In the Garden of the Commendatore 5/5
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 V
Continued from Part Four.
~*~
Madamina, il catalogo è questo (My little lady, this is the catalogue)…
~*~
She can’t help the nervous glance she sends in both directions of the street, as if help will suddenly materialize from behind a lamp post or garbage can. Really, what good is Arthur’s stalking if he isn’t here for the important parts?
“I’m sorry, Mr. Browning, but I was just on my way home,” she says, stepping away from the car. Just putting some distance between herself and the vehicle makes her feel better.
Browning smiles and opens the car door. “Allow me to give you a ride.”
“No,” she says too quickly. Her heart’s pounding so hard it feels as if the thing is about to jump up her throat. Taking another step back, she surprises herself when her voice remains steady and calm. “Thank you, though. I’m all right. Goodnight, Mr.-”
Her mouth snaps closed when Browning holds up a picture easily made out even from the dim light of the car. Throughout the course of an infinite moment, the world slips off its axis and then rights itself again.
Ariadne gets in the car.
Browning knocks on the glass partition, and the driver takes off even though he hasn’t asked for directions to her apartment. When Browning hands her a familiar-looking folder, she guesses- likely correctly- that he doesn’t need to ask.
The dossier isn’t as thorough as the one Robert first showed her; in fact, the pictures and notes all seem to be from the past few months. That doesn’t mean there isn’t more elsewhere though.
“What’s the young man’s name?” he asks, holding up the picture that got her into the car. “The investigator couldn’t figure that one out.”
The picture is from a week ago. Arthur took her out to lunch for a debriefing, to tell her that as a result of their work in Robert’s brain Gerald Holden’s entire existence had subsequently been erased from the world. The client was very pleased with their work. Holden’s widow? Not so much.
Ariadne already has a new account under her name in the unfailingly unscrupulous Cayman Islands, courtesy of Arthur, who handled everything.
Arthur wore a gorgeous lavender shirt under a black pinstripe blazer that day. He took her to the Palace Hotel for their meal. A group of waitresses gathered together at the edge of the room to giggle and ogle him. He held out her chair for her. She strangely doesn’t remember this happening, but the picture shows that he put his hand on her back as they were leaving.
“Why did you do this?” she asks, glancing through seemingly mundane photos of her leaving her apartment and reading on the subway.
She experiences an unpleasant shock when she sees a picture of her and Arthur sitting together at the coffee shop. So long ago?
“I didn’t. Robert did.”
Her eyes snap up from the dossier. “What did you say?”
“We had a man at the old company who we went to for… well, let’s call it ‘extracurricular security,’” he says, grinning. “Robert was sloppy to use him again, but I guess he doesn’t know that he reports first to me. This is an exact copy of the dossier he gave to Robert when he got off the plane from Sydney this morning.”
Her hands are shaking, so she lowers the folder down to her lap. “Why did he do this?”
She can’t ask what she really wants to know: does Robert know? About her? About the extractions? Or the inception? Are they in trouble?
“Robert is a complicated man, but I’m sure you already know that,” he says, which is the same as no answer at all.
Struggling to control her breathing without revealing her panic, Ariadne asks, “What do you want from me, Mr. Browning?”
“You aren’t going to defend him this time?”
He looks so smug she wants to hit him.
“What. Do. You. Want?”
He takes a thick envelope out of his breast pocket and hands it to her.
She half-expects to find more pictures, this time maybe of Cobb or Eames or Yusuf, but it’s not. It’s money. Lots and lots of money.
“What is this?”
“You’re a smart girl, Ariadne. What does it look like?”
It looks like a bribe. “What’s it for?”
“I want you to quit your job at Fischer Morrow.”
She looks up in surprise.
“After that, I want you to get on a plane and disappear. It doesn’t matter where you go as long as you go somewhere else. You’re never to see or make contact again with Robert.”
Feeling as if she has just entered the twilight zone, Ariadne stares at Browning, stares down at the money, and looks at Browning again as if one or the other will start to make sense. “What the hell does this mean?”
“You heard me.” Browning, cool as a cucumber, could be talking about the stock market or the weather or anything other than calmly bribing her into leaving the country.
Ariadne has to give herself a mental shake in an attempt to dispel the madness of this encounter.
“Why do you want me to stay away from him?” she asks, genuinely curious. The only explanation for this is that he knows about the extractions or even the inception, but that wouldn’t explain why he’s handing her an envelope full of cash. “Why do you care? I’m just his employee.”
Browning sighs and takes back the dossier. Taking a pair of reading glasses from his coat pocket, he flips to a certain page and reads, “Subject stays late, passed typical working hours, several nights a week alone in the office building with Robert Fischer. Subject frequently receives rides home after work hours in a car licensed to Robert Fischer.”
His eyes flick up to hers, and Ariadne starts to get an idea of where he is going with this. She feels her skin start to crawl at his self-satisfied amusement as he reads, “November 2, Subject leaves Robert Fischer’s penthouse at three in the morning looking disheveled.”
He takes off his glasses and gives her a pointed look. “Just his employee?”
Ariadne would feel a hell of a lot more embarrassed if his insinuations were true. But as it were, she just feels confused. And annoyed.
“Why would he need to hire someone to tell him what he already knows?”
“I expect he was curious to know who else you were spending your time with. Probably about the young man in the photos. What did you say his name was?”
Ignoring Browning’s insinuation- again- Ariadne tries to rationally think through her escalating unease about what she could have done to spike Robert’s suspicions of her. The picture of her and Arthur at the coffee shop predates their first extraction job on him. She has a hard time believing that he would let her stay on at the company for so long afterward and even fail to prevent another extraction job on his mind afterward if he knew.
So, why would he have her followed?
There are no answers, no matter how furiously she thinks about the problem.
Frustrated, she says, “How is any of this your business, Mr. Browning? Why do you care who he spends his time with?”
