Work Text:
Cobb was so far up his ass, so wrapped in the cage of thoughts and feelings he wished to trap Mal in, that it removed him from reality. Mal was too pervasive, more so than in life even, a haunting presence constantly plaguing him and pushing him over the edge, a little closer every day.
That’s why he didn't even realize, not right away and not for a long time.
“Looks like Arthur’s taste.”
It could have been a throwaway comment, designed merely to fish out information - after all, Saito really was partial to postwar British art - but then Mal turned the same taunts to Arthur.
“Judging by the decor, we’re in your mind, aren’t we, Arthur?”
Arthur’s face tightened, surely grinding his teeth, and that, more than anything, struck Cobb as significant. Had Mal’s blow landed? Was it even a blow at all?
There was no time anymore though, Arthur was shot and then the dream was collapsing, and before Cobb could even realize fully what had happened he found himself with a new sponsor and a new, impossible job that absorbed his entire being, latching on to a desperate, feverish hope of finally being able to escape the vicious grip of her- her everything, and return home.
The whirlwind of inception captured him from the first moment, existing in a bubble out of time and space, out of touch but for a single point of hyperfocus. But once in the dream everything started falling apart, and Cobb couldn’t even tell by what kind of miracle they managed to not fall into Limbo but actually gain Fischer’s trust.
They were preparing to dive into the last level of the dream when suddenly, incongruously, Arthur knelt beside Eames and smiled.
Oh. Oh! How blind he had been. Mal had told him, his own subconscious was trying to tell him, it was right in front of his eyes. Everything slotted neatly in place now, how Arthur knew Eames’ location at the drop of a hat, his own impulse to call Eames specifically and to mention the pointman to him as a hook, the weird tension ever constant between them, that very painting that was the start of it all. A portrait of the painter’s thief lover, that was Arthur’s own deliberate choice, Arthur’s taste not in art but in matters of the heart.
With this new revelation, Cobb closed his eyes.
—
Cobb floated through the airport in a daze. It had worked, he was about to see James and Phillipa again. He still couldn’t believe it. But there was one last thing.
Unseen, he turned around just in time to see Eames' smile. It was different from any other smile he had witnessed from the forger, all soft twinkly eyes, but it felt familiar, in his heart. Arthur had just joined him, a hand resting above his on the cart. A weight lifted from Cobb's shoulders, one he hadn't even realized was there at all. They were going to be alright.