Unfinished Inception fic
Jun. 21st, 2012 09:27 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
indiana_jI'm trying to jolt myself into writing again so posting this very unpolished, unfinished Inception fic. This part has Adrienne, Arthur and a bit of Dom at the end. If I finish, the entire gang will show up.
Also, warning, it deals with someone's passing and subsequent funeral. In essence, Arthur comes to Adrienne to deliver some bad news.
Aaaand any apologies to anyone who actually speaks French. -.-
For the first time since inception, the world truly feels as if it is laid out at Ariadne’s feet. Paris is a glittering jewel that finally deigns to share her secrets, allows her to see in the nooks and crannies that the city is built off of, gives her the inspiration that she needs far more than her fellow builders. Ariadne would see all this if she weren’t so damned drunk.
She’s singing in the streets with her arms through her fellow students (former, she thinks, giddy thoughts popping like champagne bubbles in her mind) and Paris is like an indulgent aunt this night. Her people watch with amusement as they go from bar to cafe to street corner with a mood that is contagious.
They do not celebrate alone this night. They feel as if their triumphs are shared willingly, joyfully, by every building, stone and window in the old girl.
Only Ariadne, in her more sober moments of which there are few, half-wonders if Paris really does feel along with them. She has, and will, see much stranger things in her time.
Her arm is looped through Anne-Laure’s when they start breaking off in pairs. Attempts are made to figure out the way home before Juliette finally just flags down a taxi for her and Jared (Ariadne remembers kissing him in front of the Eiffel Tower - the location, so overdone, and the kiss fizzle and retreat to the back of her mind. She’s not impressed) to share. Marko kisses both the girls on the cheek goodbye as he saunters off but not home, she knows that much.
Then they are only two as they stumble, giggling, through the streets. They sing snatches of half-remembered, half-forgotten songs whose words tumble over each other as the two friends keep each other up right.
Anne-Laure’s building is three blocks before Ariadne’s and the other woman tugs on her hands and asks if she wants to come up. For drinks. For talking. For safety.
It is in French that Ariadne answers, waving her hands. “J'irai bien! Je vous verrai avant la cérémonie!”
They are too drunk for arguments, so the Frenchwoman simply shrugs and stumbles up the flights of stairs to her apartment; Ariadne slips off her heels and walks carefully towards her own home. She sings alone now to her adopted city as she trails her hand along the rough walls of the surrounding buildings.
Of all the songs she knows, of the legitimate ones in French both new and old, she finds herself coming back to her father’s favorite song by the Beatles.
“Michelle, ma belle,” she sings as she spies her building in the dark, “sont les mots qui vont tres bien ensemble, tres bien ensemble.”
She thinks of him singing that to her in his horrible made up French accent as he watched her on the playground. Of him leaving that on her answering machine during her first year abroad. Her thoughts on her father and the song on her lips falter as she spies someone slip out of the shadows of the entry way as she approaches.
The bubbles in her mind sharpen and crystallize a second before they implode as she stumbles backwards, knowing the skirt will allow her to run only so fast on the slick, narrow streets. An animal panic seizes her - runrunrunrunrun -
Until the sharp cut of a suit, the hands in the pockets and the utter stillness of the man a block away forces her mind to realize who is waiting for her.
Waiting.
Not stalking.
When Arthur can see that his movement will not spook her into running, he finally approaches. She’s smiling again as she meets him half way, face tilted to see his face more clearly.
“You,” she says, intelligently.
He peers down at her and blinks. “We’ve been trying -” He falters and Ariadne sways slightly; his hand gently grips one of her arms to steady her. “Calling for hours. Cobb got worried and sent me to make sure you were okay.”
She pats his hand and almost impales him on the impossibly pointy, tall shoes that dangle in her hand. Arthur gingerly moves the shoes slightly away from the center of his chest. “Just celebrating,” she states. She’s happy they were worried and that they care enough to check on her. “Been out for hours - think I left the phone upstairs.”
Arthur casts a dubious glance behind him. “Don’t tell me you live on the top floor...”
“Okay, I won’t tell you.”
