In the Garden of the Commendatore 3/5
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 III
Continued from Part Two.
~*~
Absently chewing on her pencil, Ariadne watches Robert pace back and forth on the other side of his office door as he snarls into his phone.
Several times already, she has caught him looking at her.
Once, she smiled back to let him know he was caught, but he didn’t behave in the abashed way he was supposed to. He frowned instead, as if he was trying to hear something from far away.
Or as if he were trying to remember something.
It’s only out of self-preservation that she watches him, too, which places them in a strange game of visual cat-and-mouse. The whole thing makes her heart pound anxiously in her chest, but Ariadne has a job to do.
Robert might not understand why they are doing this to each other, but she’s searching for evidence of adverse effects from the extraction.
When he fell into natural sleep afterward, did he have natural dreams? Were they plagued with half-formed fears and pleasures? Did he wake up with the taste of bubblegum soda on his tongue or vague recollections of a little girl with a pink neckerchief?
What would it mean? For him? For her?
Sensing her gaze on him again, Robert turns his head and their eyes meet. Her cheeks burning, Ariadne quickly drops her eyes back to her computer screen. Their catch and release of gazes has long gone passed subtle and moved daringly close to obscene. Someone is going to notice eventually.
She waits a few seconds before looking at him again. He’s back to pacing.
Ariadne has tried not to allow herself to think too often on what she saw in Robert’s head because that way lies madness. But it’s hard to look at him now and not subconsciously seek out remnants of that little kid and his ridiculous suit, to try to fit the pieces from then into the puzzle existing now. She feels almost forced into reevaluating him.
It’s not that she doesn’t like him. But Robert is borderline icy to everyone even on a good day, sad inner child or not. He’s arrogant enough to walk right into Wilson & Bailey and to steal their intern right out from under them.
Also, she figures someone who is so fastidiously put together, never with a hair out of place, and who wears such extravagant suits day in and day out has to be terribly vain.
His life has been so different from hers that he’s practically alien, and she has no idea how to relate to someone who was born with a silver spoon in his mouth.
Ariadne has never had anything she didn’t work her ass off to get.
But now she sees a man who has also become isolated, who was maybe always isolated from the people around him.
She finds herself wondering if he has ever had a real friend or even a colleague on his same level and wavelength. She’s only ever seen him on the phone for business and never for a personal call. He’s snapping orders now at whomever’s on the other end of his call, and in his temper he has never looked further from that little boy than he does now.
This is Robert the sleek corporate shark.
How messed up do you have to be for your own subconscious to snub you?
“Ariadne, will you hand me that blueprint? Ariadne? Hey!”
Snapping out of her trance, she transfers her gaze from Robert to Harriet, who is suddenly standing over her, with a confused frown. “What did you say?”
Harriet snorts and reaches across Ariadne to get the blueprint herself. “Don’t you even think about it, little girl.”
How long before people stop thinking of her as a child? “What are you talking about?”
“You know what.”
No, they haven’t been subtle. At all. Nonetheless, she aims for denial. “I wasn’t-”
Harriet doesn’t let her finish before interrupting her. “Over the years, I’ve built three different towers on three different continents for Fischer Morrow.” She holds up three fingers as if Ariadne could confuse what three means.
“Yeah, you’ve mentioned-”
“- and there’s always at least one of you little chippies who thinks she’s going to be the next Mrs. Fischer. Every damn time. And it’s pathetic to watch, let me tell you.”
Ariadne chokes on a cough.
Harriet’s hard expression becomes solemn. “But you, Ariadne, have too much going for you to throw it all away for a roll in the sack with the boss. It’s not worth it. Trust me.”
For some reason, she feels surprised that Harriet would misinterpret what is occurring between her and Robert as romantic. She takes a second to compose herself and then asks, “What’s a chippie?”
“Don’t be cute.”
“You know, Harriet,” she says, forcing a grin, “I really had no idea you held me in such high esteem.”
Harriet snorts. “Don’t let it go to your head.” She stands and stretches with the stiffness of too many hours spent at a desk. “I’m going to lunch. I suggest you do the same because I’m going to want to power through these arches when I get back.”
Ariadne waves at her retreating back, but her attention has already shifted back to Robert. Does the man never eat?
She knocks on the doorframe to announce her presence. “Hey.”
Robert barely glances up from the paperwork he’s been buried in all morning. “Ariadne,” he acknowledges.
“Everyone’s already gone to lunch.”
“Uh-huh,” he says distractedly. “You can take your lunch now, too, if you want.”
She hesitates and then says, “You don’t eat?”
He looks up and raises his eyebrows when he realizes she’s holding out two sandwiches toward him. “What’s that?”
Ariadne steps further into the room and holds up her offering. “Pastrami on rye and, um, egg salad. I think. Until someone takes a bite, it’s still up for debate. I got these from a shifty looking vendor, so…”
Robert looks less than impressed with her efforts. “One of those is for me?”
“Yeah. I mean, you can have the pastrami on rye since we actually know that’s what it is. Unless you don’t like pastrami?”
“Ariadne?”
“Yes?”
“Why did you buy me a sandwich?”
He isn’t exactly making this easy for her, but she forges ahead nonetheless. “You’re so busy. I never see you eat.” She waves the sandwiches tantalizingly. “You know you want one.”
There is an agonizingly long moment where the tension that has grown taut between them throughout the past few days threatens to snap, and she feels fairly certain he’s going to tell her where exactly she can stick these sandwiches.
But in the end, Robert just sighs and gives in. Reluctantly. “All right. I suppose.”
Good enough, she thinks and sets the sandwiches on his desk.
She ducks her head so he won’t see her smile when he takes the ambiguous choice. She knows a potentially horrible sandwich doesn’t make up for multiple attacks on his subconscious, but it makes her feel better to at least offer.
They sit across from each other, and it’s mostly silent as they munch on really bad sandwiches until Robert suddenly says, “Ariadne?”
“Yes?”
“I don’t think this is egg salad.”
~*~
Poco dura de'matti la festa, Ma per me cominciato non ha
(A fool’s holiday is very short, but for me it has not yet begun)…
~*~
A week goes by without anyone contacting her. And then another week passes.
After a particularly harrowing day at work, she sends a text message to the phone number Arthur gave her.
Is it finished? Are we done?
She slides her coat off her shoulders, which are stiff with pain, and throws it over an armchair. Her overpriced heels go flying across the room as she slumps down onto her beaten up old couch.
She wants nothing more in the world than to sink into a warm bath full of bubbles and soothing balms, but it would take more effort than she is capable of exerting at the moment to move from the couch.
Peter Browning visited the office today.
~*~
“You barely look old enough to drive. What does he have you doing?”
Ariadne feels herself begin to shrink under the weight of Browning’s gaze even though she knows he doesn’t, can’t, know her. “Um…”
Luckily, Robert saves her with a timely entrance. “Uncle Peter?”
“So, he lives after all,” Browning deadpans. “I was beginning to wonder after you stopped returning my calls and emails.”
“I’ve been busy,” he says, not quite meeting Browning’s eyes. “What are you doing here, Uncle Peter?”
“Yes, I see you’ve been busy,” he says, ignoring the question. “Quite the digs you’ve got here.”
The slur in his words is barely distinguishable, as is the slight sway to Browning’s step. The casual observer probably wouldn’t pick up on the signs, but Ariadne had an uncle who was a high-functioning alcoholic, and she does know the signs.
