In the Garden of the Commendatore 2/5
In the Garden of the Commendatore
by Starvinbohemian ~ Rated R ~ 31,000 words
Ariadne/Robert, implied Ariadne/Arthur, + Ensemble
Ariadne and Robert build a green skyscraper.
...In the Garden of the Commendatore...
Part II
Continued from Part One.
~*~
Notte e giorno faticar (I work night and day)…
~*~
Ariadne manages to go a full week at Fischer Morrow before anyone finds out she’s an intern. True to his word, Robert has given her enough responsibility that no one would have known unless they asked.
Her new job is harder than she ever could have imagined. She works her ass off all day and rarely gets to leave on time. It’s a high-pressure work environment, even more so than at Wilson & Bailey, and everything needs be done right the first time.
Her first day and she already sees a secretary get reduced to tears and fired.
After the door closes on the sobbing woman, an executive Ariadne loosely associates with the name Jerry groans and pulls a twenty out of his wallet. He gives it to another man, who chuckles and then winks at Ariadne in a way that suggests another bet in the making.
Her new supervisor, Harriet Sterling, a sharp-dressed shark of a woman, clearly resents her presence and even more so after discovering she’s an intern a week into the job.
Ariadne suspects Harriet thinks she did something untoward to get a job she is vastly unqualified for, and she’s not entirely wrong.
But if Harriet has ever taken her concerns directly to Robert, he must have shot her down because Ariadne still has a job the second week.
She sees Robert frequently throughout the day, but he’s usually speaking urgently into his cell phone as he passes through on the way to his office. Sometimes, he nods at her. Sometimes, he doesn’t.
Ariadne has to take the subway over an hour each way between her apartment and Fischer Morrow’s temporary home, an office building in the business district.
The money is good for an intern in that there actually is a salary, but it’s still not much to speak of. If she were cautious before, then she doesn’t dare rent a space any more luxurious than her current hole in the wall now that she’s directly under Robert’s thumb.
She’s never been so exhausted.
And she loves it all.
~*~
“I want to show you something.”
These words lead to Ariadne sitting across from Robert in his town car as they drive across town to some mystery location. He spends most of the car ride on his cell phone while she does her best not to appear as nervous as she feels.
The luxury seats feel strange under her. She hasn’t driven a car, let alone owned one, since she still lived with her parents, and they never had one like this.
There’s some kind of operatic music playing softly over the speakers. She runs the back of her fingers over the tinted, bullet-proof windows until it occurs to her that he might take issue with her leaving fingerprints. She lowers her hand with a guilty glance at Robert.
Catching her eye, he smiles and snaps his phone shut. “How are you getting along with Harriet?”
“Fine,” she lies. “She knows what she’s talking about.”
“She’s the best at what she does. You couldn’t ask for a better mentor.”
Ariadne hums her agreement even as she receives a sudden mental image of Cobb. She hasn’t heard from him since the original inception job, though she wonders about him often. Arthur has never said if he hears from him.
“What are we listening to?” she asks, pointing at the stereo.
“Mozart. Don Giovanni.”
“That’s an opera?”
Robert tries to cover his smirk behind his hand, but she still sees and resents it. “Yes, it’s an opera.”
“I’m not much of an opera fan,” she says wryly. “I went once, but I fell asleep halfway through.”
“Must not have been much of an opera.”
“Guess not,” she says with a shrug. “This one any good?”
“Don Giovanni is said to be the finest opera ever composed,” he says primly. “Musical perfection, a ‘work without blemish,’ etcetera.” She can’t tell if he’s joking or not.
“Wow,” she teases. “Musical perfection, huh? I guess that means it’s good. What’s it about?”
“A lothario,” he says, wagging his eyebrows in a way that makes her smile, “who refuses to repent and ultimately gets punished for it.” He pauses. “But some people think it was really about Mozart’s father.”
“Oh, yeah?” she says, watching him closely as his eyes seem to slide past her to somewhere else. Instinctively understanding where he’s gone, she lets Robert go and they finish out the rest of the ride in silence.
Stepping from the car, she finds herself looking at a row of dilapidated high-rises and a dead field set between two of them, a blank space that could have once been a building itself.
“Can I ask now what we’re doing here?”
He crooks a finger at her, and she follows him into the field. Dry twigs scratch at her legs, and she has to step over cans and broken bottles in order to keep up.
“What do you think?” he asks, spreading his arms out. “Can you see your design here?”
He can’t be serious. Ariadne glances around the field again as if it will magically transform into something other than what it is. “Here?”
“The buildings were condemned ages ago, and we’re going to level all this. There’s nothing here now, but picture this place when the tower’s finished. Picture all the people coming and going. Other businesses will follow. This whole area will develop and create jobs.”
Jobs. Is he thinking of the protesters at the conference?
“Come on, Ariadne,” he urges at her skeptical look. “Use your imagination. Can’t you see it?”
The eagerness in his eyes and the conviction in his voice spark something in her, and she does start to see. The high-rises stretch and bend, transforming into mirrored glass and recycled steel. The breeze turns into power generated by the wind turbines. She sees restaurants and bookstores and people buying bagels and hotdogs from vendors. She sees the future.
“It’ll be a challenge,” she says, beginning to grin.
Robert’s answering grin grows wider. “Yes, it will.”
Something electric passes between them then, and she feels the hairs on her arms rise. The exchange burns, alive and hungry, as the pulse recognizes a twin.
Ambition.
~*~
Arthur shows up on a Tuesday.
Ariadne is walking from the subway to work when he falls into step beside her. “Go into the coffee shop on your right up here,” he murmurs without actually looking at her.
She sidesteps into the café and gets in line with the other customers. When Arthur comes up behind her, she feels the brush of his coat against her back. She orders a bagel and latte, while he gets straight black coffee, and then he follows her to a small table in the back.
For several seconds, they only stare at each other.
“I didn’t think you liked coffee,” he says finally. “I never saw you drink it at the warehouse.”
She didn’t need it before. “You set me up,” she says to him without preamble.
Arthur leans back in his chair and takes a careful sip of his coffee. She wishes he would at least pretend to be surprised at her accusation. “I prefer to think of it as having done you a favor.”
“Dangling me like bait in front of Fischer was a favor?”
Arthur at least has the decency to look contrite. “It wasn’t like that.”
“That’s how it seemed to me.”
“Ariadne, that job wasn’t you. I’ve been there, okay? After what you’ve done in dreams… There’s nothing quite like it, remember?”
She drops her gaze to the swirling patterns her straw leaves in the latte. “You’re just like Eames. And Cobb. Using the promises of dreams to manipulate me into doing what you want me to do.”
“That isn’t fair.”
“No, but it’s true.”
“I do think I did you a favor. Because,” he says quickly before she can interrupt him, “you get the best of both worlds without having to choose. For now, at least. You could have said no.”
He’s right, of course. She could have said no. But it would have taken a better person than her, and she thinks Arthur knows as much.
She watches the people walking by the café, so brisk and sure in their destinations, and wonders how comfortable they each are in their lives, what they would do if they were her. But it’s pointless speculation because they aren’t her.
Arthur doesn’t watch the crowd. The people might as well be projections for all the attention he pays them. He’s watching her, though, no doubt waiting for her to come around to the inevitable.
“Well, I’m at the company,” she says quietly. “You got what you wanted. So, now what?”
“Are you ready for the next part?”
“Yeah.”
~*~
Entrar io vidi, in un mantello avvolto, un uom che al primo istante avea preso per voi. Ma riconobbi poi che un inganno era il mio
(I saw a man enter, wrapped in a cloak. At first I mistook him for you, but then I realized that I was mistaken)…
~*~
“What’s the job?”
“There’s a plant.”
“I thought I was the plant.”
Arthur’s eyes are laughing at her. “There’s another plant.”
~*~
“Fischer’s mother died when he was a boy, yes?”
Eames’s question causes Ariadne and Arthur to look up from the maze they’re building in surprise. Yusuf continues to study her music collection.
Her apartment feels almost comically small with the three men and their clashing energies taking up so much space, and she now understands why Cobb chose to go with a warehouse.
“Eleven, wasn’t it?” Arthur says.
“What are we listening to?” Yusuf asks suddenly.
Over the speakers, a man accuses a woman of being unfaithful. She denies it, but he doesn’t believe her…
Ma se colpa io non ho, ma se da lui ingannata rimasi; e poi, che temi?
