This isn't grade school. She clutches her bishop, her grip slick and loosening- the moisture droplets on her hands separating her from the smooth surface. There's no desperate, heart-wrenching metaphorical sound of her heart ripping, even though she's turning away from him. They had a moment. They had a job.

This is their job. She's no damsel in distress- that ship sailed, long ago, somewhere in-between drawing a maze and driving off a goddamn bridge. Let me repeat that, she thinks to herself, a goddamn bridge. Yes, she's aware Yusuf was actually driving, but it takes some balls to fall off a bridge too- never mind that she was asleep for it; she'd spent most of the flight from Paris to Sydney worrying about it.

She's not one to curse, or moan all poetically, but the fact that she's, you know, psychologically died a grand total of four times in the past ten hours, not to mention the incredible pain of jetlag, especially for one in her position, makes her think slight profanity is acceptable. She's blurred around the edges now, softened by her physical limits and weaknesses. But her core has only been strengthened.

Paradox, she thinks wryly, only she thinks she means ironically. Because it's not really a paradox. She just can't associate that feeling of…something being off without describing it like it's Penrose stairs. Contradictions, oxymorons- to her, they really are paradoxes now. The phrase has been imbued into her subconscious.

She doesn't know whether to laugh, cry, or throw up all over Fischer's entourage. She doesn't know how she's supposed to feel, or how she wants to feel. Well, that's not true either. She's a professional. Her poker face would do both the Forger- an actor, really, only acting implies pretending or faking, and Eames just…is, and the Point Man- whose Poker face rivals the very definition of Poker face extremely proud.

Which makes sense because he was the one who warned her she needed one.

There's Cobb, wading through the airport, and she can practically hear a film score accentuating his slow descent from Extractor to Redeemed Hero, Prodigal Son, and Father Returning. In the end, it's always been about him- this struggle has been his. And she can't help but feel partially that no one really cares what happens to the rest of them.

Only the folder in her bag proves otherwise, because only Arthur would be so…Arthur as to provide her with a folder of specific instructions, tips, and words of encouragement. She rubbed a page between her fingers and smiled, because as an Architecture student, she knows her paper, and the crisp heavy creaminess is far more expensive than anything she's ever been able to afford. She stands just outside customs and savors her options like a fine wine or creamy dessert at a fancy restaurant she can now afford.

Paris- she wants to laugh. Because if she was anyone else, her first stop would be somewhere exotic, like Paris only, fuck it, she lives there. And there's the profanity again- it's on the surface; she's using it to detach from her…vulnerability. She wants to sound like Eames, who curses habitually, and Arthur, who she just knows has a constant stream in his head. Because after all she's gone through- she should cuss. She should be able to.

She's hallucinating, she realizes, considering she's debating the ethics of cerebral cussing when she should be absorbing the fact that they've just done the impossible- only to run from it like fugitives.

They are fugitives, she has to remind herself, and then realize exactly what she's said, and panic. Did she really mean that? Or was it just habit? Because she should have said we, not they, and yet…

It's then she decides to stop thinking so much and just take a cab. Really, there's nothing else to do but take a cab, so she does. It's what a professional would do. And as unconventional as she sometimes got the feeling they were- they were professional.

But were they really unconventional? She knows so little of the dream world. Maybe everyone there was like that.

She tips the cab driver generously; but that's nothing to do with the new fortune she's recently acquired, and everything to do with the same reason she intruded on Cobb's dream. There's a little seed inside her, a little germ of kindness and helpfulness and all that makes her…well…concerned, even over projections she knew were just projections.

Well, she didn't know, or she wouldn't have asked. And then she's surprised Arthur never clarified that point with her. And a little self-shocked she never thought about it until they were halfway through.

Clearly, there's a reason she's not the point man.