Title: Burning at these Mysteries
Chapter: Four
Disclaimer: I don't own Inception or these characters.
Rating: T
Ship(s): Ariadne/Arthur
Summary: Post-movie. The aftermath of the situation isn't something she'll allude easily to. And really, diving into his proposal, what exactly made her think this would be a good idea?

—

She is so attuned to Arthur now; from the sound of his voice to the way he walks, that there's no possible reason as to why she can't hear him get up from her bed and start to dress.

Ariadne closes her eyes and tries to concentrate on the clink of his belt instead of the sweat that is beginning to accumulate on her forehead.

God, she is just so tired all of a sudden.

She feels Arthur's eyes on her instantly, feels the heat of his warm chest burning through his collar shirt like molten metal. Ariadne wants to fidget under his scrutiny, wants to shrink away and hide under her bed sheets where it's safe, where she and Arthur both refuse for him to stay.

And then the quiet gets to be too much for him and Arthur inches closer, his expression is a mix of displeasure and worry.

"Ariadne," he exhales, raking a hand through her damp hair, "you're shaking."

She closes her eyes again and this time notices her shivering, realizes that she's both burning hot and freezing cold at the same time, and that there's a massive headache forming inside her head.

Arthur starts to open her drawers, rifling through her neglected scarves and trinkets, like he's frantically searching for something.

"What happened to your cigarettes?" Arthur asks as he searches through the items on her nightstand, his hand narrowly missing her golden totem.

"I threw-ww them out-t," she stutters in response, her tiny frame shuddering like violent tremors.

"Jesus," he says, his voice marred with frustration, "You're supposed to detach yourself from them gradually, Ariadne. You can't quit nicotine cold turkey like that, or else you'll put your body into withdrawal."

Ariadne tries to focus on his voice, but it's proving to be difficult over the aching that's spreading through her body.

"Wait here, I'll go down to the convenience store and buy you a pack."

"No!" Ariadne chokes as her quivering body tangles itself in her cold bed sheets, "D-don't bring-g-g those things-s near me-e ever a-again. Just go."

With a sigh, Arthur murmurs something to himself, pulls his arms through the sleeves of his shirt, and starts to gather the remainder of his clothes.

"Okay, I'm leaving now."

Ariadne nods, her teeth grinding against each other too hard for her to speak.

For a moment there is silence. Then she hears Arthur drop his clothes back on to the floor. He crawls under the covers and presses the length of his body against hers, wrapping his arms around her shaking torso to pull her nearer.

Ariadne can't stop the sigh of relief that escapes her as she nestles herself closer to his languid figure.

She thinks she hears him whisper just this once, but she can't be too sure.

—

"Hey, you don't look so good," she comments a week later while getting ready for a morning lecture at NYU. "You look like you haven't slept in days."

Arthur's lips twitch in amusement, his eyes filling with a peculiar sort of light that allude to one thing and one thing only: they have been spending nights together.

Each time he holds her until her body stops shivering and the symptoms of her withdrawal fade away long enough for her to fall back asleep. Sometimes it takes mere minutes, and other times, he holds her for hours.

He yawns deeply, unraveling his rolled up sleeves and frowning at the wrinkles on them as he rubs the dark circles under his eyes. "I've been having nightmares, okay?"

"Oh."

Arthur's face immediately hardens and he walks towards the front door where he begins to slip on his expensive leather loafers. Ariadne follows him, slouching against the thin walls of her apartment.

"Your nightmares – they're about the van, aren't they? You have nightmares about the time you first knew Cobb wasn't going to wake up."

Arthur's eyes glisten and she realizes that there is pain still there, like a hard throbbing in the very depth of his chest, just like her own.

"No, not anymore," he replies, and there's something in his voice she has never head before, "they're about something else entirely."

He opens the door and steps out into the hallway, and suddenly, that pain, morose and never dulling, begins to ease and something else begins to take its place.

Something white and hot and burning.

—

They continue to have sex regularly, but even that has changed somehow. Sometimes it's still frantic, and rushed, and they don't manage to make it to a bed. However, sometimes it's sensual and deliberate, like a desperate dance of desire Ariadne had thought she'd forgotten a long time ago.

Sometimes, it's simply moisten lips and soft, calloused hands rather than wet, feverish skin rushing next to each other.

Sometimes Ariadne fears that they're making love.