… probably because she doesn’t believe herself.
“Don Giovanni,” she says as she glues an elaborate tree made of pipe cleaners to the model. “Why?”
“Seems a bit dramatic for you,” he says, smiling so she knows he’s just teasing.
“Shut up.”
“Do pay attention, please, children,” Eames says. “Arthur, your report said that his mother was a petite brunette, didn’t it? A living saint who devoted all her time to bettering the world? Feeding orphans, rescuing kittens- that kind of thing?”
Ariadne starts to get a bad feeling. Where is he going with this?
“She did some charity work,” Arthur says cautiously. “But what-?”
“And the girls Varis Energy and Miyamoto Ltd. sent over were probably something to the tune of glamorous blondes as well, yes?”
“What’s your point, Eames?”
He rubs his hands together excitedly. He’s clearly on a roll with something. “We all know Fischer has some serious daddy issues. I think we’re all intimately acquainted with those. Well, who’s to say that he doesn’t have mummy issues as well?”
Ariadne definitely doesn’t like where this is going.
“For a boy so young to lose his mother, especially a mother like that, it’s going to leave a mark. A hole. The kind he’s always going to be looking- and failing- to fill. Because what woman could ever live up to the paragon of femininity his mother’s become in his mind? The man wants the whore, but the boy within wants the mother.”
“This is getting a little too Freudian for me,” Arthur says uneasily.
Eames laughs. “Yes, yes, poor Arthur. But your research shows a string of failed relationships with women most men would give their left leg to touch. Two disastrous engagements within the short span of three years show us a man desperate to find love but unable to make it work. You know I’m right.”
Scratching his chin, Yusuf looks thoughtful. “Are you talking about impersonating his mother in a dream? Like you did with Browning?”
“No, no,” Eames says, making a face. “Fischer wouldn’t allow that. He’d know instantly that he was dreaming. There would be snot and tears, embarrassment for all involved, and absolutely nothing would get accomplished. It would be a disaster.”
“Then… what?”
“We don’t need his mother to tap into his mummy issues. There are… other ways.”
Arthur looks as if he’s starting to understand where Eames is taking them. “You can’t be suggesting that we-?”
“You know exactly what I’m suggesting, Arthur dear.”
“Well, I don’t,” Ariadne says. “I thought the goal was to find out who Fischer’s got on the inside at Varis Energy. Why are you talking about Freud?”
Arthur and Eames share a look that makes her feel distinctly wary. She looks to Yusuf, but he shrugs, clearly just as lost.
“That is not what we discussed,” Arthur says angrily.
Eames shrugs. “I’m just saying that the boy has a notable weak spot. One we can use.”
“I thought you already tried sending a girl in,” Yusuf reminds them. “It didn’t work.”
“Yes, but maybe we weren’t sending in the right kind of girl.”
None of them are looking at her, and Ariadne’s unease spikes. Are they talking about…?
“She’s already in the company-”
“Yes, but do you really think that’s going to be-”
The wooden legs of the chair shriek as she abruptly shoves back and stands. “Fuck you, Eames. I am not a prostitute. You can’t just whore me out because you picked the wrong con to snag him. Getting Fischer’s attention was part of your job, not mine.”
Eames is unfazed by her anger. “Yes, love, but you managed to grab it just the same.”
She turns on Arthur. “Is this why you wanted me at Fischer Morrow? So I could get into Fischer’s pants and then he would spill all his dirty secrets to me?”
The very idea makes her feel sick. And devalued. She’s an architect, not a whore. Robert, unwitting mark that he is, instinctively recognized her as some kind of bait, and she didn’t even know it herself… Fuck.
“Absolutely not,” he says, glaring at Eames.
One of these days, she’s going to have to stop taking him at his word. Damn it, she should have made them tell her everything at the outset. Why didn’t she?
This never would have happened if Cobb were here.
“Is the plan or is it not to find the plant at Varis?”
“That’s a good question,” Yusuf mutters under his breath.
“It is,” Eames reassures her. “But sometimes the clients like what we do for them enough that they want to take a second bite at the apple. It can be useful to-”
“No,” she snaps. “If that’s the plan, then I’m out.”
“Ariadne-”
“No.”
Eames sighs and holds up his hands in surrender. “All right, all right. It was just one option. We can do it another way. I just thought-”
“No.”
~*~
Ma se colpa io non ho, ma se da lui ingannata rimasi; e poi, che temi?
(But if I am not to blame, if I have been tricked by him; and then, what do you fear?)
~*~
From close observation, Ariadne quickly learns that Robert is typically the last one to leave the office at night unless he’s out of town on business.
Considering her work load, it’s barely a ruse to make sure she is the only one left with him tonight after everyone else has finally gone home.
“I never said the job would be easy,” he teases as he passes by her desk on the way to his office.
“No, you didn’t,” she says softly.
Ariadne waits about ten minutes after he’s disappeared into his office before she goes to check. She finds him slumped over in his desk chair.
Robert drinks a total of three Venti-sized coffees throughout the day, and it was almost pathetically easy to wait for him to step out so she could drop a dose of a Somnacin into his final cup of the day.
She pulls out her cell phone and dials the number Arthur gave her.
~*~
Eames gives her a wicked smile. “Want to learn something new?”
~*~
“He has to trust you,” Eames tells her.
They ambush Robert inside a bank.
Ariadne has no idea where Robert actually keeps his money, but he’s filled out her bank dreamscape with lush chairs, expensive-looking mahogany desks, and bank tellers dressed fashionably enough to put Arthur to shame.
There is a Japanese painting hanging over the lobby entrance that she recognizes from Robert’s office. Strange, abstract art pieces decorate the walls, some of it interesting enough that she makes a mental note to borrow the images for future designs.
Someday, she realizes, she would like to talk to Robert about these pieces, to hear his opinions on art. It would probably be an interesting discussion.
The one thing that gives her pause is a strange, neoclassical statue. A man dressed as an ancient Roman towers over them all. Odd and gauche, the statue doesn’t match the sleek, modern design scheme of the rest of the bank and in fact stands out like a sore thumb despite being shoved over to the side of the lobby like something discarded.
Looking at the statue unnerves her for some reason, and so she doesn’t. Instead, she stares at the floor like everyone else, her hands pressed against her head. Her hair hangs over her face so that he won’t notice her as they rush him passed.
Arthur and Eames are wearing ski masks as they drag Robert and Yusuf (disguised as another teller) to the kind of enormous bank vault she’s only ever seen in movies- until now.
Ariadne scrambles after them.
“Open it!” Eames demands.
Yusuf pretends to be shaking with fear as he puts in some phony combination that triggers the giant chrome door to swing back. Countless stacks of crisp, green bills line the walls. There’s so much green it burns the eyes. “Just don’t hurt me!”
“Shut up!” Eames screams and even Ariadne, waiting behind a plastic frond for her cue, flinches at the sound. Eames changes faces as easily as he changes ties.
Even in the midst of a hostage crisis, Robert is frustratingly serene in the face of danger. “Look,” he says reasonably, “there’s no need for any of this. I can just-”
The wall clunks next to her head as Arthur shoves him up against the wall and puts his gun in Robert’s face. “What was that? You have something to say?”
“All right, all right,” he says, and she imagines him holding up his hands in conciliation.
Eames does Arthur one better. “You!” he snaps at Yusuf. “Come here.”
There’s a scuffling sound. “Please…”
“Sorry, mate, but we seem to be done with you.”
Robert cries out in alarm in tandem with the sound of a gun blast. Ariadne flinches at the sound, and she can’t help but peak around the side of the door.
She instantly wishes she hadn’t.
Yusuf’s body lies unnaturally still on the floor, and Robert’s face is coated in blood. He looks petrified.
“Get the money,” Eames tells Arthur, who starts moving around the vault and shoving the green bills into his sack.
“You… you can have it all,” Robert stammers. He’s trying to wipe the blood off of his face with his sleeve, but he’s really just smearing it around. “There’s… no need for… further violence.”
Eames lands a sharp jab into Robert’s stomach which sends him down to his knees as he crumbles in imagined pain. That wasn’t necessary, she thinks. He’s getting carried away.
Eames crouches down next to Robert and grabs a painful-looking fistful of hair. “There’s still a need so long as I say there’s a need, Mr. Fischer.”
Ariadne rolls her eyes.
