Warning: mentions of suicide, mentions of character death

Ariadne's life can be very easily divided into two parts, Before Inception (BI) and After Inception (AI).

Before Inception is the part that contains high school and college and her last name. It contains her goal of becoming an architect, now sidelined that she knows how to build cathedrals in seconds. It has her family, which she tries to call every few weeks or so, spinning lie after lie about what she's doing, and it has a boy who would have ended up being her boyfriend but who paled in comparison to her dreams. (She has easily dropped this life.)

After Inception has Dominic Cobb and Arthur and Eames and Yusuf. It's the part with needles and guns and creation, and it's the part with the semi-permanent adrenaline rush of never ever knowing what's going to happen next. It has a different kind of family but one that's just as strong as one built on blood, an odd companionship formed from killing and being killed by each other but also from creating worlds with each other and walking in each other's dreams. (This is the life that she hopes never ever stops.)

About four months AI, Ariadne starts noticing things. Little things, like how Dom can always ask Arthur where Eames is, and Arthur always knows. Things like how Eames always brings back two cups of coffee, passing one to Arthur with a brush of hands. They're just little things, but they quickly add up.

[It freaks her out just a little -a lot- that Arthur has the same expression on his face when he's shooting Eames out of the dream that he has whenever the other man brings him coffee.]

She asks Dom about it, because she's still confused at the calmly explosive relationship between his point man and his forger, even after over a year of working together. She doesn't understand how they can go from killing each other easily in dreams to the fond smiles they have for each other in the quiet space between planning a job and executing it, and he tells her this.

(After, of course, laughing and correcting her possessives.

Arthur and Eames belong to nobody but each other, and that started long before either of them met the Cobbs.)

As much as Arthur always knows where Eames is- whether it's in the same room or the same city, right next to him or halfway across the world- so too does Eames.

["Where's Arthur?" one of them had asked the room at large, not really expecting an answer.

Eames replied absently, "Cairo," not looking up at their expressions of shock.

"Where have you been?" they ask Arthur when he showed up, a day and a half late.

"Had a little problem," he tells them. "Cairo took longer than I thought it would."]

There are times when Arthur has refused jobs because of Eames and there are times when Arthur has refused jobs on behalf of Eames.

["No," he says.

"No?" they're shocked. "Why not? It's an easy job with a big payday, and it's even in Vegas."

"No," Arthur repeats. "I've got plans."

"Plans? What plans? We're the only ones doing a job right now."

He doesn't reply, just turns and walks out.

They're scanning the newspaper right before the job, out of habit more than actually looking for anything in particular. There's a small picture in the international news section, and they only notice it because the paisley pattern of the shirt not quite hidden by the suit in front of it catches their eye even in grayscale. The picture's too tiny and grainy for them to make out any features, but it's unmistakably Arthur and Eames.]

["No," Arthur tells them.

"What? Arthur?" they're a bit groggy and disoriented, for good reason, given that it's four in the morning and they have no clue why Arthur is calling them.

"Eames will not take the job."

"What the- " they search their mind, remembering that they had decided yesterday to ask Eames for his talents as a forger. "We haven't even asked him yet!" They had been planning to ask tomorrow.

"Eames will not take the job," Arthur repeats, and they hear the finality of his tone, the guns and knives that it promises, and they gulp.

Arthur hangs up. They don't call Eames.]

Eames will do anything Arthur says.

Whether they're dreaming,

["Right here," he'll say, like he has so many times before, marking an x with his finger- this time, on the middle of his forehead. "Shoot me right here."

"Of course darling," Eames always pulls the trigger, not even questioning if they're dreaming or not, and he'll shoot himself a split second later in the exact same place.

If they're dreaming, he'll wake up, he knows.

And if they're not, that's perfectly fine too.]

["Here," he'll say, putting a folder in his hands. "Become this person," he'll say.

Eames has been beggars and kings and girls and boys and children and adults and every shade of humanity in between.

Forge another identity, another personality. Slip out of your skin and into someone else's. Change your body like a chameleon.

Become this.

Arthur tells him who to be, and Eames does, shuffling through personalities like cards in a deck. It becomes easier and easier to slip back into his own skin with each new card added. It's easier to figure out what parts of his mind are Eames as he learns what parts aren't.]

Or awake.

['Come here,' he'll ask, texting Eames the name of a city or a country, or once, notably, just a pair of coordinates in the middle of the Mediterranean.

Eames has always made it to the specified location within the week, once managing to make it from New York City to Shanghai in three days, using twelve different forms of transportation, slipping into the warehouse minutes before the rest of the team got there.

When they come in, he's perched on top of Arthur's desk, a cup of coffee in each hand and a bagel placed on top of one of the piles of paper on the desk. They pause before walking in, wary of the stranger in their space. Eames doesn't help his first impressions with having a knife slash of a grin on his face, more feral than anything else, looking like the most dangerous thing in the room with a leather jacket and two visible guns, one at his hip and one on his ankle. (He's not the most dangerous thing in the room- not after Arthur's entered it.)

Arthur just continues without a hitch in his step, grabbing his coffee from Eames' hands even as Arthur shoves him off of his desk.]

