dream a dream (and what you see will be)

mizzy2k

"Dreamers with no imagination at all build from memory," Cobb says. "And that's the quickest route to the subconscious realising there's an intruder. The more real a dream, the quicker you feel if it's being messed with. But dreamers with too much imagination-"

Cobb looks across to Eames for support, obviously unable to find the right phrasing of it, and even Eames pushes his mouth into a line, searching for the right word.

"Some of them get lost," Arthur says, and Ariadne turns to him. Arthur's looking out to the sea. He's sitting cross legged in the sand like he's on a tiled floor not on sand, and his back is ruler straight, and seriously, Ariadne feels empathy—he must have back problems. Or, alternatively, a chance at never having a back problem at all. He turns his head to look at her, and his expression is impassive. "Sometimes the world they build is so wild you can't find the information to extract, it's impossible to differentiate the fact from the fiction."

"Like limbo-" Ariadne begins, but Cobb looks tired all of a sudden and she swallows the word back in.

"Or if you take a dreamer with too much imagination into a more realistic dream, like an extraction, sometimes their subconscious can't help it; the storyline of the dream diverts too much. Fears become monsters, daydreams become part of the dream, fantasies manifest and let the subject know too quickly they're being messed with, and-" Arthur turns to Cobb, one eyebrow raised, "remember the Ellison job?"

"Urgh," Cobb says, rubbing his chest automatically like a tic he can't get rid of; he frowns down at his hands like they are giant traitors. He faces Ariadne to explain, "The projections were all dressed up like X-Men."

"Cobb got speared out of the dream by Wolverine," Arthur says, "It was a mistake to take the client in."

"The guy wanted to be a superhero," Cobb says, "I had no idea my architect at the time was pissed off about the X-Men movie."

"The whole world was pissed off about the X-Men movie," Arthur points out. "They only kept in two of Whedon's lines. Two."

"It was tragic," Cobb says, in this flat dreary voice like he's heard this rant before.

"And one of them they let Halle Berry butcher," Arthur adds.

"Worst moment of her entire career," Eames says in an agreeable tone like he has no clue what they're going on about, but Ariadne has heard him make X-Men references before; it's disturbing how easily Eames keeps pretending to be someone else, even around them. She wonders absently who the real Eames is, and doubts she'll ever find out. The thought makes her sad, but not for herself. She hopes someone finds out who the real Eames is; someone else if it can't be Eames himself.

"And then sometimes, writers get lost." Ariadne thinks somehow it's part of Arthur's X-Men rant, but it's the sudden somberness in his tone that's the clue; that, and his face has become cold, and distant, and even more like stone than his I'm on the job face. Arthur's tone is icy, but almost whimsical, like he's missing something that he can never have; Cobb's voice goes a bit like it when something reminds him of Mal.

"Sometimes they never want to come out of the world they've made. Even though it's a first level dream and not limbo. They know it's not real but it's better than facing the real world," and there's a real bitter, mocking tone to Arthur's voice now, almost like self loathing, and Ariadne's heart tumbles in her chest hard, and she moves forward instinctively—only to be stopped by Eames' arm, straight and hard across the planes of her shoulders.

Ariadne looks at him, hurt, a bitter word already halfway out of her throat, and Eames looks back patiently, no change of expression, but it's times like this when Eames seems wise beyond his years. It's his observation skills, the ones that make him an excellent forger, the skill none of them have to his degree, that sometimes manifest in an almost precognition—noticing something wrong before anyone else does, and Ariadne looks again at the scene to see what she has missed.

She catches it—the mirroring furrow between the eyes, matching on Arthur's and Cobb's faces. There's history here, an old argument. Arthur gets to his feet, coldness cutting across his face like a shadow, and Cobb follows him up smoothly, his expression hard like steel. Ariadne copies them by instinct; she stumbles, and Eames helps her up. He's tense like he's ready to step in the middle. Like he can smell a fight in the air, here in the sunshine, on the sand, while the sea glitters like the largest sapphire in the world behind them; an incongruously pretty backdrop.

"I know what you're planning with this job," Arthur says, and it cuts directly through the almost jovial air they'd managed to create like a huge fucking cleaver, shattering it neatly. Arthur twists to face Cobb in one smooth movement, and apart from that tiny furrow, Arthur's face is carefully, carefully blank. "I know what you're asking."

"Nothing that can't be done," Cobb replies, his tone as light as Arthur's, but just as cutting regardless.

"Dom-" Arthur breathes, and that's when Ariadne inhales, clasping her hands to her mouth and earning a streak of candy on her cheek from the pink frothy sugar city she had forgotten she was holding, because Arthur never says Cobb's first name, never, it's always formality with Arthur, procedure, one hundred per cent of the time. Ariadne had to threaten Arthur with a spork for him to call her by her first name. Ariadne risks a look at Eames, to see if he is as uncomfortable as she is, but he just looks patient, like he knew this was about to happen.