“Yes, I’m sorry,” Robert gasps, his composure a mere memory. “You’re right. Whatever you say…”
Eames doesn’t seem able to help himself, and so he hams it up further by dropping his voice into a menacing growl. “I think I’m getting tired of you. I’m tired of your face, and I don’t think your presence is further required here either.”
Just get to it, Ariadne mentally urges.
“Do you believe in God, Mr. Fischer?”
Oh, for the love of… Fed up, Ariadne finally abandons her hiding spot and lifts the heavy horse statuette she nabbed from the lobby over her head.
Robert’s eyes widen when he sees her, and for a second as their eyes meet, she thinks he’s going to tell her to run. But then she brings the statuette down on Eames’s head- hard.
Real or feigned, he goes down as if someone’s cut his strings. One down.
Arthur acts as if he’s going for his gun and then pretends to get it stuck in his belt so as to give her enough time to get Eames’s fallen gun.
She knows she can’t afford to hesitate, but Arthur must see hesitation in her expression because something unnamable passes between them just before she shoots him between the eyes.
He goes down, too.
She has to get used to this, she knows.
Her legs are only barely trembling when she turns to Robert. “Are you all right?”
He doesn’t answer- possibly because he’s having a bit of a hard time, what with the murders and all the dead bodies around him and all. Ariadne holds out a hand to help him up off the floor, but he doesn’t seem to notice.
Staring up at her with wide, glazed eyes, he says, “You… saved me.”
Bingo.
“I’m glad I got here in time.” She pulls a convenient handkerchief from her pocket and gently wipes some of the blood from his cheek. “They didn’t hurt you, did they?”
Her breath catches when he suddenly grabs her wrist.
“Ariadne?” he asks, sounding unsure.
“How do I get him to trust me?” she asks.
“Whether he knows it or not, he’s going to want to trust you,” Eames tells her. “If he doesn’t already. Just give him the opportunity, and he’ll do the rest.”
Out of the corner of her eye, she spots one of those small homemade windmills sitting innocuously amongst the money. She frowns.
“Yes, I’m here,” she tells him, “and you’re all right.” She rubs the handkerchief across his face again, making sure that the part coated in Somnacin has contact with the skin. “Everything’s going to be all right.”
Robert nods, accepting this. “Thank you.”
Yeah, she’s probably going to hell.
~*~
“On the second layer down, you’re going to be on your own.”
~*~
Ariadne wakes up in a poorly lit board room.
Projections sit around a long table discussing business things that go completely over her head and might as well be gibberish. Shades have been drawn down over the floor-length windows that line the opposite wall so that shadows stretch across the room and obscure most of their faces.
Still, she easily picks out Maurice Fischer at the head of the table.
Now, where is Fischer, Jr.?
A single strip of light flashes across her eyes.
Wincing, she glances around for the source and finds a small boy standing in the far corner of the room.
Ah. There he is.
He’s pulled back the edge of one of the shades so as to peak to the outside world. The sunshine reflects off the window pane, casting prisms of light across the room like shooting stars. The board members don’t pay him any mind.
Careful not to disturb the board members, she tiptoes across the room to join young Robert at the window. He barely glances at her as she crouches down beside him.
“What are you looking at?” she whispers.
“Nothing.”
She pulls the shade further back, revealing that the building they are in overlooks a verdant park full of trees and children running around cherry-red playground equipment. Ariadne was sure to include high slides and complex climbing structures, the likes of which she herself wouldn’t have been able to resist as a kid.
“It looks like fun.”
He shrugs noncommittally.
“Would you like to go down there?”
“I’m not supposed to.” His mournful expression brings a wistful smile to her face. Even if it is just a dream, a boring board meeting is no place for a little kid. He looks so ridiculous in his little suit, like a miniature grown-up or one of those creepy dolls people keep inside glass cabinets.
Without really thinking about it, she reaches out and musses up his slicked hair.
“Hey!” he cries, fending her off. “You’re not supposed to touch me!” His indignation is adorable and, well, ridiculous.
A few of the projections glance over at them. Ariadne shudders at the disturbing sensation of having eyes from obscured faces on her. But Robert isn’t upset so much as just indignant, and so the projections turn back to their meeting.
“Sorry, but the kids aren’t going to know what to do with you down there if you go looking like this.”
He looks at her with wide eyes. “But I can’t…”
“Yes, you can,” she says, smiling. “If you help me, I can get you permission.”
“You can get permission?” he asks skeptically.
“Yes, but only if you help me out. Will you do that, Robert?”
Ariadne can tell he doesn’t believe her, but she’s counting on the tantalizing pull of the park to override his suspicions. She might not have had any siblings growing up, but she babysat enough to know how to handle manipulating a child. Thankfully, children’s desires are fairly straight forward.
“What do I have to do?” he asks.
She points at the board members and says, “Can you tell me the names of the people sitting around the table?”
He frowns. “I guess.”
She points to the shadow sitting next to Robert’s father. “Who’s that?”
“Uncle Peter.”
She pauses, startled, and then asks, “What about that one?”
“Mr. Jeters.”
“And that one?”
“Ms. Clint.”
They go around the table, skipping a projection Ariadne recognizes as Harriet as well as Nazrahi, Robert’s vice-chairman, and Emilia Sanchez, Browning’s replacement. It’s a good mix of current and supposedly past business associates of Fischer Morrow.
Robert stops as they come to the last projection. There’s a card sitting in front of him that reads, “Guest.”
“Who’s he?” she asks, watching Robert carefully. “I don’t think he works here.”
Robert squints at the projection as if confused. “I don’t think I know him.”
“Yes, you do. You know everyone. He’s the spy in the other company that finds out their secrets and brings them back here.”
“Oh.”
“Yeah. What’s his name?”
Robert’s eyes go glassy as he stares at the obscured projection. “I… don’t know.”
She has to hide her disappointment. “Can you at least tell me what he looks like?”
“He has… red hair?”
Even as he speaks, the projection develops red hair, though the rest of his face remains hidden in shadow.
Eagerness starts to creep into her voice. “What else, Robert?”
“He’s big.”
The projection instantly becomes bulky. When he leans forward and rests his strong forearms on the table, she can see that he’s wearing a wedding ring.
Almost there.
“What about his face?”
Robert thinks about it for a moment. “Ugly. Big nose. Blue eyes.”
It’s not a perfect picture, but it’s enough. Ariadne can see enough of the face that she’d know him in the real world. Objective accomplished.
“Thank you, Robert,” she says warmly.
Time for his reward.
Ariadne waits until the projections wrap up their imaginary meeting and start filing out of the room, and then she says, “Come on. Let’s go to the park.”
Robert looks reluctant. “You still have to ask my father.”
“I already did. He said you could come if you helped me, and you did.”
He doesn’t move.
“Well, if you really don’t want to…” Ariadne stands and walks over to the door. “I suppose I’ll just go by myself. Too bad.”
She purposely doesn’t look back as she opens the door.
“No, wait!”
Covering a grin with her hand, she glances back over her shoulder. “Yes?”
Gnawing on his lower lip, he comes up to her side and looks up at her with too-blue eyes. “My father really said I could?”
“That’s right.” She holds out her hand. “Come on, Robert. It’s boring up here and fun down there. And I’ll be with you.”
Smiling hopefully, he takes her hand. “Okay.”
On their way through the park, they pass popcorn and cotton candy vendors whose products fly around their stands like butterflies. A clown stands juggling fluorescent bulbs beside a fountain Ariadne borrowed from a real park she once visited. Except now the fountain pours bubblegum soda from trumpets wielded by cherubim. Bubbles float through the air without ever falling.
It is almost too much sensory experience for Robert, who takes it all in with wide eyes and a slack jaw. He even forgets to walk once they reach the enormous hollowed-out tree that has children scampering in and out and up and down wooden staircases.
But once they reach the playground, he hesitates at her side.
“Go on,” she urges. “Oh, wait!” She helps him out of his blazer, removes his little tie, and gives his hair another mussing. “There you go. Now, go have fun.”
He gives her a strange, unreadable look that makes her wonder why he’s so nervous about spending time at a fantasy playground; but then he shuffles off in the direction of a bronzed slide that curls up as high as the surrounding trees.
Ariadne takes a seat on a platinum bench and glances around at her realized design. Damn, she’s good. Who wouldn’t want to play here? If this doesn’t create a positive association in Robert’s mind, then she doesn’t know what will.