“Why?” For the first time, she sees genuine anger boiling beneath his calm façade. “It’s my business,” he spats at her, “because that boy has been like a son to me for over thirty years, and that makes it my business to protect him when little tramps like you come sniffing around his money. You’re hardly the first I’ve had this conversation with, little girl. Not by a long shot. His father hoped he would eventually wise up but it looks like Robert’s always going to be a sucker for a pair of convincing Bambi eyes.”
His lip curls. “At least he had the forethought this time to hire an investigator before it got too serious. That’s progress, I suppose.”
Ariadne can only shake her head in amazement, seeing as how she has no idea what to say or even how to process what Peter Browning is saying to her. It’s ridiculous. He’s ridiculous.
Unless…
No. Browning doesn’t know what he’s talking about. Robert was drunk that night- and concussed- and it doesn’t have to mean anything more than that. It doesn’t.
But she still has a very serious problem on her hands. She has to tell Arthur.
“Let me out of this car,” she snaps. “Now.”
“Have it your way,” he says, tapping the glass partition again.
As soon as the car comes to a stop, she pops open the door. But Browning immediately catches her arm.
“Think about my offer. There’s ten-thousand dollars in this envelope, and there will be another ten-thousand waiting for you in an account after you follow through.”
Another account. The idea of being independently wealthy has never seemed less appealing.
Tossing the envelope back at him, she jerks out of his grip. She is already several feet down the sidewalk when Browning’s voice makes her stop again. “Ariadne!”
She turns and sees that he’s leaning casually against the side of the car.
“You should think really hard about my offer. Or else Robert might start to wonder why exactly you were on the same flight as he was from Sydney to Los Angeles that day.”
~*~
She knows the first thing she should do is call Arthur or Eames, but Ariadne’s feet start heading back toward Fischer Morrow before she can talk herself out of it.
She starts to run.
Hugo, the night security guard, lets her back into the building, and she heads straight for Robert’s office.
The lights are still on, but he’s not there when she barges into his office.
Ariadne doesn’t waste any time in ransacking the place. She searches the papers on his desk and then she tugs open all the drawers. Robert’s briefcase is on the floor by his chair, so she puts it on the desk and pops the hinges.
And there it is.
Sinking down into the desk chair, Ariadne allows the folder to fall open on her lap.
Browning was right. The dossiers are identical.
She takes a thick, shuddering breath and, with shaking hands, studies the photographs with more focus than she allowed herself in the car with Browning. Most of the photos are perplexing in their capture of the mundane, but her heart does a flip-flop when she sees one she didn’t notice in Browning’s car.
Yusuf. Yusuf hugging her goodbye at the airport.
If this means what she thinks it means, then-
“What are you doing?”
Robert’s voice makes her jump. Looking up, she sees him frowning at her from the doorway.
She holds up the dossier. “What is this?”
He looks from her to the folder with an unreadable expression on his face. “Where did you get that?”
“Your uncle ratted you out,” she says flatly, seeing no reason to lie.
“Uncle Peter?” Robert sighs, not looking nearly as embarrassed or even as particularly surprised by this confrontation as he should. “He told you?”
“Yup,” she snaps. “You should find a new investigator. The old one’s crooked.”
He nods as if her suggestion was serious and gives her a measuring look. “You’re angry.”
Angry? Definitely, but it’s more complicated than that when she feels as if she’s fallen into something heavy and sticky, and it’s hard to tell if she feels more angry, afraid, or… relieved.
“Why did you do this?” she asks. If the jig is up, then she wants to hear it from him rather than look for truth in Peter Browning’s sly insinuations.
“I told you,” he says after a beat. “Everyone who works for me-”
“Has a background check?” she interrupts. “This isn’t a background check. This is surveillance. You’ve been having me followed and photographed and gave fuck all about my privacy.”
Robert winces at that, but Ariadne doesn’t care. She can feel her dream job and her skyscraper slipping away from her, piece by piece, and all because she wasn’t careful enough. Deference to her boss seems pointless now that he knows he’s also her mark.
Ariadne feels dizzy enough from all her churning emotions to recklessly ask, “Did you find anything interesting?” She tosses the dossier across his desk towards him, and some of the pictures slide out.
Say it, Robert. Just say it. Browning might not have understood how all the pieces fit together, but surely Robert…
Coming up to the desk, he shuffles the pictures around until he finds the one he’s looking for. His hand pauses over the picture of Yusuf- her fingers clench around the armrests-but he holds up a picture of Arthur instead.
“It was strange that my guy couldn’t find out anything about this man. No name, no address, no employment. Nothing.”
With a resigned sigh, she slouches back in his chair and lets her gaze fall to her lap. Robert knows. Damn it, they’re going to jail, aren’t they?
Part of her wanted this, she realizes. She wanted Robert to figure it out so she wouldn’t have to do this anymore, so she wouldn’t have to keep feeling… responsible for him. And he could be free of the unnatural hold she has over him.
But that doesn’t mean she wants to go to jail for mind crime.
She eyes the bronze horse statuette and wonders if it’s worth it to risk Robert’s life with a second concussion.
Robert awkwardly clears his throat, and she looks back up. “So, who is he?”
“What?” Is he playing with her?
He gives her an annoyed look that suggests she hasn’t been listening. “I said the investigator couldn’t find anything on him. You never mentioned a boyfriend, but you seem… friendly.”
She stares at him, and Robert rushes forward with, “I was concerned, all right? How much do you really know about this guy? Don’t you think it’s strange that there’s no record of him anywhere?”
It’s his unhappy tone that gives him away, and finally, Ariadne understands.
Robert doesn’t know. He’s just as ignorant of the crimes they’ve done to him as he ever was. She feels her heart sink because this is so much worse than she thought.
He’s jealous.
That was not supposed to happen.
“It’s none of your business who he is,” she says, angry and afraid. “None of this is any of your business. If you wanted to know something about me, then you should have just asked.”
Scowling, Robert looks away from her.
She stands and moves around the desk. “Was there something you wanted to know in particular, Robert?”
Ariadne thinks now that if he were to ask her for the truth, she would tell him. Everything.
