FIC: Kiss Trick, 10/?
Mar. 14th, 2011 10:17 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
the_ragnarokI wrote this, then realized that if Arthur's the dreamer on the first level he shouldn't be able to go down into the next. Put it down to Arthur just being that awesome, okay?
Bayliss is in the conference room. They manage to find their way there without notable incident, pausing at the door to tidy themselves up.
Eames takes a minute to enjoy the sharp figure they all cut, walking in pressed and besuited. Arthur in particular looks lovely, the flawlessly neat lines of him a joy to look at, the black of his suit too dark for real cloth to accomplish. It swallows the light, and the watcher's gaze.
When they come in, Bayliss doesn't even look up, and Eames feels the momentary annoyance that he always does when something beautiful goes unappreciated.
Ariadne sits down facing him, and slides a handful of papers over to his directions. Eames coached her about this, how to look like a prim and proper businesswoman. Dom has more experience, but in Eames' opinion it's better that Ariadne do it. She's more likely to put Bayliss off-guard.
Arthur's standing to the side, unobtrusive, until Ariadne looks to him and says, "Could you bring us all something to drink, please?"
The drink will be drugged, and then they'll go down to the second level. Which means that Eames need only wait here for about five more minutes listening to Ariadne and Bayliss go on about the stock market.
Arthur returns and offers Bayliss his drink. Bayliss is unconscious within ten minutes, and Arthur has the dream representation of a PASIV spread out and waiting for them to plug in. Eames does admire his efficiency.
~~
The second level, or at least what Eames can see of it at the moment, is complete and utter darkness. He grimaces – it's easier to put on a forge when you can see yourself or, for that matter, anything – but he isn't the best at what he does for nothing.
It's different, putting on a forge for a job. Eames has to be more careful, settle into it more thoroughly than he does for training session. It's very like the difference between everyday makeup and the greasepaint one wears on stage – harder to remove, necessarily so. There are failsafes one takes, to avoid losing a forge on the job, which can be potentially lethal; those means aren't without risks themselves, but it's not like Eames is in this line of work for his health.
So he takes his time, pulling Alex over him and into him and all around, until she's opening her eyes to blink at the darkness and brushes aside a stray thought that isn't hers.
She closes her eyes, navigating by feel until she finds a door. The room is cramped with crates, the smell of ancient dust and ozone thick around her. She's pretty sure those are cobwebs she just felt brushing across her fingertips.
The door is creaky when she opens it, but there's nobody on the other side to hear. Alex looks around – apparently the room she just came out of is one of the museum's storage rooms. She brushes grey dirt from her cargo pants, straightens and looks around. She knows where she's supposed to go, more or less, and the rest she'll navigate by feel.
Bayliss is one floor down, in front of a Renaissance painting exhibit, frowning at the pieces.
"Got what we need?" she asks him without preamble.
He seems startled when he turns around to look at her. "I – what?"
"For the break-in. Yeah." She makes an impatient gesture. Fucking amateurs, she has no idea why she took him on for the job.
He swallows and produces a key. She smiles approvingly. Oh, yeah, that's why she took him. Because he's got access. There's a small voice in the back of her mind saying that isn't how a heist is supposed to go at all, but she hushes it. Simple is best, isn't it? Easiest way to open a door is with a key.
"Great," she says. "All right, follow me."
Bayliss is wearing all black, she notes, with a little huff of disappointment. Rookie mistake, that. Her clothes are a dark dirty blue. It's a working color, good for concealing scratches or dirt or – most importantly – her, in a dark room. Black stands out too much.
The corridors they're climbing are steadily growing narrower. The place they're headed for is a service entrance, a half-floor that doesn't appear on the official blueprints. That's her favorite part of this: how unlikely it is that anyone will even find out what they've taken, at least not until it's far too late to do anything about it.
Alex is deep in thought, making small lists of what she needs to take care of – escape routes, fencing the piece, making sure Bayliss keeps his mouth shut after. This is why it takes her nearly a minute to notice they're in the wrong room. The picture on the wall is wrong, not the piece they're meant to steal at all. She curses softly and turns to leave.
"Where are we going?" Bayliss says – loudly, damn the man. Almost as soon as he speaks Alex hears footsteps in the corridor. She shuts the door quickly and claps her hand over Bayliss' mouth, heart beating fast.
The footsteps grow louder, then fade. Alex lets him go. He stands where he is, staring transfixed at the painting on the wall. It doesn't look like much to her, but then again, all she knows about art she learned from auction catalogs. It's just one of those modern paintings, splotches of paint that don't look like anything to her. Trying to make sense of it makes her eyes hurt.
