Her name is Mal, short for Mallorie. Wrong, Arthur thinks to himself. His Quebecois French is still enough to know what the name means. He feels shame in the spiteful way he stares at her. She is fantastic, he knows. He knew it from the moment she held his face in her adoring hands.

Still, his fingers keep working at the loose thread in his tie, hands trembling with the force it takes not to unravel completely.

“I really wanted you to meet her,” Cobb says. His voice is smooth and pliant and warm in a way that Arthur has never really heard before, and it feels like death; feels worse than that, even. “You’re the most important friend I have, and—well—”

Arthur has an eye for detail, an acute sense of attention and observation that goes unrivaled in most cases. He had seen the ring on their fingers from across the room when he first walked in, but he allows Cobb to introduce the concept to him anyway. He tries to go someplace else, numb himself to the growing grief that builds in his chest, clawing its way up his throat to sit bitter on his tongue.

Once upon a time ago, Arthur imagined sharing space with Cobb; he imagined fingers intwined across mahogany and shoulders brushing and silent, searching looks. It was a finely crafted fantasy; in reality, one dark-haired, dark-eyed face substitutes for another, and it makes him want to cry.

“Ariadne is already in the building,” Cobb says, words muted under his breath. “Arthur is perched on the roof of Sanyo. Don’t look.”

Saito catches himself in the act of it and rigidly sets his face forward again. “But the Sanyo tower is nearly a kilometer away,” he answers. “How will he—”

“Arthur doesn’t miss,” Cobb interrupts. A man exits one of the doors in the dim-lit hallway followed by two beautiful women, and Cobb turns towards Saito, pressing a hand against his lapel and pushing him against the wall. Saito tries not to turn away, but Cobb’s eyes are sharp and intense, and he is only a man. “Once he knows his target, Arthur can’t miss.”

“And Ariadne?” Saito asks if only to breathe. The group passes by them without so much a glance, and Cobb watches them go. “What is she doing?”

They set forth again, turning the corner. At the end of the hallway, a door stands alone, two guards standing on either side. “She’s making us a map,” he explains. “Well, a map for me. A maze for these guys once we grab Fischer.”

The things that Cobb doesn’t explain ring crystal clear in Saito’s thoughts: Ariadne is like Cobb. He wouldn’t have taken on a protégé so young if she didn’t have the same abilities as him.

He wonders if Cobb sees in her a successor or a daughter. The fact that he is uncertain says more about Cobb than himself.

“So why did you need me?” Saito finally asks right before they stop in front of the door.

Cobb gives the guards a congenial smile; the men pat them down before speaking into their headsets. The door opens, and Cobb leans into him, a hand on his lower back.