’s eyebrow quirks upward. “What the fuck is going on,” Arthur growls. “Who is that?”
When Cobb sees the man up close, the mere shock is almost enough to make him lose grip of his gun. Arthur, on the other hand, just looks dumbfounded.
Before them stands Dom Cobb: he’s got the same blond hair, the same piercing blue eyes, the same tall stature, the same blind confidence that a man like Cobb earned over years of extracting.
“This is unreal,” Cobb breathes. He shakes his head back and forth, bringing himself back to the present, where Arthur looks horrified.
“I’ve been here for hours, Arthur,” the other Cobb pleads. “Time down here works a little differently. I fell asleep moments before you-down here, that was long enough for me to get lost in this godforsaken place. You’re traveling with a projection. He’s going to kill you-look, he’s got a gun. I, on the other hand, am unarmed.”
Cobb’s gun, however, is pointed as his doppelganger.
“Arthur, don’t listen to him, he’s a figment of Ariadne’s imagination,” Cobb commands at last. Arthur’s lips press together in a firm line, his face full of uncertainty.
“What fresh hell is this,” Arthur breathes, unsure where to point his gun.
In a second, Cobb disarms Arthur. The other Cobb has no trouble figuring out where to point the stolen weapon. It happens so fast that Cobb only has time to shout out a vague, “No!” before Arthur’s corpse falls to the ground, a bullet in his brain.
“Jesus Christ!” Cobb growls, turning back to find the projection but he is gone. For a moment, Cobb jerks his head around, trying to find his attacker once again…
“Gotchya,” says a low voice in his ear. Cobb spins around quickly, knocking Arthur’s gun from his hands-but it’s too late: the other Cobb has already grabbed his gun and tossed it into a canal that edges the street. At last, the two Cobbs face each other, alone and unarmed.
For one sick moment, it’s like looking into a mirror: the replication is so complete, so precise, that Cobb is certain he’s looking into a glass, glaring at his own reflection. It’s when his doppelganger begins smiling at him that Cobb truly understands the gravity of the situation he has fallen into.
“You really shouldn’t have shot Arthur,” Cobb tells the projection.
In response, the projection tackles Cobb to the ground, and the fight commences.
The scuffle takes less than five minutes. The projection is not trained, only knows brute force and aggression-not that those two in combination are ineffective… but to Cobb, his mirror is naïve. How could Ariadne have imagined the kind of combat training the real Cobb had gone through in his youth? There are many reasons that Cobb keeps so many secrets, and this is one of them: only he truly knows himself. And sometimes, that is advantage enough.
Cobb pins his twin beneath him, pressing his knees against the doppelganger’s shoulders, letting his shins fall to the ground between the projection’s arms and torso. With a quick movement, he twists the other Cobb’s neck until he hears the tell tale break of the double’s spinal cord snapping. Breathing hard, he remains on top of the dead projection until he can hear something beyond the sound of his own heavy breathing. It is an odd feeling, killing one’s self. It gives Cobb the willies. Cobb pulls out his totem and lets it spin, perfect in its undisturbed turning, for two minutes before snatching it up again.
“Why the fuck are you here,” he whispers to the dead thing below him. Cobb pats the body down for weapons, but somehow in the scuffle the gun had been lost. The only thing he finds on the corpse is a lone chess piece: a king.
Cobb pockets it and then turns to Arthur’s body. The point man’s fingertips are cold, and his lips are blue.
“I’m sorry,” he murmurs. He folds Arthur’s arms in front of his chest, a final apology. “See you up above.”
Cobb walks away, fingering the king in his right pocket.
Arthur wakes up with the word “fuck” on his lips. He’s back on level two.
“I didn’t expect to see you back so soon. Cobb and Ari on the way?” Eames asks casually. His pants have begun to spot with blood on his right thigh.
“Fucking-fucker! There was a projection down there,” Arthur finally gets out. Eames raises an eyebrow.
“Woah there, darling, you encountered a projection? While dreaming? How shocking,” Eames says with a laugh.
“It was a projection of Cobb, you imbecile,” Arthur hisses, now pacing back and forth in front of Eames.
Realization hits Eames like a truck, knocking the wind out of his chest.
“Fuck,” he breathes.
“He shot me,” Arthur elaborates emotionally. “And now Cobb’s down there with no damn idea what’s going on. If we lose him because I’m the world’s shittiest point man, I swear, Eames-”
“Arthur,” Eames says slowly, trying to calm the point man down. Arthur looks positively stricken with fear and self-loathing.
“What if he doesn’t come back?” Arthur asks Eames plainly.
“We’ll jump that hurtle if and when we meet it,” Eames replies calmly.
“If he dies because of me, I don’t know if-if I’ll-“ Arthur says, his words stopping and starting.
“I know,” Eames says kindly in understanding. “Which is why he better bloody well come back.”