"This girl is lost, Arthur. We're not extracting a petty commercial secret. We're extracting her personality. You know the scope of what we need." Cobb tilts his head, strong, and stares straight at Arthur. "We need Fantasia."

The word means something to Arthur, because he tenses even more, and Ariadne would have guessed that was an unlikely feat except it's happening before her; Arthur personifies tense at the best of times, and this is feeling awfully a long way away from the best of times.

Then she realizes that the world means something to her too, and she can't form words for a moment, because the concept is beautiful. Of course that's where she's heard the name Ivory Tower before...

"Wait a second." Eames manages to find his voice and uses it to barge in, even though he's interrupting the stare that Arthur is directing at Cobb, a stare that could probably level cities. Ariadne idly wonders then if anyone has done that in a dream, and the answer is swift: of course they have. "Fantasia. You're going to recreate the Neverending Story, in a dream." Eames whoops then, loud and unembarrassed, doing a funny half-spin on his heel before turning back to them, arms spread wide. "That's insane. And genius."

"So we're recreating the biggest kid's story in the world, after Harry Potter," Ariadne says, slowly digesting the idea, already feeling ten years younger already as the nostalgia of her youth catches up with her. "Isn't that like, recreating a memory? So it's dangerous."

"You've never physically been there, so you don't have memories or experiences." Cobb shrugs.

"I've been there, Cobb," Arthur snaps, Dom's surname fully back in place, Arthur's control obviously there as well. "I'm glad you have the option to forget about that, but I don't." Arthur steps forwards, and his eyes are flint-hard.

"Best step back, sweetheart," Eames murmurs into Ariadne's ear, but it's redundant—she doesn't have Eames' keen eyes or people skills, but she knows dangerous people when she sees them, and Arthur's radiating dangerous.

"And Mal promised me I would never have to go back," Arthur finishes, delivering what is supposed to be the final blow. Arthur tenses, like he's expecting Cobb to fight back, but Cobb just sags, and that makes it worse, like a thousand years in limbo have just crawled into his shoulders and onto his face and settled there.

"I've danced around the truth for your sake, Arthur. And I know you work yourself ragged to be the best point man in the world, but it stings me to watch you do that, when you could be the best architect out there as easy as breathing."

Ariadne fumbles in her bag lining for her totem, feeling uncertain and vulnerable. When she edges a look at Eames, she catches a glimpse of something in his hands that he quickly pockets and she feels less crazy.

Arthur looks like he wants to swear, or punch Cobb; instead, his reaction is pure Arthur. He stays still, tilts his chin, and if looks could kill, Cobb would be jelly on the pavement. He's cool, professional and bristling with how lethal he actually could be if pushed any farther. "You just crossed a line you shouldn't have, Cobb."

Cobb's voice is just as quiet when he says, obtusely, "Mal was the reason you weren't left there in the first place."

Arthur visibly flinches. "Low blow."

"She wouldn't hesitate doing the same for this girl."

"Lower blow," Arthur snaps, but the tension across his shoulders dissipates with his words. Cobb opens his mouth to say something else, and Arthur's eyes narrow immediately. "I'm armed. Call me by my real name and I swear I am not so precious about my impeccably clean police record that I'll refrain from shooting you in public."

Arthur moves his hands to the small rise in the line of his jacket that Ariadne hadn't even noticed, and Cobb holds his hands out like a surrender, his half-eaten cotton candy blowing in the wind. Arthur swallows, looks absolutely torn for a second, and then his face relaxes and he turns, heading back for the sea. Ariadne looks to Cobb for a cue, and follows when Cobb does.

"Call me when it's time to go back," Arthur says. "And you owe me candy," he adds, calling it backwards without looking, his voice thin. "Lots of candy."

"Strawberry sherbet and Tootsie Pops," Cobb says. "I remember."

"His real name-" Eames starts, sounding hugely curious and so much like himself in the middle of all this strangeness that Ariadne shoulder bumps him companionably, and Eames predictably steals the last of her cotton candy in retaliation.

Eames joins Yusuf in the water, ostensibly to escape Ariadne's wrath over the cotton candy, but really because he's been dying to join Yusuf in the sea since they got down onto the beach. Ariadne recognised at least the way his eyes traced Yusuf's path in the water. It was longing. It was what Ariadne had felt, that night after fleeing from her first day of dreaming. Furious at Cobb for shredding her face apart with glass fragments, but longing all the same for that sensation of pure creation. The longing eventually won out over the fury.

Longing usually did.

Ariadne's more sensible than Yusuf and Eames, or that's what she tells herself. She moves to stand by Arthur, on the damp sand, where the incoming tide laps over her toes. Arthur's removed his shoes too by the time she gets there; they join his candy floss to dangle from one hand. His pant legs are rolled up neatly, and he's wearing his socks like a pocket handkerchief poking out of his front jacket pocket.

It's a companionable silence, and Ariadne feels relieved that they can still have this even after Cobb and Arthur have fought. She feels relief and a quiet sort of happiness at this, her odd little found family.

