Who: Ariadne and Chris What: Preparing for a job, Chris offers to teach Ariadne how to shoot. Where: BSAA Headquarters When: Recently.
Chris was … a little apprehensive about the idea of teaching someone to shoot. Not because he’d never done it before - he had, plenty of times, even taught his sister way back when and while she couldn’t outshoot him, she was still a damn good shot - or because he didn’t think he’d be much good, but because there was a difference between giving someone who’d had previous training a refresher course after too long off the field and teaching a civilian. To his knowledge, that’s what Ariadne was - a civilian, who might have had some strange luck (good or bad) pulling her into the dream heist group, but a civilian nonetheless.
Guns were only easy if you used them with no other intent than to scare and kill. Point and shoot. It was almost too easy, sometimes - something he didn’t plan on encouraging. Obviously, he didn’t have time to really get her much experience, and unfortunately for everyone the best experience came from the battlefield, so she wasn’t going to be great right off the bat. But there were limits to everything. And if they were lucky, all this would be was just a precaution.
As if he’d ever been lucky in his life.
Getting through the door was easy, if tense; getting Ariadne herself through the building was a little trickier. Chris had some clout as a founding member of the B.S.A.A. but it wasn’t going to be enough to keep her in the building for more than a few hours. So he moved quick, telling them she was a friend of a friend, someone Claire was scouting, and that she needed basic weapons training. It would have to do.
“Do you have any experience with guns at all?” he asked, giving her a wary look, once they reached the empty basement shooting range.
Ariadne wasn’t exactly looking forward to learning how to shoot a gun. The one and only time she’d handled the weapon was in limbo, when she shot Mal. It scared her, how much she’d enjoyed shooting the older woman. Even if Mal had just been a projection, those kinds of feelings reminded her too much of how Bianca had felt before she left. Still, she understood that she needed to learn and if she was familiar with the weapon, maybe she wouldn’t have to use it. Hopefully.
She was glad, at least, that it was Chris teaching her. Kevin already knew Azeneth and this way, none of the boys would know about her new Las Vegas person. It seemed as though it would be better that way, after everything that happened. Crossing over hadn’t bothered Kevin and Ariadne was ready to get down to business. The sooner they could get through this, the sooner they could get to the job and everyone could just calm down. She followed Chris through the unfamiliar building, stayed close and silent because she didn’t want to cause him any trouble.
“I’ve held and fired a gun only once. I was lucky I didn’t shoot Cobb. I’d rather not press my luck any more than I have to,” she replied, trying to inject a little humor without going overboard. Guns were some pretty serious business and she was taking this seriously. She was just a little nervous.
His smile was brief and humorless in response - a little knowing, and a little more wary. At least she knew it wasn’t something to be taken lightly. Though why she would have had to fire … he didn’t ask the circumstances, even though he wanted to know. The argument he’d seen follow after his offer had cast an unusual shadow on the situation. But he assumed the details were need-to-know, and he was getting used to not needing to know these days, so Chris went to the desk where they kept extra weaponry to get Ariadne a standard 5 millimeter.
“There’s four basic rules to gun safety,” he said, turning with the gun in hand. “Whatever you’ve got, always treat it like it’s loaded, even if you know it isn’t.” He unloaded the magazine to show her that, yes, it was ready to fire, then put it back in. “Always aim it down or somewhere safe when you’re not actively firing it. Don’t put your finger on the trigger until you know you’re going to shoot - ” a rule he’d broken a hell of a lot in the past years, but he wasn’t about to admit it “ - and always know your surroundings. What’s behind the target, in case you miss.”
There were other rules, more stringent ones, particularly involving other weapons, but being pressed for time Chris didn’t bring them up. A handgun was the most she would need, or so he hoped. His guess was that if they needed more firepower, that’s what he was there to provide. He moved to the first lane in the range, and once there, set down the weapon on the counter and pulled out his own Beretta.
“Got all that?” he asked, to make sure she had it all in mind. “It’s mostly common sense. The goal here’s to make sure everyone else stays safe even if there’s a bunch of weapons right at hand.”
She listened intently, focusing on everything he said as well as what he was doing with the gun. Ariadne didn’t reach for the weapon, didn’t even move her hands from her sides as he showed her that the magazine was full. She nodded along after every rule, conveying as best she could that she was paying attention. She was taking this seriously. He moved to the first lane at the range and she followed, standing just next to him without touching anything. Maybe this wasn’t such a good idea. It wasn’t like she’d go on jobs without them. It actually hurt that Arthur thought she would. Extractions, or however they classified the jobs, weren’t something she did for a living. She was an architectural student who participated in one job. Entirely by accident. It was hard, trying to find her place in all of this.