An overwhelming desire rushes over her. She wants to get out of these clothes, she wants to sleep, she wants to kiss someone in front of something that’s not so stupidly cliched and she wants to not shrug it off. She knows she’s far more likely to only achieve two of the four things, so she lets Arthur slip her arm through the crook of his elbow as they head towards home.
The music has left with her energy and it is only half way up the stairs that Ariadne digs her fingers into his arm.
“Something’s wrong,” she whispers, staring straight ahead into the dark. She’s suddenly very afraid. “Something’s happened.”
“Yes.”
“What is it?”
He doesn’t look at her but she can still feel the intensity rolling off of him. “Ariadne, you’re incredibly drunk. If I tell you now, I’ll have to tell you all over again in the morning.”
She licks her lips. “Would that - would that be so bad?”
Now he looks at her though she can’t make out his features in the dark she thinks he might look sad. “I’m many things but I’m not cruel, not to you. I won’t make you go through this twice. Please don’t make me do that.” The plea is as much for his sake as it is for hers.
She remembers nothing much after this exchange. A struggle into clothes, a glass of water pressing into her hands, covers being tucked around her.
In her mind, her father - several hundreds of thousands of miles away - sings to her in her mind and chases away the monsters.
They monsters will wait until morning. They always do.
*
The morning after waits for no man or woman, no matter how much they’ve had to drink. Ariadne’s been awake for the past ten minutes and has survived simply by holding the pillow over her head. When self-suffocation fails to work, she finally forces herself to peer out from under the tent of pillows and blankets she’s formed around herself during the night.
The apartment, a studio apartment that’s been hers since her second year at university, wobbles for a moment before slowly sliding into its proper place. Habit has her poking out a hand to topple over the chess piece that resides on her nightstand. It hesitates and then topples over; considering the pounding headache, the dry mouth and upset stomach, Ariadne feels incredibly disappointed that this is reality at its finest.
With a groan, Ariadne manages to roll out of bed without tripping over the tangled sheets that lay half on and half off the bed. The clock on the wall tells her it’s nearly seven a.m. and she can’t fathom why she’s up so early on a Saturday after a night like that. But the damage is already done - once she’s out of bed, no matter the hour or hangover, she can’t return to sleep.
It doesn’t mean she’ll like it, though.
With heavy hands, she shoves the Japanese screens (a birthday present from, of all people, Saito) to the side so she can head towards the kitchen and the salvation of coffee.
Despite the success of inception and the resulting payment, she’s simply never moved from her very first apartment. She’d spent one year living in the dorms of the Parisian university but located the slightly seamy, more expensive than it had a right to be, right next door to the best cafe in the area apartment during her first summer there. Over the years, she’s made it her own and until Saito’s first and only visit, she’s never even wondered why she hasn’t moved.
Despite the pounding headache, she smiles slightly as she shuffles her way towards the kitchen; Saito had looked simply appalled at her living conditions when he’d arrived. He’d even gone so far as to double check that he had, indeed, paid her properly and she had received every single cent she’d been owed.
Yes.
She had.
And it was sitting in a neat and tidy account until she has an actual need of it.
It pays for her schooling, for the books and rent. It pays for food and nights out. But that’s her living off the interest and, perhaps, not even the full interest. When she walks and accepts her diploma, she’ll use some of that for a world tour. Go see her friends, from the team and before, go places she’s never been before.
Until then, she’s happy (as happy as she can be without building in dreams, anyway) with her apartment, with the fact that she can leave Paris that day and be considered a graduate (she doesn’t have to walk but oh god, she wants to), with the knowledge that -
The person coming out of her bathroom almost startles a scream out of her. It is only by the dint of vaguely remembering Arthur waiting for her in front of her building that has her clamping her hands over her mouth to stifle it. For his part, he flinches back slightly at her reaction - in Arthur speak, that telegraphs almost as much as her almost high pitch scream.
They stare at each other for a heart beat before Ariadne groans and her hands move from her mouth to her temples. “Oh god, I didn’t need that,” she moans as she tries to piece together why exactly Arthur’s in her apartment.
“Arthur? What ... ?”