And then Arthur makes this keening sound. Low in his throat, like he's been shot.

Eames and Yusuf don't notice at first, too busy still splashing around, but Ariadne does, and her heart clenches at his stricken expression. Arthur turns from her, looking out into the sea with an expression that hurts, and Ariadne nearly reaches out for him automatically without thinking, pulling her hand back when she remembers last second that Arthur isn't particularly touchy-feely.

She tries to follow Arthur's gaze, and he's staring at Eames. He swallows, and it's like he's having trouble scraping oxygen into his lungs, and he says, helplessly, "He doesn't even know what he's asking me to give up."

Ariadne can't help herself. She doesn't understand the moment—she only understands Arthur's in some sort of pain, and that's enough for her to want to act. She can't stop herself this time. Her hand reaches out, touches his elbow and he flinches, looking at her with wide, hollow eyes. And then he shakes himself, and his mouth sets into that thin, heavy line she's more familiar with.

"We should get back," Arthur says, his voice low and uncertain. He shoves his free hand in a pocket and starts to walk back, shoes still dangling from the other. Ariadne watches him go. She wasn't cold before but now she can feel it, down to her bones. The bright sunshine is a decoy to the actual temperature of the day.

"What did you say?" Eames demands, splashing towards her. His expression is set in shadow as he stares after Arthur, a frown on his face. Ariadne can see the frown, and she doesn't understand it for the longest time.

"I didn't say anything," Ariadne says. Arthur's heading for the embankment, and Eames is still frowning at him. Eames can see something she can't. She looks again, focussing. His shoes in his left hand dangle, swaying oddly. "He's less tense."

"He's absolutely pissed off, but you're right. He's looser. And look at his feet."

Ariadne looks, and tilts her head to the side, like a different angle might give her a better appreciation. She hadn't noticed anything different at all, but she does now. She wonders if it's Eames' talents, or if it's because Eames just watches Arthur more than she does. "He's walking toe to heel, not heel to toe."

"Like a dancer," Eames murmurs. Ariadne doesn't know if he realizes he's said that out loud. He shakes himself, and gives her a broad smile she doesn't believe. "Looks like it's time to get back to work."

"It is getting rather chilly," Yusuf says from behind them. Ariadne startles. She hadn't realized he'd been so close, but it makes sense. Something big enough to cause that much of an argument between Arthur and Cobb is something huge, something terribly secret, and they're so closed knit any secret is going to be a focal point of their lives.

They're not as relaxed as Ariadne had hoped they would be as they walk back to their headquarters, but they're also not as tense. She thinks of the emails she's been getting from her friends in corporate operations about their teambuilding exercises, which have mostly included building things from newspaper and abseiling and really odd buffet food. Ariadne much prefers Cobb's version, even though they're all quiet on the way back. Eames seems oddly entranced by how Arthur's walking, swapping between heel-to-toe and toe-to-heel at the oddest of moments.

She thinks maybe Arthur hurt his foot; he's stoic enough not to mention something like that.

The truth is much worse than that.

A few metres away from the front door of the warehouse, Arthur stops. His expression is blank, and he's staring at the door like it's the worst thing in the universe.

Ariadne slows and comes to a stop a few paces behind him. The others stop beside her. It happens a lot in people who work together—the hive mentality. One holds back and the rest do automatically.

Arthur's shoulders are tense, and he looks like he might never move again.

"Do you know they've done studies about memory?" Arthur says. Ariadne almost wishes she could see his face, but she's locked to the spot by her own fear. Arthur is reliable and dependent and doesn't act oddly, but this is out of character. For Arthur to break routine, it has to be something terrible. His voice is cold and flat, like during their briefings, when he's relaying clinical facts. "That feeling when you walk to the kitchen to do something, but by the time you get there you've forgotten what you're going for. We have that feeling when we're dreaming from the very beginning of the dream. Like there's something we've forgotten."

"We use that feeling," Cobb says, "to do our job."

"Did you know that studies say it's perfectly reasonable to go from one room to the next and forget the reason why you even made the move? It's because the brain compartmentalizes everything. Memory's not continuous. Our brains are more like computers. We have to put things in blocks. Doors, thresholds, they're a natural barrier. Our brain automatically uses the sensation of passing through a door to close the door on that block of memory."

"Trust you to research that," Eames says, already rolling his eyes, but he has his hands in his pockets. It's defensive body language. He's just on edge as the rest of them.

"Doors are just symbols. But then, so are totems. And they're sometimes the only thing keeping us grounded."

"We can do this later," Cobb says, edging a little closer, a small frown creasing his forehead like he's only just now figuring out something is wrong. Ariadne wants to slap him round the back of his head. It's a common impulse around him and Ariadne's well practised at holding it back in. She's had more than her fair share of revenge in the dream world. Once she "accidentally" dropkicked him down a well. Good times, she thinks, and feels instantly saddened; this moment feels the farthest from good times she's ever felt.