Bayliss' voice is a shock in her ears when he speaks. "Are we going?"
She tears her eyes away from the painting. She must have been staring at it, God knows why. She shakes herself up. "Yes."
~~
This museum, Alex thinks, has too many goddamned mirrors in it. She kinda wants to break a few, but that's only likely to draw unwanted attention and besides she promised her therapist not to do that anymore.
It doesn't help that Bayliss keeps looking at her, like... She doesn't even know how to call it, can't pin a name on it and there's a world of unpleasant little thoughts rising in her head when she tries. Fuck it. It's probably just her imagination. That and the goddamned mirrors.
Probably that's why she gets lost, again. It makes her want to kick something. It's not like her, to get turned around like that. Maybe it's that asshole who sold her the museum map, he looked like a dodgy fucker.
So in spite of the fact that they're supposed to be in the medieval section, they find themselves in a courtyard. The night's air is pleasant, at least, cool against her skin, the grass wet with dew that's seeping into her crappy shoes. She pauses for a moment to enjoy it, and Bayliss walks right past her.
Alex makes a move to grab him, but he's speeding up and she doesn't catch him like she meant, only grazing her fingernails across his shoulder. He doesn't even seem to notice, making a beeline towards the statue in the middle of the clearing.
It's a big, ugly motherfucker. It'll fetch a good price, Alex thinks, but they don't have the time or the resources to get that away tonight.
"Come on," she says, grabbing Bayliss' arm. His gaze turns to her, then down to the scratches she left on his shoulder. One of them has little red droplets lining it, almost black in the faint light of the courtyard. She swallows an apology – fuck him, he should've stayed in place.
"Just give me a minute," he says, terse, but his body is already starting to move towards her.
"We don't have a fucking minute," she says, low and calm. "The guards are gonna be here any second. Do you want that painting or not?"
"I'm not sure." His voice is slow, too slow. Considering something that should be fact already.
Goddamnit. This is why she doesn't work with rookies. "Well, you'd better get sure right fucking now, or I'm leaving you here for the guards."
His mouth curves into a tiny smile. "You wouldn't."
The hell she wouldn't. Who does that asshole think he is? "Try me," she says.
Thankfully, he turns then. But then he says, "Okay, change of plans," and that's not how this is supposed to go. "We're taking this," he says, pointing at the statue.
Her face twists into a snarl, but he looks at her, impassive. "Either we're taking it," he says, "or I'm not coming, and you can go open that safe by yourself. I'd like to see you try."
Well, she'd like to see him being skewered by rusty knives, but does that help her? She tamps down on her anger. It's not likely to help right now. "Why," she says, "should I even be remotely interested in that thing? Who's gonna pay me for it, huh?"
"Me," he says, and the hell of it is, she believes him.
Against her better judgment, she nods, slowly. "All right," she says. "So what did you have in mind?"
His earlier smile comes to life again, this time with a predatory glint of teeth. "You know what I think? I think this doesn't have to be either/or."
She nods slowly, and listens to him while he gets his idea of a plan rolling. Bayliss is an utter dick, but at least he thinks on his feet.
~~
She called their getaway driver, who'll help Bayliss to remove the sculpture. She's going to remove the picture they meant to steal in the first place. It's not an ideal arrangement and she resents the fuck out of Bayliss for switching things up on her, but realistically there's not much she can do about it.
She scrambles up flights of dusty stairs, as the ceilings become lower and the wallpaper peels around her. The light comes from old yellow bulbs, dangling precariously at the ends of half-exposed wires. She tilts her head aside to avoid one when she comes to the door.
It's a simple door, one that she could kick down if she tried hard enough. A safe, huh? Shows what that fucker knows. But still, it's better like this, sliding the key noiselessly into the lock.
And what do you know: There's a goddamn mirror on the wall. Fucking typical.
She comes closer, in spite of her own misgivings. It's just a piece of reflective glass. She shouldn't react to it like this, that's a stupid thing to do. But she stares at it, and at herself, and feels herself tremble.
Mirrors are a problem. They make her forget who she is.
She sees herself there, for a second – dark hair and dark eyes and slender frame, nothing anyone would really look at twice – and then she sees images flickering across in rapid succession. A tall blonde woman, the type she used to hate helplessly on sight; an older man with graying hair; a little girl, looking up at her with questioning eyes; a man, bulked with muscle, with a wary look in his eyes.