Browning is drunk.
He looks around their offices with an unmistakable sneer on his face. “Christ, it’s been decades since I’ve been in an office this small.”
Robert’s cheeks flush pink, and Ariadne can tell from the resolute way he doesn’t look at her that he is embarrassed this is happening in front of her. Thankfully, they’re the only two people still here working through lunch. Again.
“Let’s go into my office.” He tries to take Browning’s arm, but the man doesn’t follow his subtle cue.
“Thank God you actually have an office,” he says, chuckling at his own joke. “I was worried for a moment there.”
“Of course I have an office,” Robert mutters. He instantly looks twenty years younger and on the verge of a very real pout.
“This place is only temporary.”
She says it before she can stop herself, and of course, she immediately regrets it when they both turn to look at her.
“Did you just say something?” Browning asks, confirming her suspicion that he’d forgotten her. “Robert, did she just say something? Who is this? What is she even doing here? Are you hiring children at this place?”
Ariadne feels her back straighten with indignation, but Robert quickly interjects, “She’s an architect, Uncle Peter. Now, let’s go into my-”
“I’ll just bet she’s an architect,” he grumbles.
The look he gives her makes Ariadne wish she could disappear into the wall. “I tell you, Maurice wouldn’t have let this one through the front door. Not after that last time-”
“Uncle Peter!” Robert’s voice snaps like the crack of a whip in their otherwise silent office. Browning merely snorts, but Ariadne looks at him in surprise, which seems to make Robert remember himself.
He takes a breath and then says in a much calmer voice, “Please, come into my office.”
“Yeah, yeah,” Browning mutters, but he obediently follows his godson into his office. Robert tactfully closes the door behind them.
Ariadne releases a breath she didn’t even realize she was holding. However, her relief proves merely ephemeral when the sound of raised voices from behind the door only takes a few minutes to reemerge.
“Oh, this is what embarrasses you? Not the fact that you’ve completely destroyed-”
“I was twenty-years-old, Uncle Peter!”
“Yes, and she’s still on the payroll!”
“What are you even doing here?”
“I wanted to see what you destroyed your father’s legacy for!”
She doesn’t mean to eavesdrop, but she still jumps when Robert suddenly pokes his head back out from behind the door.
“Ariadne, you can take your lunch now.”
It’s not an offer so much as an order.
She goes, but she brings him back another sandwich. This time, it’s a Reuben. A grilled corned beef offering smothered in cheese, sauerkraut, and Thousand Island dressing.
Browning’s gone by the time she wanders back into Robert’s office, and he’s standing by the window again in what she has now come to recognize as his melancholy pose.
“You forgot to eat again,” she says, holding out the Reuben.
Robert sighs and takes her offering without any of the previous fuss. “I’m sorry you had to see that.”
“That’s all right.”
There’s a pregnant pause, wherein neither of them speaks or makes a move to sit down. Ariadne breaks it by saying, “But I do have an important question for you.”
His eyebrows go up in surprise. “And what’s that?” He voice is as aloof as always, but she detects a tremor in the undercurrent.
Ariadne holds up the sandwich to her eye for a mock inspection. “Do you think this is real meat in these sandwiches? Or do you think it’s more like mystery meat? It’s kind of gross, but I can never tell the difference.”
Robert blinks once. Twice. And then he smiles. Kind of.
“I think I need to introduce you to food that doesn’t come from random strangers you find on the street.”
“Fair enough.”
~*~
She never receives a response to her text, but maybe that’s answer enough.
If they really are finished, then maybe she can start breathing easy again. Maybe her job at Fischer Morrow will start to feel real and not temporary.
Ariadne pours herself a glass of wine in some sad parody of a celebration and turns up the volume on her music player. Settling back on her couch, she closes her eyes and lets the impassioned arias of Don Giovanni wash over her.
She only makes it about as far as what she thinks is an angry mob chasing down Don Giovanni for something or other before she turns it off with a sigh. Maybe something a bit more cheerful this time? Something in English even.
She imagines Yusuf laughing at her from miles and miles away.
~*~
There are reporters waiting for them at the restaurant.
“Someone on the staff must have tipped them off that we were coming,” Harriet says, leaning over Ariadne for a better look at the crowd.
Neil, Robert’s personal assistant, already has his phone out. “Do you want me to reschedule the meeting? Or we can see if the contractor’s willing to meet us at another restaurant?”
Robert curses under his breath. He rubs a weary hand over his face.
“We already rescheduled with them twice,” Neil cautions.
“They’ll reschedule again,” Harriet says reasonably. “They need our business more than we need theirs.”
“We’re not rescheduling,” Robert snaps. To his credit, he doesn’t seem frazzled so much as resigned. He smirks at her. “Besides, I promised to introduce you to real food.”
Harriet raises an eyebrow at this, and Ariadne quickly asks, “Why are there reporters?”
Harriet and Neil both look at Robert, who sighs. “I dismantled another subsidiary company today.”
Oh. Well. She’s only half-joking when she says, “And all before lunch?”
Robert looks like he might smile. Maybe. Really, it’s hard to tell with him.
“What do you want to do?” Neil asks him.
He looks at Ariadne. “Will you be all right with going through the reporters?”
Surprised, she nods. “Don’t worry about me.”
Robert nods and puts his shades on, instantly becoming all sharp angles and cold, untouchable authority. “All right, then. Everyone walk straight into the restaurant. Don’t say anything to the reporters. Try not to make eye contact. If they talk to you, then just ignore them.”
Easier said than done, she discovers.
“Mr. Fischer, what do you have to say to all the accusations of mental incompetence?”
“Are you aware that there are already six lawsuits being filed as of this morning?”
Despite her brave words, all the shouting, so loud and directly in her ears, and all the faces pressed in close to her quickly send her into vertigo spin. She sways dangerously on her feet, and she isn’t sure if the cause is the vertigo or the pushing crowd.
“Hey! Hey, you! What’s your name? Hey!”
A reporter gets too aggressive and actually grabs her arm. Ariadne doesn’t have time to feel alarmed before Robert’s there, shoving him back. “Don’t touch her.”
She feels his hand on her back, firm as he ushers her through the crowd. She grows grateful for the physical support after a flash goes off in her face and all she can see is stars.
“That was horrible,” she says once they’re safely ensconced inside the hotel.
Robert sighs. “You don’t say.”
The contractor smiles, shakes Robert’s hand, and only speaks of the superficial beyond the shop talk like the professional he is. But there is a nervous energy to his movements that suggests the unexpected press hoard has shaken him. Ariadne can sympathize.
They have barely ordered appetizers before Robert’s already frowning down at his phone. He stands suddenly. “I’ll be right back. Feel free to order some champagne. On me.”
Neil grins at her. “I love it when he says that.”
Ariadne doesn’t mean to follow him. She really only intends to go to the ladies’ room, but on her way she spots Robert standing at the hotel bar and pauses.
If Robert were anyone else, then his sneaking away from a work meeting to catch a few minutes of a sports game wouldn’t feel so out of the ordinary. But Ariadne knows from Robert’s dossier that the only sports he cares about are the ones he himself plays. He’s an accomplished polo player and equestrian, and that’s where his athletic interest ends.
There has never been any indication from either Arthur or Robert that he has any affection for baseball, which happens to be what is on the television right now.
All of these facts from the Robert Fischer Almanac flash through her mind as if she were pulling them off the computer, and so she hesitates. She almost goes to join him, but the appearance of another man at the bar freezes her feet in their tracks.