"The longer we wait the harder it is to make a clean break of it." Arthur squares his shoulders, like moving through the door into the warehouse is going to kill him, and Ariadne swallows hard, tasting acid. She doesn't like this day. She really doesn't like it. She wants to cry or crack apart the sky. She wants to dream up a world exactly like this moment just so she can destroy it. She wants Arthur to stay outside, and go back to the beach with them, or at least stay where he is, because if he moves, Ariadne feels like the world might end if he does. It's melodramatic and over the top, but that's the only way she can describe it.

Arthur steps forward, because wishing that something isn't real means squat in the real world. He pauses, and turns then, and his face is the most terrible thing that Ariadne's ever seen, because there's pain in it. And Arthur never shows emotion, never, and this is worse than being in pain herself-

"It's time for a parade," Arthur says, clear, concise, impossible; he looks at Eames helplessly for a moment, then turns to the door and says, in a much less composed voice, in a voice that's almost a whisper, "I don't want to die."

And then he pushes open the door and steps through.

The four of them stand there stupidly for a moment, just staring at the door as it swings shut behind him, and they're frozen. A sound tears loose from the back of Ariadne's throat and it hurts like it's grazing her tonsils. She looks at the others in nothing but disbelief, and her heart clenches in her chest for a moment; Cobb looks worried, Yusuf upset, and Eames... The expression on Eames' face...

Ariadne can't describe it. She feels it, though. It's like rage and fury and confusion blended into a cocktail of fire; it's enough to kick start her body into movement, and she's running with Eames to the door, blind with panic.

Eames gets there first. The door snaps back, slams into the wall of the warehouse like the sound of a gunshot, and Ariadne's imagination is awash with mindless terrors - fire washing through the warehouse and Arthur's body on the floor in a puddle of blood or maybe Arthur will have disappeared and there'll be no sign he ever existed-

All her fanciful fears dissipate in a second when she skids to a halt on seeing Arthur halfway across the warehouse, throwing his shoes into the corner. He turns on hearing them, and he smiles and waves.

Ariadne feels abruptly silly - a combination of silliness at thinking such odd disasters would await them in the warehouse and silliness at not adding insanity to her list.

And then Arthur starts taking his clothes off.

"Um," Cobb says, slightly awkwardly, "this is a shared space. You have co-workers. We like, um, being able to work without feeling awkward."

Arthur calmly drops his pants onto the chair he'd automatically draped his jacket over, and tilts his head as he peels off his waistcoat and starts on his shirt. "I'm uncomfortable, Dom. You can't expect me to work like this."

Ariadne frowns. There's something different about Arthur's tone, and not just his more casual use this time of Cobb's first name. She holds back cautiously, not wanting to blister into this situation that she doesn't understand.

Arthur pulls off his shirt as Cobb frowns at him, and Ariadne finds a blush creep up on her cheeks as she can't quite stop staring. Underneath his pristine clothing, Arthur's. Well. Fit. Then she stares for a different reason as Arthur picks up his water bottle and tips it over his head. He shakes his head a little, his normally pristine hair still slicked back. Ariadne had a boyfriend in college who used pomade like Arthur does; she supposes the one dose of water isn't quite enough to dispel it.

"The fuck is this stuff," Arthur mutters, and Ariadne fumbles for her totem again, because what?

"I don't know if we'll be able to concentrate if you walk around like that," Cobb eventually manages, as Arthur stands there nonplussed, standing in his blue-checked boxer shorts (well, Ariadne reflects, there's one question she wouldn't have asked about Arthur answered regardless) and socks like nothing's wrong. Like the whole team isn't staring at him and his sculpted abs.

Arthur looks at Cobb seriously for a moment, and then cracks an odd sort of smile. "What if I said I worked better like this?" Arthur steps out from behind the table, displaying the curve of his legs to great effect. He's acting like nothing's wrong, even though this is completely out of character.

"Ariadne and I have no complaints," Eames breaks in, with an exaggerated leer on his face. Arthur rolls his eyes at Eames, but looks back towards Cobb. Ariadne shoots an annoyed look on principal at Eames, but she can't bring herself to lie; she could sort of stare at Arthur's naked chest for a long time without getting bored. She's not going to be able to look at any businessman in a suit without wondering what's beneath now, dammit.

"Relax, Dom. You think I run all the way from my apartment every morning in a suit? I've got my jogging clothes in the back." Arthur tilts his head at the small area in the back where they all mostly drop their stuff during work, and turns to go.

Ariadne turns, because it would be completely unprofessional to watch him walk the length of the warehouse, even though his legs look as toned as his stomach, and she is only human. As she glances over at the others, Cobb is looking up at the ceiling, his expression slightly strained, Yusuf looks unaffected, and Eames isn't making any pretence at not watching Arthur walk away which is so ridiculously in character for him that Ariadne feels grounded despite Arthur's behaviour change.

She doesn't know what to think that Arthur's walking toe-to-heel the whole way. She's not Eames and she can't decipher people that easily.

