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Arthur is not an extractor, not by any stretch of the imagination, but as the best point man in the business he makes sure the job gets done by any means necessary. So when Dexter caught Dom, grabbed him from behind and garrotted him with a finesse that Arthur was disgusted to find himself admiring, he took the head start and ran. Away from Dom, who thrashed until his body went limp, away from Dexter – who was unstable at best, chameleonic and unsettlingly calm in his pursuit – and towards the one thing they need. With Dom topside, he risks being woken at any moment, disconnected from the PASIV with enough time to get them out of Miami before the lab tech can find them.
It’s not until he’s run past the same shaky air conditioner six times, having never chosen the same path twice, that he realises what he’s been missing. He’s not imaginative enough to be an architect, nor sly enough to be an extractor, but he knows all at once, what he’s been missing. He skids to a halt, catching his fingertips on the protruding edge of the air conditioner’s plastic cover. Beneath his hands it shudders once, and with feeling.
Dexter is not a dreamer. Nothing about his history, even the things he’s tried very hard to bury, even hint towards any prior knowledge of shared dreaming before this moment. Nevertheless, he’s got a uniquely terrifying mind, and Arthur is alarmed when he blinks, and opens his eyes to find the room has changed.
He does an awed turn-around, taking in the drop cloth that has been draped up and taped against the wall, the ceiling, the floor. A table in the middle, across which is draped a black butcher’s apron; a small leather case, unfurled and shimmering with cutlery. No, he reflects. Not cutlery. Just knives and a distressing-looking drill with a corkscrew bit. He can see a shaft of light behind the plastic barrier: a door, presumably, but every fibre of his being tells him not to go near it. Instinct, then, makes him take two steps back before he realizes there’s still a constant, and it's pressing insistently into his back.
The conditioning unit.
Arthur turns and gracelessly pries at the edges of it. He gives one yank, a stunted movement at best, but the faceplate disengages without a struggle, with the ease of something that has endured this several times. He knows why instantaneously - can see exactly what they’re here for, a small polished microscope slide box of brown wood. A surge of relief hits him. Dexter can do whatever he’s going to do (and Arthur knows what he’s going to do, has known since the moment they descended into his madman’s subconscious, dreads it because he knows that it’s going to hurt) but they’ll still have what they need, what they were paid to get. Dexter will go to prison forever and Arthur will know that he’s never going to be topside and wake in a room like this one.
For a man who isn't a dreamer, Dexter’s good at this. His mind is so fluid and adaptable. He’d make an excellent architect, better than Ariadne and maybe better than Cobb was, when he could still build, but there’s something wrong. Dexter’s dreamscape, thus far, has been notoriously empty, no projections to speak of, and it lends a particularly eerie quality to it. Arthur’s aware, nevertheless, that he’s not alone.
His fingers close around the box. The catch is nothing intricate, and he’s flicked it open almost before his hands have cleared the hollow edges of the unit (a unit that is running despite having most of its innards moved or removed). Arthur flips the lid and pulls out the first thing his fingers touch.
It’s a photograph, dog-eared but bright, as if the sunlight in the picture permeated the film it printed on. Two children, a boy and a girl, holding hands but looking put out about it. A woman, blonde and beaming, holding a baby wearing a floppy blue hat on his head, with a handful of sand that he’s enthusiastically dropping down the front of the woman’s bathing suit. A second woman, tall and thin with hair that’s almost red in the sunshine. Arthur seems stunned for a moment – he had quite seriously expected something different, something forward and stark, perhaps “I KILL PEOPLE” scrawled in Dexter’s now-familiar hand on a big yellow Post-It, or a neatly organized binder with names and faces and burial sites.
Instead, he turns the picture and finds, in the same script but with a tidiness that suggests it was written, are names – Rita, Cody, Astor, Harrison, Debra – and a date in mid-July. Above it, in that same careful penmanship, is not “I KILL PEOPLE” but instead, “I LOVE THEM.”
Arthur, admittedly, is perplexed. This is his secret? He wedges the photo between his thumb and the grain of the box, ticking through the slides for anything else. He finds nothing but a single drop of blood in each of them, and it’s not until he’s moved to the table and is preparing to tear out the lining that he remembers the reason he’s not the extractor.
“Not what you were expecting?” Dexter asks throatily from behind him, and Arthur nearly flies over the table in sheer terror. He reaches for his gun – which was, he’s certain, there a moment ago – and finds nothing. He remembers something he hasn’t thought about in years – you mustn’t be afraid to dream a little bigger, darling – and dread punches him in the chest.
“I’m a very...meticulous monster,” Dexter murmurs, “But I’ve figured out what you’re all doing. You won’t find what you want here. You look for the secrets people hold dear to them, the ones that would kill them if anyone found out. But those secrets are less important than the ones that would kill them if they took a moment to recognize them. To know. Those tickling secrets we keep from ourselves.” Dexter smiles a hollow smile, something astronomically different than the one he wears when he’s passing out donuts out at work or cooing gently at his baby. The juxtaposition rattles Arthur right to his teeth.
“Now put it back.”
Arthur can’t do that, of course. He takes the advice from years ago, dreams a little bigger, just a little bigger, and when Dexter’s dream can’t support the sudden changes Arthur's dreaming imposes, the foundation of it cracks down the sides. Arthur, better at bringing down dreams than building them, is once again astounded at the force with which the serial killer holds it all together, wrests it away from Arthur, but the damage is done, the distraction complete.
With Dexter working to stabilise his dream, Arthur lunges forward and grabs the knife nearest him on the table. Without hesitation, he twists the blade straight back into his left eye, and the pain is – the pain is excruciating and bright and white hot – Arthur can’t see or breathe or – everything is pain, Arthur can’t, he –
–wakes in the reclined chair with the same serenity he always has. Beneath his calm expression he can feel and taste the sharp copper of blood that was running down his throat and face. He can feel the point of the blade driving home into his brain, but he sits up and with hands that shake only slightly he removes the IV from his arm and winds it back into the PASIV.
“Do you have it?” Dom is asking, and it’s clear he’s still shaken too.
Arthur is contemplatively silent until he wraps the cords where they belong and secures the silver briefcase closed. He produces a pair of handkerchiefs from his pocket and hands one to Dom. They both set to wiping away the remains of their presence there. “No,” Arthur finally says. “He’s – his secret isn’t what we thought it was. It was probably somewhere else, what we’re looking for. He practically confessed, but his darkest secret is..." Arthur hesistates. "The one thing he doesn’t want anyone to know isn't going to do us or Debra Morgan any good.”
Arthur is careful when he wipes the chair Dexter, who will stay asleep for another ten minutes or so if the sedatives hold, is lying in. Arthur, thinking about how skilfully Dexter held his dream up, doesn’t feel optimistic about the timeframe.
“What was it?” Cobb wants to know as they shoulder open the doors, leaving Dexter dozing in the plastic-wrapped room of an old building in the warehouse district.
“Suffice to say it won’t help us,” Arthur says with a finality that’s meant to curb any further inquiries. Cobb watches him seriously as they walk two blocks up, not breaking his gaze until they actually get in the waiting sedan. They don’t talk about it again, though.
Arthur would know what’s useful, after all. It’s his job.