["Steal this," he had asked -just once- when they felt too old for their years and too young for their minds.

Eames felt like his skin was going to split apart and peel off of him like a chrysalis and Arthur felt like his bones were going to break through his skin.

Neither of them knew what they would find underneath. Both of them thought that they were never going to get the smell and feel of blood off of their skin, from under their fingernails, out of their dreams. It would take years before they trusted their minds when they woke up, before they were able to sleep without the help of drugs, before they had a dream that wasn't manufactured.

They had known each other for yearsdecadeslifetimes and daysweeksmonths, and both of them knew that what Arthur had really meant to say was "Steal me."

So Eames did.]

The reverse is equally true. Arthur will do anything for Eames.

A voicemail left from a Slovakian prison got him to ditch a job and his team in Brazil and fly for thirteen hours so that he could bail Eames out before helping him escape the city after a job gone bad.

["Darling, would you mind sending bail money?" is what he listens to over and over on the plane ride, cursing out the other man in all of the languages he knows while mentally tallying the number of people in Europe who owe him favors.

The accented drawl echoes in Arthur's mind as he plans, pacing the narrow confines of the airplane. He can hear the tiredness in Eames' voice and an added accent that might have been caused by anything from a split lip to a healing rib.

Arthur knows that he will quite happily destroy one or two cities if he doesn't get there in time.

Possibly more.

Probably more.

Arthur does get there in time, and while he does not destroy the city, he does destroy a house and two warehouses.

People learn quickly to not kidnap either Arthur or Eames without the other. (Kidnapping them both creates its own set of problems, but that's a story for another day.) Trying to use one of them as leverage against the other is akin to signing their own death warrant.]

"Can I have your tie, Darling?" he all but purred, leaning over Arthur's desk in the middle of the inception job, his thumb resting on the knot of Arthur's tie, the rest of Eames' hand cradling his throat. Ariadne had stared wide eyed as Arthur nodded, Eames slipping the silk strip from around his neck without saying a word, winding it around his hand before turning away. Eames walked out of the warehouse without looking back and Arthur didn't look up to watch him leave.

[He had never gotten it back, of course.

'ur tie is a casualty, darling :)' is the text he receives about an hour after Eames left.

He doesn't reply to the message.

Arthur waits hours for him to return, which he did with a ripped shirt and bruised knuckles and no sign of the Armani tie that he left with.]

There are facts that Ariadne knows for herself, that Dom doesn't have to put into words for her because she's seen their truth for herself.

Arthur is the only person who can wake Eames up without getting a weapon of some sort pointed at him.

[Ariadne stepped into the warehouse and stopped in her tracks to unabashedly stare.

Eames looked so much younger, curled up on the couch sleeping. His expression was unguarded in a way that she had only seen for moments down in a dream, right before he forged or created something.

"Eames?" she asked softly, reaching out a hand to tap him on the shoulder.

She hadn't even touched him before she saw his muscles tense. A split second later, she found herself face down on the floor, one arm twisted behind her and a dagger pressed to her throat.

There's a short pause before Eames completely wakes up, one that feels like centuries to her. Ariadne can feel the blade brushing across her skin as she tries not to hyperventilate.

"Sorry love," Eames said when he realized it was her, giving her a hand to help get off of the floor.

"It's okay," she tells him, waiting until she turns away to bring her hand up to her neck. There's a small smear of blood that she wipes away.

They didn't speak of it again.

One day, she goes out to get lunch for the team, and when she gets back, she sees Arthur leaning over Eames, who was once again curled up asleep on the couch.

Before she can say anything, Arthur reached out, brushing his hand up Eames' back. Eames opens his eyes slowly, stretching languidly as a smile spread across his face.

'Darling,' she can see Eames' mouth form the word as Arthur's hand reaches his hair. He leaves it there for a moment, saying something Ariadne can't hear, quiet murmurs of conversation the only thing carrying across the room.

Arthur's hand is still entangled in Eames' hair and Eames reaches out to run two fingers over one of Arthur's cufflinks.

Eames has remained completely relaxed the entire time.]

Arthur and Eames dream together.

[They're in France, this time, and Ariadne's still getting used to the mental exhaustion caused by sleeping all the time but not resting. She doesn't really sleep unless she's put under now, and she spends the nights wandering the streets of Paris like she used to, a crepe in one hand and a sketchbook in the other.

She comes in earlier than usual one day and hears the hum of the PASIV before she sees that it's already hooked up. Two lines coil out of it, one to Arthur and one to Eames, the somnacin sedative mix moving through the plastic tubes.

As she watches, the timer counts down, both of them coming back to alertness simultaneously, eyes blinking open.

Before they even sit up or remove the needles, their eyes seek each other out, entire conversations carried in that one moment. It's so startlingly intimate that Ariadne has to look away, feeling like a voyeur.

She turns around and comes back five minutes later to find both of them back at their desks, the PASIV put back in its place like nothing had happened.]

I'm alive! I put my writing on a hold while working through some mental health issues, and I'm finally in a place where I felt like writing and publishing again. I've literally been working on this story since June of 2015, and I've finally finished writing it. The story's complete, and I'll be posting the other two chapters in the next few weeks.