She goes back to the maps but feels lost, and she doesn't even turn when Arthur taps her on the shoulder. He's wearing sweatpants and a loose t-shirt, and doesn't look too odd—they're probably designer work-out clothes knowing Arthur's pristine taste. "Things are a bit of a jumble at the moment... But one thing I do remember. An argument. I was too harsh," he says, and Ariadne looks at him and can't help but stare. She's confused and Arthur looks... different. He's obviously tried to wash his hair, and it still looks normal, all slicked back, except a few hairs are curling at the nape of his neck, against his forehead, and it softens his face a little. "I'm sorry."

"Are you apologizing?" Eames demands from across the room where he's helping Cobb and Yusuf with some particularly fragile looking equipment that Ariadne kinda remembers from Chemistry class, but she can't remember the name of half of the pieces. It doesn't look like he's helping much, more like he's distracting himself, and Ariadne doesn't blame him. It's easier to think about things rather than Arthur's weird mood shift. "Because you should. You're being odd."

"I'm not apologizing to you," Arthur shoots back, lifting an eyebrow in Eames' direction, but instead of the controlled, thin press of his mouth that usually accompanies a jibe in Eames' direction, there's a curve of a wicked smirk on his mouth instead.

"Wouldn't want to be too out of character," Eames mutters, as Yusuf slaps his hands away from meddling with one of Yusuf's thousand glass jars of strange liquids and compounds.

"Getting out of character is sort of the point," Arthur says, grabbing a chair and straddling it backwards, reaching for something under the tables. He emerges with a laptop, and shoves at the papers. Some of them casually fall on the floor and Arthur doesn't bat an eyelid, even though he was screaming bloody murder at Eames' 'cavalier' attitude to them earlier.

Arthur flips up the lid, and hums contentedly under his breath for a moment as it loads. Ariadne pulls up a chair to watch him as he pushes in a dongle to connect to the internet, and as the laptop's screen darkens for a moment in its loading process she sees Arthur's face freeze in the middle of his humming, like he's just realized he has been humming, and then there's an almost forced physical tension that flits across his face as he makes himself continue to hum until Google Chrome loads up and fills the screen.

"Can you pass me that candy floss?"

Ariadne blinks at the question, then reaches across the table, gingerly picking up Arthur's casually discarded bag of pastel colored candy and passing it to him. He rips it open and starts shoving handfuls into his mouth. Ariadne stares at him as he loads up YouTube, and starts watching cartoons.

"Um," Ariadne says, after a minute of Super Mario, "how is this supposed to help?"

"Arthur doesn't watch cartoons," Arthur says, "when else am I supposed to catch up. Have you seen this one?"

Ariadne stares. "Arthur?"

"Hmm-mm?" Arthur turns to look at her, looking slightly annoyed. He sighs and reaches out to slap at the space bar and the video stops playing. He grabs for another handful of candy floss. There's a clear look of realisation on his face. "You know, this is odd. I can remember arguing with you, but Arthur's just holding back a ton of stuff. It's rather annoying. You're Ariadne, right? It's difficult to keep track of names."

"I- what? Arthur, what-"

Arthur sighs, and slams the laptop lid down. "Dom, seriously, you're a shit. Who doesn't brief a team that they're working with a multiple?" Arthur shoves a hand in Ariadne's direction, and Ariadne looks at his hand like it's an alien object. "I'm Seb. Pleased to meet you."

Ariadne continues to stare at his hand, and then she shakes herself and automatically holds out her hand, because she's an idiot but she's not a rude idiot, and if multiple means what she thinks it means, well, it's hardly Arthur's fault. She shakes Arthur's - Seb's? - hand quickly, and brushes her hand on her pants.

She doesn't know what to call him in her head. Calling him something else would be like agreeing he's gone, and he's not. Arthur's sitting right in front of her.

"Oh, sorry about that, I get sugar everywhere," Arthur says, and his voice is different, the rhythm's all off, and he's a little shyer, a little friendlier in his tone, and Ariadne doesn't believe he's sorry at all.

"Excuse me a minute," Ariadne says. Arthur rolls his eyes and flips the laptop open again, jabbing at it. She hurries to her feet and over to where Cobb is standing, looking as frightened as he probably should be, considering how she's feeling. She pushes right into Cobb's personal space. "Do you want to explain this? What the hell's going on?"

Cobb looks sheepish. He puts a hand on the back of his neck, and looks up at the ceiling. Ariadne just gets angrier. They routinely go into each other's heads. Something like this is crazy. It's unfair.

It's completely odd and Ariadne can't wrap her head around it. Arthur's her constant and now it's like he isn't even there.

"Arthur," Cobb starts, and he brings his gaze down from the ceiling. It's more defiant now, like he's daring them to tell him he's done something wrong. "Arthur doesn't really exist."