Eames turns his back while Arthur wipes his face, ignoring the sound of the point man’s erratic breathing in favor of Ms. Piaf’s lovely voice singing the kick.
He finds her alone: a wisp of a waif facing the wide expanse of window, stacking a house of improbably balanced cards impossibly high. She is in the penthouse of the building Cobb had immediately suspected her of inhabiting. Her back is turned to him, and he can see the sun setting on the horizon. He doesn’t know or recognize this limbo, this bizarre place from his architect’s subconscious imagination. She is thin, thinner than he remembers her: he imagines this is how she wants to see herself, what her mind’s eye wants most desperately to become. She wears a worn cardigan unbuttoned over a pair of faded jeans. A scarf hangs loosely around her neck, a sight so common that Cobb almost laughs at its appearance. He doesn’t interrupt her, merely savors the feeling of relief that bubbles through his being-she is here. The search is over.
“I know you’re there,” she chuckles, the sound of her voice radiating warmth through Cobb’s core. The extent to which he missed her is a little staggering, and Cobb finds himself off-balance, stumbling.
In a few strides, Cobb has captured her in his arms. He holds her to his body, resting his chin atop the crown of her head, pressing her hair down with a caress of his palm. For a moment, Ariadne is startled-then she relaxes into his grip.
“You’re feeling affectionate today,” she says. Cobb thinks that he can detect an odd sadness in her voice; a melancholy that he realizes has come to define her world.
“I found you,” is what he responds.
“I never go too far,” she murmurs, pulling away from him. Cobb can feel his eyes welling with emotion.
“Sometimes-sometimes, you do,” he whispers, half to himself. Ariadne quirks an eyebrow at him, then shakes her head briskly.
“You’re acting strangely,” she remarks. “My brain must be getting a bit rotted.” She lets a finger trail up Cobb’s chest, an act that surprises him. Cobb feels a deep-rooted shame at his sudden arousal.
“Why don’t you wake up then,” he asks her, burying his guilt, while pressing her hands away from his person.
She looks at him for a long moment and finally answers, “I am awake.”
“But you just said-” Cobb begins.
“You’re confusing me,” she cries out, hands gripping her temples. “You’re not supposed to do that.” Her eyes are filled with tears when she looks up at him. “You’re supposed to make me happy.”
Cobb can feel his resolve breaking underneath what little composure he has left. “I just want to save you,” is what he tells her, raking a hand up and down her arm. She shudders into his caress.
“Don’t need any saving.” He flinches at the lie. She curls into his chest, wrapping her arms around his torso, cheek against his sternum. He reciprocates, pulling her in close. She makes a soft contented sound against his shirt. “Don’t need anything but you.”
“Don’t say that,” Cobb chokes out. He can’t come this close and lose her again. “Come back with me, Ariadne.”
“I’m right here,” she murmurs, looking up into his eyes. “Now kiss me.”
“You need to understand something first,” Cobb says, taking her face in his hands. “You’re not where you think you are. I’m here to bring you back home.”
“Stop it,” Ariadne whimpers, trying to twist her head away from him. “You’re hurting me.”
“I’m trying to help you,” he pleads, forcing her to make eye contact with him by steadying her head with a strong grip.
“Then stop,” she hisses, wrenching her head away from him sharply. “If you can’t love me, then you don’t belong here. So just get out.”
Cobb takes a moment to assess his options. He sees that she’s clearly been affected by her time in limbo-exactly how long had she been down here, in her time, anyway?-and to shatter her misconceptions could be deadly. She thinks you’re the projection you killed, Dom, Cobb thinks to himself. What exactly was he doing with her here?
“Ariadne,” he whispers. “Come here.”
He would pretend, for her. Of all the people in the world, Ariadne is one of the few he would do this for: Cobb thinks for a moment that perhaps for Arthur, he’d make the exception as well. He would take part in this make-believe life until he could convince her of its falseness without shattering her sanity.
He leans down to kiss the girl standing on her toes. When their lips touch, the world stops: literally, the sun stops in its path. Ariadne’s mind has a wicked sense of humor.
How long is this masquerade going to last? Cobb thinks. He feels a two-fold shame that stems from both the idea of deceiving her, and also the fact that he could sense that some sick part of himself was enjoying their intimacy. Then the nausea hits him, like a sucker punch to the gut. It takes a great deal of strength just to remain standing.
“We have all the time in the world,” she laughs against his lips, pressing another kiss against his cheek, and then dropping down onto the soles of her feet to press her lips against the fabric covering his chest in the area near his sternum. She takes him by the hand to a bedroom down the hall. He wobbles in her wake, horrified; he takes in the surroundings cursorily, paying little attention to much else besides the warm body beside him. Taking advantage of a mentally distressed and distraught young adult had not been in the cards for Dominic Cobb, but it also appears that a lot of things are not going according to plan.