One particularly rainy night, the evening after her nicotine withdrawal stops, Arthur carries her to her bed, running his lips over every inch of her body until she's begging for him. And when he thrusts into her gently, lovingly, she hears him confirm, over and over under his breath, "This doesn't mean anything."

She wipes a hand blindly over her cheek, knowing that what they have between them is not enough to prolong anything genuine or anything outside of inception and the team and Cobb.

"Can I ask you something?" she questions once she rolls off of Arthur, her voice sounds a little raspy because she's trying to catch her breath.

"Okay."

Ariadne summons up the courage she has left and turns her head to face him. "Do you blame me for what happened?"

A beat passes, and all she's thinking about at the moment is Arthur saying yes and how much it will crush her when he does. Nonetheless, there's nothing else to lose, nothing he doesn't already know, nothing he doesn't already make her feel.

"I used to."

She presses. Of course she does. "And what about now?"

Arthur turns to face her, his hair plastered to his forehead due to the sweat excreted from their recent activities. Ariadne can't help but push it off from his face. Her heart thumps painfully when she does.

"I blame myself."

"You shouldn't," she says, propping her head up on her hands.

Ariadne levels her gaze on his face, seeming to be committing his features to memory. Is she trying to remember? Trying to make a memory, just in case? She's not certain, but the fact that she's drawing up blanks as she tries to remember them in Fischer's subconscious makes her nervous.

"Maybe," he shrugs, pushing himself up to rest against the headboard. "I used to blame you because I thought you purposely let him miss the kick and stay down there."

His eyes flicker down to hers, and she can see the insecurity darkening his brown orbs; a lack of confidence that she hasn't noticed on Arthur since his confession in the warehouse.

"And truth be told, I hate myself for thinking that. I was the one who didn't check up on Ficher's background thoroughly. I'm liable for Saito getting shot, and Cobb chasing after him –"

His voice cuts off as she climbs into his lap, tucking her legs against his thighs and twining her arms around his neck and shoulders. Blood rushing, she senses all parts of her brain going fuzzy and blending together, expect for the rational part.

That portion keeps telling her Arthur isn't responsible for Cobb's experiences in limbo, isn't accountable for his inception on Mal, isn't at fault for Cobb not being able to get out like he had before.

She voices her thoughts out loud.

"He did that to her?" Arthur asks, referring to Cobb's own guilty conscience.

"He loved her," she replies, and kisses him, chests pressing together.

Ariadne feels the reverb of her heart beating a rapid rhythm beneath Arthur's skin, while hers pounds back in echo.

—

Furrowing her eyebrows, Ariadne studies Cobb's face closely. Despite the actions feeling childish, she waves a hand in front of his face and pokes him in his stiff shoulder just to be certain.

When Arthur had given her a copy of the warehouse key, she remembers asking him how Cobb's body stays alive while he's down under for so long. Arthur had told her that it is almost self-generative. Sometimes he has to hook him up to an oxygen machine and even a food supply, but the only sign of bodily function is Cobb's mind processing and recessing in limbo.

That's why he doesn't need much care. His mind is degenerating, but creating and thriving at the same time. Consequently, if he ever wakes up, he will not remember a thing.

A sense of foreboding settles heavily in the air in the warehouse, and Ariadne checks to make sure that no one, especially Arthur, is around to see her.

"Hey, Cobb," she says, settling into the lawn chair adjacent to the dreaming man.

"You can't hear me, and even if you could, you won't understand where any of this is coming from," she pauses, mulling the words over in her head, "I wanted to tell you how I felt, about everything, because I've never actually come out and told anyone about it, except Arthur, and that didn't happen easily. "

She looks beyond Cobb, and stares at the concrete floor, counting the thin gray cracks that undoubtedly match the ones on her bedroom ceiling.

"So when I got back on the road after work, my cab got to the exit to Brooklyn, but I changed my mind and kept going because if this," Ariadne gestures between their bodies, "is ever going to be resolved, I have to tell you that I know you're alright. I think I've always known, even sitting on that river bank with Arthur while you were still in the van."

It feels like she's fallen short of the true nature of her emotional state, but it's all she can come up with at the moment. "I'm not explaining it right."

There's a loud clank of metal that bounces around in the emptiness of the warehouse behind her, but Ariadne doesn't pay it any attention.

She lets her head drop into her hand as her clouded mind struggles to find coherence, something more touching, something to tell Cobb that means more.

Why is it still important to dream?

My dreams are still together.