A child wearing a red coat and pulling the string of a kite suddenly runs passed.
Glancing upward, Ariadne blinks in surprise when she realizes the paper skyscraper kite is modeled after her latest façade design for Fischer Tower. The idea is still in its first draft. She didn’t know he’d even seen it yet.
The passage of only a few minutes brings Robert, looking small and sheepish, before her again.
“What’s wrong?”
He doesn’t answer immediately.
“Robert?”
He scuffs his shoe against the concrete and doesn’t meet her eyes when he says, “They won’t let me play with them.”
Ariadne glances over at the children on the playground and sees several hostile stares being directed their way. Her first and second thoughts are that the projections have caught on to her and that they’re in trouble.
But the children don’t come for them.
After the initial glares, they just keep running around, minding their own business. The adult projections aren’t looking at them at all. None of the projections are looking at her. No, but the kids did seem to be looking at…
She looks down at Robert in dismay. His own subconscious doesn’t want to play with him?
“Robert…”
“I don’t care,” he says, lifting his chin proudly. “They’re stupid anyway.”
He does. Of course he does.
She doesn’t really know what to say, but she’s saved by the interruption of a little girl who comes barreling up to them. She has brown pigtails and wears combat boots and a pink neckerchief.
“Hello!” she chirps.
They both stare at her in surprise, but Ariadne experiences a jolt of recognition once she gets a better look at the girl. How…?
“Do you like dinosaurs?” the girl asks Robert.
“Um… yes?”
“Me, too!” she says with a bright grin. “You want to see something cool?”
Robert looks to her for permission, but Ariadne’s still gaping at the girl. She remembers wearing those boots every day, refusing to ever leave them behind until her mother finally threw them away out of disgust. Did she bring her younger self into the dream?
“It’s really cool.”
“Can I?” Robert asks eagerly, tugging at the edge of her coat.
“I don’t know…” Should she let Robert play with a projection of her younger self? Was that a good idea?
Younger Ariadne looks straight at her and says in a strangely adult voice, “He’ll like it. I promise. It’s good for children to enjoy themselves. Isn’t it, darling?”
No. No way.
“Please?” Robert begs.
“Okay,” she whispers.
The girl winks at her and then they’re scampering off.
No. This feels weird. Wrong. She starts to go after them, but her feet suddenly turn to stone as she sees them disappear behind a large... neoclassical statue. A statue of a man dressed as a Roman…
The hair on her arms stands on end.
It followed them down here.
She wants to wake up. She wants to wake up now.
She nearly screams when someone roughly grabs her arm and yanks her back against a solid chest. Icy fear plunges its fingers down her back even as his hot breath scalds her ear.
“What do you think you’re doing?” he snarls.
She screams.
~*~
“Why did you do that?” she demands as soon as the I.V. comes out of her arm.
Eames sits up on the floor and stretches lazily. “Arthur’s research said wee Robert had trouble relating to other children, and this needed to be a positive experience.”
“No one told me that,” she says angrily. “I thought the park was just the reward. You knew I was building a dream for Robert as a kid and you didn’t think that was the kind of thing I should know?”
Eames hops over Robert, who still haplessly slumbers on, and straightens his cuffs without looking at her. “Well, now you know, don’t you?”
Ariadne realizes she’s shaking all over. She slowly drops down into Robert’s desk chair to avoid an embarrassing fall.
She needs to tell them about the statue and about how Maurice Fischer, miraculously, furiously alive, just accosted her in the dream in defense of his son. He was so angry, and he shouted at her even though she was too frightened to understand half of what he said.
“Arthur said I was going in alone,” she says instead, her voice shaky. “I thought I killed you in the bank vault.”
He chuckles. “You’re going to have to hit me harder than that.”
“Certainly killed me,” Yusuf mutters as he tugs Robert into a sitting position. “I think you were having way too much fun down there, Mr. Eames.”
“Did any of the projections in the board room look familiar?” Arthur interrupts. He’s already packing up the PASIV equipment in preparation for a hasty getaway.
“Yeah,” she says distractedly. “A couple people I work with. Oh, and Peter Browning. He was there.”
Arthur nods, unsurprised.
“But Eames-”
“Did Fischer describe the plant?”
“Yeah, he’s a big man with red hair and blue eyes. He’s married because there was a wedding ring. Somewhere around fifty-year-old,” she says, still eyeing Eames. “I’m pretty sure that’s your guy. But Eames-”
“Would you know him if you saw him again in person?”
“Yes, Arthur!” she snaps.
Eames tries to walk passed her, but she jumps up on jelly legs and grabs his sleeve. “Why did you use me as your disguise?”
There’s no way he could have just guessed about what she used to look like. His mirage was perfect, from the butterfly-bow hair ties her mother used to make her wear to the combat boots she insisted on in exchange. He must have gotten hold of a picture somehow. This was planned.
“Why?” she repeats.
He sighs. “Just a precaution. Insurance, if you will.”
“Damn it, Eames. I told you no.”
For a moment, he almost looks pitying, but then it’s gone like the flicker of light off of glass.
“I know.”
~*~
After they’re gone, Ariadne gently shakes Robert awake.
He blinks blurry eyes at her. “Ariadne? Did you just…?” He can’t finish the thought because the specifics of the dream should already be fading away.
She takes a deep breath and then swallows down the ugly feelings still swimming around in her head about this job. “You fell asleep at your desk.”
“I did?”
“It’s probably time to call it a day, huh?”
He glances at his watch. “It’s two in the morning. What are you still doing here?”
She’s getting used to lying to him by now. “The same as you. I got caught up in work and didn’t notice the time. I wanted to check in before I left.”
He’s a little unsteady as he rises to his feet, which might be a side effect of the Somnacin. She doesn’t know. He stumbles and Ariadne instinctively reaches out to catch him. “Whoa there.”
But it’s just a momentary fumble, and he’s already regained his balance. “I’m fine,” he says. “Just a cramp.” He cracks his neck with a wince.
He probably shouldn’t sleep on the floor then. “Oh. Good.”
Robert is staring at her, and Ariadne suddenly realizes that she’s still holding on to him. She moves away with an awkward laugh. “Sorry.”
Robert’s still giving her a funny look, but he lets her faux pas pass without comment. “How were you planning on getting home at this hour?”
“Same as always,” she says with a shrug. “I take the subway.”
He makes a face. “At this hour? No, let me call you a cab.”
“That would be a really expensive cab ride. I live all the way across town.”
Robert frowns as if the cost of the cab never occurred to him. “I know where you live,” he says, sounding perplexed. But he stops dialing.
He either doesn’t realize or else doesn’t care about his own faux pas in mentioning the thick dossier he has on her. Annoyed, Ariadne says, perhaps a bit rudely, “I don’t need a cab. I’ll be fine. I leave late all the time.” He knows she leaves late all the time, but maybe it has never occurred to him before now to wonder how she gets home.
“Ariadne,” he says sternly, “you’re not riding the subway at two in the morning.”
“Well, unless the company has secret cots, showers, and changes of clothes in my size-”
“I’ll have my driver take you home, and I’ll take the cab.”
How can he possibly have a driver on hand at this time of the morning? Do drivers not have a union? “No, really, I can’t let you do that-”
“Already done,” he says, snapping his phone shut.
Robert smirks at her. Actually smirks. Despite her frustration, Ariadne almost smiles. She throws up her hands in surrender.
“All right, Mr. Fischer. It looks like you win.”
“I usually do.” He pauses. “And it’s Robert.”
She does smile this time. “I’ll just bet, Robert.”
~*~
Ariadne drives Yusuf to the airport.
At the gate, he gives her a warm smile, and they hug goodbye.
His part in this is done. Arthur told her that even if they need to go back in, they won’t need his stronger compounds for a single-level extraction. Regular old Somnacin will do, and Arthur knows his way around a PASIV blind, deaf, and dumb.
Time for Yusuf to go home to the family.
For some reason, she finds herself clutching him a bit too hard. He notices.
“Are you going to be all right?” he asks, clearly concerned but still aiming for jovial. “With those maniacs, I mean? And Fischer?”
She laughs. “Yeah, I think so.”
He gives her a final gentle squeeze and then lets her go. “Be safe, Ariadne.”
Watching him walk away seems like a strange time to be reminded of Cobb.