Robert searches her eyes for something only he understands (if he understands). Holding his gaze becomes harder by the second as she feels exposed and bare- but she holds it anyway. She owes him that much.
“Is he important?” he asks finally.
Not “Is he your boyfriend?” or “Do you love him?” but what sounds suspiciously along the lines of "Will he be a problem?”
Ariadne feels a deep well of sadness spring up in her chest.
“No,” she lies.
~*~
Là ci darem la mano (There we will entwine our hands)…
~*~
“I don’t understand,” Eames tells her over the phone. “The job is finished. You can breathe easy now and focus on building your skyscraper.”
“No,” she slurs despite the fierce concentration she is putting into not slurring. The vodka bottle clinks against her foot as she tosses her legs over the side of the bed. “You don’t- you aren’t listening to me, Eames. I…”
“Did something happen? Is he trying to take advantage of you? Is that what this is about?”
She hesitates. “No, but-”
“Because I can take care of that! Just say the word and I’ll send someone over to… take the edge off his frustration.”
The thought makes her feel sick in a way that has nothing to do with inebriation. “The hell? No.”
“Are you sure? Because-”
Ariadne slams her fist against the mattress in frustration. “No! Just leave-” She stops cold, realizing where she was about to go, but it’s too late.
“-him alone?” Eames finishes quietly.
And there is nowhere to go from there. Ariadne’s head falls into her hands, and she giggles helplessly between her fingers. The phone crunches painfully between her shoulder and her neck, but she doesn’t care.
Once upon a time, she wanted to be an architect- a real architect- more than anything. She had an objective, and she pursued it with a terrifyingly single-minded focus. Nothing could or would get between her and that objective. How else was a girl from a little podunk town in Ohio going to sit amongst the greats in Paris? She was unstoppable. Now, look at her…
“Does he know?”
The question sounds innocent enough, but she hears the anxiety laced underneath.
“No. But I think… I think all the time I- we- spent in his head did something to him and I…”
“Ariadne,” he says, still in that gentle tone, “you sound as if you’re cracking.”
She chokes on a wet laugh. “Do I?”
Eames’s voice instantly becomes cajoling, as if talking her off a ledge is just another aspect of his job. “Now, you can’t do that, my darling. You aren’t thinking of telling him, are you? Ariadne?”
She doesn’t answer.
“Ariadne?” He keeps saying her name as if it will bring her back to her senses. “Let me help you. Shall I send Arthur over to talk to you?”
Seeing Arthur right now is about the last thing she wants to do, and she tells Eames as much.
“Then what? Tell me how I can make this better for you.”
Ariadne drops the phone when she hears someone knocking on her apartment door.
“Are you still there? Hello?” she hears from the fallen phone.
She picks the phone back up and says, “I’m here, Eames, but I’m going to go now. Don’t tell Arthur anything. I’ll call you tomorrow.”
“But-”
She hangs up.
There’s another knock.
Ariadne carefully shifts the empty vodka bottle under her bed and then moves so that she’s pressed against the cool wood of the door. The solid press of it reminds her that this is real. When he knocks again, she feels the reverberations through the door flush against her body.
She shouldn’t open the door, not when she already knows who will be standing there on the other side. How she knows, who can say? Maybe this is a dream.
Robert’s hand is up in preparation for another knock when she suddenly opens the door. He blinks at her in surprise and then lets his hand fall. “Hello.”
He looks so out of place standing in her hallway, like a Ming vase in a dollar mart. “Hello.”
She should ask him what he is doing here, but the question feels superfluous when she already knows the answer.
Does he?
“I’m sorry,” he says softly. “I shouldn’t have hired that investigator. It was… inappropriate.”
Her smile is equal parts amusement and bitterness. If there were ever a word to sum up their relationship en masse, then… well, inappropriate works for her.
Looking at him now, Ariadne realizes she has lost all sense of where right and wrong lie at this point. Would her transgression be any less if she sent him away to avoid further damage? Or would cutting him loose be the same as pretending she doesn’t owe him anything?
She wonders if he feels a sort of sordid thrill from being here on the wrong side of town, from being inappropriate with his too-young employee, and if this should bother her at all.
He asked her to save him. But who is going to save her?
Robert’s eyes widen when she reaches out to touch his tie. “You’re not going to do it again, right?”
“No,” he says, sounding a bit breathless.
Ariadne sighs. “All right then.”
She takes his hand and leads him inside.
~*~
Da' miei tormenti impara. A creder a quel cor, e nasca il tuo timor dal mio periglio
(Learn from my suffering. Trust what I say, and let my own misfortune make you afraid)…
~*~
Arthur shows up in the morning.
Robert doesn’t stir at his knock, and so she leaves him in her bed, taking only one of the blankets from where it has been kicked onto the floor.
They end up sitting on the roof of her apartment building. Wrapped in her blanket, she watches all the early morning people scuttling this way and that beneath an orange and pink sunrise.
“He isn’t going to sleep forever,” she says when Arthur stays silent for too long. He didn’t seem particularly surprised or angry when she told him what happened, which just makes her confusion all the worse.
“Take Browning’s money.”
Of all the things for him to say, that was the last she expected. As she is thinking that she must have heard him wrong, Arthur says it again. “Take the money, Ariadne.”
“Why?” she asks. Her voice sounds strained even to her. “Why would you tell me to do that?”
“Because if you run now, then Fischer is going to follow you.”
Ariadne sucks in a shallow breath.
“At least, he’ll try. But if you take Browning’s money, then it might put Fischer off the trail. If you’re lucky, then it will be easy, and he’ll give up once he figures out you were paid off to disappear. It wouldn’t be the first time that’s happened to him.”
Ariadne winces.
“If that doesn’t do the trick, then you can try sending the money in one direction while you go off in another. That would at least buy you some time.”
“You think he’ll find out about what we did to him?” she says, trying to follow his line of logic. She wishes he didn’t sound so clinical in his suggestions, but she also recognizes that cleaning up other people’s messes is part of what he does. She hates feeling like a problem he needs to deal with.
