Everything That Is Real (Comes Around)

Part Five

            Ariadne blinked and realized she was standing on a sidewalk in what appeared to be a small mountain town. Her projections were breezing by and ignoring them which was a comfort even if they were her own. The sky above was a bright blue and the sun felt warm against her skin. Looking down the road, she assumed it was the main street, shops and restaurants lined side by side. The main street was on a steep hill and she stood on the top looking down.. It was quiet and it made her feel calm. A hand in hers made Ariadne look up and she saw Arthur standing next to her. The detail was very impressive for someone who rarely designed dreams and she almost felt proud that he was showing this to her.

            “I've been working on this for years,” he said as the two of them began to walk down the main street. “It's roughly based on a town I visited when I was young and how it made me feel. There was nothing but peace in that place in the mountains.”

            “Building from a memory?” Ariadne asked and Arthur shook his head.

            “No, that place is perfection compared to this. In dreams we can create and do impossible things but the real world is something that can't truly be replicated.” He stopped and looked at her. “Like Rome, for example, do you think you could have made something like that?”

            “No, not even close, not even in a lifetime,” she said before nodding. “The real world, despite how nice this can be, is just so much better than anything we could create in here.”

            “Things in the real world, the little things in cities and landscapes, are created by thousands of minds or years of erosion.” He squeezed her hand. “This is where I like to escape when things up there get overwhelming. No one has ever seen this.” Ariadne could not find words to explain how honored she felt to see what he perceived to be a paradise outside of the real world. So the two of them walked around for a little while until Arthur suddenly turned and lead her around a corner. Ariadne had her back to a wall that felt warm from the sun as he put his hands on both sides of her pinning her there. She caught the eyes of her projections looking at them before Arthur stole her lips into a kiss. That seemed to settle her mind enough as she hooked her fingers around his belt loops, pulling him closer. When his lips traveled to her neck, Ariadne moved her head to the side, exposing more flesh, loving the feeling of his body against her, his hands finding her hips before moving up her shirt and digging his nails into her ribs.

            She opened her eyes and stared at the ceiling of the hotel. The timer on the PASIV was flashing zeros but Ariadne could not stop her pounding heart. She pulled the line out of her wrist and looked over at Arthur. His dark eyes watched her as he pulled the line from his own wrist and closed the case. She looked away and tried to focus on the ugly carpet in front of her to try and get the dream out of her head. They were back in the real world and that meant that Arthur was uptight and worried about everything again. That relaxed man she saw in the mountain town that did not exist was not present in the real world. It broke her heart a little knowing that the only place he could really relax was a dream. Ariadne stood and pulled the bishop out of her pocket clenching it tight in her hand before she walked to the bathroom.

            The florescent light was almost headache inducing as she set the piece down and tipped it over. Somewhere in the back of her head Ariadne wanted it to fall wrong so she could go out there and see a relaxed Arthur, an Arthur that was not plagued with pressure and guilt, someone she so rarely saw that he seemed like an entirely different person. The sound of footsteps coming toward the bathroom made Ariadne snatch up the bishop and hold it tight in her hand. When Arthur walked in she saw his hand closed in a fist and she just knew that he was clenching his die the same way she had clutched her totem only moments before.

            “I know you said that the dreams can't even compare to reality, that a dream can never be as amazing as the real thing, but there is one thing in the dreamworld that I would take to reality in a heartbeat,” she said refusing to look at him.

            “Can I ask what that is?” Arthur asked though it sounded like he did not want to hear the answer.

            “The only place you relax is in the dream. It's the only place where your shoulders don't look like they're going to break or that something little is going to set you off. The only time you relax around me is there and that's only when it's the two of us. When you know nothing can go wrong, when you don't need to over think anything, and that seems like the only time you're willing to let your guard down.” Ariadne clenched the tile on the counter as she realized how much it hurt. “The only place you truly trust me is in a place that you just said doesn't even compare to reality.” In the mirror she could see him standing near her but not near enough to touch. His face was completely devoid of emotion and he was not looking at anything in particular.

            “I'm sorry,” Arthur whispered after what felt like a long time. He turned and walked out of the bathroom and the next thing Ariadne heard was the sound of the door to their room opening and then closing quietly. She had told Cobb that she was patient, that she was willing to wait for him to let her in at his own pace, but the knowledge that the only times she could ever remember him being open and calm were in the dreams was devastating. The only thing he said was 'I'm sorry' before he left. Ariadne clenched her bishop tightly in her hand before she walked out of the bathroom and crawled into bed. She could not be bothered to change, she barely had the energy to kick off her shoes, and she drifted before she fell asleep with her bishop in hand.