The man she sees is sitting on a couch in a room somewhere, and this is why mirrors are a bad idea, because she finds herself thinking, I remember this.
~~
Ariadne sighed. "I'm so fucking tired," she said, flopping down to sit in Eames' lap. Eames smiled and put a hand around her back, companionable.
"You've been working hard," Sandra said, sympathetic. Arthur, who just walked in from the kitchen, turned his eyes on Eames and Ariadne in rapid succession. Eames would have to ask him about that later. At the time he just patted Ariadne on the shoulder and sent her to lean against Sandra on the love seat.
Arthur came to sit next to him, closer than he normally did with company around. Sandra started telling some story, something they've heard before, but nice enough to listen to given their weary states at the time.
"What I don't get," Ariadne said, interrupting her, "is what the hell happens to all the architects." The story was about yet another architect-turned-extractor.
Sandra made an inquisitive noise, but Arthur said, "I have a theory."
"That it's a demon?" Ariadne said, which caused some general snorting. "No, really, what?"
"It's about creation," Arthur said. His eyes were closed, his forehead touching Eames' shoulder. It was all Eames could do not to pet him shamelessly. "And permanence. People become dream-architects because they love to create, and they achieve greatness out of love for what they do."
"But it fucks them up, doesn't it," Sandra said, "that everything they make is so flimsy by nature."
Arthur opened his eyes to nod at her, and Eames was struck by the rapport between those two, the way conversations were effortless and unending between them. "Every architect I've ever met had the exact same nervous breakdown. What am I doing, what is this even for, what's the purpose, who the fuck cares. None of it will be there anymore when the dreamer wakes up." He shifted, tucking himself closer against Eames.
"God, yeah, that conversation," Sandra said. "I call it an architect looks at thirty."
Ariadne twitched. "I don't feel like that at all," she said.
"Well, I don't want to say that you will," Sandra said, tucking a curl of Ariadne's hair behind her ear. "It's just that experience speaks for itself, you know? And it happens most often to the best ones. The mediocre ones don't care. So I'd be pretty surprised if it didn't happen to you."
There was an uncomfortable silence for a moment, until Ariadne said, "And what happens to the ones that do?"
"Most of them?" Arthur said. "They find something else to do. Take point or learn how to forge or start farming sheep. They find another job, or leave the business altogether if it's too much for them."
Ariadne's eyes were bright, looking at Arthur. "And the others?"
"They end up doing militarizations," Eames answered for him. "It's permanent, and the better ones think of it as an art form."
"You can do seriously amazing things with that kind of expertise," Arthur added. "That trick I promised to show you, Althea taught me that when I worked with her. Most people never even scratch the surface of what you can do with dreams."
Eames knew he was making a face, but he couldn't help it. Arthur looked up at him, exasperated. "What?" He asked. "Look, I know you have some kind of grudge against her, but let it go, okay? She's just doing her job."
"She's not," Eames said, with more vehemence than he meant to express. "I mean, of course she is, but – oh, bugger." He sank into the couch and firmly closed his mouth.
There was a gentle hand on his shoulder. He looked up to see Ariadne. "Inquiring minds want to know," she said, with the same wry voice she used on Cobb. The comparison did not feel particularly flattering.
Eames took a deep breath. "She enjoyes it," he said flatly. "She makes nightmares and she loves it. It's not even that efficient a method, compared, people just like to use it because it hurts those who try to make their way in, and she's happy to do that." Arthur's eyes took a worried look, focusing on Eames. "I don't like it when people enjoy hurting others," Eames said quietly. "Not for the hurt's own sake."
Ariadne looked like she wanted to protest for a moment, but Sandra just gave him a long look and said, "You want to spit it out?"
Eames didn't, Eames completely meant to shut his face about the subject, but she did ask. "I can't understand it," he said, the ultimate concession from a forger. "I don't want to. Hurting the people you love. I think it's awful. It doesn't matter if they let you, it still is."
Unexpectedly, Sandra's expression was amused. "If they let me, yeah, that would be pretty goddamned awful." Her smile turned oddly gentle. "I don't do it because they let me. I do it because they want me to. World of difference, buddy."
"Are we done with this conversation?" Arthur said, trying to get up.
"I'm not sure," Sandra said, gaze still locked on Eames. "Are we?"
They should have been. Eames wanted them to be. Instead he said, "Are you sure you can know the difference?"
Her gaze was steady, unflinching. "Not always," she said. "I have to trust them to tell me."
