Eames was the dreamer on level three. They lied to Fisher. Ariadne asked and Cobb told her that he just told him that. That's why Eames heard the music and why Arthur put the headphones on Eames in the elevator.

And my canon is that he did make it. You can see he (Cobb) is not wearing his wedding ring at the airport when he hands his passport over to security.

But everyone has their thoughts and ideas about Inception and that's one of the amazing and lovely things about it. It has so many possibilities inside.