He has his back to her, but she can see he has a bulky physique.
And red hair.
~*~
Arthur’s voice sounds small and far away, compromised by the blur by static.
“It’s not enough,” he tells her. “They want a name.”
~*~
There is nowhere in the room where she can hide, no pillar to duck behind so she can observe them, and so she slowly backs out of the room. Luckily, neither of them turns around, and so she makes it out of the bar without being detected.
Standing foolishly in the center of the hall, looking for all the world like a lost child, she considers going to the bathroom as she initially planned. Afterward, she can just rejoin everyone at the table, and they can carry on with their lunch meeting.
Ariadne could forget she ever saw that red-headed man.
She could.
She can’t, she realizes with defeated resignation.
She can’t because if she can get that guy’s name right now, today, then they won’t have to go back into Robert’s dreams.
It has never occurred to her to ask what exactly it is that Robert’s getting on the sly from Varis Energy- because she doesn’t care. They were hired to get the plant’s name and just his name. She gets that, and the job’s finished. Everybody goes home, no (more) harm done.
With a sigh, she ducks around the corner and waits.
She doesn’t have to wait long.
Whatever business he has with Robert concludes quickly, and the red-headed man leaves the bar and heads down the hall opposite from where Ariadne’s hiding from view around the corner.
She has to pass the entrance to the bar again and risk being seen or even running directly into Robert, but she’ll lose him if she doesn’t act quickly. She moves.
The man isn’t dallying. Walking at a brisk pace that barely passes for casual, he bypasses the elevators and ducks around a corner.
Keeping her distance, she follows. Well, she tries, but he doesn’t make it easy for her. He doesn’t have much of a head start on her, but somehow every time she turns a corner, he’s already just disappearing around another. It starts to feel like she is chasing a ghost.
He breaks into a run.
Shocked, Ariadne drops cover and runs after him.
A woman comes out of her room just as she is taking a corner, and she screams when Ariadne barrels into her. Tangled, they fall to the floor. Cursing, Ariadne shoves her down and crawls over her, ignoring her protests. There isn’t time for politeness because she can’t afford to lose him.
But she has.
He has somehow led her in a complete circle, and she finds herself spilled out into the lobby near the hotel bar. Gasping for breath, she looks around for her target. There are people milling about, but none of them are bulky redheads. He’s just… gone.
How? He didn’t have much of head-start on her, and who the fuck designed this place with so many labyrinthine twists and turns? Shit, shit, shit.
No, labyrinthine or not, there’s no way he could have escaped her in this place. No way unless…
Ariadne’s suddenly so terrified that she drops immediately to her knees right there on the floor so that she’ll have a flat surface at hand. The totem comes out of her pocket, falls, and…
… lands hard on its right side. Not a dream. Which means she’s just royally screwed up in reality.
Damn it.
~*~
Robert looks surprised when she sets the pamphlet on his desk.
“They’re going to be performing it at the Met the weekend after next. I thought of you,” she adds when he doesn’t respond right away. “Because… you like opera?”
“Uh, I do.” He glances over the advertisement for Madame Butterfly she picked up for him and then gives her a polite smile. “Thank you.”
He still seems fairly befuddled by her, but that is starting to feel like a commonplace. If it’s not a sandwich, then it’s an ad for an opera he probably doesn’t like. Maybe next time she’ll get really creative and put something obscure and without a referent on his desk, like a rubix cube. Or, if she happens to be feeling particularly sadomasochistic, perhaps an origami unicorn. Would he get that reference?
“I brought you a coffee, too.” She offers him his third Venti of the day, made just as he likes it. Straight black, no frills, and probably exactly how his father once took his.
He seems more bemused than appreciative. “You know, I do have a secretary to get me coffee.” And food, he doesn’t add.
“She already left,” she answers smoothly, though she can feel her cheeks reddening, “and I was getting coffee for myself anyway.” She pauses. “You don’t want it?”
Robert holds her gaze for a long moment, and she feels something tighten in her chest until good breeding finally kicks in and he reaches out to take the coffee from her.
“Thank you.”
She forces a smile.
He sets the coffee down on his desk without drinking, and she feels the smile wither away on her face. There is no reason for her to still be standing here, but she doesn’t leave. When the silence threatens to become awkward, she blurts out, “I listened to Don Giovanni.”
“I thought you didn’t like opera,” he says, raising an eyebrow at her.
“I still don’t really think it’s for me,” she admits with a shrug. “But you can’t call something ‘musical perfection’ and expect me to just take your word for it.”
His mouth quirks. “Well, what did you think?”
“It was… okay.” She smiles genuinely at his dismayed expression and amends her criticism with, “The songs were pretty.”
“Pretty?” he says, as if she’d just described the statue of David or the Sistine Chapel as eh.
“I guess I didn’t really get what I was supposed to take from it.”
She thinks she understands what Robert feels, though, when he listens to sad songs sung by a daughter mourning her dead father; a dead father who comes back in the guise of a supernatural statue to take revenge on his unrepentant murderer.
It took her several attempts to finally get to the end of the opera, but the revelation of the statue filled her veins with ice water as her heart raced unwillingly to match the rising storm of pulsing brass, guttural baritones, and weeping wind instruments that accompany Don Giovanni down to hell.
At the crash of the crescendo, she felt Maurice Fischer’s fingers digging into her arm again as if he were standing right behind her.
Once it’s over, she puts Don Giovanni at the back of a desk drawer with the mind to never listen to it again. Talking about it now makes the hair on her arms rise, but she’s, well, stalling.
“The case said it was supposed to be a tragedy,” she says, “but Don Giovanni was horrible. He spent the whole opera trying to rape everyone in sight and then he threw his only friend to the angry mob to save himself. I didn’t exactly feel bad for him when he got dragged down to hell at the end by the statue.”
Something about his expression makes her curiously ask, “Do you?”
Robert turns the pamphlet over in his hands as he seems to mull over his response. “I think it’s tragic he doesn’t repent before the end,” he says quietly, “even after Elvira offers him salvation and forgiveness for everything he did to her.”
Sensing her misstep, Ariadne regrets bringing up the subject at all, especially when she sees the melancholia slip back into his eyes.
She glances at the picture he keeps on his desk of a little boy blowing windmills with his father as her mind drifts back the darkened board room where all the faces were obscured except for one.
During the inception job, Eames said they were repairing Robert’s relationship with his father, but now she thinks that might have just been a line meant to assuage her. If her observations (and manipulations) of Robert are anything to go by, then maybe reconciliation with the dead isn’t that simple.
“I’ll bring you a copy of that blueprint you wanted,” she says, shifting them back to a safer topic.
She puts her hand on the doorknob but otherwise makes no move to leave.
“Thank you,” Robert says absently. He finally takes a sip of his coffee under the unnoticed intensity of her stare, and then it’s done and Ariadne sighs sadly.
The coffee slips from his fingers and splatters on the floor with a soft pop as the plastic lid becomes dislodged from the cup. Lukewarm coffee half-seeps, half-settles atop the water-resistant commercial carpeting.
Robert slumps forward in his chair, but Ariadne is there to catch him before he can hit his head on the edge of the desk. She gently settles him back into a more secure and hopefully comfortable sitting position.
“I’m so sorry, Robert,” she tells him, but an apology from her doesn’t really mean anything at this point.
She takes out her phone.