It’s been a year and some change since they all went their different ways at LAX but she’s kept in touch with all of the team, even seen some of them, since then. Oddly, she’s seen Yusuf more than the others as business brings him repeatedly either to Paris or the surrounding country side. Saito, that once. A monthly call to Eames and infrequent, spur of the moment calls with Cobb. Arthur and Ariadne, though, email on an irregular schedule.
It seemed so Arthur to her when she’d received that first email, even though she’d only just set up that account a month prior.
Arthur rubs his hands together and tries to not look so out of place in her rough around the edges place (how he looks so put together after obviously sleeping on her couch, she’ll never know). “You weren’t answering your phone, so Cobb asked if I could stop by to - well, to see if everything was fine, first of all.”
That’s right, he’d mentioned that last night. “It’s - yeah, it’s - oh crap.” Ariadne groans as she turns towards the front door and reaches for her cell phone where it rests in its normal place on the little shelf. “I went out with friends last night and forgot this at home.” Her head hurts as she shifts to look at him again. “Is everything okay?”
She knows it isn’t.
Arthur looks at her and she thinks she sees something soften there. “Can we sit?”
Without thinking, she reaches for him and tugs on his sleeve, a silent ‘yes’. “Arthur, what’s happened?”
When he takes her by the hands, she has a sudden insight.
“Oh god.”
*
“- didn’t mean to interrupt but I couldn’t help but be intrigued by your array of maps.” It’s a quiet hour in the cafe near the university and while Ariadne should be annoyed at the interruption, she couldn’t in the face of curious and affable professor. He was also one of her advisers and she really shouldn’t have been surprised that faculty as well as students frequented Le Petit Cafe.
Miles continued. “Working so hard already, Ariadne? You’ve been here only a week! You’ll shame the locals in no time at this rate.”
“Oh, no I’m not -” Was it wrong to admit not working on homework or classwork to your adviser? “It’s stupid,” she admitted, waving at the seat across from her so he could sit.
“I highly doubt that.”
Shyly, she handed over the well-worn map to him. “It’s of my home town,” she said softly. “I’m a bit homesick and my dad would pour over these maps with me when I was growing up.”
He peered over the top of the map at her and his eyes smiled. “Not stupid in the least. Would you familiarize me with this city? Can’t say that I know it.”
“I’d love to!”
*
Passed away in his sleep, Arthur tells her as he kneels in front of where she’s sitting on the couch. Went to bed the night before and never work up.
Her hands are like ice in his as she fights back the tears. She’s never been comfortable with grief; it wears on her like an ill-fitting coat for someone two sizes smaller. The hangover has turned into a dull roar as she tugs her hands free of his.
He lets her go.
“I - I need -” Ariadne covers her face with her hands and struggles to take the next breath. “I need to make a call.”
“Cobb wants you to attend the funeral,” Arthur says as he straightens slowly, looking afraid of spooking or breaking her with an ill thought out move. “I could gather some things for you.”
It’s not a question so she doesn’t answer as she grabs her phone and runs to the roof.
She finds herself alone up there amongst empty lawn chairs and blankets (the whole building would go up there and drink, eat, laugh together like some multicultural, mixed up family - she always wonders if they were why she took to the team so well) blinking into the morning sun. She fells like she’s run a marathon instead of simply up one simply flight of stairs.
Miles is dead. And with his death, a teacher, an adviser, a friend is gone.
So she calls home and her parents, so well trained in what time differences mean, answer on the second ring.
“Baby, what’s wrong? Are you okay?” Her dad, in the background, asking her mother if she’s in any trouble. “Ari?”
Alone on the rooftop with the sounds of her parents in her ear, calling her the name that no one else in the world calls her, she breaks down. For the first time since that morning in the cafe with Miles, she feels acutely homesick.
*
Fifteen minutes later find her back in front of her own apartment as she hesitates on the threshold. The door is closed, Arthur’s work, so she leans her forehead against the dark wood and fights to regain some composure. It’s one thing to break down to the soothing voices of her parents, quite another to let Arthur see her lose it.
There are some things in her life that she’s known instinctively would be a game changer and, for good or bad, this is one of them.