"And if they didn't?" Eames pressed. "If they told you what they thought you wanted to hear, because they wanted to do what you wanted? Because they loved you?"
"Is that what you think love is?" she said, and the pity in her eyes made Eames want to kick something.
~~
Alex walks a step back, blind, and another, nearly trembling. She feels sick, disoriented, unsure of herself. The world wobbles around her for a moment, or so it feels.
There's something wrong with her.
Look, this isn't the time, she tells her own treacherous mind. Just let me get out of here and I'll do something about it. Therapy, likely, all over again. Fuck, she hates shrinks. Still, better than this, that this sudden loss of self that had her immersed in the life of someone who doesn't even exist.
The worst of it is, she looks at the mirror again and it's not a mirror anymore, just a painting. Not the one she came here for, either. It's a woman, huddled in a bundle of clothes that looks like it's trying to eat her alive. There's a dark patch in the middle that makes Alex think of guts leaking out, of bodies ridden with bullet holes, blood draining out.
Colorful black, she thinks, and banishes the thought. She has no idea what the fuck it even means. Black isn't even a proper color.
~~
Bayliss is waiting for her outside, with a grin she wants to punch off his face. "Did you get it?" he asks.
"No," she says curtly, because fuck him. Her bad mood is at least partially his fault, she thinks, so he may as well get some of it aimed at him.
"Nevermind," he says. "Your man came and got it." He's looking back at the place where the statue was, an odd expression on his face. "What's that?"
"What?" she says, and turns around. There's a flatness there, incongruously dark against the grass. "Oh, that. I think it leads to a storage space or something." There's an itch in the back of her mind. A door, locked, it means... something. "They put things away there."
"Put away," he says, distantly, then turns to look at her. They're nearly of a height. She's not a short woman.
She takes a step back, discomfited. "When is my guy coming back?"
"We have twenty minutes," Bayliss says, and takes a step forward. She needs to push him away, but if she does, that's still contact, he might take that as encouragement, shit shit shit.
"Back off," she says. He doesn't, but he doesn't move closer, either. Small victory. "I'm serious. Back the fuck off, okay? Let's finish this job without doing anything stupid."
"You know what's stupid?" he says. "Regrets. People are much likelier to regret what they haven't done than what they have, did you know that? And people still don't – "
There's a hand on Bayliss' shoulder. It's attached to –
For a moment, her brain comes up with a jumble of memories, images, the feeling of skin, a name, Arthur.
Then she blinks, and he's just the getaway driver again.
"We're done here," he says curtly, the driver, her guy (what's his actual name? She can't remember). "Get your asses in the truck or I'm leaving you here."
Bayliss comes after him, strangely docile, and Alex follows behind.
In the truck, she sits in the front while they're driving. The security guards are coming after them already. That's not good, she recognizes through the fog seeping through her mind. She takes a gun from the glove compartments and drops them, one at a time, as clean and dissociated as playing a computer game.
"Where are we going?" she finds herself asking, and dreading the answer. She doesn't want to know, there's a bit of her that does know and it's hiding from itself. The driver doesn't answer, just pulls a sharp turn. She shoots at the sniper she sees on a roof right ahead.
They drive around for what feels like hours, until a cellphone rings. The driver looks at it, frowns, then stops the truck.
"Hey," he says, oddly gentle, and reaches for another gun. "Shall I?"
"What are you talking about?" she demands, nervous, but she knows. Should have known all along.
"Eames," he sighs, as if to himself. Then he has the gun trained on her, muzzle on the soft skin below her jaw. "Say when," he says, like this is some kind of sick game.
She should be fighting, should be doing anything but close her eyes and say, "Now." But that's what she does.
~~
Eames comes to, blinking, shaking himself mentally until he's lost all traces of Alex. Some forges are stronger than others, settling on you with some strange affinity that makes them harder to see through, but also harder to untangle one's self from. Eames doesn't think he'll use her again. That way lies madness.
Arthur's right beside him, for a moment, waiting for Cobb to get up and leave the dream. His expression is inscrutable, but he darts down and kisses Eames softly for the barest moment. Such a breach of professional behavior is most unlike Arthur, and Eames resolves to shake him down for answers.
Later, though. For now, they're getting up, and when Cobb finally rises, Arthur aims a gun at him.
Cobb looks like he's about to say something, but when he opens his mouth, all that comes out is, "Shoot."
Arthur does. Head shots in dreams are odd things, just a little red blot on someone's forehead rather than the gory explosions they are in real life. Or maybe it's just Arthur's tidy little mind.
