A/N: This is your recent Tom Hardy convert reporting in. It's been a while since I wrote a multichapter fic so I'm oiling my gears. This fic will be ensemble cast but mostly Eames-centric, plot-heavy, featuring OCs and mostly ship-free (excepting Eames x Arthur BrOTP. Maybe a little Arthur/Ariadne.) Can't believe I didn't get into this movie sooner because it ticks so many of my boxes.

I.

Eames is wearing a black tuxedo and a flirtatious smile that doesn't quite reach his eyes. Among the gamblers, strategists and chancers laying chips upon green felt, or watching with hawk eyes while roulette wheels spin and dealers trade diamonds and reveal hearts, he feels perfectly at home.

That doesn't mean he's quite at ease, but he certainly gives the impression of it as he leans back against the bar with the air of a man surveying his empire. He could play at being James Bond if he wanted: dream up a gun inside his jacket to go with the vodka martini he's drinking, but he's not here for pleasure. Not that being an international superspy landing himself right in the middle of danger feels so far removed from reality right now.

"Could I tempt you with a high stakes wager?" he murmurs, leaning closer to the woman sat next to him as he slips a playing card out of his sleeve and slides it over the bar towards her. Even she looks like she could be a Bond girl, deep auburn hair elegantly tied up in a complicated Chinese knot that accentuates a long, graceful neck, while her black dress is cut low enough to reveal sharp collarbones before cloaking the rest of her body like a shadow. Her eyes are pale blue. Too pale, almost. Hard like sapphires.

Those eyes glance up at him coldly from beneath black lashes before she reaches out to rest a fingertip on the back of the card, tapping once before a lacquered fingernail hooks beneath the edge and turns it over. Seven of spades. There's a slight misprint on the suit in the upper corner, leaving off the stem so that it more closely resembles an inverted black heart.

It takes her a moment to consider, then she decides the symbol is proof enough of who he is. "What kind of wager?" Even hailing as he knows she does from Moscow, there's barely a trace of an accent in her voice.

"I'm afraid I don't have the password, so you're going to have to gamble on whether or not to trust me. Get it right, and we're both in the money. Get it wrong, and you risk being shot on the way out of here."

Her eyes narrow, fixing him with a scrutinising stare. He knows he's the real gambler in this situation, needing her to co-operate, but nor is he the type to take unnecessary risks. They've played their cards right. She'll trust him.

A beat passes, then the woman looks away and takes a sip of her drink. When she speaks, her tone is cold and businesslike. "I'm told you have something for me."

It worked, then. Eames leans closer, letting his eyes flit up briefly to glance at Arthur watching from across the casino, then returns his attention to their mark. "Let's not discuss it here. Somewhere more private."

"Your hotel room?" She looks at him with a skeptically raised eyebrow that says "in your dreams."

Well, he thinks, where else? "Elena." It's his first time using her name, and he sees her bristle, caught off guard. "Allow me to explain the situation…"

"Let me guess," she cuts him off. "We're sleeping."

The words die in Eames' throat. He abruptly freezes, almost forgetting to breathe.

"This is your dream," she continues, clearly enjoying the sudden deer-in-headlights look on his face. "Inside your friend's dream, inside another friend's dream. And you've brought him—" Her head turns to gaze towards the exact spot where he'd seen Arthur just moments before, and it's a fight for Eames to suppress his panic as he realises the projections around them have all gone still. "And him along for the ride." Her head turns again, this time fixing on Cobb standing over by the blackjack table, shock and panic on his own face as two of her subconscious bouncers close in to keep him from trying to run. "Dominic Cobb. He has quite the reputation. I'm actually surprised he isn't the one I'm sat here talking to."

When Eames looks back at Elena again, she's smiling.

It takes him a moment to gather his thoughts, fighting back the instinctive oh shit reaction at realising they've been made and trying to keep up the calm facade. "They said you were exceptionally skilled at evading extraction," he remarks, and suddenly realises just why all teams that had attempted this before them had failed.

"They downplayed it." Elena sips at her cocktail again, insufferably smug. "I've known exactly what was happening since the first level of the dream, Mr Eames. Set up to perfectly replicate my hotel room in the real world so that when I wake inside it, I'll believe I'm no longer dreaming. That's why you needed three levels. The level after that, you pretend to be my boss, give me an assignment, establish a contact. On this level, you pretend to be that contact. How am I doing so far?"

He grits his teeth, knowing she has them figured out. "Almost entirely accurate."

"I won't ask what my errors are. It doesn't matter. See, here's what actually happened, Mr Eames." Her smile widens as she leans closer, savoring her triumph. "The minute after your people put us all under, my people stormed the room you're holding me in, captured your chemist, took control of your PASIV unit, and established a means of communicating with me inside the dream. At the signal from me, one of my men will inject a chemical into your veins that will stop your heart. From that point, they'll have five minutes in which to revive you before brain damage begins to set in. Eight minutes, you're a vegetable. Ten minutes, you're dead. So, to be on the safe side, let's say you'll want them to revive you within four minutes. First level of the dream, that's an hour. Second level, twelve hours. This level, five days. And if you want me to send the signal for them to do that, you are going to tell me everything you know about the CIA's plans to come for me."

Eames' mind is racing. He blinks, and the sudden panic he'd earlier felt quickly turns to outright fear. "You're bluffing. There's no way for you to communicate with the real world from inside the dream."

Oh, but she's enjoying this. "Rapid eye movement. They attach sensors to my skull, I can send signals that my people know how to interpret. Don't believe me?"

"Not at all." He doesn't sound as confident as she'd hoped.

Elena only shrugs. "Well, unfortunately for you, I don't have to prove anything. I already did it. In the real world, I'd say...about a minute ago. Right now, your heart is making its final beat. Check if you don't believe me." She holds out a hand to him, and in it he can see a stethoscope has materialised. Eames ignores it.

"I don't have the information you want," he says, voice hushed as if fearful he'll be overheard even in his dreams. "The American government hired us off the books. I'm not a spy; I'm a forger. They told us the barest minimum we needed for this job. I don't know anything."

"Sure you do." She says it with absolute confidence, and Eames begins to feel a dreadful certainty that this isn't a bluff. A disconcerting inability to sense his own heartbeat while sleeping doesn't help. "They briefed you on this. You've been to their offices, spoken to their people. You know something. It's all buried somewhere in your head, and you've got five days to find out where."

"Even if I did know something, if they find out I not only failed to extract what they wanted from you but actually handed over classified information to a foreign agent, I'd be spending the rest of my most likely shortened life in Guantanamo Bay."

"Not my problem." It's accompanied by another shrug. "See, here's what's going to happen if you don't get me what I want: you die, this dream collapses, and so we fall back to the next one. In the head of your architecture graduate, I believe. Tiny little thing, isn't she? Don't imagine she really knows what she's gotten herself into." Eames clenches his jaw at the mention of Ariadne. "We try this again, and if that fails, then we fall back to the first level. Chemist with the beard, am I right? That fails, he dies too." Shouldn't have gone to Yusuf, either. Their contractors could have found someone else capable of stabilising a three-level dream, but it's too late. "I guess I wake up with nothing gained, nothing lost. But the three of you don't wake up at all. Worth a try at least, don't you think, Mr Eames?"

Eames says nothing. He doesn't know what he could say.

The lights in the casino flicker. Paying it no heed, Elena flags down another bartender for a refill and sips at the cocktail with a sadistic glee. "You need to work on the design of your drinks," she remarks, shooting him a taunting glance. "This one tastes like fear."