~*~
Continue to Part Three.
by Starvinbohemian ~ Rated R ~ 31,000 words
Ariadne/Robert, implied Ariadne/Arthur, + Ensemble
Ariadne and Robert build a green skyscraper.
...In the Garden of the Commendatore...
Part II
Continued from Part One.
~*~
Notte e giorno faticar (I work night and day)…
~*~
Ariadne manages to go a full week at Fischer Morrow before anyone finds out she’s an intern. True to his word, Robert has given her enough responsibility that no one would have known unless they asked.
Her new job is harder than she ever could have imagined. She works her ass off all day and rarely gets to leave on time. It’s a high-pressure work environment, even more so than at Wilson & Bailey, and everything needs be done right the first time.
Her first day and she already sees a secretary get reduced to tears and fired.
After the door closes on the sobbing woman, an executive Ariadne loosely associates with the name Jerry groans and pulls a twenty out of his wallet. He gives it to another man, who chuckles and then winks at Ariadne in a way that suggests another bet in the making.
Her new supervisor, Harriet Sterling, a sharp-dressed shark of a woman, clearly resents her presence and even more so after discovering she’s an intern a week into the job.
Ariadne suspects Harriet thinks she did something untoward to get a job she is vastly unqualified for, and she’s not entirely wrong.
But if Harriet has ever taken her concerns directly to Robert, he must have shot her down because Ariadne still has a job the second week.
She sees Robert frequently throughout the day, but he’s usually speaking urgently into his cell phone as he passes through on the way to his office. Sometimes, he nods at her. Sometimes, he doesn’t.
Ariadne has to take the subway over an hour each way between her apartment and Fischer Morrow’s temporary home, an office building in the business district.
The money is good for an intern in that there actually is a salary, but it’s still not much to speak of. If she were cautious before, then she doesn’t dare rent a space any more luxurious than her current hole in the wall now that she’s directly under Robert’s thumb.
She’s never been so exhausted.
And she loves it all.
~*~
“I want to show you something.”
These words lead to Ariadne sitting across from Robert in his town car as they drive across town to some mystery location. He spends most of the car ride on his cell phone while she does her best not to appear as nervous as she feels.
The luxury seats feel strange under her. She hasn’t driven a car, let alone owned one, since she still lived with her parents, and they never had one like this.
There’s some kind of operatic music playing softly over the speakers. She runs the back of her fingers over the tinted, bullet-proof windows until it occurs to her that he might take issue with her leaving fingerprints. She lowers her hand with a guilty glance at Robert.
Catching her eye, he smiles and snaps his phone shut. “How are you getting along with Harriet?”
“Fine,” she lies. “She knows what she’s talking about.”
“She’s the best at what she does. You couldn’t ask for a better mentor.”
Ariadne hums her agreement even as she receives a sudden mental image of Cobb. She hasn’t heard from him since the original inception job, though she wonders about him often. Arthur has never said if he hears from him.
“What are we listening to?” she asks, pointing at the stereo.
“Mozart. Don Giovanni.”
“That’s an opera?”
Robert tries to cover his smirk behind his hand, but she still sees and resents it. “Yes, it’s an opera.”
“I’m not much of an opera fan,” she says wryly. “I went once, but I fell asleep halfway through.”
“Must not have been much of an opera.”
“Guess not,” she says with a shrug. “This one any good?”
“Don Giovanni is said to be the finest opera ever composed,” he says primly. “Musical perfection, a ‘work without blemish,’ etcetera.” She can’t tell if he’s joking or not.
“Wow,” she teases. “Musical perfection, huh? I guess that means it’s good. What’s it about?”
“A lothario,” he says, wagging his eyebrows in a way that makes her smile, “who refuses to repent and ultimately gets punished for it.” He pauses. “But some people think it was really about Mozart’s father.”
“Oh, yeah?” she says, watching him closely as his eyes seem to slide past her to somewhere else. Instinctively understanding where he’s gone, she lets Robert go and they finish out the rest of the ride in silence.
Stepping from the car, she finds herself looking at a row of dilapidated high-rises and a dead field set between two of them, a blank space that could have once been a building itself.
“Can I ask now what we’re doing here?”
He crooks a finger at her, and she follows him into the field. Dry twigs scratch at her legs, and she has to step over cans and broken bottles in order to keep up.
“What do you think?” he asks, spreading his arms out. “Can you see your design here?”
He can’t be serious. Ariadne glances around the field again as if it will magically transform into something other than what it is. “Here?”
“The buildings were condemned ages ago, and we’re going to level all this. There’s nothing here now, but picture this place when the tower’s finished. Picture all the people coming and going. Other businesses will follow. This whole area will develop and create jobs.”
Jobs. Is he thinking of the protesters at the conference?
“Come on, Ariadne,” he urges at her skeptical look. “Use your imagination. Can’t you see it?”
The eagerness in his eyes and the conviction in his voice spark something in her, and she does start to see. The high-rises stretch and bend, transforming into mirrored glass and recycled steel. The breeze turns into power generated by the wind turbines. She sees restaurants and bookstores and people buying bagels and hotdogs from vendors. She sees the future.
“It’ll be a challenge,” she says, beginning to grin.
Robert’s answering grin grows wider. “Yes, it will.”
Something electric passes between them then, and she feels the hairs on her arms rise. The exchange burns, alive and hungry, as the pulse recognizes a twin.
Ambition.
~*~
Arthur shows up on a Tuesday.
Ariadne is walking from the subway to work when he falls into step beside her. “Go into the coffee shop on your right up here,” he murmurs without actually looking at her.
She sidesteps into the café and gets in line with the other customers. When Arthur comes up behind her, she feels the brush of his coat against her back. She orders a bagel and latte, while he gets straight black coffee, and then he follows her to a small table in the back.
For several seconds, they only stare at each other.
“I didn’t think you liked coffee,” he says finally. “I never saw you drink it at the warehouse.”
She didn’t need it before. “You set me up,” she says to him without preamble.
Arthur leans back in his chair and takes a careful sip of his coffee. She wishes he would at least pretend to be surprised at her accusation. “I prefer to think of it as having done you a favor.”
“Dangling me like bait in front of Fischer was a favor?”
Arthur at least has the decency to look contrite. “It wasn’t like that.”
“That’s how it seemed to me.”
“Ariadne, that job wasn’t you. I’ve been there, okay? After what you’ve done in dreams… There’s nothing quite like it, remember?”
She drops her gaze to the swirling patterns her straw leaves in the latte. “You’re just like Eames. And Cobb. Using the promises of dreams to manipulate me into doing what you want me to do.”
“That isn’t fair.”
“No, but it’s true.”
“I do think I did you a favor. Because,” he says quickly before she can interrupt him, “you get the best of both worlds without having to choose. For now, at least. You could have said no.”
He’s right, of course. She could have said no. But it would have taken a better person than her, and she thinks Arthur knows as much.
She watches the people walking by the café, so brisk and sure in their destinations, and wonders how comfortable they each are in their lives, what they would do if they were her. But it’s pointless speculation because they aren’t her.
Arthur doesn’t watch the crowd. The people might as well be projections for all the attention he pays them. He’s watching her, though, no doubt waiting for her to come around to the inevitable.
“Well, I’m at the company,” she says quietly. “You got what you wanted. So, now what?”
“Are you ready for the next part?”
“Yeah.”
~*~
Entrar io vidi, in un mantello avvolto, un uom che al primo istante avea preso per voi. Ma riconobbi poi che un inganno era il mio
(I saw a man enter, wrapped in a cloak. At first I mistook him for you, but then I realized that I was mistaken)…
~*~
“What’s the job?”
“There’s a plant.”
“I thought I was the plant.”
Arthur’s eyes are laughing at her. “There’s another plant.”
~*~
“Fischer’s mother died when he was a boy, yes?”
Eames’s question causes Ariadne and Arthur to look up from the maze they’re building in surprise. Yusuf continues to study her music collection.
Her apartment feels almost comically small with the three men and their clashing energies taking up so much space, and she now understands why Cobb chose to go with a warehouse.
“Eleven, wasn’t it?” Arthur says.
“What are we listening to?” Yusuf asks suddenly.
Over the speakers, a man accuses a woman of being unfaithful. She denies it, but he doesn’t believe her…
Ma se colpa io non ho, ma se da lui ingannata rimasi; e poi, che temi?