Then Arthur turns the gun at him. Eames just nods, and then he's blinking himself awake again with the noises of a moving train rushing around him.
Bayliss is in the conference room. They manage to find their way there without notable incident, pausing at the door to tidy themselves up.
Eames takes a minute to enjoy the sharp figure they all cut, walking in pressed and besuited. Arthur in particular looks lovely, the flawlessly neat lines of him a joy to look at, the black of his suit too dark for real cloth to accomplish. It swallows the light, and the watcher's gaze.
When they come in, Bayliss doesn't even look up, and Eames feels the momentary annoyance that he always does when something beautiful goes unappreciated.
Ariadne sits down facing him, and slides a handful of papers over to his directions. Eames coached her about this, how to look like a prim and proper businesswoman. Dom has more experience, but in Eames' opinion it's better that Ariadne do it. She's more likely to put Bayliss off-guard.
Arthur's standing to the side, unobtrusive, until Ariadne looks to him and says, "Could you bring us all something to drink, please?"
The drink will be drugged, and then they'll go down to the second level. Which means that Eames need only wait here for about five more minutes listening to Ariadne and Bayliss go on about the stock market.
Arthur returns and offers Bayliss his drink. Bayliss is unconscious within ten minutes, and Arthur has the dream representation of a PASIV spread out and waiting for them to plug in. Eames does admire his efficiency.
~~
The second level, or at least what Eames can see of it at the moment, is complete and utter darkness. He grimaces – it's easier to put on a forge when you can see yourself or, for that matter, anything – but he isn't the best at what he does for nothing.
It's different, putting on a forge for a job. Eames has to be more careful, settle into it more thoroughly than he does for training session. It's very like the difference between everyday makeup and the greasepaint one wears on stage – harder to remove, necessarily so. There are failsafes one takes, to avoid losing a forge on the job, which can be potentially lethal; those means aren't without risks themselves, but it's not like Eames is in this line of work for his health.
So he takes his time, pulling Alex over him and into him and all around, until she's opening her eyes to blink at the darkness and brushes aside a stray thought that isn't hers.
She closes her eyes, navigating by feel until she finds a door. The room is cramped with crates, the smell of ancient dust and ozone thick around her. She's pretty sure those are cobwebs she just felt brushing across her fingertips.
The door is creaky when she opens it, but there's nobody on the other side to hear. Alex looks around – apparently the room she just came out of is one of the museum's storage rooms. She brushes grey dirt from her cargo pants, straightens and looks around. She knows where she's supposed to go, more or less, and the rest she'll navigate by feel.
Bayliss is one floor down, in front of a Renaissance painting exhibit, frowning at the pieces.
"Got what we need?" she asks him without preamble.
He seems startled when he turns around to look at her. "I – what?"
"For the break-in. Yeah." She makes an impatient gesture. Fucking amateurs, she has no idea why she took him on for the job.
He swallows and produces a key. She smiles approvingly. Oh, yeah, that's why she took him. Because he's got access. There's a small voice in the back of her mind saying that isn't how a heist is supposed to go at all, but she hushes it. Simple is best, isn't it? Easiest way to open a door is with a key.
"Great," she says. "All right, follow me."
Bayliss is wearing all black, she notes, with a little huff of disappointment. Rookie mistake, that. Her clothes are a dark dirty blue. It's a working color, good for concealing scratches or dirt or – most importantly – her, in a dark room. Black stands out too much.
The corridors they're climbing are steadily growing narrower. The place they're headed for is a service entrance, a half-floor that doesn't appear on the official blueprints. That's her favorite part of this: how unlikely it is that anyone will even find out what they've taken, at least not until it's far too late to do anything about it.
Alex is deep in thought, making small lists of what she needs to take care of – escape routes, fencing the piece, making sure Bayliss keeps his mouth shut after. This is why it takes her nearly a minute to notice they're in the wrong room. The picture on the wall is wrong, not the piece they're meant to steal at all. She curses softly and turns to leave.
"Where are we going?" Bayliss says – loudly, damn the man. Almost as soon as he speaks Alex hears footsteps in the corridor. She shuts the door quickly and claps her hand over Bayliss' mouth, heart beating fast.
The footsteps grow louder, then fade. Alex lets him go. He stands where he is, staring transfixed at the painting on the wall. It doesn't look like much to her, but then again, all she knows about art she learned from auction catalogs. It's just one of those modern paintings, splotches of paint that don't look like anything to her. Trying to make sense of it makes her eyes hurt.