“I’ve got it,” she replied with a nod. “I don’t want to put anyone in danger if they insist I be armed. It’s practical, I know, and I know that I should possess this particular skill but-” Ariadne shrugged. “It doesn’t matter. I’ll do my best.” She took a deep breath and gave Chris a warm smile. “Shall we?”
… but she didn’t want to know in case something goes wrong, Chris thought to himself. Or she was worried she might hurt someone even with the right rules in mind. There were always a thousand things that could go wrong - it was a good sign she was concerned. He nodded in return to the smile, his own even more brief than before, and held out his Beretta to demonstrate the grip.
“You’ll probably be fine,” he said. “You’re pretty much aware of the dangers - a lot of beginners aren’t. Since you’re new to this, you’ll want to start out with a two-handed grip, to keep things steady. It’s a pretty straightforward fit - ” He showed her, one hand firmly around the grip, the other around the first “ - so make sure it feels comfortable. Natural as it can get. Once you’ve got more experience, you can try one-handed, if that works better for you.”
He waited until she had a decent grip on her own weapon before turning toward the target. It was, as always, in a vaguely human shape. At least he wouldn’t have to talk her through the weak points of anything he faced on a daily basis - people were … he hated to say it, but easier to deal with. You shot a person in the chest and they were going to go down, bulletproof gear or not. Someone with a virus would take three or four. More, depending on the weapon.
“Keep your feet apart when you’re aiming, and bend your knees a little. There shouldn’t be much recoil on yours, but it’s still not a bad idea to be ready.” He pointed out how to line up the sight, keeping it centered and straight, and then - actually firing. He demonstrated one quick shot, lining up and putting a hole through the dead center of the target’s head with the practiced ease of almost fifteen years in the field. “I guess in your line of work, aiming to kill doesn’t carry the usual consequences … so the heart or the head probably works best for you.”
Ariadne waited for him to indicate that she should pick up the weapon before doing so, holding it similarly to the way she had when she’d shot Mal. Two hands, just the way he described, with her finger as far away from the trigger as she could get it. “Where’s the safety?” she asked, looking at the gun and not easily spotting the feature she was looking for. The last thing she needed was to make a complete fool of herself. Eames would never let her live it down and she was have enough issues with him already. She felt bad that Chris was getting thrown into the deep end with them and she hoped that whatever was going on with Cobb wasn’t going to screw all of them over. It was just so much for her to worry about and now this? She was almost at her breaking point and she didn’t quite realize it.
She nodded and widened her stance shoulder width apart, bending just slightly at the knee like he instructed. Ariadne had expected the shot from his weapon but she was still surprised by the sound of it, flinching before she could stop herself. Embarrassment coursed through her, a slight blush coloring her cheeks. “Sorry,” she muttered softly, as he began to explain where would be best to aim. She cleared her throat and nodded. “It just wakes the person up. They’ll feel the pain until they ‘die’ I think. I’m not...sure, honestly.” Every time she talked about what she did or how things worked, she felt more and more out of her depth. Still, she lifted the gun and tried to aim as best she could. It was hard to force herself to keep her eyes open at first, but she took a deep, calming breath, and just let it go. She fired, hitting the white area a bit to the side of the head and a bit above the shoulder. Not quite anywhere useful. There hadn’t been much recoil, thankfully, and firing the gun hadn’t been nearly as bad as she’d thought.
“The safety’s built in. So long as you don’t pull the trigger, it shouldn’t discharge on its own.” He shook his head at her apology, reholstering the Beretta. “It’s fine - I should have warned you. The noise in here is amplified, so it won’t be as bad when we’re … assuming we’re out in something like the open when we’re in the dream. Still takes some getting used to, though.”
Chris stepped back, unaware of the chaos rolling in Ariadne’s head, and thought about the idea of experiencing death only to … wake up. Sure, that happened in dreams sometimes, but it had to be different when you were actively moving through a dream. Did it make the death more painful? More memorable? He grimaced at the thought and tried to push certain thoughts out of his mind to try and focus on the actual shooting at hand. A miss, but not a terrible one - she’d still hit the paper, and not too far from the actual target itself.
“Pretty good,” he said. “Try it again. I don’t know how projections work on the whole, but half the time just the shot is enough to scare people off. Or the sight of the gun.” Though that hadn’t stopped the ones in Cobb’s dream from descending on them like a rabid horde hell-bent on putting him down. It probably depended on who was involved, he supposed. If they were wary of guns or not. “Give it a couple more tries, until you need to reload.”