This isn’t what he wants-he isn’t even sure how he feels about the girl in reality. In the dream, however, the line between wanting something subconsciously and consciously is blurred to the extent that perhaps, the line never existed at all.
“Stay with me, Dom,” Ariadne murmurs in his ear. “Are your thoughts really more interesting than I am?” She shifts under the covers and Dom groans.
“No, not really,” he relents, rolling himself on top of her. For a moment he holds her there, clutching at her. She feels so solid and real under his fingertips.
“I missed you,” he whispers.
“Don’t leave me, then,” she tells him softly. “Then you won’t miss me so much.”
He kisses her hard now, hands playing with the bottom of her shirt. She encourages him with a moan, letting him slip off her top easily. She shimmies out of her pants with a smirk, and then goes to work on his shirt. Small fingers glide in the space between his shirt and his skin-Cobb shudders in response.
“I can’t do this,” he finally blurts out. Ariadne looks at him, shocked. “I can’t do this with you.”
She sits up on the bed, tucking her arms around her naked person.
“It’s me, isn’t it,” she says softly. “I always knew you’d get tired of me eventually. I’m not close to what Mal was.”
“No!” Cobb says in an almost shout. “Ariadne, you can’t believe that I could ever compare the two of you-“
And it’s true: he could never compare the incandescent, radiant dark haired woman he had fallen in love with so many years ago, the mother of his children, the woman that had slowly lost her mind in the real world to a fantasy… to a dark haired girl just old enough to be called a woman, a girl that has also, slowly lost her mind to a fantasy…
Perhaps they are similar than Cobb had originally thought. Perhaps Cobb has a type.
“I’m sorry I’m not enough,” she says, attempting to escape the confines of the covers.
He grabs her arm.
“You are,” he whispers. “Enough, I mean.” He pulls her back down to his half naked form. “You are.”
When he slips off her panties, he feels the guilt begin to set in. She lets him do the work now, unsure after his latest outburst. Cobb presses a kiss against the edge of her cheek, letting his nose trail against the skin of her neck as he slips downward.
“You are extraordinary,” he tells her.
“You’re just saying that because I’m a good architect,” she says, trying to brush off the compliment.
“No. You’re a damn good architect, but I can think of one better,” Cobb says with a smile, clearly indicating his own work. Ariadne grins and crinkles her nose in response. “You are extraordinary. You’re a survivor, Ariadne. You know what it takes to keep going. It’s a strength I wish I had more of.” He leans forward so that their bodies are perfectly aligned. “If you remember nothing about this night, remember this-you are going to get through this.”
Ariadne shakes her head back and forth, smiling sadly. “We’ve done this a thousand times, Dom… don’t be silly.’” She pulls him inside her, gasping at the sensation.
He moves within her soundlessly, save the few moans that erupt from his mouth every so often. It’s only after they’ve both come that he encounters that sinking feeling in full force.
“That felt real,” Ariadne whispers to Cobb, both staring up at the dark ceiling.
“It was,” Cobb says simply.
“I love you,” she sighs, spent and exhausted. In response, he kisses her temple. Content, she snuggles against his side.
Cobb barely sleeps that night. Contrition keeps his eyes open till daybreak.
Cobb and Ariadne wake up tangled in each other. Cobb’s legs are haphazardly strewn along with Ariadne’s, his knee nicely tucked between her thighs. His arms have wound themselves protectively around her naked chest. His chin rests atop the crown of her head.
It would be easy to live this way.
Cobb considers waking her immediately and telling her the truth: that he was here to bring her back to the real world, that he had impersonated her imaginary version of him, that he had taken advantage of her in her weakest moment, and that she should be well rid of him once she had her full faculties again. Instead, he slips out of bed and makes coffee.
The smell of it seems to wake her. She approaches him from behind, naked, save a thin light blue robe.
“Morning,” she says softly, nuzzling her nose in the space between his shoulder blades. Cobb inhales sharply, reveling in her touch.
“Morning,” he replies, turning and handing her a mug of steaming coffee. She places it on the counter untouched.
“Not necessary for what I had in mind,” she says archly. Cobb squints down at her. She lifts the hem of her robe suggestively.
“Oh really,” he laughs, the innuendo unmissed. A sudden barrage of guilt hits him and the smile fades from his face.
“Really, really,” she grins, taking him by the hand toward the bathroom. “The shower’s already running.”
Dom stops himself before he goes any further.
“No, you go on in first,” he tells her. “I need to find something.” Ariadne looks at him strangely before heading to the shower alone.
Cobb finishes his coffee while he listens to the sounds of the shower running and the hum of Ariadne’s voice singing along to a nameless tune. What he really, truly fears is that in telling her he would shatter some deep, inner image of him that would send her spiraling into an abyss of falsehood that limbo tends not to discourage but to cherish and cultivate. To wake her, he would have to make her realize the dream on her own.
He decides then and there that finding her totem is the first thing on his agenda.