Bayliss' voice is a shock in her ears when he speaks. "Are we going?"
She tears her eyes away from the painting. She must have been staring at it, God knows why. She shakes herself up. "Yes."
~~
This museum, Alex thinks, has too many goddamned mirrors in it. She kinda wants to break a few, but that's only likely to draw unwanted attention and besides she promised her therapist not to do that anymore.
It doesn't help that Bayliss keeps looking at her, like... She doesn't even know how to call it, can't pin a name on it and there's a world of unpleasant little thoughts rising in her head when she tries. Fuck it. It's probably just her imagination. That and the goddamned mirrors.
Probably that's why she gets lost, again. It makes her want to kick something. It's not like her, to get turned around like that. Maybe it's that asshole who sold her the museum map, he looked like a dodgy fucker.
So in spite of the fact that they're supposed to be in the medieval section, they find themselves in a courtyard. The night's air is pleasant, at least, cool against her skin, the grass wet with dew that's seeping into her crappy shoes. She pauses for a moment to enjoy it, and Bayliss walks right past her.
Alex makes a move to grab him, but he's speeding up and she doesn't catch him like she meant, only grazing her fingernails across his shoulder. He doesn't even seem to notice, making a beeline towards the statue in the middle of the clearing.
It's a big, ugly motherfucker. It'll fetch a good price, Alex thinks, but they don't have the time or the resources to get that away tonight.
"Come on," she says, grabbing Bayliss' arm. His gaze turns to her, then down to the scratches she left on his shoulder. One of them has little red droplets lining it, almost black in the faint light of the courtyard. She swallows an apology – fuck him, he should've stayed in place.
"Just give me a minute," he says, terse, but his body is already starting to move towards her.
"We don't have a fucking minute," she says, low and calm. "The guards are gonna be here any second. Do you want that painting or not?"
"I'm not sure." His voice is slow, too slow. Considering something that should be fact already.
Goddamnit. This is why she doesn't work with rookies. "Well, you'd better get sure right fucking now, or I'm leaving you here for the guards."
His mouth curves into a tiny smile. "You wouldn't."
The hell she wouldn't. Who does that asshole think he is? "Try me," she says.
Thankfully, he turns then. But then he says, "Okay, change of plans," and that's not how this is supposed to go. "We're taking this," he says, pointing at the statue.
Her face twists into a snarl, but he looks at her, impassive. "Either we're taking it," he says, "or I'm not coming, and you can go open that safe by yourself. I'd like to see you try."
Well, she'd like to see him being skewered by rusty knives, but does that help her? She tamps down on her anger. It's not likely to help right now. "Why," she says, "should I even be remotely interested in that thing? Who's gonna pay me for it, huh?"
"Me," he says, and the hell of it is, she believes him.
Against her better judgment, she nods, slowly. "All right," she says. "So what did you have in mind?"
His earlier smile comes to life again, this time with a predatory glint of teeth. "You know what I think? I think this doesn't have to be either/or."
She nods slowly, and listens to him while he gets his idea of a plan rolling. Bayliss is an utter dick, but at least he thinks on his feet.
~~
She called their getaway driver, who'll help Bayliss to remove the sculpture. She's going to remove the picture they meant to steal in the first place. It's not an ideal arrangement and she resents the fuck out of Bayliss for switching things up on her, but realistically there's not much she can do about it.
She scrambles up flights of dusty stairs, as the ceilings become lower and the wallpaper peels around her. The light comes from old yellow bulbs, dangling precariously at the ends of half-exposed wires. She tilts her head aside to avoid one when she comes to the door.
It's a simple door, one that she could kick down if she tried hard enough. A safe, huh? Shows what that fucker knows. But still, it's better like this, sliding the key noiselessly into the lock.
And what do you know: There's a goddamn mirror on the wall. Fucking typical.
She comes closer, in spite of her own misgivings. It's just a piece of reflective glass. She shouldn't react to it like this, that's a stupid thing to do. But she stares at it, and at herself, and feels herself tremble.
Mirrors are a problem. They make her forget who she is.
She sees herself there, for a second – dark hair and dark eyes and slender frame, nothing anyone would really look at twice – and then she sees images flickering across in rapid succession. A tall blonde woman, the type she used to hate helplessly on sight; an older man with graying hair; a little girl, looking up at her with questioning eyes; a man, bulked with muscle, with a wary look in his eyes.
The man she sees is sitting on a couch in a room somewhere, and this is why mirrors are a bad idea, because she finds herself thinking, I remember this.