“That’s always a risk,” he says with a nonchalant shrug.
“And you think he’ll want revenge badly enough to hunt me down?”
Arthur finally takes his eyes off of the admittedly beautiful sunrise and looks at her. “Does Fischer strike you as the vengeance type?”
Ariadne assumes the question to be genuine and unloaded, so she considers her answer carefully. And, ultimately, no. She doesn’t see Robert as the mustache-twirling villain. She can picture him angry and betrayed, but not enough to sick assassins on her.
“If he won’t want revenge,” she says slowly, “then why would he want to track me down?”
She would give anything to be able to decipher the look he gives her. “Because I think he’ll want to find you badly enough to try.”
Ariadne suddenly finds it difficult to breath. She drops her gaze to the safe criss-cross pattern of her blanket. “You don’t know that.”
“Call it an educated guess.”
Ariadne doesn’t want to think about all the implications of that in regards to herself and Robert as well as Arthur and she won’t because this is already complicated enough.
He sighs at her confused frown and moves them forward. “Whatever his motive is, a man in Fischer’s position can afford- literally- to maintain an active pursuit for a long time without putting in much effort himself. That’s… dangerous.”
“Did you know it was going to happen like this?”
Her sense of betrayal hangs in the balance, waiting for a word from him to tip it over. Has she ever really had a handle on this job? She doesn’t think so. If Arthur purposely put her in both physical as well as emotional jeopardy then… She doesn’t know what.
Arthur surprises her by putting two fingers under her chin and bringing her face back up to his. “No, Ariadne. No. But some things… can’t be predicted.”
She still wants to believe in him. “What kind of things?”
He gives her another warning look that tells her she is getting too close to the things she doesn’t want to think about, and she bites her tongue.
They sit without speaking for a long time as the city comes to life below them. Robert will be awake soon, and he will probably want his coffee and the New York Times and most definitely won’t want to meet Arthur.
Downstairs, awkward morning-after tension awaits her. Ariadne will offer to make breakfast, and he will remind her that he doesn’t eat breakfast but can he use her shower? Maybe he’ll leave right away or maybe they will share a silent cab ride to work, where Robert will retreat into his office and Ariadne will take an extra-long lunch and then pretend she isn’t feeling well and leave early.
And those are her good scenarios.
“There’s another job,” Arthur says suddenly. “It’s in Tokyo. We’re in need of an architect.”
Ariadne smiles sadly. “So, I run? Is that what you always do, Arthur?”
She thinks he looks sad, too, in this moment, but she’ll never really know whether that is just what she wants to see. Arthur tucks a strand of hair behind her ear and leans in so his lips brush the shell of her ear.
Her eyes fall shut as he whispers, “Sometimes, it’s all you can do.”
~*~
L'ultima prova dell'amor mio (The final proof of my love)…
~*~
Ariadne calls Cobb.
She hasn’t spoken to him since the inception job, but she has always known how to get in contact with him if she needed to. She had naively hoped he would be the one to make the initial move, but first months and then years of silence dispelled her of the notion.
Once they get passed the awkward pleasantries, she says, “I need a favor.”
He owes her.
~*~
“I want to show you something.”
Ariadne takes Robert’s hand and leads him over to the field between the dilapidated high-rises. Together, they watch as steel and glass churn up from the previously barren earth. Up and up it goes as the materials bend and shape into a familiar façade.
A diagonal grid climbs up the sides, forming an intricate pattern of solar panels and glass that will pull in natural light better than a façade made from pure steel ever could. Transparent glass passageways placed at terrifying heights reflect back images of the gorgeous sunset that hangs over them. The wind turbines, huge and impossibly beautiful, sprout from the roof like new plants rising from the earth.
Born of both their imaginations, Fischer Tower represents both Ariadne’s desire for occasionally bizarre innovation as well as Robert’s sleek, elegant lines. She could have made the skyscraper look like anything here, with physics-defying dream architecture, but she wants Robert to see what their dream child will look like someday.
She wanted to see it.
When Robert wipes away a tear from her cheek, Ariadne realizes she is crying. Catching his hand, she says, “Promise me you won’t let Harriet change anything. It’s already perfect, Robert. And don’t let the contractor convince you that this can’t be done. It can. All of it, I promise.”
“I don’t understand,” he says, but his fingers entwine with hers in a way she chooses to interpret as a promise.
“You will.”
Standing in the shadow of their creation, Ariadne pulls Robert down into a kiss that holds no promises because she can’t afford to make any more.
When he pulls back, there is something wet and warm in his eyes that she has never seen there before. “Ariadne, I-”
She cuts him off with another kiss because she doesn’t want to hear impossible things.
Ariadne isn’t in love with him and for a thousand different reasons, but what terrifies her is that she might want to be and that maybe he wants her to be. She really couldn’t feel worse about that.
But this is just a dream.
She kisses him for as long as she can and releases him when she hears footsteps approaching.
Cobb gives her a sad smile, which she returns with effort. He waits patiently, several feet away, giving them their space.
Robert’s grip tightens on her shoulder as he stares at Cobb. “Who is he?”
Ariadne takes a final, hungry look at her skyscraper. She breathes in all her fears and hurts and disappointments- and lets them go.
“Robert, this is Mr. Charles,” she says, drawing him over to Cobb. “He’s… a friend.”
“What is he doing here?”
“He’s here to help you so that this never happens to you ever again.”
As a parting gift, hers is perhaps dubious, but it’s the best she can do.
~*~
A few hours later, Arthur and Ariadne hop a redeye to Tokyo.
Before they go, she leaves her resignation letter on Robert’s desk.
Finis.
Notes:
1. All intercalary quotes are from Mozart’s opera, Don Giovanni.
2. The “I talk to you in my head” line was brazenly borrowed/stolen from the movie, Me Without You.
3. All the green skyscrapers named other than the obviously fictitious Fischer Tower are real, though some are still in the development stage and haven’t actually been built yet! I figured since Inception takes place twenty minutes into the future, they would be complete by then. If you want to see these gorgeous buildings, then take a gander over here.