~*~
Mi par ch'oggi il demonio si diverta d'opporsi a miei piacevoli progressi; vanno mal tutti quanti
(It seems the devil must be amusing himself at my expense today; everything is going badly)…
~*~
Cobb said never to use memories when building a dream.
But Cobb broke all his own rules, so Ariadne doesn’t see why she should be expected to follow them.
Tapping her wrist, Arthur nods at her and then-
- she is somewhere else.
There is a tray in her hands, heavy with dirty, enameled dishes, and when she lowers it she sees light streaming in through huge bay windows that line the far side of the ballroom.
Somehow, the city view she expected has been replaced with an ocean whose waves of cerulean sea foam come right up to the edge of the windows in silent collisions that should have shaken the walls.
This isn’t part of her design.
That’s not right, she thinks, but no one else seems to notice as they chatter quietly over pristine tablecloths and soft jazz. Questioning the logistics of dreams is pointless anyway.
Through a reflection that reveals a black and white waitress ensemble and thick bangs she doesn’t sport in real life, she sees it- a monolithic statue, ten times its previous size, that rises out of the sea like a raging Poseidon.
The austere features of a Maurice Fischer carved from fear and marble are clear to her now.
Trepidation propels her backwards, away from a stone gaze separated from her only by fragile glass, but her back abruptly collides with something solid. “Ah!”
Her tray falls from her hands, and Ariadne cringes at the resulting cacophony of several dishes breaking at once. She stares at the mess, unsure of what she’s supposed to do.
A hand brushes her shoulder just as a low voice says, “Not very subtle.”
She whirls around only for her mouth to fall open in shock. The face she sees every morning in the mirror smirks back at her.
“Better get those dishes,” Not-Ariadne says. “He’s looking over here.”
“I don’t…”
“Ariadne, get down or Fischer’s going to see you.”
She immediately drops to her knees beside the mess. She knows where Robert’s table is because she put him there, and she angles her back to him.
The light bulb finally goes off over her head, and she glares up through her bangs at… well, herself. “Eames, what are you doing?”
“Your target is in the bar,” he says in her voice, already moving away.
Ariadne has to resist the impulse to grab his- her?- ankle. “Get back here,” she hisses, but he ignores her.
She doesn’t know what he’s up to, but something tells her that she’s not going to like it. Unfortunately, the only way to stop him at this point would be to sacrifice both their covers in order to body-check him right here and now.
Though tempting, she stays where she is and tries to subtly watch Eames’s progress across the room. For some reason, he has her wearing a form-fitting pencil skirt that’s about two inches short of work appropriate.
In counting the number of buttons that should be done up on her blouse to avoid embarrassing herself- well, him- Ariadne can’t help but notice that Eames has embellished her in some key areas.
Bastard, she thinks indignantly.
Not-Ariadne joins Robert at his table with an apologetic smile. Robert says something, and Not-Ariadne laughs a little too loud.
She feels the bottom of her stomach fall out. This isn’t how it is supposed to go.
Somewhere beyond her fury and humiliation, she remembers that she has a mission to carry out.
Rising reluctantly to her feet, she leaves the broken dishes on the floor and heads for the hotel bar.
The projection is waiting for her just where Eames said he would be. Summoning up her game face, Ariadne touches his arm. “Excuse me, sir, but I need you to come with me.”
He frowns down at her, but she sees a flicker of panic flare in his eyes. It becomes more than a flicker when she flashes a hint of the Glock 17 hidden in her apron pocket. “Sir?”
He follows her to the designated hotel room where Arthur is waiting for them. They tie him to a chair and gag him while he watches them with terrified eyes. She ignores him in favor of glaring over his head at Arthur.
“I wondered why you and Eames were working together again,” she says grimly, “and why we specifically needed a forger. I guess I know now.”
He sighs. “Ariadne…”
“Unless the next words out of your mouth are going to be ‘No, Ariadne, Eames’s role in this job is not specifically to impersonate you,’ then I don’t want to hear it, Arthur.”
This whole time, she really was the mark. “Why?”
He looks at her, and she can almost see the pros and cons weighing themselves in his head over whether he should tell her the truth.
Whichever scale rises, he tells her, “Eames is here to keep you safe.”
“I’m not in danger, Arthur!”
“You thinking that is exactly why Eames is here.” He probably doesn’t mean to sound so patronizing, but he still really, really does.
Ariadne resists the urge to punch Arthur right in the nose, but Eames chooses an inopportune time to enter the room wearing her face.
“He’s on his wa- gah!”
As soon as he shuts the door, she’s there, shoving him back. “Asshole!”
“Wait now,” he says, holding up his- her- hands. “What’s this about?”
“Stop it,” she says angrily. “Stop looking like me right now.”
He exchanges a look over her head with Arthur, who returns it wearily. And then it’s Eames again looking down at her with a chagrin expression.
“Why? Why are you doing this?”
“I told you. Insurance.”
“How does that stupid skirt and flirting with my boss gain us insurance?” She can hear her voice going shrill, but she doesn’t care. “And why is he coming to meet you in a hotel room? No, you know what? I don’t want to know!”
“Ariadne, it’s only a dream,” he says softly.
That might have worked before she knew inception was possible, but she knows now that the simplest, smallest suggestion can radically change everything.
“You can’t do things like this,” she says, and it’s pathetically close to begging. “You can’t because you’re going to confuse him.”
Confuse us, she thinks. She and Robert are in a good place of sort of but not really friends, and she likes it that way. They’re building something together that could revolutionize architecture as the world knows it, and Eames could ruin everything by planting… ideas in Robert’s head. Ideas that have no business being there.
Eames grips her shoulders, gives her a gentle shake, and says earnestly, “Ariadne, my love, that is the point.”
She gapes at him. “What?”
“Do you know why you’ve been able to get this far? It’s because Fischer trusts you. A couple of background checks is nothing to a man like that. He likes you, and that’s a good thing. You’re passed his guard, but if the situation turns on us then that will become a very dangerous place to be. This isn’t a game we’re playing. Forget prison, we’re talking about life and death stakes involving a man who was a hair’s breath away from becoming a world power unto himself.”
The projection starts to make gurgling noises around his gag. They ignore him.
“I know…”
“Good. Now, think about all the power and all the resources that man has at his fingertips at any given moment, and then imagine how he would feel once he found out about you.”
She tries to interrupt him, but he says, “No, I want you to really think about what he would do if he knew what you’d done to him. What would you do in his shoes?”
There’s an invisible grip on her throat, and she can’t answer. But the kind of man Eames is describing… that’s not Robert. That could never be Robert. Robert likes Reuben’s and opera and horseback riding and green architecture. He gets a twinkle in his eye when he’s talking about things he cares about. He would never order a hit on her. The very idea of him as a mustache-twirling villain is ludicrous.
So, why can’t she say that? Why are the words caught on the roof of her mouth like sticky peanut butter?
He lightly touches her face, and she bites her lip against the emotions the gesture bubbles up to the surface. He’s speaking in that soft, cajoling way that adults use to talk to children when they’re being unreasonable.
“We need him to care about you because, if he does, then there’s a chance that when… if things go bad, they won’t go so bad for you. Do you understand?”
She does. God help her, she does.
Arthur clears his throat and says, “He’ll be here any second. Are you ready?” He isn’t asking Eames.
“Yeah.”
Arthur’s arm goes around her throat, and he presses the Glock against her temple just as Robert enters the room.