With a shuddering breath, she opens the door and wanders in to find Arthur leaning a hip against her bed as he gazes down at the street through the window. Her bed, she notes, is now made and her only good suitcase rests on top of it.
There’s a brief flash of embarrassment at the idea that Arthur has gone through her things while she’s been gone and she sends up a brief prayer that he didn’t dig too deeply in her underwear drawer. Rubbing her face with one hand, she tosses him her phone as he turns to face her.
She doesn’t need to look to know he caught it.
Arthur doesn’t ask any questions about her call and she doesn’t volunteer any answers.
Instead, Ariadne finds herself in her kitchen making coffee for two instead of one. Grief and the headache dull embarrassment at the state of her apartment, at the state of her, as she pulls out mugs and putters around while Arthur prowls the small apartment.
“Did you know him?” she asks if only to break the silence. To hear a voice that’s outside of her own head.
“Yes. He introduced me to Dom, actually.” She can hear the smile in his voice. “Before he figured out what we were really up to.”
When she’d gotten back from the job, Miles and she had never discussed what she’d - they’d - done. Oh, he’d talk with her for hours on end about shared dreams, the process, what she could do but he’d never asked, never wanted to know, the details of what had set his son-in-law free at last.
“He’s back, that’s all that matters. That and the children are happy.”
“He was surprised when I came back to finish, you know,” Ariadne says, turning around so she can face Arthur as he picks over her CD collection with an amused, confused expression on his face.
“But pleased, no doubt.”
She nods and remembers the look on his face as he’d patted her on the hand over glasses of wine. “There’s more to life than dreams, my dear. Some people forget that.”
It’s taken her a very long time to realize that Miles blames - blamed - himself for Mal’s death. After all, he’d taught her and Dom together. He’d been the beginning while Limbo, Dom, and Mal had been the end. And he’d been terrified that he’d sentenced her to the same fate - a sacrifice, he’d thought, to see his grandchildren happy again.
Arthur meets her gaze and she sees the question in his eyes.
“I can step out my door and build a city out of nothing tomorrow morning,” she says quietly. “But this? The classes and late night drinks with my friends as we frantically tried to finish our papers? It deserved a chance, too.” Her lips tremble and he takes a half-step closer, hand raised slightly before she waves him off.
The machine behind her chirps and beeps as it finishes brewing and she uses it as an excuse to turn away.
“Sugar, cream?”
“Just black,” he says, a few scant inches away from her right. He moves so quietly in the real world that it makes her long for her chess piece, just to double check.
“Yeah, I figured,” she says, instead, as she reaches for the pot.
*
Tucked in the car that was waiting for them outside, Arthur tells her that Dom is flying in with the kids and Miles’ wife - widow, she thinks with a pang of sadness and her mind conjures the image of a lonely woman at the bottom of a stairwell - and they were all heading to the place that Miles’ had owned for years.
“We?” she asks with a yawn. Between last night and this morning, her body is more than ready to relax into the lull from the movement of the car. It would take them an hour, maybe more, to make their way there and as a student, and Architect, she’s learned quickly to take her sleep where she can.
“Miles was a bit of a name,” Arthur replies, hands resting loosely on top of each other over his waist, looking relaxed and alert all at the same time. It must be a gift. “The rest of the team are making their way to Paris as we speak.”
Buoyed by the idea that she won’t be alone in this, she lets sleep take her.
Only in her dreams does she realize that she’s never asked Arthur why he’d been in Paris in the first place.
*
By the time they reach the place, Dom is already there. Ariadne trails behind Arthur, unsure suddenly, stupidly, of her welcome. She hasn’t seen Dom since the airport and her contact with him has been the most minimal over the last year. Not because they hadn’t cared to stay in touch but he’s had a life to get used to again, children to father over and she’s had a degree to chase.
But after Arthur and Dom shake hands, she finds herself in a warm, if awkward hug with the man who’d gotten her into dreams in the first place. “I’m so sorry,” she says as she pulls back, hands still on his elbows.
He smiles slightly. “I’m glad you’re here. Miles would have been pleased.”