"Excuse me?" Eames says, losing all pretence at being useful. His fingers break whatever piece of equipment he's holding. Yusuf's face falls, but Eames is being obvious enough about his current aura of hostility; Yusuf isn't going to brave setting him off any more. "What the hell do you mean Arthur's not real, he's right there. This is real life, Cobb. Your totem might be malfunctioning but ours are just fine, so if this is an attempt to be stupid, well, I never thought you had to work hard at that-"

"I'm sorry to blunt your ego like this, Eames, but Arthur's a forge." Cobb shrugs a little, and looks over to where Arthur's honest-to-goodness giggling at what's on the screen, still eating mouthfuls of the candy and he's loose, relaxing into the chair, tapping his fingers on the table, a wide grin stretching his face. "He used to be like Amelia, lost in a dream. Mal and I got him out, but we had to... make some adjustments."

"Arthur's a forge," Eames repeats, like he didn't hear Cobb, but Ariadne sees his fingers dig into his leg and it's disbelief more than anything.

Ariadne's numb, too numb to react, because this feels weird. Unreal. Except not even an extractor would use this dream scenario on a Mark, because it's so crazy. A sane brain would reject it, and the warehouse is stubbornly stable.

Ariadne might be frozen, but Eames doesn't stay frozen.

It's because Eames, like Cobb, errs on the melodramatic that Ariadne doesn't even feel surprise that Eames pulls his gun on Cobb.

The fact that she sits and calculates an escape strategy is probably just a sad reflection on the fact she's way too immersed in the criminal world now.

A criminal world where Arthur isn't real, and Ariadne's sorry, but what the fuck? It's going to take Ariadne's brain longer to wrap around that one than the whole Fantasia dreamscape.

Cobb swallows automatically, and then looks coolly at Eames, his 'facing down projections' expression. "All right," Cobb says, his tone smooth apart from the small hitch in his voice betraying the fact he believes Eames might shoot him, "I can understand that response-"

"Really," Eames says flatly. His eyes are dark. "Because I might not. Explain it to me."

Cobb flickers a look at Ariadne, who is the closest to Eames and stands a much better chance of disarming Eames. Eames' finger isn't on the trigger, but that doesn't mean much. Ariadne's been around them in too many dreams with firearms and undergone enough basic training to know it's just regular firearm safety.

She doesn't particularly feel inclined to rush to Cobb's rescue. Not until he stops being so crazy.

"You don't know what happened," Cobb says, "to necessitate-"

"Does anyone like it when he's polysyllabic?" Eames asks Ariadne, still keeping his gun trained on Cobb's chest.

Only aim at something you're willing to kill is pounding through Ariadne's head instead of anything else. Arthur's words from her last firearm training. Only aim at something you're willing to kill.

"Not enough dislike to shoot him over it," Ariadne says, shakily. Cobb exhales in obvious relief, as Eames nods at her and holsters his weapon. "But I might be willing to join in on the bodily harm if his explanation isn't good enough."

She tilts her head at Cobb. Defiantly. Daring him to have a problem with her anger.

"One of these days I'm going to get through a working day without you all offering to shoot me," Cobb mutters, sulkily.

"Maybe one of these days you'll not be a complete arsehole," Eames says.

There's a long, slow moment where no one says anything. Ariadne feels sick, and uncertain, but mostly sick to the stomach. She'd thought the world had rotated a hundred and eighty degrees when Cobb introduced her to dreamsharing, and had been sure that nothing else would be able to pull the rug from under her carefully constructed world so thoroughly again.

She was wrong.

The idea of Arthur, stable Arthur, not being real.

He's been her foundation of the dreamsharing world, and without that, without Arthur-

Ariadne still can't think about it. It's too much to process. Especially with Arthur sitting over on the other side of the warehouse, the bright colors of his cartoon flickering over his face.

Arthur's face.

Arthur.

She knows him. He's her friend. He's a forge. Before, when she shook Arthur's hand, it was an automatic thing. A vague track in the back of her head reminded her that Multiple Personality Disorder was a medical condition and no one's fault, and sometimes, as with other conditions like it, people got ashamed and didn't like to talk about it. But this is something else entirely. This is messed up.

No, this isn't going to settle in her brain properly any time soon at all.

"Mal and I had no choice," Cobb says levelly. "When we found Sebastian - Arthur," he clarifies, "he was sick. He's essentially the same, just with some... adjustments to be able to function effectively in the dreamscape without losing control."

"Essentially the same," Eames repeats, and doesn't soften his angry expression. "Christ, Cobb, you're a fucking knob. At least tell me you have a fucking clue why I nearly orphaned Jimmy and little Phillipa."

"I'm..." Cobb's eyes linger for a moment on the rise in Eames' jacket where he's stashed his gun back in its holster. "I'm aware."

He's clearly got no idea that Eames is still an inch from shooting him in the face.

Ariadne's a thousand miles past being unimpressed with the situation, and is not in the mood to inform Cobb of the probable impending violence to his person.

"Start from the beginning," Eames suggests, with the tone of a person that uses a suggestion as an invitation to impending violence if the words aren't to their satisfaction.

"Mal was a thief," Cobb says, "but she dabbled in forgery. Not to the depth as you, Eames. But enough."