… probably because she doesn’t believe herself.
“Don Giovanni,” she says as she glues an elaborate tree made of pipe cleaners to the model. “Why?”
“Seems a bit dramatic for you,” he says, smiling so she knows he’s just teasing.
“Shut up.”
“Do pay attention, please, children,” Eames says. “Arthur, your report said that his mother was a petite brunette, didn’t it? A living saint who devoted all her time to bettering the world? Feeding orphans, rescuing kittens- that kind of thing?”
Ariadne starts to get a bad feeling. Where is he going with this?
“She did some charity work,” Arthur says cautiously. “But what-?”
“And the girls Varis Energy and Miyamoto Ltd. sent over were probably something to the tune of glamorous blondes as well, yes?”
“What’s your point, Eames?”
He rubs his hands together excitedly. He’s clearly on a roll with something. “We all know Fischer has some serious daddy issues. I think we’re all intimately acquainted with those. Well, who’s to say that he doesn’t have mummy issues as well?”
Ariadne definitely doesn’t like where this is going.
“For a boy so young to lose his mother, especially a mother like that, it’s going to leave a mark. A hole. The kind he’s always going to be looking- and failing- to fill. Because what woman could ever live up to the paragon of femininity his mother’s become in his mind? The man wants the whore, but the boy within wants the mother.”
“This is getting a little too Freudian for me,” Arthur says uneasily.
Eames laughs. “Yes, yes, poor Arthur. But your research shows a string of failed relationships with women most men would give their left leg to touch. Two disastrous engagements within the short span of three years show us a man desperate to find love but unable to make it work. You know I’m right.”
Scratching his chin, Yusuf looks thoughtful. “Are you talking about impersonating his mother in a dream? Like you did with Browning?”
“No, no,” Eames says, making a face. “Fischer wouldn’t allow that. He’d know instantly that he was dreaming. There would be snot and tears, embarrassment for all involved, and absolutely nothing would get accomplished. It would be a disaster.”
“Then… what?”
“We don’t need his mother to tap into his mummy issues. There are… other ways.”
Arthur looks as if he’s starting to understand where Eames is taking them. “You can’t be suggesting that we-?”
“You know exactly what I’m suggesting, Arthur dear.”
“Well, I don’t,” Ariadne says. “I thought the goal was to find out who Fischer’s got on the inside at Varis Energy. Why are you talking about Freud?”
Arthur and Eames share a look that makes her feel distinctly wary. She looks to Yusuf, but he shrugs, clearly just as lost.
“That is not what we discussed,” Arthur says angrily.
Eames shrugs. “I’m just saying that the boy has a notable weak spot. One we can use.”
“I thought you already tried sending a girl in,” Yusuf reminds them. “It didn’t work.”
“Yes, but maybe we weren’t sending in the right kind of girl.”
None of them are looking at her, and Ariadne’s unease spikes. Are they talking about…?
“She’s already in the company-”
“Yes, but do you really think that’s going to be-”
The wooden legs of the chair shriek as she abruptly shoves back and stands. “Fuck you, Eames. I am not a prostitute. You can’t just whore me out because you picked the wrong con to snag him. Getting Fischer’s attention was part of your job, not mine.”
Eames is unfazed by her anger. “Yes, love, but you managed to grab it just the same.”
She turns on Arthur. “Is this why you wanted me at Fischer Morrow? So I could get into Fischer’s pants and then he would spill all his dirty secrets to me?”
The very idea makes her feel sick. And devalued. She’s an architect, not a whore. Robert, unwitting mark that he is, instinctively recognized her as some kind of bait, and she didn’t even know it herself… Fuck.
“Absolutely not,” he says, glaring at Eames.
One of these days, she’s going to have to stop taking him at his word. Damn it, she should have made them tell her everything at the outset. Why didn’t she?
This never would have happened if Cobb were here.
“Is the plan or is it not to find the plant at Varis?”
“That’s a good question,” Yusuf mutters under his breath.
“It is,” Eames reassures her. “But sometimes the clients like what we do for them enough that they want to take a second bite at the apple. It can be useful to-”
“No,” she snaps. “If that’s the plan, then I’m out.”
“Ariadne-”
“No.”
Eames sighs and holds up his hands in surrender. “All right, all right. It was just one option. We can do it another way. I just thought-”
“No.”
~*~
Ma se colpa io non ho, ma se da lui ingannata rimasi; e poi, che temi?
(But if I am not to blame, if I have been tricked by him; and then, what do you fear?)
~*~
From close observation, Ariadne quickly learns that Robert is typically the last one to leave the office at night unless he’s out of town on business.
Considering her work load, it’s barely a ruse to make sure she is the only one left with him tonight after everyone else has finally gone home.
“I never said the job would be easy,” he teases as he passes by her desk on the way to his office.
“No, you didn’t,” she says softly.
Ariadne waits about ten minutes after he’s disappeared into his office before she goes to check. She finds him slumped over in his desk chair.
Robert drinks a total of three Venti-sized coffees throughout the day, and it was almost pathetically easy to wait for him to step out so she could drop a dose of a Somnacin into his final cup of the day.
She pulls out her cell phone and dials the number Arthur gave her.
~*~
Eames gives her a wicked smile. “Want to learn something new?”
~*~
“He has to trust you,” Eames tells her.
They ambush Robert inside a bank.
Ariadne has no idea where Robert actually keeps his money, but he’s filled out her bank dreamscape with lush chairs, expensive-looking mahogany desks, and bank tellers dressed fashionably enough to put Arthur to shame.
There is a Japanese painting hanging over the lobby entrance that she recognizes from Robert’s office. Strange, abstract art pieces decorate the walls, some of it interesting enough that she makes a mental note to borrow the images for future designs.
Someday, she realizes, she would like to talk to Robert about these pieces, to hear his opinions on art. It would probably be an interesting discussion.
The one thing that gives her pause is a strange, neoclassical statue. A man dressed as an ancient Roman towers over them all. Odd and gauche, the statue doesn’t match the sleek, modern design scheme of the rest of the bank and in fact stands out like a sore thumb despite being shoved over to the side of the lobby like something discarded.
Looking at the statue unnerves her for some reason, and so she doesn’t. Instead, she stares at the floor like everyone else, her hands pressed against her head. Her hair hangs over her face so that he won’t notice her as they rush him passed.
Arthur and Eames are wearing ski masks as they drag Robert and Yusuf (disguised as another teller) to the kind of enormous bank vault she’s only ever seen in movies- until now.
Ariadne scrambles after them.
“Open it!” Eames demands.
Yusuf pretends to be shaking with fear as he puts in some phony combination that triggers the giant chrome door to swing back. Countless stacks of crisp, green bills line the walls. There’s so much green it burns the eyes. “Just don’t hurt me!”
“Shut up!” Eames screams and even Ariadne, waiting behind a plastic frond for her cue, flinches at the sound. Eames changes faces as easily as he changes ties.
Even in the midst of a hostage crisis, Robert is frustratingly serene in the face of danger. “Look,” he says reasonably, “there’s no need for any of this. I can just-”
The wall clunks next to her head as Arthur shoves him up against the wall and puts his gun in Robert’s face. “What was that? You have something to say?”
“All right, all right,” he says, and she imagines him holding up his hands in conciliation.
Eames does Arthur one better. “You!” he snaps at Yusuf. “Come here.”
There’s a scuffling sound. “Please…”
“Sorry, mate, but we seem to be done with you.”
Robert cries out in alarm in tandem with the sound of a gun blast. Ariadne flinches at the sound, and she can’t help but peak around the side of the door.
She instantly wishes she hadn’t.
Yusuf’s body lies unnaturally still on the floor, and Robert’s face is coated in blood. He looks petrified.
“Get the money,” Eames tells Arthur, who starts moving around the vault and shoving the green bills into his sack.
“You… you can have it all,” Robert stammers. He’s trying to wipe the blood off of his face with his sleeve, but he’s really just smearing it around. “There’s… no need for… further violence.”
Eames lands a sharp jab into Robert’s stomach which sends him down to his knees as he crumbles in imagined pain. That wasn’t necessary, she thinks. He’s getting carried away.
Eames crouches down next to Robert and grabs a painful-looking fistful of hair. “There’s still a need so long as I say there’s a need, Mr. Fischer.”
Ariadne rolls her eyes.