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 V
Continued from Part Four.
~*~
Madamina, il catalogo è questo (My little lady, this is the catalogue)…
~*~
She can’t help the nervous glance she sends in both directions of the street, as if help will suddenly materialize from behind a lamp post or garbage can. Really, what good is Arthur’s stalking if he isn’t here for the important parts?
“I’m sorry, Mr. Browning, but I was just on my way home,” she says, stepping away from the car. Just putting some distance between herself and the vehicle makes her feel better.
Browning smiles and opens the car door. “Allow me to give you a ride.”
“No,” she says too quickly. Her heart’s pounding so hard it feels as if the thing is about to jump up her throat. Taking another step back, she surprises herself when her voice remains steady and calm. “Thank you, though. I’m all right. Goodnight, Mr.-”
Her mouth snaps closed when Browning holds up a picture easily made out even from the dim light of the car. Throughout the course of an infinite moment, the world slips off its axis and then rights itself again.
Ariadne gets in the car.
Browning knocks on the glass partition, and the driver takes off even though he hasn’t asked for directions to her apartment. When Browning hands her a familiar-looking folder, she guesses- likely correctly- that he doesn’t need to ask.
The dossier isn’t as thorough as the one Robert first showed her; in fact, the pictures and notes all seem to be from the past few months. That doesn’t mean there isn’t more elsewhere though.
“What’s the young man’s name?” he asks, holding up the picture that got her into the car. “The investigator couldn’t figure that one out.”
The picture is from a week ago. Arthur took her out to lunch for a debriefing, to tell her that as a result of their work in Robert’s brain Gerald Holden’s entire existence had subsequently been erased from the world. The client was very pleased with their work. Holden’s widow? Not so much.
Ariadne already has a new account under her name in the unfailingly unscrupulous Cayman Islands, courtesy of Arthur, who handled everything.
Arthur wore a gorgeous lavender shirt under a black pinstripe blazer that day. He took her to the Palace Hotel for their meal. A group of waitresses gathered together at the edge of the room to giggle and ogle him. He held out her chair for her. She strangely doesn’t remember this happening, but the picture shows that he put his hand on her back as they were leaving.
“Why did you do this?” she asks, glancing through seemingly mundane photos of her leaving her apartment and reading on the subway.
She experiences an unpleasant shock when she sees a picture of her and Arthur sitting together at the coffee shop. So long ago?
“I didn’t. Robert did.”
Her eyes snap up from the dossier. “What did you say?”
“We had a man at the old company who we went to for… well, let’s call it ‘extracurricular security,’” he says, grinning. “Robert was sloppy to use him again, but I guess he doesn’t know that he reports first to me. This is an exact copy of the dossier he gave to Robert when he got off the plane from Sydney this morning.”
Her hands are shaking, so she lowers the folder down to her lap. “Why did he do this?”
She can’t ask what she really wants to know: does Robert know? About her? About the extractions? Or the inception? Are they in trouble?
“Robert is a complicated man, but I’m sure you already know that,” he says, which is the same as no answer at all.
Struggling to control her breathing without revealing her panic, Ariadne asks, “What do you want from me, Mr. Browning?”
“You aren’t going to defend him this time?”
He looks so smug she wants to hit him.
“What. Do. You. Want?”
He takes a thick envelope out of his breast pocket and hands it to her.
She half-expects to find more pictures, this time maybe of Cobb or Eames or Yusuf, but it’s not. It’s money. Lots and lots of money.
“What is this?”
“You’re a smart girl, Ariadne. What does it look like?”
It looks like a bribe. “What’s it for?”
“I want you to quit your job at Fischer Morrow.”
She looks up in surprise.
“After that, I want you to get on a plane and disappear. It doesn’t matter where you go as long as you go somewhere else. You’re never to see or make contact again with Robert.”
Feeling as if she has just entered the twilight zone, Ariadne stares at Browning, stares down at the money, and looks at Browning again as if one or the other will start to make sense. “What the hell does this mean?”
“You heard me.” Browning, cool as a cucumber, could be talking about the stock market or the weather or anything other than calmly bribing her into leaving the country.
Ariadne has to give herself a mental shake in an attempt to dispel the madness of this encounter.
“Why do you want me to stay away from him?” she asks, genuinely curious. The only explanation for this is that he knows about the extractions or even the inception, but that wouldn’t explain why he’s handing her an envelope full of cash. “Why do you care? I’m just his employee.”
Browning sighs and takes back the dossier. Taking a pair of reading glasses from his coat pocket, he flips to a certain page and reads, “Subject stays late, passed typical working hours, several nights a week alone in the office building with Robert Fischer. Subject frequently receives rides home after work hours in a car licensed to Robert Fischer.”
His eyes flick up to hers, and Ariadne starts to get an idea of where he is going with this. She feels her skin start to crawl at his self-satisfied amusement as he reads, “November 2, Subject leaves Robert Fischer’s penthouse at three in the morning looking disheveled.”
He takes off his glasses and gives her a pointed look. “Just his employee?”
Ariadne would feel a hell of a lot more embarrassed if his insinuations were true. But as it were, she just feels confused. And annoyed.
“Why would he need to hire someone to tell him what he already knows?”
“I expect he was curious to know who else you were spending your time with. Probably about the young man in the photos. What did you say his name was?”
Ignoring Browning’s insinuation- again- Ariadne tries to rationally think through her escalating unease about what she could have done to spike Robert’s suspicions of her. The picture of her and Arthur at the coffee shop predates their first extraction job on him. She has a hard time believing that he would let her stay on at the company for so long afterward and even fail to prevent another extraction job on his mind afterward if he knew.
So, why would he have her followed?
There are no answers, no matter how furiously she thinks about the problem.
Frustrated, she says, “How is any of this your business, Mr. Browning? Why do you care who he spends his time with?”