Cobb wanders into the living room of Ariadne’s self-constructed apartment and wonders if it looks anything like the place where she lives in the real world. On the coffee table in the center of the room is a chess set. Cobb gulps as he hears the sound of the shower turning off.
Taking a seat on the couch in front of the board, he waits for her to emerge from the bathroom. When she does, it takes a great deal of strength to remain sitting and not to take her into his arms and reintroduce her to the bedroom.
“Is it time for chess already?” Ariadne laughs, curling up next to him. “We could play a different game instead.”
Cobb takes her hand that has been slowly gliding up his chest and sets it down gingerly by her side.
“No, not-not really in the mood for that right now,” he says awkwardly.
Ariadne stiffens her back and leans away from him.
“Well, I suppose you could do with another loss,” Ariadne sighs, pushing forward a bronze pawn. “You always let me win, I don’t know why we even play anymore.”
Cobb raises an eyebrow, his interest peaked. “Maybe this time will be different,” he says in a deliberately slow voice. Ariadne laughs, looking at him rather pityingly.
“Alright, Dom… if you say so,” she laughs as he moves a knight forward two spaces and over one.
Cobb thinks back on the time during his youth that he spent playing chess: how he had grown up playing the game with his paternal uncle, learning the all the tricks necessary to deceive his opponents. In a lot of ways, to Cobb, chess was very similar to extraction-but Cobb had never talked to Ariadne about his past as a chess player. She couldn’t know about his expertise, thus her subconscious image of him would not have the skills to beat her.
But Cobb-the real Cobb-certainly did.
Ariadne stands up sharply, backing away from Cobb with a staggered gait.
“This is wrong,” she tells him angrily. Cobb is standing now as well, having just played a well-constructed checkmate strategy flawlessly. She feels like the walls of her chest are caving in, like the room is not big enough to contain her rage and confusion.
“Ariadne, you need to breath,” Cobb tells her, trying to stop her panic attack before it begins. He reaches out a hand towards her, but she swats it away.
“Don’t touch me!” she shrieks. “Don’t touch me.”
“Alright!” Cobb yells back, hands up. “Alright, you win. Just-just listen to me. You’re confused right now, and-”
“I’m confused? You’re the one who’s acting so strangely, Dom!” Ariadne hisses at him, one hand placed bracingly over her heart, as if to shield it from him. “You’re horrible at chess.”
“No,” Cobb says slowly. “You only thought I was.”
Ariadne freezes. “Now I’m really lost.”
“Ariadne,” he says, gazing into her eyes helplessly, “where’s your totem?”
“Totem?” she asks. “Non-sequitor much?”
“Let me refresh your memory,” Cobb offers, pulling out his own top. “A totem is generally a small object that one can use to differentiate between reality and dreams. You once called it-“
“An elegant solution for keeping track of reality,” Ariadne blurts out. Clapping her hand over her mouth, she stares at him with wide eyes.
Excited, Cobb starts toward her. Ariadne takes as many steps backward as he takes forward.
“Stay where you are,” she says in a low voice. Cobb doesn’t move an inch.
“You are dreaming right now, Ariadne,” Cobb tells her firmly. “If you could find your totem, it would prove to you the thing that I will never convince you of: that this place isn’t real.”
“Shut up,” she says, tears flooding her eyes. “Shut up. You’re not Cobb. You’re different. You’re lying to me!”
“I’m not the man you thought I was,” Cobb says. “You created a projection of me down here, Ariadne-I’m real. I’ve come here, to limbo, to bring you back to reality.”
Ariadne’s face contorts into a sob. She sinks to her knees, emotionally spent. Cobb approaches her cautiously, but she remains on the floor, desolate.
“Tell me you’re lying,” she pleads. “Tell me this was real. That I didn’t just waste the last three years of my life living a lie.”
He cradles her once again in his arms, but this time she stiffens in revulsion at his embrace.
“You were acting strange last night,” she says slowly in realization. “You-you switched with my… my projection, last night.” She gazes up at him accusatorily. “And you still had sex with me.” She comes to a stand. “You took advantage of me.”
Cobb does not refute her words. There’s little he can say to justify his actions.
“How dare you,” she growls at him, pushing him aside and walking toward the door. “How dare you. You-you disgust me, Dom Cobb.”
When she leaves, Cobb does not expect her to return, but he also feels that he has lost the right to go after her. Instead, he waits.
She returns three days later.
“I want to find my totem,” is all she says in greeting. Cobb nods his head curtly, letting her direct the conversation. “You’ve done little to inspire my trust, Mr. Cobb,” she goes on. “In fact, you’ve dug yourself a deep hole out of which I doubt you’ll emerge. How can I know if this world is truly, as you claim, fake, without my totem to tell me?”
“You can’t. That’s why Mal invented them,” Cobb says. His voice is ridden with guilt, an emotion that he’s become rather accustomed to.
