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It wasn’t often that Arthur was left behind on an assignment, but when the mark takes him out almost instantly into the dream, Ariadne has to pillage on without him. She has the basics down, and she knows almost as much as Arthur does about the mark. What both of them don’t know is that this mark is trained.
Not defensively, though the gun-yielding projection/mark that took out Arthur ten seconds in makes Arthur assume as much. No, this mark is trained much differently. She’s intuitive and crafty, but she’s scary and disturbed.
Her voice was scratchy and the low timbre of her voice was eerie and haunted. She was a mental patient whom doctors were desperate to help, thus their employing an extraction team to figure out her disturbance. The dream started out very strangely. Unlike all other assignments Arthur had been in, he instantly felt uneasy once he opened his eyes in the dream. Rightfully so, when he felt the gun of the patient stuck to his back as he looked at Ariadne, whose eyes had grown wide with fear.
“Oh my, you’re a wispy little thing aren’t you?” The patient was threatening Arthur with a gun, but her words were meant to cut into Ariadne like knives. Arthur couldn’t move and his lack of mobility scared him.
“Why can’t I—” the gun went off and his eyes opened to see eagerly waiting doctors hunched by the gurneys with notepads and charts. “She shot me. Ariadne is still in there. I can’t… I can’t explain this.” The doctors shared looks and hoped that the young woman would be able to do some good in there.
Ten minutes later, Arthur found purchase sitting on the gurney that Ariadne was lying on, grasping one of her hands tightly. Her eyes opened and she was immediately in search of Arthur. She was relieved to see him almost instantly, but just as instantly, a look of guarded fear clouded her eyes and Arthur instantly feared something else had happened in his absence.
“Ari—what happened? Did you talk to her? Were you hurt?” He wasn’t sitting anymore, but was still grasping onto her hand. She pulled away gently and shook her head.
“I’m going to go talk to them, all right?” She spoke slowly and Arthur’s lack of response was enough of one. Ariadne stood and walked to the other side of the hospital room to address their employers. Arthur watched as her lips moved and she told the doctors that the young woman was attacked at a young age, told that her family was in danger and that her escape would trigger their deaths. “Whoever attacked her preyed on her fears. She couldn’t tell if he really had her family or not, so she was too scared to try to escape. Her name is Madison Connelly.”
~
“Will you talk to me please? You haven’t said anything to me, and I’d like to know how everything went. Ariadne?”
She looked at him, sadly at first, then blankly. Her efforts to remain aloof came off as distant and cold and she regretted it. But what Madison had done to Ariadne was chilling. It was as if Madison was psychic, for she instantly knew that Ariadne was in love with Arthur. She picked up on her emotions and almost immediately used Arthur against her. Ariadne knew it was a dream, but it was the first time a mark had known what she was doing in the dream and was able to cripple her partner into submission. She had been at a loss and the mere moments of distraction—Arthur’s abrupt leave had knocked the breath out of her—had been enough to nail Ariadne in a vulnerable position.
“You heard me at the hospital. I talked to her and she told me what happened to her. Whoever took her was sick, Arthur, he did sick things to her and I don’t think they’re ever going to be able to help her.” Arthur hadn’t been asking in regards to the patient, but was referring to her.
“What did she say to you? How could she do what she did? I couldn’t move!”
“She’s become… very intuitive. Just like her captor, she picked up on things quickly and she used them against us.” Arthur brought a hand to her cheek and she winced. He didn’t back down though and brought both of his hands to either of her cheeks and forced her to look him in the eyes.
“What did she do to you?”
“She… was malicious in her words. She made me feel insecure and small and stupid. I almost couldn’t get anything else out of her.” Arthur raised a brow and pleaded with his eyes for her to continue. “She knew what we felt for each other. She knew it almost instantly, which is why she took you out. It made me weak to see you die, and she knew it would.”
Arthur’s eyes softened, but his grip on her face turned a fraction of a bit like a death grip. He wound his wiry arms around her neck and head and held her to his chest. He didn’t like being separated from her in the dream and he didn’t like the distance between them as a result of it. “Arthur…” Ariadne was soft spoken, and she cringed at how weak it sounded.
“What did she say, Ari?”
Ariadne’s eyes watered and she tried to lower her head away from his gaze, but his grip on her was steadfast. It was representative of his love for her. Never slowing, never fading. She grabbed onto the sides of his suit jacket and bunched the material into her hands as she sobbed into his chest with full on abandon. Arthur’s fears grew infinitely and he regretted how much they had underestimated the deranged mental patient. Ariadne’s small body was wreaked with sobs and his tightening hold on her seemed to reassure her only fractionally.
“I’m here. I’m right here and I’m not going anywhere.”
~
“Are you really so easily fooled? Do you honestly believe he’s good to you? He’ll spit you out the second he’s tired of you and you’ll have nowhere to go. Where will a sad little girl like you turn when the only person that matters realizes what a waste of space you are?”
~
The hours passed and the night turned into morning. Ariadne’s body was tucked tightly into Arthur’s side as he stretched his arm away from her body. It had grown tired during the night when it seemed his touch was the only thing to comfort her. He hadn’t gotten many answers out of her, but he was confident she would be able to talk later on in the day, after she rested, after she felt him still there. Whatever was said or done in that dream made her feel alone. The thought stabbed at him, for he knew, he was bound to her in every way except legally (this he would rectify soon, once the time was right).