For a moment she can’t see him and she blinks back heavy tears as she gives him a watery smile. “He was a great man.”
“One of the best.”
Also, warning, it deals with someone's passing and subsequent funeral. In essence, Arthur comes to Adrienne to deliver some bad news.
Aaaand any apologies to anyone who actually speaks French. -.-
For the first time since inception, the world truly feels as if it is laid out at Ariadne’s feet. Paris is a glittering jewel that finally deigns to share her secrets, allows her to see in the nooks and crannies that the city is built off of, gives her the inspiration that she needs far more than her fellow builders. Ariadne would see all this if she weren’t so damned drunk.
She’s singing in the streets with her arms through her fellow students (former, she thinks, giddy thoughts popping like champagne bubbles in her mind) and Paris is like an indulgent aunt this night. Her people watch with amusement as they go from bar to cafe to street corner with a mood that is contagious.
They do not celebrate alone this night. They feel as if their triumphs are shared willingly, joyfully, by every building, stone and window in the old girl.
Only Ariadne, in her more sober moments of which there are few, half-wonders if Paris really does feel along with them. She has, and will, see much stranger things in her time.
Her arm is looped through Anne-Laure’s when they start breaking off in pairs. Attempts are made to figure out the way home before Juliette finally just flags down a taxi for her and Jared (Ariadne remembers kissing him in front of the Eiffel Tower - the location, so overdone, and the kiss fizzle and retreat to the back of her mind. She’s not impressed) to share. Marko kisses both the girls on the cheek goodbye as he saunters off but not home, she knows that much.
Then they are only two as they stumble, giggling, through the streets. They sing snatches of half-remembered, half-forgotten songs whose words tumble over each other as the two friends keep each other up right.
Anne-Laure’s building is three blocks before Ariadne’s and the other woman tugs on her hands and asks if she wants to come up. For drinks. For talking. For safety.
It is in French that Ariadne answers, waving her hands. “J'irai bien! Je vous verrai avant la cérémonie!”
They are too drunk for arguments, so the Frenchwoman simply shrugs and stumbles up the flights of stairs to her apartment; Ariadne slips off her heels and walks carefully towards her own home. She sings alone now to her adopted city as she trails her hand along the rough walls of the surrounding buildings.
Of all the songs she knows, of the legitimate ones in French both new and old, she finds herself coming back to her father’s favorite song by the Beatles.
“Michelle, ma belle,” she sings as she spies her building in the dark, “sont les mots qui vont tres bien ensemble, tres bien ensemble.”
She thinks of him singing that to her in his horrible made up French accent as he watched her on the playground. Of him leaving that on her answering machine during her first year abroad. Her thoughts on her father and the song on her lips falter as she spies someone slip out of the shadows of the entry way as she approaches.
The bubbles in her mind sharpen and crystallize a second before they implode as she stumbles backwards, knowing the skirt will allow her to run only so fast on the slick, narrow streets. An animal panic seizes her - runrunrunrunrun -
Until the sharp cut of a suit, the hands in the pockets and the utter stillness of the man a block away forces her mind to realize who is waiting for her.
Waiting.
Not stalking.
When Arthur can see that his movement will not spook her into running, he finally approaches. She’s smiling again as she meets him half way, face tilted to see his face more clearly.
“You,” she says, intelligently.
He peers down at her and blinks. “We’ve been trying -” He falters and Ariadne sways slightly; his hand gently grips one of her arms to steady her. “Calling for hours. Cobb got worried and sent me to make sure you were okay.”
She pats his hand and almost impales him on the impossibly pointy, tall shoes that dangle in her hand. Arthur gingerly moves the shoes slightly away from the center of his chest. “Just celebrating,” she states. She’s happy they were worried and that they care enough to check on her. “Been out for hours - think I left the phone upstairs.”
Arthur casts a dubious glance behind him. “Don’t tell me you live on the top floor...”
“Okay, I won’t tell you.”
An overwhelming desire rushes over her. She wants to get out of these clothes, she wants to sleep, she wants to kiss someone in front of something that’s not so stupidly cliched and she wants to not shrug it off. She knows she’s far more likely to only achieve two of the four things, so she lets Arthur slip her arm through the crook of his elbow as they head towards home.