“It’s okay. I’m okay. It just takes getting used to,” she agreed, putting on a brave smile to force back the unease threatening to overtake her. “I don’t remember it being so loud last time, so it might not be when we’re working,” Ariadne offered, almost as if she were trying to reassure him, which was actually kind of absurd. She shook her head slightly and focused on the target once more. She didn’t think they’d just get scared of the sight of a gun in the dream world. Or the sound of it going off. The people they faced, projections rather, were either highly militarized or not at all. If she’d need a gun, it would likely be the former that would require her to shoot a gun.
Ariadne focused and fired twice more, missing the target each time. She was careful with her shots, setting her stance and checking the sight each time. Disappointed in herself, she frowned. She needed to get this. There wasn’t a second option, primarily because she wanted to go on the job and Cobb deemed it necessary. So she would learn and she would do her best. Ariadne just wished it would be enough. She took a deep breath and focused once more, aiming and, a split second before she fired, she pictured Mal standing there. The bullet went right through the center of the target’s face. A look of panic washed over her, afraid of what it meant, but she promised herself she would talk to Jack after this. That would make her feel better. Hopefully. It took a minute for her to collect herself and empty the clip, the rest of the shots hitting the target in various places. Once it was empty, she set the gun down on the shelf and tried her best to ignore the shaking in her hands.
She was nervous - Chris could tell that much from her words. He wasn’t the one who needed reassurance, but he didn’t stop her from trying it. If it helped her, why not? He only kept back and watched her line up more shots, still missing but never by very far. It was tricky, he knew. Learning how to fire something with almost no experience. Getting good took months, if not years, of practice, and she had to learn passable in a matter of hours. But he’d see it through - he’d make sure she wasn’t going to walk into a potentially dangerous dream without knowing this much, at least --
The bullet going straight through the center of the target’s head, almost matching his first shot exactly, did give him pause. Chris looked over at Ariadne with more than a little wary suspicion. Beginner’s luck, he wondered? Or something else? There was a split second of panic that she smoothed over, so maybe it was just an unexpected turn that even she hadn’t thought would happen. The rest of the bullets hit the target and when she set the gun down, there was a little tremble there.
“Getting better,” he said, keeping his voice calm and casual. “It’s overwhelming at first, I know, but with time … I hate to say it gets easier.” Until you were putting bullets into anything that moved wrong, a fate he was trying stridently to avoid. “But at least it keeps you from jumping at every shot. Here - I’ll show you how to reload.” Chris handed her a fresh magazine and demonstrated with his own gun. As he did, he glanced at her again. “You’ve been on a mission with them before, right? Can I ask how it went, or is that more classified than I’m allowed to know yet?”
Chris knew. She knew he knew there was something wrong. Keeping herself calm and collected, not showing emotions so clearly, was a skill she never fully learned. Though he didn’t know the particulars of what happened on the Fischer job, he wasn’t stupid. Not by a long shot. He’d know something was up, so she didn’t look at him. She didn’t trust herself to speak either, not just yet. Mal had just been standing there. No weapon. No threat. Only that smug look on her face, like she’d gotten the prize and she was more pleased that Ariadne hadn’t.
Chris spoke, breaking her train of thought, and Ariadne focused on the task at hand. It was overwhelming and she honestly didn’t want it to get easier, but she didn’t say any of that. Another deep breath as she took the magazine and she followed his movements, if a bit more slowly, and carefully reloaded. The magazine clicked into place, but she didn’t lift it to fire again. It could wait for a moment and since she didn’t want to hold the gun, she set it back on the shelf, clasping her hands in front of her to try and stop the trembling.
“I have. It was just the one. I wasn’t supposed to go, originally, but I insisted. They needed me,” she explained, firm in her belief that it was the case, without going into too much detail. She didn’t want to scare him off. “It’s not classified, no,” she added, shaking her head, smiling almost lightly at the thought. They were jobs, not missions. Not to her. “It went well. We got the job done and everyone came out the other end, no worse for wear.” It wasn’t a ringing endorsement by any means, but she wasn’t about to paint a false picture. “It’s not a typical job, from what I understand, so this one should be much simpler. It won’t require multiple layers, I don’t think, or if it does, no more than two. I’m not sure why Dom- Cobb,” she corrected herself, “thinks it might be a fire fight, but it’s good to be prepared.” She didn’t sound all that convinced. Trying to delay for a few moments more, she asked, “What is this place?”
Multiple layers, huh. Making things more complicated than they had to be. Chris didn’t ask for an elaboration, since he assumed that if it came up, he’d learn about it on the fly. That the mission - job, that was a better word for it - had been successful, without any apparent significant damage, was a little comforting.
