Work Text:
dans un sommeil que charmait ton image
It's funny. She knows she's a part of something big, but it doesn't hit her just
how
big until three weeks after inception, when Robert Fischer's face is suddenly everywhere. The news of his decision to dismantle Fischer-Morrow Global ignites a worldwide storm of controversy. He makes the cover of the New York Times. Then the cover of Newsweek. Ariadne stops watching tv, but it's still impossible to ignore.
The press bills him as the prodigal son no one talked about until he inherited the world. "He was never a prodigal," she snaps at Sean Hannity one day. She's in the airport on her way back to Paris, to school, everything. It's been the most surreal month of her life, but it's time. She hugged Cobb goodbye last night, feeling the whisper of Mal's displeasure ghosting over her shoulders. Then Arthur and Eames took her out drinking, and Eames bought her round after round, staring a challenge at her over the shot glass each time until she was bold enough to grab Arthur by his sharp lapels and kiss him slowly on the mouth. Arthur leaned in close, his breath warm on her lips, but he only smiled and blushed, and when Eames winked at her Ariadne realized what the challenge was actually about.
Still, Arthur slipped a meticulous business card with a Paris phone number into her hand when they parted, and whispered, "In case you decide you miss us," as his lips brushed against her cheek.
She's eternally grateful to him for saying, "us," and not, "it." One of them is a choice she's okay with making; the other one isn't. But she figures Arthur already knew that.
She turns his card over in her hand while she waits in the international terminal at LAX, Hannity droning over the airport flatscreens about Fischer's mistake of epic proportions. No one knows what brought this about, he says. No one's clear on the new long-term business plan. Stocks are falling dramatically and companies throughout the industry are reeling from the repercussions. The collapse of the world's largest energy conglomerate ensures global economic instability, and for what? No one is quite sure.
It's all completely true. She puts in her earbuds and listens to Kings of Convenience. She closes her eyes.
She's in a warehouse. The walls are lined with aluminum. It's snowing outside. She's wearing a white jumpsuit when she looks down, and there's a gun in her hand. Fischer's ahead of her, moving to the end of the building. Maybe he thinks there's a door there, but she can't see anything.
He turns around. "Is this the right way?" He's hopeful, excited.
"Yes," she says, and shoots him through the heart.