The music has left with her energy and it is only half way up the stairs that Ariadne digs her fingers into his arm.
“Something’s wrong,” she whispers, staring straight ahead into the dark. She’s suddenly very afraid. “Something’s happened.”
“Yes.”
“What is it?”
He doesn’t look at her but she can still feel the intensity rolling off of him. “Ariadne, you’re incredibly drunk. If I tell you now, I’ll have to tell you all over again in the morning.”
She licks her lips. “Would that - would that be so bad?”
Now he looks at her though she can’t make out his features in the dark she thinks he might look sad. “I’m many things but I’m not cruel, not to you. I won’t make you go through this twice. Please don’t make me do that.” The plea is as much for his sake as it is for hers.
She remembers nothing much after this exchange. A struggle into clothes, a glass of water pressing into her hands, covers being tucked around her.
In her mind, her father - several hundreds of thousands of miles away - sings to her in her mind and chases away the monsters.
They monsters will wait until morning. They always do.
*
The morning after waits for no man or woman, no matter how much they’ve had to drink. Ariadne’s been awake for the past ten minutes and has survived simply by holding the pillow over her head. When self-suffocation fails to work, she finally forces herself to peer out from under the tent of pillows and blankets she’s formed around herself during the night.
The apartment, a studio apartment that’s been hers since her second year at university, wobbles for a moment before slowly sliding into its proper place. Habit has her poking out a hand to topple over the chess piece that resides on her nightstand. It hesitates and then topples over; considering the pounding headache, the dry mouth and upset stomach, Ariadne feels incredibly disappointed that this is reality at its finest.
With a groan, Ariadne manages to roll out of bed without tripping over the tangled sheets that lay half on and half off the bed. The clock on the wall tells her it’s nearly seven a.m. and she can’t fathom why she’s up so early on a Saturday after a night like that. But the damage is already done - once she’s out of bed, no matter the hour or hangover, she can’t return to sleep.
It doesn’t mean she’ll like it, though.
With heavy hands, she shoves the Japanese screens (a birthday present from, of all people, Saito) to the side so she can head towards the kitchen and the salvation of coffee.
Despite the success of inception and the resulting payment, she’s simply never moved from her very first apartment. She’d spent one year living in the dorms of the Parisian university but located the slightly seamy, more expensive than it had a right to be, right next door to the best cafe in the area apartment during her first summer there. Over the years, she’s made it her own and until Saito’s first and only visit, she’s never even wondered why she hasn’t moved.
Despite the pounding headache, she smiles slightly as she shuffles her way towards the kitchen; Saito had looked simply appalled at her living conditions when he’d arrived. He’d even gone so far as to double check that he had, indeed, paid her properly and she had received every single cent she’d been owed.
Yes.
She had.
And it was sitting in a neat and tidy account until she has an actual need of it.
It pays for her schooling, for the books and rent. It pays for food and nights out. But that’s her living off the interest and, perhaps, not even the full interest. When she walks and accepts her diploma, she’ll use some of that for a world tour. Go see her friends, from the team and before, go places she’s never been before.
Until then, she’s happy (as happy as she can be without building in dreams, anyway) with her apartment, with the fact that she can leave Paris that day and be considered a graduate (she doesn’t have to walk but oh god, she wants to), with the knowledge that -
The person coming out of her bathroom almost startles a scream out of her. It is only by the dint of vaguely remembering Arthur waiting for her in front of her building that has her clamping her hands over her mouth to stifle it. For his part, he flinches back slightly at her reaction - in Arthur speak, that telegraphs almost as much as her almost high pitch scream.
They stare at each other for a heart beat before Ariadne groans and her hands move from her mouth to her temples. “Oh god, I didn’t need that,” she moans as she tries to piece together why exactly Arthur’s in her apartment.
“Arthur? What ... ?”