~*~
Continue to Part IV.
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 III
Continued from Part Two.
~*~
Absently chewing on her pencil, Ariadne watches Robert pace back and forth on the other side of his office door as he snarls into his phone.
Several times already, she has caught him looking at her.
Once, she smiled back to let him know he was caught, but he didn’t behave in the abashed way he was supposed to. He frowned instead, as if he was trying to hear something from far away.
Or as if he were trying to remember something.
It’s only out of self-preservation that she watches him, too, which places them in a strange game of visual cat-and-mouse. The whole thing makes her heart pound anxiously in her chest, but Ariadne has a job to do.
Robert might not understand why they are doing this to each other, but she’s searching for evidence of adverse effects from the extraction.
When he fell into natural sleep afterward, did he have natural dreams? Were they plagued with half-formed fears and pleasures? Did he wake up with the taste of bubblegum soda on his tongue or vague recollections of a little girl with a pink neckerchief?
What would it mean? For him? For her?
Sensing her gaze on him again, Robert turns his head and their eyes meet. Her cheeks burning, Ariadne quickly drops her eyes back to her computer screen. Their catch and release of gazes has long gone passed subtle and moved daringly close to obscene. Someone is going to notice eventually.
She waits a few seconds before looking at him again. He’s back to pacing.
Ariadne has tried not to allow herself to think too often on what she saw in Robert’s head because that way lies madness. But it’s hard to look at him now and not subconsciously seek out remnants of that little kid and his ridiculous suit, to try to fit the pieces from then into the puzzle existing now. She feels almost forced into reevaluating him.
It’s not that she doesn’t like him. But Robert is borderline icy to everyone even on a good day, sad inner child or not. He’s arrogant enough to walk right into Wilson & Bailey and to steal their intern right out from under them.
Also, she figures someone who is so fastidiously put together, never with a hair out of place, and who wears such extravagant suits day in and day out has to be terribly vain.
His life has been so different from hers that he’s practically alien, and she has no idea how to relate to someone who was born with a silver spoon in his mouth.
Ariadne has never had anything she didn’t work her ass off to get.
But now she sees a man who has also become isolated, who was maybe always isolated from the people around him.
She finds herself wondering if he has ever had a real friend or even a colleague on his same level and wavelength. She’s only ever seen him on the phone for business and never for a personal call. He’s snapping orders now at whomever’s on the other end of his call, and in his temper he has never looked further from that little boy than he does now.
This is Robert the sleek corporate shark.
How messed up do you have to be for your own subconscious to snub you?
“Ariadne, will you hand me that blueprint? Ariadne? Hey!”
Snapping out of her trance, she transfers her gaze from Robert to Harriet, who is suddenly standing over her, with a confused frown. “What did you say?”
Harriet snorts and reaches across Ariadne to get the blueprint herself. “Don’t you even think about it, little girl.”
How long before people stop thinking of her as a child? “What are you talking about?”
“You know what.”
No, they haven’t been subtle. At all. Nonetheless, she aims for denial. “I wasn’t-”
Harriet doesn’t let her finish before interrupting her. “Over the years, I’ve built three different towers on three different continents for Fischer Morrow.” She holds up three fingers as if Ariadne could confuse what three means.
“Yeah, you’ve mentioned-”
“- and there’s always at least one of you little chippies who thinks she’s going to be the next Mrs. Fischer. Every damn time. And it’s pathetic to watch, let me tell you.”
Ariadne chokes on a cough.
Harriet’s hard expression becomes solemn. “But you, Ariadne, have too much going for you to throw it all away for a roll in the sack with the boss. It’s not worth it. Trust me.”
For some reason, she feels surprised that Harriet would misinterpret what is occurring between her and Robert as romantic. She takes a second to compose herself and then asks, “What’s a chippie?”
“Don’t be cute.”
“You know, Harriet,” she says, forcing a grin, “I really had no idea you held me in such high esteem.”
Harriet snorts. “Don’t let it go to your head.” She stands and stretches with the stiffness of too many hours spent at a desk. “I’m going to lunch. I suggest you do the same because I’m going to want to power through these arches when I get back.”
Ariadne waves at her retreating back, but her attention has already shifted back to Robert. Does the man never eat?
She knocks on the doorframe to announce her presence. “Hey.”
Robert barely glances up from the paperwork he’s been buried in all morning. “Ariadne,” he acknowledges.
“Everyone’s already gone to lunch.”
“Uh-huh,” he says distractedly. “You can take your lunch now, too, if you want.”
She hesitates and then says, “You don’t eat?”
He looks up and raises his eyebrows when he realizes she’s holding out two sandwiches toward him. “What’s that?”
Ariadne steps further into the room and holds up her offering. “Pastrami on rye and, um, egg salad. I think. Until someone takes a bite, it’s still up for debate. I got these from a shifty looking vendor, so…”
Robert looks less than impressed with her efforts. “One of those is for me?”
“Yeah. I mean, you can have the pastrami on rye since we actually know that’s what it is. Unless you don’t like pastrami?”
“Ariadne?”
“Yes?”
“Why did you buy me a sandwich?”
He isn’t exactly making this easy for her, but she forges ahead nonetheless. “You’re so busy. I never see you eat.” She waves the sandwiches tantalizingly. “You know you want one.”
There is an agonizingly long moment where the tension that has grown taut between them throughout the past few days threatens to snap, and she feels fairly certain he’s going to tell her where exactly she can stick these sandwiches.
But in the end, Robert just sighs and gives in. Reluctantly. “All right. I suppose.”
Good enough, she thinks and sets the sandwiches on his desk.
She ducks her head so he won’t see her smile when he takes the ambiguous choice. She knows a potentially horrible sandwich doesn’t make up for multiple attacks on his subconscious, but it makes her feel better to at least offer.
They sit across from each other, and it’s mostly silent as they munch on really bad sandwiches until Robert suddenly says, “Ariadne?”
“Yes?”
“I don’t think this is egg salad.”
~*~
Poco dura de'matti la festa, Ma per me cominciato non ha
(A fool’s holiday is very short, but for me it has not yet begun)…
~*~
A week goes by without anyone contacting her. And then another week passes.
After a particularly harrowing day at work, she sends a text message to the phone number Arthur gave her.
Is it finished? Are we done?
She slides her coat off her shoulders, which are stiff with pain, and throws it over an armchair. Her overpriced heels go flying across the room as she slumps down onto her beaten up old couch.
She wants nothing more in the world than to sink into a warm bath full of bubbles and soothing balms, but it would take more effort than she is capable of exerting at the moment to move from the couch.
Peter Browning visited the office today.
~*~
“You barely look old enough to drive. What does he have you doing?”
Ariadne feels herself begin to shrink under the weight of Browning’s gaze even though she knows he doesn’t, can’t, know her. “Um…”
Luckily, Robert saves her with a timely entrance. “Uncle Peter?”
“So, he lives after all,” Browning deadpans. “I was beginning to wonder after you stopped returning my calls and emails.”
“I’ve been busy,” he says, not quite meeting Browning’s eyes. “What are you doing here, Uncle Peter?”
“Yes, I see you’ve been busy,” he says, ignoring the question. “Quite the digs you’ve got here.”
The slur in his words is barely distinguishable, as is the slight sway to Browning’s step. The casual observer probably wouldn’t pick up on the signs, but Ariadne had an uncle who was a high-functioning alcoholic, and she does know the signs.
Browning is drunk.
