13Ariadne walked up the fire escape and bruised her knuckles on the rough wood of her childhood home's front door. After five minutes or more it swung open on its creaky hinges to reveal a young woman with pale eyes and hair bobbed at her earlobes. Her face twisted into an unappreciative smirk when she laid eyes on Ariadne.
"Well, look who it is," she said smugly, "The child wonder. Couldn't handle the city of love, Ari? I knew you'd come crawling back."
"Sharon," Ariadne spoke coldly to her eldest cousin, "I'm a woman, not a child. Paris is perfect. And I'm only visiting. So get out of my way."
Pushing past Sharon, she strode into the apartment's narrow hallway. She was in Chicago, her hometown, because she needed a place to stay after arriving in the States. The Inception job was over. She had no idea where the rest of the team was. So desperate to put them out of her mind was she that even Sharon's constant taunts were welcome.
"Momma!" Sharon called as she slammed the front door, "Ariadne's here! What should I do with her?"
"Oh, it's her?" the familiar voice of Ariadne's aunt Brenda came from the kitchen, "Well, she can make herself useful in here instead of behaving like the lazy collage girl she is!"
Ariadne sighed and, leaving her cousin to smirk her life away in the hall, entered the shoddy little kitchen. Brenda Owens was tapping her foot impatiently on the linoleum flooring. In her arms were three pizza boxes. Three more sat on the kitchen surface, which Ariadne scooped up.
"You should have called to say you were coming. You could have cooked."
"I had a lot going on," Ariadne replied, not bothering to mention how exhausted she was and how cooking was the last thing she wanted to do.
The two of them went quickly across the hallway and into the tiny family room. There, slumped on the threadbare couch and sprawled on the fraying rug, were the rest of the Owens family. Ariadne noted, as she often did, how obvious it was she wasn't one of them, with her dark brown hair and deep brown eyes. Brenda and her offspring were all mousy haired and watery blue-eyed. And there was her size; Ariadne's petite five feet was unique and she thought differently about it depending on what mood she was in. Meanwhile, needless to say, the Owenses were each and every one giraffes. But Brenda was her mother's sister, so technically they were family.
Mark Owens, her eldest cousin after Sharon, greedily consumed his pizza. "Well, baby Ari, aren't you getting big? Oh, wait, you're not," he grinned.
"No, but you are," Ariadne smiled mirthlessly, dropping her eyes to Marks's bulging stomach. Mark scowled and went back to his pizza – an extra large with all the toppings.
Sharon and Mark had always been partners in crime, ready to prod and poke their younger cousin at every opportunity. Over time, she had learned to give as good as she got.
"Got a boyfriend yet?" interrogated Ruth, the youngest.
"Of course not!" Jane answered for her, "This is Ari we're talking about."
"You see, girls, the reason she hasn't got a boyfriend is because she spends all her time filling her head with useless silly books," Aunt Brenda explained, albeit untruthfully.
"I've been very busy lately. And it's only been six months since my last relationship ended, actually."
"Six months?" spluttered Ruth, "I've had three relationships in the last two!"
"You're thirteen. That's not a relationship, that's playing house."
"Shut up, Ari," hissed her Aunt Brenda, "She's jealous, Ruth, that's all it is."
Sighing, Ariadne struggled not to let her mind drift back to the memory of a kiss that didn't happen. She had to forget about that now, forget about him.
Instead, she remembered how she had cared for Jane and Ruth when they were children, staying home to babysit while Sharon and Mark were out playing in the streets. Their father had left around the time when Ruth was born, and eight-year-old Ariadne had looked after the baby when Brenda had to work. It hurt her to think how her bond with her two younger cousins had turned sour as they became miniatures of their older sister and brother.
"Ari? Ariadne!" Aunt Brenda was annoyed.
"Yes?" she snapped back to reality.
"Jesus, head in the clouds as always," moaned Sharon.
"Ariadne, take the pizza boxes and put them in the trash," her aunt ordered. Ariadne did as she was told. There was no real point in refusing.
Her mobile rang when she was coming back through the hall. She wearily pressed her ear to the speaker.
"Hello?"
"Hello, Ariadne."
Shock hit her. "Arthur? How the hell did you get my number?"
"Oh. Er, I researched. Is that okay?" Hurt was clearly audible in the point man's voice now. Ariadne knew it was because of her hostile response, and she felt a stab of guilt.
"Yeah, um, that's fine. Why are you calling? What's wrong?"
"Does something have to be wrong for me to call you?"
"No! How are you?"
"We just achieved the impossible, so, yeah, I'm good. You?"