“Yes, I’m sorry,” Robert gasps, his composure a mere memory. “You’re right. Whatever you say…”
Eames doesn’t seem able to help himself, and so he hams it up further by dropping his voice into a menacing growl. “I think I’m getting tired of you. I’m tired of your face, and I don’t think your presence is further required here either.”
Just get to it, Ariadne mentally urges.
“Do you believe in God, Mr. Fischer?”
Oh, for the love of… Fed up, Ariadne finally abandons her hiding spot and lifts the heavy horse statuette she nabbed from the lobby over her head.
Robert’s eyes widen when he sees her, and for a second as their eyes meet, she thinks he’s going to tell her to run. But then she brings the statuette down on Eames’s head- hard.
Real or feigned, he goes down as if someone’s cut his strings. One down.
Arthur acts as if he’s going for his gun and then pretends to get it stuck in his belt so as to give her enough time to get Eames’s fallen gun.
She knows she can’t afford to hesitate, but Arthur must see hesitation in her expression because something unnamable passes between them just before she shoots him between the eyes.
He goes down, too.
She has to get used to this, she knows.
Her legs are only barely trembling when she turns to Robert. “Are you all right?”
He doesn’t answer- possibly because he’s having a bit of a hard time, what with the murders and all the dead bodies around him and all. Ariadne holds out a hand to help him up off the floor, but he doesn’t seem to notice.
Staring up at her with wide, glazed eyes, he says, “You… saved me.”
Bingo.
“I’m glad I got here in time.” She pulls a convenient handkerchief from her pocket and gently wipes some of the blood from his cheek. “They didn’t hurt you, did they?”
Her breath catches when he suddenly grabs her wrist.
“Ariadne?” he asks, sounding unsure.
“How do I get him to trust me?” she asks.
“Whether he knows it or not, he’s going to want to trust you,” Eames tells her. “If he doesn’t already. Just give him the opportunity, and he’ll do the rest.”
Out of the corner of her eye, she spots one of those small homemade windmills sitting innocuously amongst the money. She frowns.
“Yes, I’m here,” she tells him, “and you’re all right.” She rubs the handkerchief across his face again, making sure that the part coated in Somnacin has contact with the skin. “Everything’s going to be all right.”
Robert nods, accepting this. “Thank you.”
Yeah, she’s probably going to hell.
~*~
“On the second layer down, you’re going to be on your own.”
~*~
Ariadne wakes up in a poorly lit board room.
Projections sit around a long table discussing business things that go completely over her head and might as well be gibberish. Shades have been drawn down over the floor-length windows that line the opposite wall so that shadows stretch across the room and obscure most of their faces.
Still, she easily picks out Maurice Fischer at the head of the table.
Now, where is Fischer, Jr.?
A single strip of light flashes across her eyes.
Wincing, she glances around for the source and finds a small boy standing in the far corner of the room.
Ah. There he is.
He’s pulled back the edge of one of the shades so as to peak to the outside world. The sunshine reflects off the window pane, casting prisms of light across the room like shooting stars. The board members don’t pay him any mind.
Careful not to disturb the board members, she tiptoes across the room to join young Robert at the window. He barely glances at her as she crouches down beside him.
“What are you looking at?” she whispers.
“Nothing.”
She pulls the shade further back, revealing that the building they are in overlooks a verdant park full of trees and children running around cherry-red playground equipment. Ariadne was sure to include high slides and complex climbing structures, the likes of which she herself wouldn’t have been able to resist as a kid.
“It looks like fun.”
He shrugs noncommittally.
“Would you like to go down there?”
“I’m not supposed to.” His mournful expression brings a wistful smile to her face. Even if it is just a dream, a boring board meeting is no place for a little kid. He looks so ridiculous in his little suit, like a miniature grown-up or one of those creepy dolls people keep inside glass cabinets.
Without really thinking about it, she reaches out and musses up his slicked hair.
“Hey!” he cries, fending her off. “You’re not supposed to touch me!” His indignation is adorable and, well, ridiculous.
A few of the projections glance over at them. Ariadne shudders at the disturbing sensation of having eyes from obscured faces on her. But Robert isn’t upset so much as just indignant, and so the projections turn back to their meeting.
“Sorry, but the kids aren’t going to know what to do with you down there if you go looking like this.”
He looks at her with wide eyes. “But I can’t…”
“Yes, you can,” she says, smiling. “If you help me, I can get you permission.”
“You can get permission?” he asks skeptically.
“Yes, but only if you help me out. Will you do that, Robert?”
Ariadne can tell he doesn’t believe her, but she’s counting on the tantalizing pull of the park to override his suspicions. She might not have had any siblings growing up, but she babysat enough to know how to handle manipulating a child. Thankfully, children’s desires are fairly straight forward.
“What do I have to do?” he asks.
She points at the board members and says, “Can you tell me the names of the people sitting around the table?”
He frowns. “I guess.”
She points to the shadow sitting next to Robert’s father. “Who’s that?”
“Uncle Peter.”
She pauses, startled, and then asks, “What about that one?”
“Mr. Jeters.”
“And that one?”
“Ms. Clint.”
They go around the table, skipping a projection Ariadne recognizes as Harriet as well as Nazrahi, Robert’s vice-chairman, and Emilia Sanchez, Browning’s replacement. It’s a good mix of current and supposedly past business associates of Fischer Morrow.
Robert stops as they come to the last projection. There’s a card sitting in front of him that reads, “Guest.”
“Who’s he?” she asks, watching Robert carefully. “I don’t think he works here.”
Robert squints at the projection as if confused. “I don’t think I know him.”
“Yes, you do. You know everyone. He’s the spy in the other company that finds out their secrets and brings them back here.”
“Oh.”
“Yeah. What’s his name?”
Robert’s eyes go glassy as he stares at the obscured projection. “I… don’t know.”
She has to hide her disappointment. “Can you at least tell me what he looks like?”
“He has… red hair?”
Even as he speaks, the projection develops red hair, though the rest of his face remains hidden in shadow.
Eagerness starts to creep into her voice. “What else, Robert?”
“He’s big.”
The projection instantly becomes bulky. When he leans forward and rests his strong forearms on the table, she can see that he’s wearing a wedding ring.
Almost there.
“What about his face?”
Robert thinks about it for a moment. “Ugly. Big nose. Blue eyes.”
It’s not a perfect picture, but it’s enough. Ariadne can see enough of the face that she’d know him in the real world. Objective accomplished.
“Thank you, Robert,” she says warmly.
Time for his reward.
Ariadne waits until the projections wrap up their imaginary meeting and start filing out of the room, and then she says, “Come on. Let’s go to the park.”
Robert looks reluctant. “You still have to ask my father.”
“I already did. He said you could come if you helped me, and you did.”
He doesn’t move.
“Well, if you really don’t want to…” Ariadne stands and walks over to the door. “I suppose I’ll just go by myself. Too bad.”
She purposely doesn’t look back as she opens the door.
“No, wait!”
Covering a grin with her hand, she glances back over her shoulder. “Yes?”
Gnawing on his lower lip, he comes up to her side and looks up at her with too-blue eyes. “My father really said I could?”
“That’s right.” She holds out her hand. “Come on, Robert. It’s boring up here and fun down there. And I’ll be with you.”
Smiling hopefully, he takes her hand. “Okay.”
On their way through the park, they pass popcorn and cotton candy vendors whose products fly around their stands like butterflies. A clown stands juggling fluorescent bulbs beside a fountain Ariadne borrowed from a real park she once visited. Except now the fountain pours bubblegum soda from trumpets wielded by cherubim. Bubbles float through the air without ever falling.
It is almost too much sensory experience for Robert, who takes it all in with wide eyes and a slack jaw. He even forgets to walk once they reach the enormous hollowed-out tree that has children scampering in and out and up and down wooden staircases.
But once they reach the playground, he hesitates at her side.
“Go on,” she urges. “Oh, wait!” She helps him out of his blazer, removes his little tie, and gives his hair another mussing. “There you go. Now, go have fun.”
He gives her a strange, unreadable look that makes her wonder why he’s so nervous about spending time at a fantasy playground; but then he shuffles off in the direction of a bronzed slide that curls up as high as the surrounding trees.
Ariadne takes a seat on a platinum bench and glances around at her realized design. Damn, she’s good. Who wouldn’t want to play here? If this doesn’t create a positive association in Robert’s mind, then she doesn’t know what will.