“Why?” For the first time, she sees genuine anger boiling beneath his calm façade. “It’s my business,” he spats at her, “because that boy has been like a son to me for over thirty years, and that makes it my business to protect him when little tramps like you come sniffing around his money. You’re hardly the first I’ve had this conversation with, little girl. Not by a long shot. His father hoped he would eventually wise up but it looks like Robert’s always going to be a sucker for a pair of convincing Bambi eyes.”
His lip curls. “At least he had the forethought this time to hire an investigator before it got too serious. That’s progress, I suppose.”
Ariadne can only shake her head in amazement, seeing as how she has no idea what to say or even how to process what Peter Browning is saying to her. It’s ridiculous. He’s ridiculous.
Unless…
No. Browning doesn’t know what he’s talking about. Robert was drunk that night- and concussed- and it doesn’t have to mean anything more than that. It doesn’t.
But she still has a very serious problem on her hands. She has to tell Arthur.
“Let me out of this car,” she snaps. “Now.”
“Have it your way,” he says, tapping the glass partition again.
As soon as the car comes to a stop, she pops open the door. But Browning immediately catches her arm.
“Think about my offer. There’s ten-thousand dollars in this envelope, and there will be another ten-thousand waiting for you in an account after you follow through.”
Another account. The idea of being independently wealthy has never seemed less appealing.
Tossing the envelope back at him, she jerks out of his grip. She is already several feet down the sidewalk when Browning’s voice makes her stop again. “Ariadne!”
She turns and sees that he’s leaning casually against the side of the car.
“You should think really hard about my offer. Or else Robert might start to wonder why exactly you were on the same flight as he was from Sydney to Los Angeles that day.”
~*~
She knows the first thing she should do is call Arthur or Eames, but Ariadne’s feet start heading back toward Fischer Morrow before she can talk herself out of it.
She starts to run.
Hugo, the night security guard, lets her back into the building, and she heads straight for Robert’s office.
The lights are still on, but he’s not there when she barges into his office.
Ariadne doesn’t waste any time in ransacking the place. She searches the papers on his desk and then she tugs open all the drawers. Robert’s briefcase is on the floor by his chair, so she puts it on the desk and pops the hinges.
And there it is.
Sinking down into the desk chair, Ariadne allows the folder to fall open on her lap.
Browning was right. The dossiers are identical.
She takes a thick, shuddering breath and, with shaking hands, studies the photographs with more focus than she allowed herself in the car with Browning. Most of the photos are perplexing in their capture of the mundane, but her heart does a flip-flop when she sees one she didn’t notice in Browning’s car.
Yusuf. Yusuf hugging her goodbye at the airport.
If this means what she thinks it means, then-
“What are you doing?”
Robert’s voice makes her jump. Looking up, she sees him frowning at her from the doorway.
She holds up the dossier. “What is this?”
He looks from her to the folder with an unreadable expression on his face. “Where did you get that?”
“Your uncle ratted you out,” she says flatly, seeing no reason to lie.
“Uncle Peter?” Robert sighs, not looking nearly as embarrassed or even as particularly surprised by this confrontation as he should. “He told you?”
“Yup,” she snaps. “You should find a new investigator. The old one’s crooked.”
He nods as if her suggestion was serious and gives her a measuring look. “You’re angry.”
Angry? Definitely, but it’s more complicated than that when she feels as if she’s fallen into something heavy and sticky, and it’s hard to tell if she feels more angry, afraid, or… relieved.
“Why did you do this?” she asks. If the jig is up, then she wants to hear it from him rather than look for truth in Peter Browning’s sly insinuations.
“I told you,” he says after a beat. “Everyone who works for me-”
“Has a background check?” she interrupts. “This isn’t a background check. This is surveillance. You’ve been having me followed and photographed and gave fuck all about my privacy.”
Robert winces at that, but Ariadne doesn’t care. She can feel her dream job and her skyscraper slipping away from her, piece by piece, and all because she wasn’t careful enough. Deference to her boss seems pointless now that he knows he’s also her mark.
Ariadne feels dizzy enough from all her churning emotions to recklessly ask, “Did you find anything interesting?” She tosses the dossier across his desk towards him, and some of the pictures slide out.
Say it, Robert. Just say it. Browning might not have understood how all the pieces fit together, but surely Robert…
Coming up to the desk, he shuffles the pictures around until he finds the one he’s looking for. His hand pauses over the picture of Yusuf- her fingers clench around the armrests-but he holds up a picture of Arthur instead.
“It was strange that my guy couldn’t find out anything about this man. No name, no address, no employment. Nothing.”
With a resigned sigh, she slouches back in his chair and lets her gaze fall to her lap. Robert knows. Damn it, they’re going to jail, aren’t they?
Part of her wanted this, she realizes. She wanted Robert to figure it out so she wouldn’t have to do this anymore, so she wouldn’t have to keep feeling… responsible for him. And he could be free of the unnatural hold she has over him.
But that doesn’t mean she wants to go to jail for mind crime.
She eyes the bronze horse statuette and wonders if it’s worth it to risk Robert’s life with a second concussion.
Robert awkwardly clears his throat, and she looks back up. “So, who is he?”
“What?” Is he playing with her?
He gives her an annoyed look that suggests she hasn’t been listening. “I said the investigator couldn’t find anything on him. You never mentioned a boyfriend, but you seem… friendly.”
She stares at him, and Robert rushes forward with, “I was concerned, all right? How much do you really know about this guy? Don’t you think it’s strange that there’s no record of him anywhere?”
It’s his unhappy tone that gives him away, and finally, Ariadne understands.
Robert doesn’t know. He’s just as ignorant of the crimes they’ve done to him as he ever was. She feels her heart sink because this is so much worse than she thought.
He’s jealous.
That was not supposed to happen.
“It’s none of your business who he is,” she says, angry and afraid. “None of this is any of your business. If you wanted to know something about me, then you should have just asked.”
Scowling, Robert looks away from her.
She stands and moves around the desk. “Was there something you wanted to know in particular, Robert?”
Ariadne thinks now that if he were to ask her for the truth, she would tell him. Everything.