“I think-I think my totem was a chess piece,” Ariadne says in an attempt to recall her past life.
“It was. You hollowed it out, made it so that only you knew its heft,” Cobb tells her. An odd gleam appears in his eye. “I have an idea.”
He puts all the chess pieces away, save the two bronze bishops, which he does not touch.
“The point of having a totem is that only you should know how they work. Only you should know how they feel-and you should, deep down, know this already,” Cobb explains slowly. “I know what your totem is-a golden bishop, that you hollowed to make unique. Now, feel these two pieces.”
Ariadne grasps each bishop in her hand, a wary look on her face. “One is heavier,” she says at last.
“I’m going to try to take your totem now, Ariadne,” Cobb tells her. “You should be able to stop me.”
“But how?” Ariadne asks in exasperation. “If I don’t know which is which-“
“You’ll know,” Cobb says shortly. Slowly, he lets his hands approach both chess pieces.
Just before his fingers can enclose on the left hand bishop, Ariadne snatches it away.
“Oh my God,” she breathes. “Oh my God.”
It is like a damn breaking-at first, a trickle of memories begin to drip down through her mind’s eye-her grandfather telling her sailor stories, teaching her how to tie the boat to the dock; her mother, reading Keats on her deathbed until she couldn’t hold the book up any longer-and then they come faster and faster-schoolwork until three in the morning; old friends who laugh until they cried; “A kind of work placement?”; extraction; PASIV; inception, limbo oh God oh God oh God-until the dam has burst, and all Ariadne can think about is the past and how she has so conveniently chosen to ignore it… until now.
Cobb smiles, eyes glassy with emotion.
“I remember,” she breathes. She holds out her empty hand to Cobb, and he grips it tightly. “I told you I could find Saito on my own.” Tears well up in her eyes. “I shot you. I’m sorry.”
“You thought you were saving me,” Cobb says softly. He clears his throat. “This conversation should be continued at a later date. Right now, we need to find Saito-his vitals in reality are dropping fast. We’re his only chance at survival.”
“And your only chance at a happy ending,” Ariadne murmurs. Cobb nods his head only slightly. “Then let’s get going,” she says.
“You know the way?” he asks. She nods.
“Though I haven’t trod that path in some time,” she adds.
They climb the crag together. Each foot steps in tandem with that of the other. They don’t talk about the events of the previous night, but their actions hang over them like a dark cloud, ominous of the fall out yet to occur. Ariadne may have taken his hand earlier, but Cobb still has a huge mistake to account for. He isn’t sure he can explain himself. He hopes she will forgive him.
They take another step upward.
She doesn’t want to think about the amount of time she spent pretending. She wants to believe it never happened, and in a way, it hadn’t. But was that not just another sort of pretending? A deep shame bubbles within her at how easily her mind had betrayed her, how easily she succumbed.
When they finally reach the top, Cobb pulls Ariadne up with a single arm. Before they begin to approach the mansion, Ariadne lets her hand grab a chunk of Cobb’s shirt before she can rethink her decision.
“We don’t tell them about last night,” she says softly. “Arthur, Eames, and the rest. We won’t say what happened.”
“Ariadne,” Cobb begins, but she places a small finger on his lips to shush him.
“If we tell them, that will make it real,” she murmurs. “I don’t want it to be real. This place-this goddamn, forsaken place… it’s not real. Nothing that happens here is real, then. End of story.”
“We should tell them,” Cobb disagrees. “The guilt of not-I just. I don’t know-“
“That’s your punishment, then,” Ariadne says, almost cruelly. “Live with the guilt, Cobb… you seem to be good at that.”
Silence rings between them for a long moment. Cobb feels as though his limbs are being chopped off one by one.
“You found me. That’s what we’ll tell them,” Ariadne says firmly.
“Arthur knows about the projection,” Cobb chokes out.
“Then we’ll tell them about the projection too,” Ariadne adapts. “Nothing more.”
“They’re going to ask,” Cobb trails off.
“Let them,” she finishes. Her eyes lock with his. “If you care about me, you’ll do me this small favor, Cobb. Save me the embarrassment of being the victim. Let me stand on my own two feet.”
All Cobb can do is nod in agreement.
A hundred feet away, a Japanese sniper takes out two figures on the verge of crossing the threshold of Saito’s estate. Two clicks of a tranquilizer gun later, the intruders are prostrate on the ground, unconscious. The sniper murmurs into a walkie-talkie attached to the fabric on his shoulder, and five men emerge from the surrounding rocky terrain to collect their quarry.
When Ariadne wakes up, she’s tied to a chair. Next to her is a conscious Cobb, who is staring at the man sitting across from them. Saito’s grey streak across his temple has become more prominent since the last time Ariadne laid eyes on him.
“Awake, I see,” Saito announces to the room. Cobb’s eyes dart toward her for a brief instant, then flick back to Saito.
