Darling,

While Mal was pregnant, and while she continues to take her extended vacation from working to take care of the baby and spend time with her two children, Arthur and Dom have been working, Dom for necessity’s sake, because they need some amount of income to support them, and Arthur simply because he likes work, because he’s Dom’s Point Man and refuses to let Dom go into a job without the most thorough knowledge of what he’s getting himself into. They haven’t needed a forger, so Arthur hasn’t gone to find Eames, but sometimes Eames comes looking for him.

It’s usually just phone calls or letters that Arthur resolutely ignores, but once a couple months before James is born, and then once a month after, Eames takes it upon himself to break into Arthur’s apartment again. He breaks into Arthur’s apartment and makes Arthur dinner and then completely ravishes Arthur in every way imaginable, and Arthur falls asleep with Eames’ body pressed up against his, feeling satisfied and full and warm. And then in the morning, when Arthur wakes up, Eames is gone, and both times, Eames leaves a note and breakfast on the counter.

Hope you slept well, his first note reads, I’m afraid I had to be off – gotta make a living, you know. Coffee should be ready by the time you read this.

The first note is accompanied by a slightly blackened but absurdly delicious salsa omelet, and the coffee is indeed ready by the time Arthur rises. This makes his irritation with Eames diminish slightly as he rolls his die half a dozen times to affirm and reaffirm that he isn’t dreaming this whole thing up.

The second note doesn’t even bother with excuses, simply stating Enjoy your breakfast, darling. I had a lovely time last night.

Arthur eats the, like everything else Eames makes, absolutely mouth-watering pancakes Eames made him (stuffed with fresh fruit, for fuck’s sake; who even takes the time to do that?). With every bite, he hates Eames a little more and rolls his die one, five, eight, ten times before he’s satisfied that he’s not imagining things.

Both times, as he sets the dishes in the sink after breakfast, he feels this strange, unsettled feeling in his stomach that he knows has nothing to do with food. He goes out to his patio and stares out at the city around him.

“What is it?” he actually says aloud to himself the second time. “What are you trying to tell me?”

The only answer he gets is the blaring horns from the highway in the distance and he sighs and rests his head on the patio railing. He feels confused and lost and, strangest of all, like he’s betraying some fundamental trust that he doesn’t even know he’s taken. He can’t for the life of him figure it out, and he hates it; he hates the feeling of not knowing, but he thinks for hours to no avail, so he locks this uneasy feeling away in the depths of his mind and doesn’t tell a soul about it, doesn’t speak of it, not even to himself.

When he checks his mail later that day, he finds a carefully wrapped package containing a simple, elegant white button up shirt. There’s no note, no explanation, but when he sees it, he can’t help thinking about Melbourne, and he knows immediately that this is from Eames (a new shirt to replace the ruined one, just as he promised).

-

Mal is just about ready to begin work again about three months or maybe a little bit more after James is born (she’s very attached to her two children and is making up for lost time by taking more time off than she really needs to). She claims she’s now impatient to get back to work, that she feels so useless just sitting around doing nothing while Arthur and Dom do all the hard work. So one afternoon, Arthur takes Phillipa and James out to play while Mal and Dom go under, just so Mal can get back into the feel of shared dreams again. It’s been so long; she needs some time to adjust back into her position as Architect from her role as just an ordinary mother of two.

Had Arthur known then what he knows now, had he known that Mal and Dom would go so far under that Mal would lose all grasp on reality, despite the solid weight of her totem, he never would have agreed to take the children out. Had he known that Mal would be plagued by a single thought, one solitary idea, until her will snapped, he never would have let them borrow the PASIV from him for the afternoon. But he didn’t know, he doesn’t know; he takes the kids out and comes back in high spirits with Phillipa singing a nonsense song as she finishes up her ice cream cone and James snoozing on his shoulder.

When he arrives back, Phillipa goes to play with her dolls in her room and Arthur puts James in his room so the young boy can keep napping, and Arthur comes back out to the living room where Mal and Dom are and smiles at them, who look as if they’ve only just woken up. And then his smile fades. Mal looks lost within herself, eyes haunted, movements slow and unsure and testing. Dom looks at her with concern, but with a certain confidence that everything will resolve itself, that everything will be okay in the end. Arthur almost feels uncomfortable, like he’s intruding on something he’s not meant to see. He looks down at his shoes.