~~
Ariadne sighed. "I'm so fucking tired," she said, flopping down to sit in Eames' lap. Eames smiled and put a hand around her back, companionable.
"You've been working hard," Sandra said, sympathetic. Arthur, who just walked in from the kitchen, turned his eyes on Eames and Ariadne in rapid succession. Eames would have to ask him about that later. At the time he just patted Ariadne on the shoulder and sent her to lean against Sandra on the love seat.
Arthur came to sit next to him, closer than he normally did with company around. Sandra started telling some story, something they've heard before, but nice enough to listen to given their weary states at the time.
"What I don't get," Ariadne said, interrupting her, "is what the hell happens to all the architects." The story was about yet another architect-turned-extractor.
Sandra made an inquisitive noise, but Arthur said, "I have a theory."
"That it's a demon?" Ariadne said, which caused some general snorting. "No, really, what?"
"It's about creation," Arthur said. His eyes were closed, his forehead touching Eames' shoulder. It was all Eames could do not to pet him shamelessly. "And permanence. People become dream-architects because they love to create, and they achieve greatness out of love for what they do."
"But it fucks them up, doesn't it," Sandra said, "that everything they make is so flimsy by nature."
Arthur opened his eyes to nod at her, and Eames was struck by the rapport between those two, the way conversations were effortless and unending between them. "Every architect I've ever met had the exact same nervous breakdown. What am I doing, what is this even for, what's the purpose, who the fuck cares. None of it will be there anymore when the dreamer wakes up." He shifted, tucking himself closer against Eames.
"God, yeah, that conversation," Sandra said. "I call it an architect looks at thirty."
Ariadne twitched. "I don't feel like that at all," she said.
"Well, I don't want to say that you will," Sandra said, tucking a curl of Ariadne's hair behind her ear. "It's just that experience speaks for itself, you know? And it happens most often to the best ones. The mediocre ones don't care. So I'd be pretty surprised if it didn't happen to you."
There was an uncomfortable silence for a moment, until Ariadne said, "And what happens to the ones that do?"
"Most of them?" Arthur said. "They find something else to do. Take point or learn how to forge or start farming sheep. They find another job, or leave the business altogether if it's too much for them."
Ariadne's eyes were bright, looking at Arthur. "And the others?"
"They end up doing militarizations," Eames answered for him. "It's permanent, and the better ones think of it as an art form."
"You can do seriously amazing things with that kind of expertise," Arthur added. "That trick I promised to show you, Althea taught me that when I worked with her. Most people never even scratch the surface of what you can do with dreams."
Eames knew he was making a face, but he couldn't help it. Arthur looked up at him, exasperated. "What?" He asked. "Look, I know you have some kind of grudge against her, but let it go, okay? She's just doing her job."
"She's not," Eames said, with more vehemence than he meant to express. "I mean, of course she is, but – oh, bugger." He sank into the couch and firmly closed his mouth.
There was a gentle hand on his shoulder. He looked up to see Ariadne. "Inquiring minds want to know," she said, with the same wry voice she used on Cobb. The comparison did not feel particularly flattering.
Eames took a deep breath. "She enjoyes it," he said flatly. "She makes nightmares and she loves it. It's not even that efficient a method, compared, people just like to use it because it hurts those who try to make their way in, and she's happy to do that." Arthur's eyes took a worried look, focusing on Eames. "I don't like it when people enjoy hurting others," Eames said quietly. "Not for the hurt's own sake."
Ariadne looked like she wanted to protest for a moment, but Sandra just gave him a long look and said, "You want to spit it out?"
Eames didn't, Eames completely meant to shut his face about the subject, but she did ask. "I can't understand it," he said, the ultimate concession from a forger. "I don't want to. Hurting the people you love. I think it's awful. It doesn't matter if they let you, it still is."
Unexpectedly, Sandra's expression was amused. "If they let me, yeah, that would be pretty goddamned awful." Her smile turned oddly gentle. "I don't do it because they let me. I do it because they want me to. World of difference, buddy."
"Are we done with this conversation?" Arthur said, trying to get up.
"I'm not sure," Sandra said, gaze still locked on Eames. "Are we?"
They should have been. Eames wanted them to be. Instead he said, "Are you sure you can know the difference?"
Her gaze was steady, unflinching. "Not always," she said. "I have to trust them to tell me."
"And if they didn't?" Eames pressed. "If they told you what they thought you wanted to hear, because they wanted to do what you wanted? Because they loved you?"