***

            Arthur knew it was stupid to walk out of the room like he did yet at the same time he really could not think of anything else to do. She was right, she was completely right, and he resented himself for that. The moment she had agreed to be his partner he had started a mental countdown before she gave up and walked away. Working with her, being with her, it was different from anything else he had ever experienced before. He went through the world with superficial relationships where he did not trust anyone much if at all. The only reason he worked with Cobb as well as he did was because Cobb had been too distracted by Mal and trying to get home and he had not noticed the distance. Mal had noticed and not long before she died she had confronted him. She had asked why after all this time he did not trust them. Arthur had had no answer then and if pressed again now it would be the same.

            They were undertaking a dangerous mission while being blackmailed by a person who was probably even more dangerous and every logical bone in his body told him that going outside alone at night was a terrible idea. For half a second he thought about going to see Eames or Yusuf but ruled both of those out right away. There was no way he could even begin to explain why Ariadne was upset and why he suddenly felt like he could not sleep in the same room as her. Arthur walked outside and tried to loosen the knot that was in his shoulders. Did he really want to trust someone completely? He shoved his hands in his pockets and began to walk with no real direction. For as long as he could remember there had been no one he trusted unconditionally. There were times when he felt like he did not need to be as guarded but there was always a few feet between him and the other person metaphorically. This method had worked for his entire life and for some reason he had thought it would work with Ariadne as well.

            That was a lie and he knew it. Arthur had thought that with time he would feel calm around her and that it would just fall into place like it was supposed to. People, he decided, only had so much patience for bullshit before giving up. Maybe Ariadne had reached her limit and after this job she would leave. The thought of never seeing her again made his stomach turn to the point that he thought he was going to be physically ill. He did not want to lose her but he also knew that he just could not give her what she wanted. She wanted the man he was in the dream when there was nothing but the two of them with no limits. It was easy to be relaxed and calm there but it was such a different situation in the real world. They were nothing alike and Arthur resented himself for letting her see that side of him. If he had kept that locked away then she would not have lost patience with him just yet. He would have had more time with her before it all fell apart.

            A quick glance at his watch and Arthur saw that it was nearly three in the morning. In a few hours his teammates would be sitting in the office space he had rented as they all got ready to do the job. Cobb would plan, Eames would find a way to gain the mark’s trust in the dream, Yusuf would mix his chemicals and Ariadne would build the level. In a few hours he was going to see her again after he had walked away. Arthur leaned against one of the buildings and looked around. He was not entirely sure where he ended up but he also knew his way back. He could rent another room and stay there. He could go to another hotel all together. He could leave the job to the rest of the team and deal with the immediate threat. Jiim/Walter, was right; he had done most if not all the work for him. It really left him with nothing to do.

            Out of the corner of his eye Arthur saw someone walking down the street toward him with their head down. Mentally he looked over the person’s outline to see who it was. There was a good chance it was Jim, Walter, since he knew that he was watching them. Here he was standing in the middle of the road at three in the morning unarmed with an approaching enemy who had made it clear that he wanted him dead. Arthur wondered for a moment if he had some sort of death wish because he did not move as the person got closer. He did not turn to run and he did not try to duck out of sight. He just stayed right where he was as the person got closer and closer. It was a man now, he could tell, with their collar up and their head down so Arthur could not see their face. A car drove by and he saw a flash of dark hair that was going gray and he smiled.

            “Out for a midnight stroll?” Walter asked as he approached; if he was armed he was not making it too obvious.

            “Out to rip some people off for a few hundred, Walter?” Arthur asked taking a mental note at the way his opponent’s face changed.

            “So you found my record. You must have access to some pretty impressive databases,” Walter said and Arthur shrugged. “So I'm going to propose to you the same question you asked me this afternoon,” a hand moved and he could see a gun flash in the streetlights, “give me one good reason I shouldn't blow you away right now.”

            “I'm going to stick with my 'Fischer wants me to do the real work and not you' argument I had earlier,” Arthur said pushing himself away from the wall. “Could you kill me? Definitely. Will you? No, you won't, not yet anyway.”

            “And why is that?” Walter asked and there was the sound of the gun cocking into place; he stared down the barrel of the gun and felt no fear.