“So how’d it go?” he asks when he looks back up again a moment later.

Neither Mal nor Dom answer, though Dom does look at Arthur with a strange, troubled expression. Arthur feels a nervous lump in his throat, but swallows it back, telling himself to stay calm, there’s nothing to get so worked up over; he’s never been nervous before, even in far more dangerous situations than this, so why should he get nervous now? Exactly, he shouldn’t.

“Did you run into any problems?” Arthur asks, because he just wants a response, some sort of acknowledgement that there really is nothing to be worried about so he can relax already.

Dom smiles, but it looks forced, and Arthur isn’t satisfied in the least.

“We’re fine,” Dom says. “Everything went smoothly. No problems whatsoever.”

Arthur doesn’t believe him. One look at the expression on Mal’s face is all it takes to convince him that something must’ve happened down there, something powerful enough to linger behind with Mal even after they’ve woken. Arthur points his gaze to Mal, who he knows won’t be able to lie to him even if she tries. Her eyes are nearly incapable of masking emotion; he’ll get it out of her.

“Are you okay?” he asks her, eyebrows knitting together.

Mal looks over at him with wide, open eyes, and he immediately sees that the answer is no, there’s something bothering her, eating away at her, trying to get out, though she won’t let it. She smiles a battered, broken smile, so unlike the woman Arthur’s grown to love, and nods slowly.

“Of course,” she says softly, and even her voice sounds different. She sounds nothing like the Mal Arthur knows, the radiant woman so full of warmth and feeling. She sounds almost emotionless now, preoccupied, distant. She doesn’t even seem like herself anymore.

“Are you sure?” Arthur asks carefully. “Because you seem—”

“I’m fine, Arthur,” Mal interrupts, her voice sharp. She sounds like she’s choking on her words as she says them and Arthur snaps his mouth shut, fearful of setting her off more. Clearly, she’s more than a little edgy right now.

Sometime later, Arthur realizes that Mal is doing exactly what she accuses him of doing, this bottling things up and avoiding them until they all but eat her alive. Sometime later, he’ll blame her for being such a hypocrite, but mostly, he’ll blame himself for not pushing harder. Sometime later, he’ll realize this is one of the moments he regrets most in his life (listed just after Melbourne and right before ever letting Eames into his life).

Mal stands and goes outside, claiming she needs some air, and stands just outside on the wooden patio, looking out absently at the grassy backyard without looking like she’s actually seeing what’s in front of her.

Arthur looks to Dom, who does his best to smile reassuringly back as he packs up the PASIV and then stands.

“Is she really okay?” Arthur asks, and he notices that Dom hesitates to answer.

“I… She will be,” Dom finally answers. “Don’t worry.”

And this statement, even though Arthur knows it’s meant to comfort and reassure, only succeeds in worrying him more. He begins to fear that maybe Mal was a little too ambitious in her first time under in almost a year. Maybe, he thinks, maybe this is just due to shock, maybe she really will get over this. She’s a strong woman, he tells himself, she’s never been one to give in to doubts and she’s reasonable and smart enough to know her limits. She is. She is. She is.

Arthur repeatedly tells himself this, scolds himself for fearing for Mal’s sanity, blocks out all thoughts of her possible emotional instability. She’s not like that, he keeps telling himself, she’s not that weak. But then, every time he sees her, he remembers that it’s not really a matter of how strong or weak a person is, it’s simply a matter of being human, of being able to be wrong, of having the capacity to doubt and question. He often recalls with a heavy heart the brilliant researchers from Project Somnacin who lost their grip on reality, went mad with the belief that this was all a dream plaguing them, people Arthur thought would never succumb to this nasty side-effect of dream-sharing.

Arthur worries, and he sleeps worse than ever, regretful of the fact that his prolonged exposure to artificial dreams has deprived him of his ability to dream naturally, because dreams, real dreams, not these drug-induced phantom dreams he lives in, would be a much needed relief from the burden of reality. Instead, he just sleeps in staticky darkness and wakes feeling unrested. He rolls his die more often now.

Three. Always a three. Just the three of them. It was simpler back then. It was nicer back then. He wishes for his past back, but knows he’ll never get it.

Three. Always a three.