“Saito,” Cobb says. Saito leans forward across the table.
“You remind me of someone I used to know, stranger,” Saito says, slightly confused. “Someone I used to employ. Someone I trusted to complete an important job.”
“So you do remember,” Cobb says softly.
“That was years ago,” Saito dismisses with a wave of his hand. “Too long ago to be real.”
“But it was real!” Ariadne blurts out. Cobb and Saito turn to stare at her.
“You had your chance, little girl,” Saito says after a moment’s awkward silence. “Don’t think I forgot our encounter.”
Ariadne’s mouth is left hanging open while Cobb tries a different approach.
“Somewhere up there,” Cobb says in an authoritative tone, “you are comatose. Down here you may be in control, but up there you are so incapacitated they’ve got you hooked to a respirator. You’re dying, Saito. You need to save your own life-by waking up.”
Cobb stands. A guard at Saito’s left lifts a gun, but Saito waves him down. The Japanese man’s eyes seem to be tied to Cobb.
“Let us be young men together again,” Cobb pleads. “Let’s wake up from this nightmare.”
Saito clears his throat. Cobb’s sincerity is palpable.
“You are much more confident that this world is… false, than the girl was,” Saito admits, clearly unnerved.
Ariadne feels her eyes burn at her failure.
“And where does she fit in?” Saito asks suddenly in a coarse voice. Ariadne doesn’t realize who he’s talking about for a moment; then she realizes Saito is referring to her.
Ariadne looks to Cobb to answer. Cobb clears his throat.
“I came for her, too,” Cobb responds, as if that was all the explanation necessary.
Saito stands.
“If this is true, how do you propose we ‘wake’?” he asks derisively.
“We need to die. Some people say it’s as easy as falling asleep,” Cobb says in a low voice. “I escaped once by gunshot. Once by train.”
“By train?” Saito asks inquisitively.
“I don’t like trains,” Cobb says automatically. “We won’t be taking that route again.”
“What about jumping?” Ariadne asks. “Seems easy enough.”
“You go first,” Saito sneers. Cobb shrugs.
“Okay,” he says.
“Not you,” Saito corrects. He points a finger at Ariadne. “Her.”
They climb to the top of a steep cliff that Ariadne can see from her apartment on the horizon. Guards surround Saito, but at the same time Cobb walks with him in tandem, trying desperately to convince the guarded man that he is asleep.
Ariadne breathes in slowly as she steps to the precipice. The cliff is tall, tall enough for a fatal impact. She begins to feel her breathing quicken and suddenly she feels Cobb standing behind her.
“I’ll be right behind you,” he murmurs in her ear. “Do you have your totem?”
She nods, hand clutching at it within her pocket.
“Concentrate on that,” he tells her. He reaches out to grab her hand, but she snatches it away.
“Don’t,” she says in a low voice. “Don’t.” She can’t be close to him right now. She has to do this on her own.
Cobb exhales and steps back.
“T.S. Eliot wrote once that the way up is the way down,” he tells her. “Remember those words. By jumping, you’re going to emerge from this haze of horror. You have to dirty yourself to be reborn, Ariadne. You’ve got to be brave.”
She doesn’t respond, but his words hold a truth that gives her strength. She inches forward and waits. She always waits.
“Do it,” Saito commands. “Or is this place more real than you say?”
“Ariadne-” Cobb calls.
She lets herself fall. The wind rushes between her limbs, and for a moment, she feels as though she’s flying-
Ariadne wakes up gasping for air. Eames, Arthur, and an unknown woman are all standing over her, looking excited.
“That bloody brilliant idiot,” Eames exclaims rather paradoxically to Arthur, who looks bemused, but pleased. “He did it, that cheeky bastard.” He directs his attention to Ariadne, a grin nigh splitting his face in two. “Hello, love. Welcome back to the waking world. Did you miss me?”
“She’s awake?” calls Yusuf from Saito’s bedside.
Ariadne opens her mouth to respond, but all that comes out of her throat is a deep choking sound. She splutters and tries again.
“Hi guys,” she whispers hoarsely.
“Hey yourself,” Arthur says with a smile. Ariadne feels a weight against her side; she looks down to see a still unconscious Cobb.
“They should be coming soon,” Ariadne informs them. As if on cue, Saito’s monitor starts blinking rapidly. The woman-a nurse, clearly part of the operation-attends to him, taking the man off the respirator. Saito begins choking out words: “That-rat-bastard!”
“Must be talking about Cobb,” Arthur laughs.
In a moment, Cobb stumbles into consciousness-literally: he slides off the side of Ariadne’s bed and onto the linoleum hospital floor.
“Shit,” he murmurs. Glancing around, he grants Saito a guilty stare. “Sorry, Saito, but I had to get you off that cliff somehow.”