"Is that what you think love is?" she said, and the pity in her eyes made Eames want to kick something.
~~
Alex walks a step back, blind, and another, nearly trembling. She feels sick, disoriented, unsure of herself. The world wobbles around her for a moment, or so it feels.
There's something wrong with her.
Look, this isn't the time, she tells her own treacherous mind. Just let me get out of here and I'll do something about it. Therapy, likely, all over again. Fuck, she hates shrinks. Still, better than this, that this sudden loss of self that had her immersed in the life of someone who doesn't even exist.
The worst of it is, she looks at the mirror again and it's not a mirror anymore, just a painting. Not the one she came here for, either. It's a woman, huddled in a bundle of clothes that looks like it's trying to eat her alive. There's a dark patch in the middle that makes Alex think of guts leaking out, of bodies ridden with bullet holes, blood draining out.
Colorful black, she thinks, and banishes the thought. She has no idea what the fuck it even means. Black isn't even a proper color.
~~
Bayliss is waiting for her outside, with a grin she wants to punch off his face. "Did you get it?" he asks.
"No," she says curtly, because fuck him. Her bad mood is at least partially his fault, she thinks, so he may as well get some of it aimed at him.
"Nevermind," he says. "Your man came and got it." He's looking back at the place where the statue was, an odd expression on his face. "What's that?"
"What?" she says, and turns around. There's a flatness there, incongruously dark against the grass. "Oh, that. I think it leads to a storage space or something." There's an itch in the back of her mind. A door, locked, it means... something. "They put things away there."
"Put away," he says, distantly, then turns to look at her. They're nearly of a height. She's not a short woman.
She takes a step back, discomfited. "When is my guy coming back?"
"We have twenty minutes," Bayliss says, and takes a step forward. She needs to push him away, but if she does, that's still contact, he might take that as encouragement, shit shit shit.
"Back off," she says. He doesn't, but he doesn't move closer, either. Small victory. "I'm serious. Back the fuck off, okay? Let's finish this job without doing anything stupid."
"You know what's stupid?" he says. "Regrets. People are much likelier to regret what they haven't done than what they have, did you know that? And people still don't – "
There's a hand on Bayliss' shoulder. It's attached to –
For a moment, her brain comes up with a jumble of memories, images, the feeling of skin, a name, Arthur.
Then she blinks, and he's just the getaway driver again.
"We're done here," he says curtly, the driver, her guy (what's his actual name? She can't remember). "Get your asses in the truck or I'm leaving you here."
Bayliss comes after him, strangely docile, and Alex follows behind.
In the truck, she sits in the front while they're driving. The security guards are coming after them already. That's not good, she recognizes through the fog seeping through her mind. She takes a gun from the glove compartments and drops them, one at a time, as clean and dissociated as playing a computer game.
"Where are we going?" she finds herself asking, and dreading the answer. She doesn't want to know, there's a bit of her that does know and it's hiding from itself. The driver doesn't answer, just pulls a sharp turn. She shoots at the sniper she sees on a roof right ahead.
They drive around for what feels like hours, until a cellphone rings. The driver looks at it, frowns, then stops the truck.
"Hey," he says, oddly gentle, and reaches for another gun. "Shall I?"
"What are you talking about?" she demands, nervous, but she knows. Should have known all along.
"Eames," he sighs, as if to himself. Then he has the gun trained on her, muzzle on the soft skin below her jaw. "Say when," he says, like this is some kind of sick game.
She should be fighting, should be doing anything but close her eyes and say, "Now." But that's what she does.
~~
Eames comes to, blinking, shaking himself mentally until he's lost all traces of Alex. Some forges are stronger than others, settling on you with some strange affinity that makes them harder to see through, but also harder to untangle one's self from. Eames doesn't think he'll use her again. That way lies madness.
Arthur's right beside him, for a moment, waiting for Cobb to get up and leave the dream. His expression is inscrutable, but he darts down and kisses Eames softly for the barest moment. Such a breach of professional behavior is most unlike Arthur, and Eames resolves to shake him down for answers.
Later, though. For now, they're getting up, and when Cobb finally rises, Arthur aims a gun at him.
Cobb looks like he's about to say something, but when he opens his mouth, all that comes out is, "Shoot."
Arthur does. Head shots in dreams are odd things, just a little red blot on someone's forehead rather than the gory explosions they are in real life. Or maybe it's just Arthur's tidy little mind.
Then Arthur turns the gun at him. Eames just nods, and then he's blinking himself awake again with the noises of a moving train rushing around him.