"Arthur misses you. You're his best friend." Her words fall out in a rush, emotions plain as day on her face. "Not too long ago, he told me he was having nightmares, and I thought they were about you. But looking back on it now, I remember the way he looked at me and sounded different, and I think I know why."

She remembers the morning well, and the expression twisting Arthur's features into something she didn't recognize, something cold and hard, but had touched her heart nonetheless.

"And he had never looked at me that way before," Ariadne breathes, wrapping her coat tighter around herself despite the intense heat radiating from the space heaters. "That was when it really hit me, Cobb. I think I'm still reeling from the realization."

'What is it?' Ariadne can almost see the annoyance etched in Cobb's sleeping face, as if he is amused to know the answer.

"Arthur's always so focused, sometimes even allusive in his own charming way, and I when I watched him standing outside my apartment, for the first time I just knew…" She waits, chest tight and adrenaline coursing to her head, "I knew that I loved him, and I don't know how to stop."

All the air in her body leaves in a long exhale that physically hurts and she can't decide whether this is a good thing or not, to finally know.

The thought leaves her exasperated and tired, and Ariadne is more than willing to take a taxi home so she can sleep off the feeling of dread that suddenly churns in her gut.

This doesn't mean anything.

Because the thing is, Ariadne chooses to embrace and accept his biting words. Perhaps she will mourn and grieve, and even yearn for the possibilities that she is turning her back on. Because one day, just like Yusuf and Eames, and even Cobb, Arthur will be gone, looking to rediscover his life once his guilt dissipates and it will only agonize her more in the end when she realizes she won't be in it.

She smiles mutely to herself, defiance seething and replacing the sense of whatever distressed emotion she's feeling right now.

"Goodnight, Dom," says Ariadne.

She stops missing Cobb after that. She knows that means more than she can ever say.

Ariadne zips up her coat and prepares herself for the chilly November wind outside, searching for the warehouse keys in her pockets as she walks towards the exit.

And then, she stiffens, noticing Arthur lingering just inside the doors and she knows he has heard her.

She had sat there with Cobb and told him that she couldn't stop her feelings, and looking in Arthur's eyes now, she sees that he can't stop his.

"I told you what we had didn't mean anything," he says.

"Yes."

"I lied."

Her mouth is dry, and there's a small taste of embarrassment, regret and sorrow. She pushes open the warehouse door, and for a moment, looking over her shoulder and just watching Arthur and the way the soft evening light hits him, makes Ariadne wish she could go back to the night she had first invited him into her apartment and do everything differently.

—

Later that evening, Ariadne stands in front of the mirror over her bathroom sink. She strains her eyes to stare at her reflection against the harsh incandescent light, running her hand over the edgy sheet of glass, trying to see herself for what she is.

The face looking back at her has changed somewhat – there is a firmness about her jaw and a few more lines around the corners of her mouth that has never been there before.

But it is still the same face. It is still Ariadne.

Her thoughts shift to Arthur and all the conflicting, contradictory impressions she has ever had of him. By the time her clock flashes midnight, there isn't a single thought in her head that doesn't have him in it. Now that Ariadne thinks about it, there is not a lot in her life now that doesn't have Arthur in it.

It's been that way since inception, hasn't it? In some big ways, in the small ones, always. From the minute she had waken up to Arthur from her first dream sharing experience with Cobb in Paris, he has grown to become the epicenter of her life. Aside from Cobb's raging subconscious dominated by Mal, Arthur has been the core of the team, the one she had tried to push Cobb into consoling with.

She sees now that he's been that to her since the moment she had came back, unable to stay away from the perpetuity of dream building, since the moment Arthur had first taught her about paradoxes, enclosed loops and boundaries, and where to draw the line.

Ariadne just didn't see it until now.

She looks at her reflection again and laughs. She laughs until her laughter turns into uncontrollable sobs and she has to grip the crumbling bathroom counter to hold herself upright. And when Ariadne goes to bed, she feels lighter somehow, airless, as if a resilient poison inside her has finally been purged.

—

Ariadne hasn't been so thankful for a Friday since she was in high school. She races through her lecture and cuts work early so she doesn't have to sit through the afternoon rush hour.

She knows she is distracted, knows her classmates and colleagues can see it too, but she doesn't have it in her to care. Ariadne shrugs of their offers of coffee, begging off with excuses of having somebody waiting for her which, given her clean track record, probably sounds like a lie.

By the time she arrives at the warehouse, the sun has already begun to set and the wind has picked up, blowing over the snow that has mounted on the flat roof overhead.