            “You know as well as I do that killing me will compromise the job and that the job comes first. If you're going to kill me it's going to be right after we turn in the ideas we extract,” Arthur said. “So why don't you just continue on your way so we can both do our jobs.” Walter stared at him for a long time before there was the click of a safety and the gun was out of sight. There was a dangerous look in Walter's eyes as he walked by. There was movement out of the corner of his eye and Arthur blocked a punch directed at his kidneys. Walter retreated and continued on his way before turning a corner, away from their hotel, and vanished. Arthur turned on his heels and walked back to the hotel. He managed to convince the night manager to give him another room. There was a moment in his head where he thought about sending a message to someone saying that he was in a different room.

            Instead Arthur opened the door to the room, kicked it closed and lay down on the bed looking at his die. He rolled it once on the end table before setting an alarm and falling asleep.

***

            Ariadne woke from a nightmare she could not remember with a start. Drenched in a cold sweat as her heart raced she struggled to slow her breathing. Instinctively she reached over to the other side of the bed looking for Arthur and found that it was empty. Instead of her heartbeat slowing down it raced even faster. His suitcase, the PASIV and his laptop were all still there but there was no sign of him. A vise clenched her chest so tight that she was sure a twenty pound weight really had dropped on it. He had not come back, not even for his things, he had just left it all there without a word.

            The sound of her phone ringing made Ariadne jump before picking it up and saying “hello” in a breathy voice.

            “Are you okay?” It was Eames and he did not sound worried. “You must have overslept because we're all down here working.”

            “All of you?” she asked as the weight on her chest slowly lifted.

            “Yes, all of us,” Eames said as he lowered his voice considerably. “Arthur is here and he looks like he got no sleep. He didn't bring his laptop or the PASIV. Did something happen?” For a brief moment she considered opening up to Eames and telling him everything about the night before, telling him about their conversation that did not feel like a fight, that had resulted in Arthur walking out of their room at two in the morning without returning.

            “He must have left early without telling me. His laptop and the PASIV are kind of buried by my stuff right now so he probably didn't want to wake me up,” Ariadne lied and she had never been more thankful that Eames was not there to look her in the eye. There was a long pause on the other end of the line.

            “Well we're all here if you want to come down and work unless you want to be left alone,” he said.

            “I'll be there in fifteen minutes,” she said quickly before hanging up. He was not hurt, not physically and probably not emotionally, but he was okay. Ariadne jumped out of bed, took a cold shower to try and calm herself down before she jumped into some clothes and grabbed all of the materials. She thought about whether she should say anything, she wondered if he was going to say anything, she contemplated if anyone else was going to say something. She was resigned to the fact that she would not let personal feelings into their work. Tensions were running high enough without drama within the group. There would be time for confrontation later; for now she had mazes to build.

            The walk to the office building carrying three bags was a strong reminder that she needed to dress lighter for the summer. Pants, even with a t-shirt, was going to be too much to deal with and she was not even sure the place where they were working had air conditioning. Ariadne rounded the corner and found the alley that Arthur had talked about. What she was not expecting to find were three flights of stairs. The PASIV was a lot heavier than she thought it would be and she really did not want to carry it up the stairs. Fortunately she could hear the sound of footsteps coming down and she breathed a sigh of relief; gentleman Arthur would help her carry everything. A strong sense of defeat washed over her like a kick to the stomach when Eames emerged.

            “You look like you could use a second set of hands,” he said. Ariadne nodded and handed over the PASIV. She flashed a smile before they walked up the stairs. If Eames had any suspicions, and she expected that he did because if there was anyone who could tell someone was lying it was him, he kept them to himself which she was more than grateful for. The top floor of the building was where they were going to work and she was a little disappointed that there was no sign of an air conditioner. There were, however, five large fans set up in various places all over the open space. Cobb and Yusuf both looked up when she entered but Arthur kept his eyes straight ahead. He was wearing different clothes. She realized he must have bought them and it made her chest ache that he would rather buy clothes than confront her, but he did seem a little disheveled.

            Cobb led her over to a large table near one of the fans and said that she could work there if she wanted. Arthur was about five feet to her right before she nodded and said that it was fine. When Ariadne walked over and set his laptop down he muttered a 'thank you' but still would not meet her eyes. There was no way he was this hurt by their conversation, it still did not feel like a fight, and he just pushed it all away to work. All work all the time Arthur. So she did the only thing she could do: she walked over to her own desk, laid out a large piece of paper, and stared at it, waiting for a maze to come to mind. She could make the preliminary maze without knowing what the actual level was and judging by the way Arthur had not even looked up when she entered she assumed it was going to be some time before she got any information out of him.