Her eyes were slowly opening and her grip around his waist grew tighter, almost painfully. Arthur had been awake for several minutes and had increased his breathing when Ariadne’s death grip on him made him uncomfortable.
“Sorry,” she said, her mouth muffled by his shirt, still from the night before. Neither had changed, or gotten ready for bed. They’d slept on top of the hotel bed covers and only removed their shoes. He kissed her forehead and whispered, “Its okay.”
“Are you… are you okay now? Can you talk to me?”
She shook her head and whispered, “Not yet.” His grip didn’t lessen, and neither did her fears.
~
“What’s your name?”
“Maddy; what’s yours?”
“Ariadne.”
“That’s unusual. You look so plain, but sound so exotic.”
“Please, tell me what happened to you.”
“Trust me, Ariadne, you don’t want to know.” Madison’s glare was certainly felt, and Ariadne could feel in her bones that whatever brought Madison to this state now, would be something she could live her entire life without knowing.
~
They still hadn’t left the hotel room, and Arthur was reluctant to leave her side, but she insisted they shower and get into fresh, untainted clothing.
After each taking their turns, her shower time doubled, his cut down, they changed and sat at the small desk in the corner of the hotel suite. Ariadne was slumped at the desk, with her totem perched in front of her, her eyes never straying from it. Arthur sat at the foot of the bed, Ariadne’s back facing him. He leaned his elbows on his bent knees and stared a hole into the back of her head.
He’d planned on letting her tell him in her own time. He feared that whatever happened in that dream, in that malicious woman’s head, had taken something from his girl that he wouldn’t be able to give back. He feared she’d been broken somehow.
“Arthur?” He stood when he heard her say his name softly. “I love you,” her voice was quiet, almost whispered. His heart melted and for whatever reason, he knew. He knew what had happened. He understood that whatever broke his girl was something only he could fix.
He came from behind her and leaned down to hug her. He rested the side of his face on the side of her head and wrapped his long arms around her shoulders. Her hands grabbed onto his forearms, and she bent her head slightly so she could cry into his arm.
“I love you, too. I love you so much. Do you understand me? Whatever that bitch said can’t change any of that. Do you hear me, Ari? I will love you forever, until my last breath.” He loosened his arms when he felt her moving to stand up and face him.
“I don’t know… I can’t figure out how she could do that to me. She took something from inside me and morphed it into something ugly and I’ve been holding on to it since I opened my eyes and saw you.”
He didn’t know what the right thing to say was so he took a step to bridge the gap between them and hugged her fiercely once more.
~
“He doesn’t want you. I could feel it the second you both stepped into this dream. He’s growing tired. Maybe not fully purchased yet, but its there, just on the cusp. He’s growing tired of you and you’re constantly dragging him down. You’re just a girl and he’s a man. He could have anyone he wanted. Why would he want you?”
~
“I want you. How could you doubt me? I will always want you. I always want you. I could just be looking at you and I feel voracious. Hearing you say my name when I’m inside of you is like hearing soft, wonderful music. Hearing you speak when you want more is like encouragement even if you don’t say the words. Hearing you say you love me is the best blessing I could ever be given in this life. Don’t let a crazy and damaged woman ever project her fears onto you, because what she didn’t have, you do; you have me. You will always have me. I am not going anywhere, and if you think I’m going to let you cave in on yourself, you are sorely mistaken. You’re my girl, and you better damn well believe I’m going to fight for you.”
~
They moved slowly, his arms held leverage on either side of her head as his body made rhythmic pumps into her. She held onto his sides, the taut muscles of his stomach flexing underneath her hands—because her hands touching him there—oh, please—and it was almost too much and enough all at the same time.
He didn’t breathe her name. No, they both knew her name. He whispered I love you’s into her hair, into the dampness of her neck, into the soft strumming beat coming from chest, into the quivering space between her legs. He held on for dear life, he held on because for a moment she wasn’t holding onto anything but fear and he needed to—wanted to, had to—show her all that they held. They held a life together. They held talents and abilities and intelligence and love. He had to hold on for the both of them, because there will be a time when he will let go, when their job will follow them home and will scar him past the skin on his bones, and she will hold them together. He had to hold on because he needed to believe that if he had her, she had him. She needed to hold on to remember to not lose herself in the dream. She was losing herself in the memories of an attacked and scorned young woman, not even her own memories, and she was pulling and pulling when it felt like she was being pushed and pushed.
~
“Tell me what you know, prove to me you know me.” His command was quick and breathy as he continued to worship her body with each of his thrusts. Oh, yes, please.
“I love you, and I will always love you.” She’s almost breathless. He’s taking her breath away.
“And?” It comes out as a grunt more than a question, and he’s grabbing both of her hands to raise them above her head. He’s intertwining their fingers so she feels him. She feels all of him in her hands.
“And you will always be here.” Yes. “And I will always be here.” Oh, God. “And you love me.”
“I love you more than anything. Anything in this world. Ask me for anything and I’ll give it to you. Ask me, Ari, it’s yours.”
They’re both almost breathless, reaching a climax within each other and because of each other. His body is spent on top of hers and he tries to move his weight from crushing her, but she grips him with her legs. She likes the feeling of him still inside of her, softening, but still loving. She likes the feeling of knowing he’s there, on her, in her, for her.
“Can you give me forever?”
“My forever is already yours, Ari. You’ll make me an honest man, and I’ll have you as my honest woman, and we’ll have forever together.”
“I love you.”