“You didn’t push him,” Eames questions with a gasp. When Cobb doesn’t deny it, Eames has a rather impressed look on his face. “You did. Nice. Very classy.”
Once Saito recovers his faculties, he does thank Cobb for a job well done, albeit begrudgingly.
“If I ever need to be pushed off a cliff, I know whom to call,” he wheezes with a laugh. Even Arthur chuckles. Yusuf makes no noise at all, merely clutches at Saito’s arm for dear life.
It’s when Saito requests a phone that the nurse objects.
“Sir, you are too weak-” she cries out, but Saito raises a hand, and that’s all the admonishment she needs to back off.
“I have strength enough to make one phone call,” Saito wheezes. Cobb’s heart feels as though it’s about to fly from his chest as Saito takes his cell phone and begins to dial. Ariadne grasps his hand, squeezing it so tight as to make indentations in his skin from the edges of her nails.
A few short words in Japanese, and Cobb is a free man.
When Saito gives Cobb a nod, Cobb turns to the corner of the room and heaves a great sob. The rest of the team graciously elects to turn away from the scene of the man breaking down long enough for Cobb to compose himself. Clearing his throat curtly, Cobb finally turns around, a grateful expression etched upon his face.
“Thank you,” he says vehemently. “Thank you.”
“Thank you, Mr. Cobb,” Saito says, grinning. “Now let me take care of those guards.”
“The police, too,” Arthur adds with a grin. Saito nearly rolls his eyes.
“You all really know the definition of discrete,” Saito sighs, holding out his hand for a cell phone.
Yusuf doesn’t leave Saito’s side while Saito explains to both his bodyguards and the LAPD that these men who had broken into his room were not the men who had broken in, but had arrived, he says with a wheeze, “just in time, to administer a special medicine for my heart condition. Now leave them alone, you absolute vultures.”
After Ariadne and Saito are discharged from the hospital, the whole team takes up camp in the Cobb household (save Saito, who conveniently finds a hotel room for only two, which he, also conveniently, offers to Yusuf who, even more conveniently, graciously accepts).
When Cobb sees his children for the first time, even Eames sheds a tear or two (which he later on denies vehemently).
“Daddy! Daddy, we missed you!” they tell him, ecstatic, jumping up into his arms.
For a few minutes, all Cobb can mutter are sweet nothings-declarations of love seem to spout from him lips every three seconds, as if to make up for lost time. Reluctant to put them down, he carries them around the house until his arms ache-and still he does not let them go. Arthur follows immediately after Cobb. The kids clearly recognize him and credit the point man for bringing their father home.
“Arthur is the best uncle in the whole world! He brought Daddy back to us!” James pronounces to the room. Arthur laughs, shaking his head back and forth.
“I’m happy to take the credit,” Arthur laughs, “but you need to be thanking your new Uncle Saito.”
“Uncle Saito?” Eames asks, eyebrows raised.
“He probably deserves the title more than I do,” Arthur admits.
“I appear to have many brothers,” Cobb laughs. “You too, Eames. Consider yourself an Uncle.”
“I’m too young to be an uncle,” Eames sniffs, and the whole room cracks up, save a quiet young woman in the corner of the room, nursing her wounded heart.
Ariadne had walked into the Cobb household of her own volition, but it remains clear throughout the day that she is wary of the place. Hours later, long after the kids have fallen fast asleep, she says her first words since entering the house.
“I need to be alone,” she tells them all. They watch her leave, the padding of her feet growing faint with distance. Eames turns to Cobb expectantly.
“What?” Cobb asks, perturbed. Arthur sighs and starts busying himself with the coffee pot. Eames takes Cobb to the corner of the room, one hand on the small of his back directing him.
“The last thing that girl needs right now is space,” Eames advises softly. “She’s had years of space down there. What she needs is someone to tether her to reality. What she needs… is you,” Eames says, almost all in one breath. Cobb raises his eyebrows.
“I think the last thing she needs is me, Mr. Eames. And since when did you get so philosophical?” he asks in surprise.
Eames’s eyes flick toward Arthur before returning to Cobb. “Since I realized that there are people in my life that I’d go to limbo and back for,” he admits in a murmur.
Cobb’s eyes widen briefly in realization. “Oh,” he says softly. “Oh. Well.” Cobb does nothing for a moment. Eames is looking at him like the weight of the world hangs in his reaction. Cobb puts a hand on Eames’ shoulder in support and walks purposefully out of the room.
“This damn machine will be the death of me,” Arthur growls from across the room.
“Need help, darling?” Eames drawls. “From an imbecile like me?”
“Oh, shut up,” Arthur hisses. “And get over here.”
Eames attempts not to glow as he approaches Arthur and the dreaded coffee maker.
Cobb opens the door to the guest room to see Ariadne sitting on the bed, alone. She looks worse for the wear, and Cobb can’t help but think that a large part of the blame for her condition should be directed toward him.