He looks around their offices with an unmistakable sneer on his face. “Christ, it’s been decades since I’ve been in an office this small.”
Robert’s cheeks flush pink, and Ariadne can tell from the resolute way he doesn’t look at her that he is embarrassed this is happening in front of her. Thankfully, they’re the only two people still here working through lunch. Again.
“Let’s go into my office.” He tries to take Browning’s arm, but the man doesn’t follow his subtle cue.
“Thank God you actually have an office,” he says, chuckling at his own joke. “I was worried for a moment there.”
“Of course I have an office,” Robert mutters. He instantly looks twenty years younger and on the verge of a very real pout.
“This place is only temporary.”
She says it before she can stop herself, and of course, she immediately regrets it when they both turn to look at her.
“Did you just say something?” Browning asks, confirming her suspicion that he’d forgotten her. “Robert, did she just say something? Who is this? What is she even doing here? Are you hiring children at this place?”
Ariadne feels her back straighten with indignation, but Robert quickly interjects, “She’s an architect, Uncle Peter. Now, let’s go into my-”
“I’ll just bet she’s an architect,” he grumbles.
The look he gives her makes Ariadne wish she could disappear into the wall. “I tell you, Maurice wouldn’t have let this one through the front door. Not after that last time-”
“Uncle Peter!” Robert’s voice snaps like the crack of a whip in their otherwise silent office. Browning merely snorts, but Ariadne looks at him in surprise, which seems to make Robert remember himself.
He takes a breath and then says in a much calmer voice, “Please, come into my office.”
“Yeah, yeah,” Browning mutters, but he obediently follows his godson into his office. Robert tactfully closes the door behind them.
Ariadne releases a breath she didn’t even realize she was holding. However, her relief proves merely ephemeral when the sound of raised voices from behind the door only takes a few minutes to reemerge.
“Oh, this is what embarrasses you? Not the fact that you’ve completely destroyed-”
“I was twenty-years-old, Uncle Peter!”
“Yes, and she’s still on the payroll!”
“What are you even doing here?”
“I wanted to see what you destroyed your father’s legacy for!”
She doesn’t mean to eavesdrop, but she still jumps when Robert suddenly pokes his head back out from behind the door.
“Ariadne, you can take your lunch now.”
It’s not an offer so much as an order.
She goes, but she brings him back another sandwich. This time, it’s a Reuben. A grilled corned beef offering smothered in cheese, sauerkraut, and Thousand Island dressing.
Browning’s gone by the time she wanders back into Robert’s office, and he’s standing by the window again in what she has now come to recognize as his melancholy pose.
“You forgot to eat again,” she says, holding out the Reuben.
Robert sighs and takes her offering without any of the previous fuss. “I’m sorry you had to see that.”
“That’s all right.”
There’s a pregnant pause, wherein neither of them speaks or makes a move to sit down. Ariadne breaks it by saying, “But I do have an important question for you.”
His eyebrows go up in surprise. “And what’s that?” He voice is as aloof as always, but she detects a tremor in the undercurrent.
Ariadne holds up the sandwich to her eye for a mock inspection. “Do you think this is real meat in these sandwiches? Or do you think it’s more like mystery meat? It’s kind of gross, but I can never tell the difference.”
Robert blinks once. Twice. And then he smiles. Kind of.
“I think I need to introduce you to food that doesn’t come from random strangers you find on the street.”
“Fair enough.”
~*~
She never receives a response to her text, but maybe that’s answer enough.
If they really are finished, then maybe she can start breathing easy again. Maybe her job at Fischer Morrow will start to feel real and not temporary.
Ariadne pours herself a glass of wine in some sad parody of a celebration and turns up the volume on her music player. Settling back on her couch, she closes her eyes and lets the impassioned arias of Don Giovanni wash over her.
She only makes it about as far as what she thinks is an angry mob chasing down Don Giovanni for something or other before she turns it off with a sigh. Maybe something a bit more cheerful this time? Something in English even.
She imagines Yusuf laughing at her from miles and miles away.
~*~
There are reporters waiting for them at the restaurant.
“Someone on the staff must have tipped them off that we were coming,” Harriet says, leaning over Ariadne for a better look at the crowd.
Neil, Robert’s personal assistant, already has his phone out. “Do you want me to reschedule the meeting? Or we can see if the contractor’s willing to meet us at another restaurant?”
Robert curses under his breath. He rubs a weary hand over his face.
“We already rescheduled with them twice,” Neil cautions.
“They’ll reschedule again,” Harriet says reasonably. “They need our business more than we need theirs.”
“We’re not rescheduling,” Robert snaps. To his credit, he doesn’t seem frazzled so much as resigned. He smirks at her. “Besides, I promised to introduce you to real food.”
Harriet raises an eyebrow at this, and Ariadne quickly asks, “Why are there reporters?”
Harriet and Neil both look at Robert, who sighs. “I dismantled another subsidiary company today.”
Oh. Well. She’s only half-joking when she says, “And all before lunch?”
Robert looks like he might smile. Maybe. Really, it’s hard to tell with him.
“What do you want to do?” Neil asks him.
He looks at Ariadne. “Will you be all right with going through the reporters?”
Surprised, she nods. “Don’t worry about me.”
Robert nods and puts his shades on, instantly becoming all sharp angles and cold, untouchable authority. “All right, then. Everyone walk straight into the restaurant. Don’t say anything to the reporters. Try not to make eye contact. If they talk to you, then just ignore them.”
Easier said than done, she discovers.
“Mr. Fischer, what do you have to say to all the accusations of mental incompetence?”
“Are you aware that there are already six lawsuits being filed as of this morning?”
Despite her brave words, all the shouting, so loud and directly in her ears, and all the faces pressed in close to her quickly send her into vertigo spin. She sways dangerously on her feet, and she isn’t sure if the cause is the vertigo or the pushing crowd.
“Hey! Hey, you! What’s your name? Hey!”
A reporter gets too aggressive and actually grabs her arm. Ariadne doesn’t have time to feel alarmed before Robert’s there, shoving him back. “Don’t touch her.”
She feels his hand on her back, firm as he ushers her through the crowd. She grows grateful for the physical support after a flash goes off in her face and all she can see is stars.
“That was horrible,” she says once they’re safely ensconced inside the hotel.
Robert sighs. “You don’t say.”
The contractor smiles, shakes Robert’s hand, and only speaks of the superficial beyond the shop talk like the professional he is. But there is a nervous energy to his movements that suggests the unexpected press hoard has shaken him. Ariadne can sympathize.
They have barely ordered appetizers before Robert’s already frowning down at his phone. He stands suddenly. “I’ll be right back. Feel free to order some champagne. On me.”
Neil grins at her. “I love it when he says that.”
Ariadne doesn’t mean to follow him. She really only intends to go to the ladies’ room, but on her way she spots Robert standing at the hotel bar and pauses.
If Robert were anyone else, then his sneaking away from a work meeting to catch a few minutes of a sports game wouldn’t feel so out of the ordinary. But Ariadne knows from Robert’s dossier that the only sports he cares about are the ones he himself plays. He’s an accomplished polo player and equestrian, and that’s where his athletic interest ends.
There has never been any indication from either Arthur or Robert that he has any affection for baseball, which happens to be what is on the television right now.
All of these facts from the Robert Fischer Almanac flash through her mind as if she were pulling them off the computer, and so she hesitates. She almost goes to join him, but the appearance of another man at the bar freezes her feet in their tracks.
