Hey, y'all. So, it's been a while. I deeply apologize. My brain just got taken away and I kinda lost some motivation to work on this. I'm glad I chose to go on here a couple days ago and look through what I had written as well as your reviews. Because of that, I remembered how much I had enjoyed working on this fic, and right now I could use some happiness. I hope you guys are all still into this fic and will enjoy this. As always, please review :)

Disclaimer: Inception and the characters in it belong to Christopher Nolan, I'm just borrowing them for my own devious purposes.

XI. Saito has met and dealt with a lot of people in his life. So, if ever asked, he'd have to say that he's gotten pretty good at reading people and figuring them out. It was nothing too in depth, but he needed to at least be able to come up with a basis as to be able to appeal to their better nature. Despite some of his hostile takeovers, he knew that more battles were won using soft words than hard thrown punches.

It was because of this skill that he was able to get Dom Cobb to so easily agree to perform Inception. The man was so transparent; it was easy to get him to do as he wanted. A man who knows what he wants is an easy man to manipulate.

He was a little surprised to see the young Point-Man who had been on the COBOL job in the warehouse after the team had been assembled. After all the trouble he had gone through to convince Saito that Inception was impossible, he had thought that he would have opted out. Saito knew that the dreaming world was a world of thieves and criminals. Thieves and criminals did not have a sense of loyalty towards their teammates. There was the saying, 'loyalty among thieves', but that didn't seem to fit the current situation.

Arthur was at the warehouse day after day, working harder than anyone he had ever known. Saito was aware of the Point-Man's skill. It was impossible to hear about the infamous Dom Cobb without hearing about his equally as skilled Point-Man, Arthur.

He didn't understand the loyalty between the two men, or ever their relationship. Arthur was much too calm and collected about the whole thing to have really been involved with Cobb before his wife died. If he had, wouldn't he be just as upset as Cobb, if not more so due to his youth? Saito was convinced that the only reason Arthur hung around was because like Cobb, he only worked with the best; that had to be it. Maybe along the way, though, they had become friends of sorts.

Saito sometimes spent time in the warehouse, if he wasn't doing anything directly related to the job then he was doing some business in one of the spare offices. He went in and out of Arthur's area all the time, borrowing a calculator or pen or something. One day he went in while the Point-Man had gone out to pick up lunch for the team to grab a stapler when he saw the photograph. It was Arthur, looking much younger, Dom and a woman who must have been Mal. Arthur was sandwiched between the couple, grinning brightly at the camera, so brightly that his dimples were showing. Mal and Cobb looked just as happy as the young man, though she definitely took more of a parental stance next to Arthur. It was in the way she had her arm wrapped around him, like she was sending the message that if anyone messed with him, they would feel her wrath.

He was mesmerized by the picture and didn't hear Arthur come back until suddenly there was a presence next to him. He looked over guiltily, picture in one hand and stapler in the other. Without a word, Arthur slowly took the photo from his hand and stared at it for a moment before putting it back down, this time facedown, like it pained him to look at it and remember happier times.

Saito watched as Arthur walked out of the little office and into the main area where the team was. He walked slowly, like he was weighted down by some heavy burden. Then the businessman realized it, the burden. Arthur covered up his relationship with Mal so others wouldn't look at him the way they looked at Cobb. So he could deny himself the right to feel sorrow for her death and mourn her. And it was all so he could take care of Cobb. The young man followed Cobb because the older man had no one else. Because he needed some sort of anchor to tie him down to reality.