“Better being prepared than not. I can’t imagine what kind of dreams someone in a coma might have.” Especially when they’d been rendered comatose because of … what had been mentioned. Almost uncomfortable, Chris automatically checked over his weapon again for any signs of a problem even though he knew there wouldn’t be any. “This is a secondary headquarters for the North American branch of the B.S.A.A. - Bioterrorism Security Assessment Alliance. There’s a few others scattered around the country, but this is the one I’m at most often.” Or had been, anyway, before … everything. “On the rare occasions I’m not out on a mission, anyway. This is mostly just for agents to wait for a new assignment.”
He didn’t go into great detail, because there was a lot of classified information about the place and the group itself that he wasn’t legally allowed to talk about. Technically, the bioterrorism part itself was classified, but when talking to someone who wasn’t even from this world, he didn’t feel the need to keep it so under wraps. If it was a problem where she was from, then that world had its own solutions. Or so he hoped.
“I hope, for the girl’s sake, that it’s much calmer than what Cobb is expecting,” Ariadne replied. “But you’re right. It’s better to just be prepared.” She sighed softly and focused on what he was saying about the building they were in. The ‘Bioterrorism’ part scared her briefly, but she realized very quickly that he wouldn’t have brought her here if it wasn’t safe. “You must be very important here. Necessary,” she observed. “We’re not...taking you away from anything pressing, are we?” She’d feel bad about that, but she’d take him at his word.
Ariadne also wondered if he would get in trouble for bringing her here. She didn’t want that, so she reached for the gun again, to continue firing. Her stance widened slightly, both hands comfortably tight around the grip, a slight bend to her knees, and she sighted the target. She was still shaking just slightly, focusing so much on not picturing Mal standing there. She missed the first three shots, wide but still on the paper. Her frustration grew and the other woman appeared once more. She emptied the clip into the target’s chest this time, never through the heart target, but still on the actual person. After the last shot was fired, she set the gun down. “I think that’s enough for now.” Her hands were shaking a bit more this time around.
“Necessary, maybe,” he said, and there was a little more bitterness to his tone than he would normally let out. He was used to being expendable, after all. Why get angry over it? “You’re not, don’t worry about that. Even if I wanted to, I couldn’t go on missions here. They’re never one-day things. It’s always a few, if not a few weeks, and since we’re limited thanks to that hotel, I’ve had to pull myself off active duty.” There were still missions he could complete, still tasks they sent him on occasionally, but they were never very far out. Nothing that he used to do, regularly and with grim dedication. “There’s other agents, though. They’re not losing any ground without me.” Or so he’d been told.
Chris watched her shoot. Three misses, and then the rest straight through the chest. It would have been normal if they’d been scattered, a few successes interspersed with misses, but this was different. When she put down the gun with shaking hands he picked it up instead, pulling out the empty magazine and letting the gun cool.
“If something’s helping you aim better,” he said, a little carefully since he was treading on uncertain ground here, “don’t be afraid to use it. Might help save your life at some point.” Even if it was a person, he thought, because god only knew how many times he’d only had to picture one person to steady his own hands. “If you think you’ll be good, then we can stop. Depending on when we start that job, you might want to try and get in another round of practice, if there’s a place you know of.” Maybe in the dream world itself? If she could get in there on her own. “Just to keep it fresh.”
He put away the gun and discarded the empty magazine, made sure his Beretta was still firmly holstered, and reeled in the target paper to get rid of it on the way out.
Ariadne stepped back and slipped her hands in her pockets. “Okay, I- I should be able to. We have a spare PASIV I can use to practice.” She could do that. “I promise I’ll practice again. Just...tell them it’ll be okay?” She looked up at him hopefully, likely looking a bit younger than she actually was because of how important this was. “I’m...I’m going to go though, if that’s okay. I need to talk to someone, unless she needs to talk to Kevin?”
“I will,” Chris said, though Ariadne seemed … unsure. Unsteady. Already that made him wary. If the idea of this was really bothering her, making her worry, then was it a good idea to have done it in the first place? He didn’t want to wind up being indirectly responsible for her getting hurt in the dream - or hurting someone else. “Give yourself some time to rest before you try it again, though. Just think that you’re probably not going to need it. That’s what I’m going in there for - in case things go to hell. If something needs to get shot, ten to one I’ll be doing it.”
It would probably be slim comfort, but any, he thought, might help out a little.
“I think she’ll be fine. I’ll escort you out - this way.” Chris started back out through the facility with Ariadne, not intending to follow her out. He planned to stay in for a little while longer to get in some more practice himself. With bigger weapons.