He has his back to her, but she can see he has a bulky physique.
And red hair.
~*~
Arthur’s voice sounds small and far away, compromised by the blur by static.
“It’s not enough,” he tells her. “They want a name.”
~*~
There is nowhere in the room where she can hide, no pillar to duck behind so she can observe them, and so she slowly backs out of the room. Luckily, neither of them turns around, and so she makes it out of the bar without being detected.
Standing foolishly in the center of the hall, looking for all the world like a lost child, she considers going to the bathroom as she initially planned. Afterward, she can just rejoin everyone at the table, and they can carry on with their lunch meeting.
Ariadne could forget she ever saw that red-headed man.
She could.
She can’t, she realizes with defeated resignation.
She can’t because if she can get that guy’s name right now, today, then they won’t have to go back into Robert’s dreams.
It has never occurred to her to ask what exactly it is that Robert’s getting on the sly from Varis Energy- because she doesn’t care. They were hired to get the plant’s name and just his name. She gets that, and the job’s finished. Everybody goes home, no (more) harm done.
With a sigh, she ducks around the corner and waits.
She doesn’t have to wait long.
Whatever business he has with Robert concludes quickly, and the red-headed man leaves the bar and heads down the hall opposite from where Ariadne’s hiding from view around the corner.
She has to pass the entrance to the bar again and risk being seen or even running directly into Robert, but she’ll lose him if she doesn’t act quickly. She moves.
The man isn’t dallying. Walking at a brisk pace that barely passes for casual, he bypasses the elevators and ducks around a corner.
Keeping her distance, she follows. Well, she tries, but he doesn’t make it easy for her. He doesn’t have much of a head start on her, but somehow every time she turns a corner, he’s already just disappearing around another. It starts to feel like she is chasing a ghost.
He breaks into a run.
Shocked, Ariadne drops cover and runs after him.
A woman comes out of her room just as she is taking a corner, and she screams when Ariadne barrels into her. Tangled, they fall to the floor. Cursing, Ariadne shoves her down and crawls over her, ignoring her protests. There isn’t time for politeness because she can’t afford to lose him.
But she has.
He has somehow led her in a complete circle, and she finds herself spilled out into the lobby near the hotel bar. Gasping for breath, she looks around for her target. There are people milling about, but none of them are bulky redheads. He’s just… gone.
How? He didn’t have much of head-start on her, and who the fuck designed this place with so many labyrinthine twists and turns? Shit, shit, shit.
No, labyrinthine or not, there’s no way he could have escaped her in this place. No way unless…
Ariadne’s suddenly so terrified that she drops immediately to her knees right there on the floor so that she’ll have a flat surface at hand. The totem comes out of her pocket, falls, and…
… lands hard on its right side. Not a dream. Which means she’s just royally screwed up in reality.
Damn it.
~*~
Robert looks surprised when she sets the pamphlet on his desk.
“They’re going to be performing it at the Met the weekend after next. I thought of you,” she adds when he doesn’t respond right away. “Because… you like opera?”
“Uh, I do.” He glances over the advertisement for Madame Butterfly she picked up for him and then gives her a polite smile. “Thank you.”
He still seems fairly befuddled by her, but that is starting to feel like a commonplace. If it’s not a sandwich, then it’s an ad for an opera he probably doesn’t like. Maybe next time she’ll get really creative and put something obscure and without a referent on his desk, like a rubix cube. Or, if she happens to be feeling particularly sadomasochistic, perhaps an origami unicorn. Would he get that reference?
“I brought you a coffee, too.” She offers him his third Venti of the day, made just as he likes it. Straight black, no frills, and probably exactly how his father once took his.
He seems more bemused than appreciative. “You know, I do have a secretary to get me coffee.” And food, he doesn’t add.
“She already left,” she answers smoothly, though she can feel her cheeks reddening, “and I was getting coffee for myself anyway.” She pauses. “You don’t want it?”
Robert holds her gaze for a long moment, and she feels something tighten in her chest until good breeding finally kicks in and he reaches out to take the coffee from her.
“Thank you.”
She forces a smile.
He sets the coffee down on his desk without drinking, and she feels the smile wither away on her face. There is no reason for her to still be standing here, but she doesn’t leave. When the silence threatens to become awkward, she blurts out, “I listened to Don Giovanni.”
“I thought you didn’t like opera,” he says, raising an eyebrow at her.
“I still don’t really think it’s for me,” she admits with a shrug. “But you can’t call something ‘musical perfection’ and expect me to just take your word for it.”
His mouth quirks. “Well, what did you think?”
“It was… okay.” She smiles genuinely at his dismayed expression and amends her criticism with, “The songs were pretty.”
“Pretty?” he says, as if she’d just described the statue of David or the Sistine Chapel as eh.
“I guess I didn’t really get what I was supposed to take from it.”
She thinks she understands what Robert feels, though, when he listens to sad songs sung by a daughter mourning her dead father; a dead father who comes back in the guise of a supernatural statue to take revenge on his unrepentant murderer.
It took her several attempts to finally get to the end of the opera, but the revelation of the statue filled her veins with ice water as her heart raced unwillingly to match the rising storm of pulsing brass, guttural baritones, and weeping wind instruments that accompany Don Giovanni down to hell.
At the crash of the crescendo, she felt Maurice Fischer’s fingers digging into her arm again as if he were standing right behind her.
Once it’s over, she puts Don Giovanni at the back of a desk drawer with the mind to never listen to it again. Talking about it now makes the hair on her arms rise, but she’s, well, stalling.
“The case said it was supposed to be a tragedy,” she says, “but Don Giovanni was horrible. He spent the whole opera trying to rape everyone in sight and then he threw his only friend to the angry mob to save himself. I didn’t exactly feel bad for him when he got dragged down to hell at the end by the statue.”
Something about his expression makes her curiously ask, “Do you?”
Robert turns the pamphlet over in his hands as he seems to mull over his response. “I think it’s tragic he doesn’t repent before the end,” he says quietly, “even after Elvira offers him salvation and forgiveness for everything he did to her.”
Sensing her misstep, Ariadne regrets bringing up the subject at all, especially when she sees the melancholia slip back into his eyes.
She glances at the picture he keeps on his desk of a little boy blowing windmills with his father as her mind drifts back the darkened board room where all the faces were obscured except for one.
During the inception job, Eames said they were repairing Robert’s relationship with his father, but now she thinks that might have just been a line meant to assuage her. If her observations (and manipulations) of Robert are anything to go by, then maybe reconciliation with the dead isn’t that simple.
“I’ll bring you a copy of that blueprint you wanted,” she says, shifting them back to a safer topic.
She puts her hand on the doorknob but otherwise makes no move to leave.
“Thank you,” Robert says absently. He finally takes a sip of his coffee under the unnoticed intensity of her stare, and then it’s done and Ariadne sighs sadly.
The coffee slips from his fingers and splatters on the floor with a soft pop as the plastic lid becomes dislodged from the cup. Lukewarm coffee half-seeps, half-settles atop the water-resistant commercial carpeting.
Robert slumps forward in his chair, but Ariadne is there to catch him before he can hit his head on the edge of the desk. She gently settles him back into a more secure and hopefully comfortable sitting position.
“I’m so sorry, Robert,” she tells him, but an apology from her doesn’t really mean anything at this point.
She takes out her phone.