A child wearing a red coat and pulling the string of a kite suddenly runs passed.
Glancing upward, Ariadne blinks in surprise when she realizes the paper skyscraper kite is modeled after her latest façade design for Fischer Tower. The idea is still in its first draft. She didn’t know he’d even seen it yet.
The passage of only a few minutes brings Robert, looking small and sheepish, before her again.
“What’s wrong?”
He doesn’t answer immediately.
“Robert?”
He scuffs his shoe against the concrete and doesn’t meet her eyes when he says, “They won’t let me play with them.”
Ariadne glances over at the children on the playground and sees several hostile stares being directed their way. Her first and second thoughts are that the projections have caught on to her and that they’re in trouble.
But the children don’t come for them.
After the initial glares, they just keep running around, minding their own business. The adult projections aren’t looking at them at all. None of the projections are looking at her. No, but the kids did seem to be looking at…
She looks down at Robert in dismay. His own subconscious doesn’t want to play with him?
“Robert…”
“I don’t care,” he says, lifting his chin proudly. “They’re stupid anyway.”
He does. Of course he does.
She doesn’t really know what to say, but she’s saved by the interruption of a little girl who comes barreling up to them. She has brown pigtails and wears combat boots and a pink neckerchief.
“Hello!” she chirps.
They both stare at her in surprise, but Ariadne experiences a jolt of recognition once she gets a better look at the girl. How…?
“Do you like dinosaurs?” the girl asks Robert.
“Um… yes?”
“Me, too!” she says with a bright grin. “You want to see something cool?”
Robert looks to her for permission, but Ariadne’s still gaping at the girl. She remembers wearing those boots every day, refusing to ever leave them behind until her mother finally threw them away out of disgust. Did she bring her younger self into the dream?
“It’s really cool.”
“Can I?” Robert asks eagerly, tugging at the edge of her coat.
“I don’t know…” Should she let Robert play with a projection of her younger self? Was that a good idea?
Younger Ariadne looks straight at her and says in a strangely adult voice, “He’ll like it. I promise. It’s good for children to enjoy themselves. Isn’t it, darling?”
No. No way.
“Please?” Robert begs.
“Okay,” she whispers.
The girl winks at her and then they’re scampering off.
No. This feels weird. Wrong. She starts to go after them, but her feet suddenly turn to stone as she sees them disappear behind a large... neoclassical statue. A statue of a man dressed as a Roman…
The hair on her arms stands on end.
It followed them down here.
She wants to wake up. She wants to wake up now.
She nearly screams when someone roughly grabs her arm and yanks her back against a solid chest. Icy fear plunges its fingers down her back even as his hot breath scalds her ear.
“What do you think you’re doing?” he snarls.
She screams.
~*~
“Why did you do that?” she demands as soon as the I.V. comes out of her arm.
Eames sits up on the floor and stretches lazily. “Arthur’s research said wee Robert had trouble relating to other children, and this needed to be a positive experience.”
“No one told me that,” she says angrily. “I thought the park was just the reward. You knew I was building a dream for Robert as a kid and you didn’t think that was the kind of thing I should know?”
Eames hops over Robert, who still haplessly slumbers on, and straightens his cuffs without looking at her. “Well, now you know, don’t you?”
Ariadne realizes she’s shaking all over. She slowly drops down into Robert’s desk chair to avoid an embarrassing fall.
She needs to tell them about the statue and about how Maurice Fischer, miraculously, furiously alive, just accosted her in the dream in defense of his son. He was so angry, and he shouted at her even though she was too frightened to understand half of what he said.
“Arthur said I was going in alone,” she says instead, her voice shaky. “I thought I killed you in the bank vault.”
He chuckles. “You’re going to have to hit me harder than that.”
“Certainly killed me,” Yusuf mutters as he tugs Robert into a sitting position. “I think you were having way too much fun down there, Mr. Eames.”
“Did any of the projections in the board room look familiar?” Arthur interrupts. He’s already packing up the PASIV equipment in preparation for a hasty getaway.
“Yeah,” she says distractedly. “A couple people I work with. Oh, and Peter Browning. He was there.”
Arthur nods, unsurprised.
“But Eames-”
“Did Fischer describe the plant?”
“Yeah, he’s a big man with red hair and blue eyes. He’s married because there was a wedding ring. Somewhere around fifty-year-old,” she says, still eyeing Eames. “I’m pretty sure that’s your guy. But Eames-”
“Would you know him if you saw him again in person?”
“Yes, Arthur!” she snaps.
Eames tries to walk passed her, but she jumps up on jelly legs and grabs his sleeve. “Why did you use me as your disguise?”
There’s no way he could have just guessed about what she used to look like. His mirage was perfect, from the butterfly-bow hair ties her mother used to make her wear to the combat boots she insisted on in exchange. He must have gotten hold of a picture somehow. This was planned.
“Why?” she repeats.
He sighs. “Just a precaution. Insurance, if you will.”
“Damn it, Eames. I told you no.”
For a moment, he almost looks pitying, but then it’s gone like the flicker of light off of glass.
“I know.”
~*~
After they’re gone, Ariadne gently shakes Robert awake.
He blinks blurry eyes at her. “Ariadne? Did you just…?” He can’t finish the thought because the specifics of the dream should already be fading away.
She takes a deep breath and then swallows down the ugly feelings still swimming around in her head about this job. “You fell asleep at your desk.”
“I did?”
“It’s probably time to call it a day, huh?”
He glances at his watch. “It’s two in the morning. What are you still doing here?”
She’s getting used to lying to him by now. “The same as you. I got caught up in work and didn’t notice the time. I wanted to check in before I left.”
He’s a little unsteady as he rises to his feet, which might be a side effect of the Somnacin. She doesn’t know. He stumbles and Ariadne instinctively reaches out to catch him. “Whoa there.”
But it’s just a momentary fumble, and he’s already regained his balance. “I’m fine,” he says. “Just a cramp.” He cracks his neck with a wince.
He probably shouldn’t sleep on the floor then. “Oh. Good.”
Robert is staring at her, and Ariadne suddenly realizes that she’s still holding on to him. She moves away with an awkward laugh. “Sorry.”
Robert’s still giving her a funny look, but he lets her faux pas pass without comment. “How were you planning on getting home at this hour?”
“Same as always,” she says with a shrug. “I take the subway.”
He makes a face. “At this hour? No, let me call you a cab.”
“That would be a really expensive cab ride. I live all the way across town.”
Robert frowns as if the cost of the cab never occurred to him. “I know where you live,” he says, sounding perplexed. But he stops dialing.
He either doesn’t realize or else doesn’t care about his own faux pas in mentioning the thick dossier he has on her. Annoyed, Ariadne says, perhaps a bit rudely, “I don’t need a cab. I’ll be fine. I leave late all the time.” He knows she leaves late all the time, but maybe it has never occurred to him before now to wonder how she gets home.
“Ariadne,” he says sternly, “you’re not riding the subway at two in the morning.”
“Well, unless the company has secret cots, showers, and changes of clothes in my size-”
“I’ll have my driver take you home, and I’ll take the cab.”
How can he possibly have a driver on hand at this time of the morning? Do drivers not have a union? “No, really, I can’t let you do that-”
“Already done,” he says, snapping his phone shut.
Robert smirks at her. Actually smirks. Despite her frustration, Ariadne almost smiles. She throws up her hands in surrender.
“All right, Mr. Fischer. It looks like you win.”
“I usually do.” He pauses. “And it’s Robert.”
She does smile this time. “I’ll just bet, Robert.”
~*~
Ariadne drives Yusuf to the airport.
At the gate, he gives her a warm smile, and they hug goodbye.
His part in this is done. Arthur told her that even if they need to go back in, they won’t need his stronger compounds for a single-level extraction. Regular old Somnacin will do, and Arthur knows his way around a PASIV blind, deaf, and dumb.
Time for Yusuf to go home to the family.
For some reason, she finds herself clutching him a bit too hard. He notices.
“Are you going to be all right?” he asks, clearly concerned but still aiming for jovial. “With those maniacs, I mean? And Fischer?”
She laughs. “Yeah, I think so.”
He gives her a final gentle squeeze and then lets her go. “Be safe, Ariadne.”
Watching him walk away seems like a strange time to be reminded of Cobb.
~*~
Continue to Part Three.