Robert searches her eyes for something only he understands (if he understands). Holding his gaze becomes harder by the second as she feels exposed and bare- but she holds it anyway. She owes him that much.
“Is he important?” he asks finally.
Not “Is he your boyfriend?” or “Do you love him?” but what sounds suspiciously along the lines of "Will he be a problem?”
Ariadne feels a deep well of sadness spring up in her chest.
“No,” she lies.
~*~
Là ci darem la mano (There we will entwine our hands)…
~*~
“I don’t understand,” Eames tells her over the phone. “The job is finished. You can breathe easy now and focus on building your skyscraper.”
“No,” she slurs despite the fierce concentration she is putting into not slurring. The vodka bottle clinks against her foot as she tosses her legs over the side of the bed. “You don’t- you aren’t listening to me, Eames. I…”
“Did something happen? Is he trying to take advantage of you? Is that what this is about?”
She hesitates. “No, but-”
“Because I can take care of that! Just say the word and I’ll send someone over to… take the edge off his frustration.”
The thought makes her feel sick in a way that has nothing to do with inebriation. “The hell? No.”
“Are you sure? Because-”
Ariadne slams her fist against the mattress in frustration. “No! Just leave-” She stops cold, realizing where she was about to go, but it’s too late.
“-him alone?” Eames finishes quietly.
And there is nowhere to go from there. Ariadne’s head falls into her hands, and she giggles helplessly between her fingers. The phone crunches painfully between her shoulder and her neck, but she doesn’t care.
Once upon a time, she wanted to be an architect- a real architect- more than anything. She had an objective, and she pursued it with a terrifyingly single-minded focus. Nothing could or would get between her and that objective. How else was a girl from a little podunk town in Ohio going to sit amongst the greats in Paris? She was unstoppable. Now, look at her…
“Does he know?”
The question sounds innocent enough, but she hears the anxiety laced underneath.
“No. But I think… I think all the time I- we- spent in his head did something to him and I…”
“Ariadne,” he says, still in that gentle tone, “you sound as if you’re cracking.”
She chokes on a wet laugh. “Do I?”
Eames’s voice instantly becomes cajoling, as if talking her off a ledge is just another aspect of his job. “Now, you can’t do that, my darling. You aren’t thinking of telling him, are you? Ariadne?”
She doesn’t answer.
“Ariadne?” He keeps saying her name as if it will bring her back to her senses. “Let me help you. Shall I send Arthur over to talk to you?”
Seeing Arthur right now is about the last thing she wants to do, and she tells Eames as much.
“Then what? Tell me how I can make this better for you.”
Ariadne drops the phone when she hears someone knocking on her apartment door.
“Are you still there? Hello?” she hears from the fallen phone.
She picks the phone back up and says, “I’m here, Eames, but I’m going to go now. Don’t tell Arthur anything. I’ll call you tomorrow.”
“But-”
She hangs up.
There’s another knock.
Ariadne carefully shifts the empty vodka bottle under her bed and then moves so that she’s pressed against the cool wood of the door. The solid press of it reminds her that this is real. When he knocks again, she feels the reverberations through the door flush against her body.
She shouldn’t open the door, not when she already knows who will be standing there on the other side. How she knows, who can say? Maybe this is a dream.
Robert’s hand is up in preparation for another knock when she suddenly opens the door. He blinks at her in surprise and then lets his hand fall. “Hello.”
He looks so out of place standing in her hallway, like a Ming vase in a dollar mart. “Hello.”
She should ask him what he is doing here, but the question feels superfluous when she already knows the answer.
Does he?
“I’m sorry,” he says softly. “I shouldn’t have hired that investigator. It was… inappropriate.”
Her smile is equal parts amusement and bitterness. If there were ever a word to sum up their relationship en masse, then… well, inappropriate works for her.
Looking at him now, Ariadne realizes she has lost all sense of where right and wrong lie at this point. Would her transgression be any less if she sent him away to avoid further damage? Or would cutting him loose be the same as pretending she doesn’t owe him anything?
She wonders if he feels a sort of sordid thrill from being here on the wrong side of town, from being inappropriate with his too-young employee, and if this should bother her at all.
He asked her to save him. But who is going to save her?
Robert’s eyes widen when she reaches out to touch his tie. “You’re not going to do it again, right?”
“No,” he says, sounding a bit breathless.
Ariadne sighs. “All right then.”
She takes his hand and leads him inside.
~*~
Da' miei tormenti impara. A creder a quel cor, e nasca il tuo timor dal mio periglio
(Learn from my suffering. Trust what I say, and let my own misfortune make you afraid)…
~*~
Arthur shows up in the morning.
Robert doesn’t stir at his knock, and so she leaves him in her bed, taking only one of the blankets from where it has been kicked onto the floor.
They end up sitting on the roof of her apartment building. Wrapped in her blanket, she watches all the early morning people scuttling this way and that beneath an orange and pink sunrise.
“He isn’t going to sleep forever,” she says when Arthur stays silent for too long. He didn’t seem particularly surprised or angry when she told him what happened, which just makes her confusion all the worse.
“Take Browning’s money.”
Of all the things for him to say, that was the last she expected. As she is thinking that she must have heard him wrong, Arthur says it again. “Take the money, Ariadne.”
“Why?” she asks. Her voice sounds strained even to her. “Why would you tell me to do that?”
“Because if you run now, then Fischer is going to follow you.”
Ariadne sucks in a shallow breath.
“At least, he’ll try. But if you take Browning’s money, then it might put Fischer off the trail. If you’re lucky, then it will be easy, and he’ll give up once he figures out you were paid off to disappear. It wouldn’t be the first time that’s happened to him.”
Ariadne winces.
“If that doesn’t do the trick, then you can try sending the money in one direction while you go off in another. That would at least buy you some time.”
“You think he’ll find out about what we did to him?” she says, trying to follow his line of logic. She wishes he didn’t sound so clinical in his suggestions, but she also recognizes that cleaning up other people’s messes is part of what he does. She hates feeling like a problem he needs to deal with.
“That’s always a risk,” he says with a nonchalant shrug.