The only thing that pushes her forward, urges her on in spite of the dropping temperature, is the light radiating from the warehouse windows above.

Soft shifting and scuffling noises reach her ears from around the corner as Ariadne nudges open the metal doors, gripping the handle tightly as the warm air from inside whips into her face, nearly suffocating her.

"Ariadne?"

Arthur, on the other side, making all the noises, rises from his seat on the lawn chair next to Cobb and shoves his hands into his slack pocket.

"What are you doing here?" he asks, his voice drifting pleasantly over the noise of the space heaters.

With a shrug, Ariadne sets the large bag on her shoulder down beside her wet boots, wiping off the excess snow on her shoulder. "I woke up this morning and I missed you."

She suddenly feels hot, and it has nothing to do with the heat. She realizes that she's probably blushing, a crimson red sweeping up her neck and all over her face. It's no surprise, really, because she has never been fond of talking about emotional stuff and that's something that's unlikely to change.

Under any other circumstance, this might be a touch amusing for Arthur. But he doesn't look amused, or ready to give a quirky reply. He looks like he's remembering her stricken face before she had walked away from him in the warehouse the other day, and Ariadne feels shame.

"And I thought about it for a long time. And I realized," she stares up at him, earnest and hopeful and she feels like a teenager again in that moment, "that what I did to you, well, it wasn't exactly fair, was it?"

Arthur walks over to her, shaking his head and looking slightly confused, as if he doesn't understand her apology, as if he doesn't recognize her. "What do you mean?"

"You overhead me say some things," Ariadne swallows, "And I left before I had a chance to explain them. "

"You could have said all this over the phone," he tells her simply, something like a Cheshire grin starts to creep onto his face.

Maybe Arthur is finally realizing how hard this is for her.

"I could have," she pauses, taking her bottom lip in between her teeth, "But that's not all I wanted to tell you."

"Ariadne – "

"I should have told you those things myself," she interrupts, clamping down on her tongue, hard.

Arthur looks at her, really looks at her, like he's seeing the girl who has been with him while his life had crumbled like a collapsing dream. He moves to her, tilting her face up to his with his warm hands, fingers stroking the skin of her cheek.

"You love me?"

Ariadne thinks of the pink in her cheeks then; sees her flushing now reflecting on Arthur and feels the hot tingling of chance pulsating through her. She nods, blinking quickly as the air fills with expectation. The need to ask about now, how he feels, if it's the same, is there but she can't quite bring herself to ask.

"Ariadne, Jesus, I missed you too," he says, like he can indefinitely reading her mind. His voice is husky enough to make her skin tickle as Arthur envelops her in his arms. "I love you."

It's the first time Arthur says he loves her, and she nods, and there are tears in her eyes when she says she loves him too.

It should scare her, the strength of the emotions flooding her body that make her hands sweep the familiar bends and angles of Arthur's frame, her heart frantic, skin pricking with sheer need.

Ariadne kisses him like she's pouring everything she has into him, arms binding around him, and God, there's no going back from here. Arthur responds quickly, working his lips over hers until she makes a small nose in the back of her throat before they both jolt back to reality.

"So, where do we go from here?"

There is no doubt what she's really asking. Arthur immediately understands and yes, he has probably though about it, every day for the last year. She has already rolled the possibilities around in her head of what life would be like if Arthur comes with her, if they leave Cobb, if they live in their own realities.

However, that couldn't happen, and it's hard to imagine anything like that ever coming to be after all the guilt and hope they have carried around with them for the past eight or so months, maybe even longer. Honestly, it's only hard just because in their attempts to forget, all their endeavors end before they even really begin.

Arthur stares at her in open wonderment and concentration, and she feels the part of her that is white and hot and burning turn into a pleasant heat somewhere inside her.

"We wait, but we move on," he says, ushering her out of the warehouse before securely locking the heavy metal doors behind him.

Later, they will unquestionably return to the solitude and faith they manifest in their wait for Cobb. But for now, they are content to stand together in the darkness of the winter night, as the snow falls and blow across the ground – spotless, white, and new

Just like a blank slate.

—

Ariadne presses herself into Arthur as he walks her to his car. She looks over her shoulder, at the towering warehouse, and feels her breathing return to normal. Maybe wanting Cobb to wake up had been a selfish attempt to restore the safety she had once felt with him there. But now she feels safe with Arthur too. Safety and hope and wholeness.

Cobb never comes back.

Arthur never leaves.

—

End.