"As well as can be expected," she said dryly, her eyes flickering to the door of the room which contained her trying family.
"Where are you?"
"Well, where are you?"
"L.A."
"Oh - is Cobb with you?"
"No, he took off back to his family without a backward glance. Guess he couldn't wait to see his children."
"He got to see their faces…" she smiled to herself.
"What?"
"He got to see his children's faces. He wanted that so badly, he told me."
"Oh? Well, things worked out pretty great for him. Where are you?"
"I'm in Chicago."
"Oh," his cheerful tone had vanished.
"What's the matter?"
"That changes things. I was gonna ask…"
"What?"
"Nothing. I'll call you if there's ever a job. Goodbye, Ariadne."
"Goodbye."
Arthur hung up, and Ariadne put her phone away. She shut her eyes tightly and leant against the wall, breathing heavily. Then she straightened up and went back into the living room to get on with her life.
The Point Man did not return to his childhood home. He never did. At the end of every job, he retreated to his state-of-the-art apartment in Manhattan. Alone, of course.
Arthur was born into a highly respected, wealthy family, an only child. Growing up in their multimillion dollar mansion in Boston, he was lonely to say the least. His parents never felt like kin to him. They were nothing but two distant figureheads, there only to judge and critique him. He saw them once a day at the formal family dinners, where they interviewed him on his progress at school and in life. They always seemed obliged, never interested. He didn't have friends, only playmates; nobody who truly cared. His only confident in childhood was his elderly nanny, Rosa. She was very loving, but when he was twelve she left him alone in the house for half an hour. It wasn't her fault, she was desperate to see her sister who had been rushed to hospital, but his parents still sent her away.
He was sixteen before he had his first kiss, and that was with a simple girl from the country club named Vivienne, who he had no real feelings for. And no, he had never been in love.
Arthur met Dom Cobb when he was twenty-two, when he was trying to get into law school. Law was not something he was particularly passionate about, but he definitely had the capability to be a lawyer and anything that could get him out of his loveless home was worthy. Cobb approached him through some recommendation. After his first exposure to the dream world, Arthur was hooked. There was no turning back. Then of course, Cobb's lovely wife Mal died under circumstances Arthur would never learn of, and everything changed for Cobb – and by extension, for his point man also.
When he was in Los Angeles, Arthur had meant to ask Ariadne to come and see him, but she was in Chicago, halfway across the country. This upset him. He wanted desperately to see her again. Not that he was planning on telling her any time soon, but he was in love with the architect. There was honestly no other way of putting it. Ever since she had walked away from her first dream experience – something Arthur had never seen anyone do before – she had occupied his thoughts more often than not. In fact, he secretly blamed her for the missing research on the job; the truth was that a large amount of the time he should have applied to delving deeper Fischer's background was spent talking to Ariadne – or sometimes just watching her from across the warehouse. He'd longed to ask her out to dinner, or at least make some sort of move (a brush of the hand, maybe?), but he was professional enough to see how any of that during the job could sabotage the whole operation. The kiss in the hotel lobby of level two was a moment of weakness, a moment he could not bring himself to regret.
He got news of a job three months after the Inception. Of course, the first person he called to be part of his team was Ariadne.
"Hello?"
"Hello."
"Arthur." Ariadne ground to a full stop in the middle of the crowded street, ignoring the grumbles of the crowd around her.
"Ariadne?"
"No, it's the Queen of England," she said dryly. There was a pause, in which she heard the familiar chuckle down the phone line, "What is, Arthur?"
"There's a job. Are you in Paris?"
"Yes, I'm in Paris. What is the job?"
"Just an extraction. Should be nothing compared to Inception."
"Ah. Um…I'm not sure I should take it."
"Why not?" He sounded tense.
"I'm still working on my degree. Professor Myles won't want me to take it."
"I understand," the sadness in his voice surprised her. She had suspected he had feeling for her, but hadn't supposed he'd care if she missed out on one job.
"Wait," she said quickly, afraid he'd hang up on her, "I said I shouldn't take it. Not that I wouldn't."
"So will you take it?"
There was a long, nervous pause.
"Yes. Yes, I'll take it."
"Good."
Ariadne found herself smiling despite the fact a man who had just pushed past her had definitely left a bruise on her shoulder, "Why's that good?"
"It just is."
Then the Point Man hung up.
This chapter just kind of exists to set the scene. They'll be some plot in the next one, I hope, but I'm gonna try and focus on the relationships between the characters. Note: There will be love triangles. Don't know why, but I adore those things.