Ariadne's hands clench uneasily in the jersey fabric of the top she's wearing, stretching it needlessly, a random tic from her high school days. She's never been a comfortable social creature, and it feels like she's standing on the edge of a cliff, like any moment the whole floor might crack and break beneath them. Her imagination is immense, it always has been, but there's no way she can imagine this conversation working without Eames pushing into Cobb's personal space, without blood being spilled before the end of the day.

Until Arthur gets up from the laptop, and heads over to them, his hands in the sweatpants pockets and a shy expression on his face that Ariadne's never seen from him before. "When they found me," Arthur says, and his voice is low and clear, like a bell, and warmer somehow. A friendlier tone. A less business-like tone, "and I insisted on dreamsharing with them, we created Arthur."

The tension leaves Cobb's body a little, like he's much more relieved now Arthur's standing there. Like Eames is less likely to try to knock his block off with Arthur in the way.

Ariadne glances across at Eames, and Eames sinks against the nearest table. Cobb's right.

"It was Mal's idea," Arthur explains. "A personality I could forge as it were, so I could safely dream without bringing Fantasia into an extraction." He looks at Ariadne, and fails a little at meeting her gaze.

"Bringing Fantasia in?" Ariadne still can't make her voice be steady. She thinks she must sound delirious. She wonders if she has a fever, and then hates herself for even thinking selfishly, because Arthur doesn't exist and Arthur's right there and Cobb didn't think it was a big deal and wow, Ariadne's really got an amazing track record of crushing on all the worst guys possible.

If Ariadne's crush on Cobb hadn't died on its own after a few months of him squinting and getting squashed by imaginary structures, it would have died today. Crashed and burned.

"I was like Amelia," Arthur says, and looks down. He swallows, hard, and then looks at Ariadne right in the eyes. "I was... lost."

We've done this before, Arthur said. Ariadne swallows, starting to understand.

Arthur shrugs sadly at her, and crosses to sit on the table Cobb's leaning against. "My mom couldn't cope- she tried, she tried her best- but she always messed with the wrong guys. So she put me somewhere where she didn't have to bother with me."

"They put you into a dreamden."

Yusuf's voice is gentle for the left-field conclusion. Ariadne looks at him. She's not the only one. It's a huge leap in logic. Yusuf's face creases, and he swallows, looking at Arthur. Arthur looks at him almost thankfully, like he hadn't really wanted to say it.

"Okay," Eames says, and his voice is completely unsteady, like he's worried he's lost his mind, "I may be shooting more idiots than just Cobb today."

Yusuf's voice might have been gentle, but his face is telling a different story.

"How did you come to that conclusion?" Cobb asks, bravely ignoring Eames.

Yusuf looks down, picks up something from the table and puts it back down, and then looks at Cobb directly, his head tilted. "It's something I was researching, back when I lived in Dubai and my work was more... legal. About the long-term effects of somnacin on children."

Ariadne stares at Yusuf, and thinks about the legal application of dreamsharing that Arthur has told her about - the Government using it for simulated wars, with soldiers stabbing and killing each other and testing what level of pain people could withstand. That had been terrible enough in itself. Testing it on children...

Not just one child. Children plural. Ariadne had just been unhappy about Arthur until now, and now her queasiness multiplies as she thinks about all the children in Amelia and Arthur's position, and all the things the PASIV allows people to do.

Sometimes Ariadne is uncomfortable with their illegal use of the PASIV, dropping into people's subconscious, messing with their heads in the most intimate and invasive way possible. But compared to all the things she's now imagining the Government doing with the technology, their work seems mild. Inconsequential.

It's no wonder Yusuf seems happier in his backstreet shop creating chemicals, and strictly monitoring his own dreamden.

"I hated my work," Yusuf says. "But my Government had reports of these children being put into dreamdens. They were cheaper than childminding services and kept the children out of the way while the parents went to work. It was much like how ten years ago some parents would just shove their children in front of the TV. Most of the serious cases of somnacin addiction we discovered happened to these children. No matter how much we tried, nothing would help. The victims had to keep dreaming or suffer very painful side effects. Or death. I lost my job trying to help them because mostly, the Government were using the kids as guinea pigs. They didn't care about survival rates, just results." Yusuf shifts a little under their gaze. "In my own dreamden, I'm more careful at my application of somnacin, and I never take a child under more than once. My compound counters the long-term effects to the best of my ability. When the dreamers choose to leave the shared dream I provide them with, they do not need somnacin."

"If I don't get a somnacin dose, my brain starts to eat itself," Arthur explains. "Charming, right? The PASIV is the safest way to ensure that a survivable level of the compound stays in my blood stream."

"That's terrible," Ariadne breathes. "And not just the somnacin dependency. And it's all terrible, and Cobb - I'm still pissed at you, that's not going to change any time soon, mister. But... Seriously, a dreamden?"