It’s been a year and some change since they all went their different ways at LAX but she’s kept in touch with all of the team, even seen some of them, since then. Oddly, she’s seen Yusuf more than the others as business brings him repeatedly either to Paris or the surrounding country side. Saito, that once. A monthly call to Eames and infrequent, spur of the moment calls with Cobb. Arthur and Ariadne, though, email on an irregular schedule.
It seemed so Arthur to her when she’d received that first email, even though she’d only just set up that account a month prior.
Arthur rubs his hands together and tries to not look so out of place in her rough around the edges place (how he looks so put together after obviously sleeping on her couch, she’ll never know). “You weren’t answering your phone, so Cobb asked if I could stop by to - well, to see if everything was fine, first of all.”
That’s right, he’d mentioned that last night. “It’s - yeah, it’s - oh crap.” Ariadne groans as she turns towards the front door and reaches for her cell phone where it rests in its normal place on the little shelf. “I went out with friends last night and forgot this at home.” Her head hurts as she shifts to look at him again. “Is everything okay?”
She knows it isn’t.
Arthur looks at her and she thinks she sees something soften there. “Can we sit?”
Without thinking, she reaches for him and tugs on his sleeve, a silent ‘yes’. “Arthur, what’s happened?”
When he takes her by the hands, she has a sudden insight.
“Oh god.”
*
“- didn’t mean to interrupt but I couldn’t help but be intrigued by your array of maps.” It’s a quiet hour in the cafe near the university and while Ariadne should be annoyed at the interruption, she couldn’t in the face of curious and affable professor. He was also one of her advisers and she really shouldn’t have been surprised that faculty as well as students frequented Le Petit Cafe.
Miles continued. “Working so hard already, Ariadne? You’ve been here only a week! You’ll shame the locals in no time at this rate.”
“Oh, no I’m not -” Was it wrong to admit not working on homework or classwork to your adviser? “It’s stupid,” she admitted, waving at the seat across from her so he could sit.
“I highly doubt that.”
Shyly, she handed over the well-worn map to him. “It’s of my home town,” she said softly. “I’m a bit homesick and my dad would pour over these maps with me when I was growing up.”
He peered over the top of the map at her and his eyes smiled. “Not stupid in the least. Would you familiarize me with this city? Can’t say that I know it.”
“I’d love to!”
*
Passed away in his sleep, Arthur tells her as he kneels in front of where she’s sitting on the couch. Went to bed the night before and never work up.
Her hands are like ice in his as she fights back the tears. She’s never been comfortable with grief; it wears on her like an ill-fitting coat for someone two sizes smaller. The hangover has turned into a dull roar as she tugs her hands free of his.
He lets her go.
“I - I need -” Ariadne covers her face with her hands and struggles to take the next breath. “I need to make a call.”
“Cobb wants you to attend the funeral,” Arthur says as he straightens slowly, looking afraid of spooking or breaking her with an ill thought out move. “I could gather some things for you.”
It’s not a question so she doesn’t answer as she grabs her phone and runs to the roof.
She finds herself alone up there amongst empty lawn chairs and blankets (the whole building would go up there and drink, eat, laugh together like some multicultural, mixed up family - she always wonders if they were why she took to the team so well) blinking into the morning sun. She fells like she’s run a marathon instead of simply up one simply flight of stairs.
Miles is dead. And with his death, a teacher, an adviser, a friend is gone.
So she calls home and her parents, so well trained in what time differences mean, answer on the second ring.
“Baby, what’s wrong? Are you okay?” Her dad, in the background, asking her mother if she’s in any trouble. “Ari?”
Alone on the rooftop with the sounds of her parents in her ear, calling her the name that no one else in the world calls her, she breaks down. For the first time since that morning in the cafe with Miles, she feels acutely homesick.
*
Fifteen minutes later find her back in front of her own apartment as she hesitates on the threshold. The door is closed, Arthur’s work, so she leans her forehead against the dark wood and fights to regain some composure. It’s one thing to break down to the soothing voices of her parents, quite another to let Arthur see her lose it.
There are some things in her life that she’s known instinctively would be a game changer and, for good or bad, this is one of them.