~*~
Mi par ch'oggi il demonio si diverta d'opporsi a miei piacevoli progressi; vanno mal tutti quanti
(It seems the devil must be amusing himself at my expense today; everything is going badly)…
~*~
Cobb said never to use memories when building a dream.
But Cobb broke all his own rules, so Ariadne doesn’t see why she should be expected to follow them.
Tapping her wrist, Arthur nods at her and then-
- she is somewhere else.
There is a tray in her hands, heavy with dirty, enameled dishes, and when she lowers it she sees light streaming in through huge bay windows that line the far side of the ballroom.
Somehow, the city view she expected has been replaced with an ocean whose waves of cerulean sea foam come right up to the edge of the windows in silent collisions that should have shaken the walls.
This isn’t part of her design.
That’s not right, she thinks, but no one else seems to notice as they chatter quietly over pristine tablecloths and soft jazz. Questioning the logistics of dreams is pointless anyway.
Through a reflection that reveals a black and white waitress ensemble and thick bangs she doesn’t sport in real life, she sees it- a monolithic statue, ten times its previous size, that rises out of the sea like a raging Poseidon.
The austere features of a Maurice Fischer carved from fear and marble are clear to her now.
Trepidation propels her backwards, away from a stone gaze separated from her only by fragile glass, but her back abruptly collides with something solid. “Ah!”
Her tray falls from her hands, and Ariadne cringes at the resulting cacophony of several dishes breaking at once. She stares at the mess, unsure of what she’s supposed to do.
A hand brushes her shoulder just as a low voice says, “Not very subtle.”
She whirls around only for her mouth to fall open in shock. The face she sees every morning in the mirror smirks back at her.
“Better get those dishes,” Not-Ariadne says. “He’s looking over here.”
“I don’t…”
“Ariadne, get down or Fischer’s going to see you.”
She immediately drops to her knees beside the mess. She knows where Robert’s table is because she put him there, and she angles her back to him.
The light bulb finally goes off over her head, and she glares up through her bangs at… well, herself. “Eames, what are you doing?”
“Your target is in the bar,” he says in her voice, already moving away.
Ariadne has to resist the impulse to grab his- her?- ankle. “Get back here,” she hisses, but he ignores her.
She doesn’t know what he’s up to, but something tells her that she’s not going to like it. Unfortunately, the only way to stop him at this point would be to sacrifice both their covers in order to body-check him right here and now.
Though tempting, she stays where she is and tries to subtly watch Eames’s progress across the room. For some reason, he has her wearing a form-fitting pencil skirt that’s about two inches short of work appropriate.
In counting the number of buttons that should be done up on her blouse to avoid embarrassing herself- well, him- Ariadne can’t help but notice that Eames has embellished her in some key areas.
Bastard, she thinks indignantly.
Not-Ariadne joins Robert at his table with an apologetic smile. Robert says something, and Not-Ariadne laughs a little too loud.
She feels the bottom of her stomach fall out. This isn’t how it is supposed to go.
Somewhere beyond her fury and humiliation, she remembers that she has a mission to carry out.
Rising reluctantly to her feet, she leaves the broken dishes on the floor and heads for the hotel bar.
The projection is waiting for her just where Eames said he would be. Summoning up her game face, Ariadne touches his arm. “Excuse me, sir, but I need you to come with me.”
He frowns down at her, but she sees a flicker of panic flare in his eyes. It becomes more than a flicker when she flashes a hint of the Glock 17 hidden in her apron pocket. “Sir?”
He follows her to the designated hotel room where Arthur is waiting for them. They tie him to a chair and gag him while he watches them with terrified eyes. She ignores him in favor of glaring over his head at Arthur.
“I wondered why you and Eames were working together again,” she says grimly, “and why we specifically needed a forger. I guess I know now.”
He sighs. “Ariadne…”
“Unless the next words out of your mouth are going to be ‘No, Ariadne, Eames’s role in this job is not specifically to impersonate you,’ then I don’t want to hear it, Arthur.”
This whole time, she really was the mark. “Why?”
He looks at her, and she can almost see the pros and cons weighing themselves in his head over whether he should tell her the truth.
Whichever scale rises, he tells her, “Eames is here to keep you safe.”
“I’m not in danger, Arthur!”
“You thinking that is exactly why Eames is here.” He probably doesn’t mean to sound so patronizing, but he still really, really does.
Ariadne resists the urge to punch Arthur right in the nose, but Eames chooses an inopportune time to enter the room wearing her face.
“He’s on his wa- gah!”
As soon as he shuts the door, she’s there, shoving him back. “Asshole!”
“Wait now,” he says, holding up his- her- hands. “What’s this about?”
“Stop it,” she says angrily. “Stop looking like me right now.”
He exchanges a look over her head with Arthur, who returns it wearily. And then it’s Eames again looking down at her with a chagrin expression.
“Why? Why are you doing this?”
“I told you. Insurance.”
“How does that stupid skirt and flirting with my boss gain us insurance?” She can hear her voice going shrill, but she doesn’t care. “And why is he coming to meet you in a hotel room? No, you know what? I don’t want to know!”
“Ariadne, it’s only a dream,” he says softly.
That might have worked before she knew inception was possible, but she knows now that the simplest, smallest suggestion can radically change everything.
“You can’t do things like this,” she says, and it’s pathetically close to begging. “You can’t because you’re going to confuse him.”
Confuse us, she thinks. She and Robert are in a good place of sort of but not really friends, and she likes it that way. They’re building something together that could revolutionize architecture as the world knows it, and Eames could ruin everything by planting… ideas in Robert’s head. Ideas that have no business being there.
Eames grips her shoulders, gives her a gentle shake, and says earnestly, “Ariadne, my love, that is the point.”
She gapes at him. “What?”
“Do you know why you’ve been able to get this far? It’s because Fischer trusts you. A couple of background checks is nothing to a man like that. He likes you, and that’s a good thing. You’re passed his guard, but if the situation turns on us then that will become a very dangerous place to be. This isn’t a game we’re playing. Forget prison, we’re talking about life and death stakes involving a man who was a hair’s breath away from becoming a world power unto himself.”
The projection starts to make gurgling noises around his gag. They ignore him.
“I know…”
“Good. Now, think about all the power and all the resources that man has at his fingertips at any given moment, and then imagine how he would feel once he found out about you.”
She tries to interrupt him, but he says, “No, I want you to really think about what he would do if he knew what you’d done to him. What would you do in his shoes?”
There’s an invisible grip on her throat, and she can’t answer. But the kind of man Eames is describing… that’s not Robert. That could never be Robert. Robert likes Reuben’s and opera and horseback riding and green architecture. He gets a twinkle in his eye when he’s talking about things he cares about. He would never order a hit on her. The very idea of him as a mustache-twirling villain is ludicrous.
So, why can’t she say that? Why are the words caught on the roof of her mouth like sticky peanut butter?
He lightly touches her face, and she bites her lip against the emotions the gesture bubbles up to the surface. He’s speaking in that soft, cajoling way that adults use to talk to children when they’re being unreasonable.
“We need him to care about you because, if he does, then there’s a chance that when… if things go bad, they won’t go so bad for you. Do you understand?”
She does. God help her, she does.
Arthur clears his throat and says, “He’ll be here any second. Are you ready?” He isn’t asking Eames.
“Yeah.”
Arthur’s arm goes around her throat, and he presses the Glock against her temple just as Robert enters the room.
~*~
Continue to Part IV.