“And you think he’ll want revenge badly enough to hunt me down?”
Arthur finally takes his eyes off of the admittedly beautiful sunrise and looks at her. “Does Fischer strike you as the vengeance type?”
Ariadne assumes the question to be genuine and unloaded, so she considers her answer carefully. And, ultimately, no. She doesn’t see Robert as the mustache-twirling villain. She can picture him angry and betrayed, but not enough to sick assassins on her.
“If he won’t want revenge,” she says slowly, “then why would he want to track me down?”
She would give anything to be able to decipher the look he gives her. “Because I think he’ll want to find you badly enough to try.”
Ariadne suddenly finds it difficult to breath. She drops her gaze to the safe criss-cross pattern of her blanket. “You don’t know that.”
“Call it an educated guess.”
Ariadne doesn’t want to think about all the implications of that in regards to herself and Robert as well as Arthur and she won’t because this is already complicated enough.
He sighs at her confused frown and moves them forward. “Whatever his motive is, a man in Fischer’s position can afford- literally- to maintain an active pursuit for a long time without putting in much effort himself. That’s… dangerous.”
“Did you know it was going to happen like this?”
Her sense of betrayal hangs in the balance, waiting for a word from him to tip it over. Has she ever really had a handle on this job? She doesn’t think so. If Arthur purposely put her in both physical as well as emotional jeopardy then… She doesn’t know what.
Arthur surprises her by putting two fingers under her chin and bringing her face back up to his. “No, Ariadne. No. But some things… can’t be predicted.”
She still wants to believe in him. “What kind of things?”
He gives her another warning look that tells her she is getting too close to the things she doesn’t want to think about, and she bites her tongue.
They sit without speaking for a long time as the city comes to life below them. Robert will be awake soon, and he will probably want his coffee and the New York Times and most definitely won’t want to meet Arthur.
Downstairs, awkward morning-after tension awaits her. Ariadne will offer to make breakfast, and he will remind her that he doesn’t eat breakfast but can he use her shower? Maybe he’ll leave right away or maybe they will share a silent cab ride to work, where Robert will retreat into his office and Ariadne will take an extra-long lunch and then pretend she isn’t feeling well and leave early.
And those are her good scenarios.
“There’s another job,” Arthur says suddenly. “It’s in Tokyo. We’re in need of an architect.”
Ariadne smiles sadly. “So, I run? Is that what you always do, Arthur?”
She thinks he looks sad, too, in this moment, but she’ll never really know whether that is just what she wants to see. Arthur tucks a strand of hair behind her ear and leans in so his lips brush the shell of her ear.
Her eyes fall shut as he whispers, “Sometimes, it’s all you can do.”
~*~
L'ultima prova dell'amor mio (The final proof of my love)…
~*~
Ariadne calls Cobb.
She hasn’t spoken to him since the inception job, but she has always known how to get in contact with him if she needed to. She had naively hoped he would be the one to make the initial move, but first months and then years of silence dispelled her of the notion.
Once they get passed the awkward pleasantries, she says, “I need a favor.”
He owes her.
~*~
“I want to show you something.”
Ariadne takes Robert’s hand and leads him over to the field between the dilapidated high-rises. Together, they watch as steel and glass churn up from the previously barren earth. Up and up it goes as the materials bend and shape into a familiar façade.
A diagonal grid climbs up the sides, forming an intricate pattern of solar panels and glass that will pull in natural light better than a façade made from pure steel ever could. Transparent glass passageways placed at terrifying heights reflect back images of the gorgeous sunset that hangs over them. The wind turbines, huge and impossibly beautiful, sprout from the roof like new plants rising from the earth.
Born of both their imaginations, Fischer Tower represents both Ariadne’s desire for occasionally bizarre innovation as well as Robert’s sleek, elegant lines. She could have made the skyscraper look like anything here, with physics-defying dream architecture, but she wants Robert to see what their dream child will look like someday.
She wanted to see it.
When Robert wipes away a tear from her cheek, Ariadne realizes she is crying. Catching his hand, she says, “Promise me you won’t let Harriet change anything. It’s already perfect, Robert. And don’t let the contractor convince you that this can’t be done. It can. All of it, I promise.”
“I don’t understand,” he says, but his fingers entwine with hers in a way she chooses to interpret as a promise.
“You will.”
Standing in the shadow of their creation, Ariadne pulls Robert down into a kiss that holds no promises because she can’t afford to make any more.
When he pulls back, there is something wet and warm in his eyes that she has never seen there before. “Ariadne, I-”
She cuts him off with another kiss because she doesn’t want to hear impossible things.
Ariadne isn’t in love with him and for a thousand different reasons, but what terrifies her is that she might want to be and that maybe he wants her to be. She really couldn’t feel worse about that.
But this is just a dream.
She kisses him for as long as she can and releases him when she hears footsteps approaching.
Cobb gives her a sad smile, which she returns with effort. He waits patiently, several feet away, giving them their space.
Robert’s grip tightens on her shoulder as he stares at Cobb. “Who is he?”
Ariadne takes a final, hungry look at her skyscraper. She breathes in all her fears and hurts and disappointments- and lets them go.
“Robert, this is Mr. Charles,” she says, drawing him over to Cobb. “He’s… a friend.”
“What is he doing here?”
“He’s here to help you so that this never happens to you ever again.”
As a parting gift, hers is perhaps dubious, but it’s the best she can do.
~*~
A few hours later, Arthur and Ariadne hop a redeye to Tokyo.
Before they go, she leaves her resignation letter on Robert’s desk.
Finis.
Notes:
1. All intercalary quotes are from Mozart’s opera, Don Giovanni.
2. The “I talk to you in my head” line was brazenly borrowed/stolen from the movie, Me Without You.
3. All the green skyscrapers named other than the obviously fictitious Fischer Tower are real, though some are still in the development stage and haven’t actually been built yet! I figured since Inception takes place twenty minutes into the future, they would be complete by then. If you want to see these gorgeous buildings, then take a gander over here.