With a shuddering breath, she opens the door and wanders in to find Arthur leaning a hip against her bed as he gazes down at the street through the window. Her bed, she notes, is now made and her only good suitcase rests on top of it.
There’s a brief flash of embarrassment at the idea that Arthur has gone through her things while she’s been gone and she sends up a brief prayer that he didn’t dig too deeply in her underwear drawer. Rubbing her face with one hand, she tosses him her phone as he turns to face her.
She doesn’t need to look to know he caught it.
Arthur doesn’t ask any questions about her call and she doesn’t volunteer any answers.
Instead, Ariadne finds herself in her kitchen making coffee for two instead of one. Grief and the headache dull embarrassment at the state of her apartment, at the state of her, as she pulls out mugs and putters around while Arthur prowls the small apartment.
“Did you know him?” she asks if only to break the silence. To hear a voice that’s outside of her own head.
“Yes. He introduced me to Dom, actually.” She can hear the smile in his voice. “Before he figured out what we were really up to.”
When she’d gotten back from the job, Miles and she had never discussed what she’d - they’d - done. Oh, he’d talk with her for hours on end about shared dreams, the process, what she could do but he’d never asked, never wanted to know, the details of what had set his son-in-law free at last.
“He’s back, that’s all that matters. That and the children are happy.”
“He was surprised when I came back to finish, you know,” Ariadne says, turning around so she can face Arthur as he picks over her CD collection with an amused, confused expression on his face.
“But pleased, no doubt.”
She nods and remembers the look on his face as he’d patted her on the hand over glasses of wine. “There’s more to life than dreams, my dear. Some people forget that.”
It’s taken her a very long time to realize that Miles blames - blamed - himself for Mal’s death. After all, he’d taught her and Dom together. He’d been the beginning while Limbo, Dom, and Mal had been the end. And he’d been terrified that he’d sentenced her to the same fate - a sacrifice, he’d thought, to see his grandchildren happy again.
Arthur meets her gaze and she sees the question in his eyes.
“I can step out my door and build a city out of nothing tomorrow morning,” she says quietly. “But this? The classes and late night drinks with my friends as we frantically tried to finish our papers? It deserved a chance, too.” Her lips tremble and he takes a half-step closer, hand raised slightly before she waves him off.
The machine behind her chirps and beeps as it finishes brewing and she uses it as an excuse to turn away.
“Sugar, cream?”
“Just black,” he says, a few scant inches away from her right. He moves so quietly in the real world that it makes her long for her chess piece, just to double check.
“Yeah, I figured,” she says, instead, as she reaches for the pot.
*
Tucked in the car that was waiting for them outside, Arthur tells her that Dom is flying in with the kids and Miles’ wife - widow, she thinks with a pang of sadness and her mind conjures the image of a lonely woman at the bottom of a stairwell - and they were all heading to the place that Miles’ had owned for years.
“We?” she asks with a yawn. Between last night and this morning, her body is more than ready to relax into the lull from the movement of the car. It would take them an hour, maybe more, to make their way there and as a student, and Architect, she’s learned quickly to take her sleep where she can.
“Miles was a bit of a name,” Arthur replies, hands resting loosely on top of each other over his waist, looking relaxed and alert all at the same time. It must be a gift. “The rest of the team are making their way to Paris as we speak.”
Buoyed by the idea that she won’t be alone in this, she lets sleep take her.
Only in her dreams does she realize that she’s never asked Arthur why he’d been in Paris in the first place.
*
By the time they reach the place, Dom is already there. Ariadne trails behind Arthur, unsure suddenly, stupidly, of her welcome. She hasn’t seen Dom since the airport and her contact with him has been the most minimal over the last year. Not because they hadn’t cared to stay in touch but he’s had a life to get used to again, children to father over and she’s had a degree to chase.
But after Arthur and Dom shake hands, she finds herself in a warm, if awkward hug with the man who’d gotten her into dreams in the first place. “I’m so sorry,” she says as she pulls back, hands still on his elbows.
He smiles slightly. “I’m glad you’re here. Miles would have been pleased.”
For a moment she can’t see him and she blinks back heavy tears as she gives him a watery smile. “He was a great man.”
“One of the best.”