The idea of it hurts. Ariadne's always felt a bit queasy at the concept of parents who just shoved their kids in front of TVs, letting Disney movies and cartoons be virtual babysitters, and she's always had to swallow uncomfortably when adverts on TV for childrens' charities come up, talking about abandoned children. The idea of putting your own child into dreamshare... It's like some weird, mishmash horrible hybrid of the most monstrous things you could do to a kid in one concept.

The breadth of what was possible in the dream world collides sharply with the hundred visceral images she has of Arthur in her head; him shooting at projections with brutal efficiency, him getting sliced apart in different ways, and burned, and in one extraction which went particularly wrong, getting impaled on a signpost. Was he stoic as part of his personality? Or had he just spent years - potentially lifetimes - in a shared dream where worse things happened?

Or was anything as bad as finally waking up and finding out the real world was hard and horrible and the furthest from Fantasia as one could possibly be. A world where your mother didn't love you enough to stop the horror, and a world where people were harsh and you couldn't imagine new friends when things got bad. A world where because of what had been done to you, you had to submerge yourself in a new personality?

Everything's too raw. She owes it to Arthur to know, to open her eyes to it all, because world change can't happen without knowledge and Ariadne never dreams small. She has Robin Hood-style delusions of grandeur, using the PASIV for the elusive 'good'; Cobb'd never go for it, but he's got to retire eventually. Sooner rather than later if Eames has anything to do with it from his current expression. Ariadne's good at looking at the big picture. But she's getting to be as good at looking at the small details, too, and right now asking about it would be too much.

"It wasn't too bad a childhood." Arthur shrugs. It's not the response Ariadne was imagining; it's much better, but it doesn't salve the ache in her chest. "There are worse places to grow up."

Ariadne struggles to say something which isn't a mangled sound of pain. She works her mouth and says something, because her childhood was sunshine and rainbows in comparison and the conflicts with her parents suddenly taste like nothing but love, so she hasn't any real excuse but selfishness, and Ariadne hates being selfish. "And then?"

Arthur shrugs. "I was there too long. The authorities got involved and couldn't wake me up—the drugs were too strong. One of the cops knew of the Cobbs, and I met Mal for the first time when she was pretending to be Dame Eyola, making me strong enough to make the right wish to come home. So I got out of there, and readjusted. Wrote a book about it to get it out of my brain, to accept it was a dream, and then when I started to dream, Mal helped me create a forgery so we would be safe in the dreamscape. She and Dom always were on the experimental edges of dreamsharing."

Ariadne's mouth feels dry, because she remembers asking Who would want to be stuck in a dream for 10 years? and Yusuf had patiently responded, It depends on the dream.

"Wait, wait, wait, Dame Eyola, and you wrote a book-" Eames actually sits down hard on the table, making it wobble. It looks like the shock of whatever he's just eureka'd himself into has at least softened a little of his violence-to-Cobb bender. "Shitting fuck no." He looks at Arthur, wide-eyed and almost reverent.

"Shitting fuck yes," Arthur says, with a straight face that wavers a moment later and breaks out into another smile. "Fan of the book, ain'tcha?"

Eames looks appalled. "It was my favorite book at uni. Bloody fucking Arthur, you're Bastian Bux?"

Arthur hurries over, yanks the laptop out of the power lead and taps something into Google, bringing up a cover of the book The Neverending Story. Ariadne smiles at it automatically. It's identical to the copy Amelia has.

This scan of the cover includes the whole dust jacket, including a pixelated picture of the author. Ariadne thinks of the times she's seen that photo in her own copy, back in storage at her mom and dad's house, and she feels a rush of shame. How had she never realized it was Arthur? It's distinctive, the crease of his eyes, the pink curve of a rare smile, the slope of his chin. Eames moves closer and she can tell he's seen it too.

"There were always rumors on the dreamsharing grapevine that it was written by someone who had lived it in the PASIV," Eames says, shaking his head. "Christ, fuck." The color drains from his face. "The number of times you've let me dig your lack of imagination."

"On the contrary, I've appreciated it," Arthur says. "It's a comfort to know one of the best forgers in the community is taken in by it."

"So I'm a moose," Eames says, but he's shaking his head and not looking too mad.

Maybe he's just worn out. Ariadne empathises. Ariadne feels... calmer now. Because Arthur might be smiling now, and wearing clothes she's never pictured him in—loose sweatpants, functional t-shirt, his hair drying in curls at the nape of his neck—and he's not who she thought he was at all, but... He's still the same, too, in an odd way. That means there's hope, that this isn't the world shaken up forever. They had Arthur before and they will again. Ariadne can breathe.

"The cutest moose in the forest," Arthur says solemnly.

Eames wrinkles his nose. "It was easier to tell your sarcasm in the forge," he mutters, his voice sounding exactly like the time Ariadne tricked him into a discussion about Twilight and he talked for ten minutes about how to make skin sparkle in the sunlight before realising he'd spent ten minutes earnestly talking about sparkling vampires.

On to part 3

Masterpost

Fic: dream a dream (and what you see will be) - mizzy2k - PART

dream a dream (and what you see will be)

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