“Please leave,” she begs, her voice cracking.
“I can’t do that,” Cobb says. “If I thought that I could make things better if I just left you alone, trust me, I would. But letting things fester is never a good idea. You know that.”
“I thought you’d do me the decency of letting it go,” she hisses, unexpected anger roaring up from deep inside her. She claps her hand over her mouth, shocked at her own outburst. Cobb puts a hand over his eyes briefly.
“I’m sorry,” Cobb says at last, emotion clouding his voice so that his words come out sob-like. “I’m sorry, Ariadne. What I did was inexcusable. If I were a better man, you would never have been violated in that way. Not by me. Not by anybody.”
Ariadne has a steady stream of tears dripping from her eyes. She doesn’t seem to notice.
“When I first saw you, the only thing running through my head was She’s here. I’ve found her. But you were so confused… and I knew that I couldn’t shatter your mirage. I failed once to bring a woman I loved back from limbo, I wasn’t about to fail again.”
“But you brought Mal back,” Ariadne says softly.
“No. Not all of her,” Cobb corrects, wiping his eyes on his sleeve. “So I didn’t tell you that I was the real me. I let you believe that I was the person you had conjured. And I don’t think I will ever forgive myself for it.”
Ariadne doesn’t interrupt this time when Cobb pauses.
“Some part of me thought that if I told you right then and there, you would reject me. Reject the freedom that I was going to offer you. Reject reality. I told myself I couldn’t risk that. But to say that I made the decision without ulterior motives in mind would be a lie. And I won’t lie to you again, Ariadne. I made you that promise, albeit silently, when I disguised myself as your figment.”
Ariadne unlatches the door and lets Cobb inside. She sits on the bed, looking at him with teary eyes.
Cobb closes the door behind him.
“After you shot me,” Cobb says softly. Ariadne winces, but Cobb puts up a hand as if to soften the words. “Afterwards, I was unbearable. Ask the rest of the team-I was behaving so erratically, they put me on suicide watch.” Ariadne covers her mouth with an open palm, eyes wide. “It wasn’t because I lost my kids-I lost them when I lost Mal. That loss had grown so familiar that it felt almost comfortable.” He smiles sadly to himself for a moment. “It was losing you, Ariadne, failing you. You made yourself a part of my life, and I let you. I had to get you back… by whatever means necessary.”
He sits next to her on the bed. Ariadne covers one of his clenched fists with an open palm.
“I don’t know if I will ever forgive you for what happened down there,” she says at last. “But I do know that it wasn’t all you. I practically begged you to have sex with me, and honestly, if you hadn’t… given in, I don’t know how I would have reacted. You sacrificed your integrity for me.”
“I sacrificed my integrity to defile you,” he whispers. “Not one of my brightest moments.”
“You saved me from limbo. Not a lot of guys can do that,” she says, a small smile on her lips. “And I also know,” she says, a hitch in her breath, “that I love you.” She squeezes his hand to emphasize her point. “Let’s call it even.”
Dom exhales a breath he hadn’t realized he’d been holding.
“It would be a little redundant to tell you that I love you, as my actions have all been pointing in that direction,” Cobb says in a rather word-vomit-y fashion. “But I do. Love you, I mean. With what’s left of my heart, I do love you.”
“Well that’s a shit ton of qualifiers… but still. Good to know,” Ariadne says with a teary grin.
Cobb pulls her into a hug. She shudders.
“How can this be real,” she breathes into his neck. “If everything I want is at my fingertips… couldn’t this be a dream?”
Cobb shakes his head. “Where’s your totem?”
Ariadne lifts it up.
“How does it feel?” he asks her.
She doesn’t answer for a moment.
“It feels real,” she says finally. “That has to count for something.”
He nods as she untangled herself from his embrace.
“The only way that I’m going to really, truly buy into this reality,” Ariadne tells him, coming to a stand, “is to live. Really live. Explore the new, rediscover the old…”
She extends a hand back toward him.
“And that all starts with you. If you’ll have me,” she adds. A sweet blush appears on her cheeks.
“I’ll always want you,” he says, taking her hand. She tugs at his hand and he also stands.
“Also good to know,” she says with a laugh. He pulls her into his arms and presses a light kiss against her brow: a promise. She rests her forehead against his for a long while, the two simply sitting together, breathing.
“Now, let’s go and assure Eames and Arthur that we’re both alright,” Ariadne says, breaking the silence. Cobb nods.
They exit the guest room and enter the kitchen with smiles on their faces, which are duly replaced by shocked expressions when they see Arthur and Eames kissing each other frantically against the kitchen counter. Cobb’s mouth hangs open in shock, and Ariadne barely suppresses a giggle.
“Back to the guest room, then?” Ariadne whispers after a moment of quiet staring. Cobb nods, slightly perturbed, and the two of them leave to kitchen hastily, off to the guest room to where they give their story a real happy ending.