fic- Late to Settle [4/5]
Title: Late to Settle
Author: yjudaes
Team: angst.
Prompt: blood.
Word Count: 1520.
Rating: R, this part, for language and violence.
Summary: Eames likes to play games; Arthur has a secret. Fulfilling my desire to write a self-indulgent His Dark Materials crossover, though it is otherwise canon-compliant. Nimue is an amber-morph red fox and Mekhmet is a melanistic leopard. Beta by silvrey, who is not what England wants, but what it needs him to be.
Part One | Part Two | Part Three
Even expecting the job to go bad, Arthur hadn't expected it to go bad so fast, or so violently. It had gone smoothly enough, at the beginning - Arthur watching the security cameras, the body of one of the guards on the floor next to him, Nimue an extra set of eyes. In the restaurant, Eames as Camille, with Mekhmet the little antelope-creature by his side. Arthur has been focused on them, watching the mark's expression change as Camille approaches him. "Oh my god," Eames exclaims, seeming completely unpracticed even with those cliched words coming out of Camille's mouth. "Oh my god, Charlie, is that you?"
Arthur would have put the little nickname just over the edge into 'too much,' but Eames plays it perfectly, a consummate actor as always. And for all the mark is a paranoid, jaded fuck, Arthur can see his expression opening up, like a book, and all his secrets are Eames's for the taking.
"I've got it," Tollefsrud says, victorious, over the walkie-talkies. Arthur's eyes track her as she moves through the hallways of the hotel, from the mark's room, down toward the vault.
"Don't take the elevator," Arthur answers, feeling more cautious than ever. He looks away from the monitors for a moment, peeling his gaze from their cool blue glow, and meets Nimue's eyes as she looks back at him.
"Arthur," she says, "I don't know --" and then he hears the muffled sound of gunfire over the shitty speakers of the building's security system (at least there is a speaker system, he's made sure of that).
He can't find Tollefsrud; she must be in one of the blind spots. "Fuck," he says, getting up. He spares a glance for Eames and the mark, and that is when he sees it - the mark's little glances toward Mekhmet, whose long, thin limbs are folded up underneath her where she is lying next to Eames-Camille's chair. They had all been hoping that the surprise of seeing Camille would have been enough to distract the mark; they had all been hoping that the forge they'd decided on would be close enough to the real thing to serve its purpose.
Arthur remembers with a sudden fierce clarity why he never bothers hoping for much.
Eames isn't wearing a walkie or a wire; he'd judged it too dangerous, unnecessary. Arthur wants to scream at him get out of there, but he has no way to do so. He pulls his cell phone out of his pocket and dials Eames's number; it goes straight to voicemail, just like he knew it would. "You're not going to get this," Arthur says to empty air, "but if you do, get out of there, and do it now. You've been made."
"Let's go," he says to Nimue, drawing his gun. He peels the heavy metal door open, slowly, looks out into the long stretch of the corridor, and, finding it empty, slips out.
The last place he'd seen Tollefsrud had been on the fourth floor, and Arthur is currently in the basement. There isn't any time to waste; he takes the steps two at a time, Nimue flying past him and waiting ahead of him on the landings. The stairwells are empty in a way that makes Arthur think there must be a crowd of projections gathering around Tollefsrud somewhere, and he can only hope that Eames will last at least long enough that Arthur can get to him as well. Draw some of the attention away - he’s used to making these kinds of plays, suicidal gambits he learned during his time with Cobb, or maybe a long time before that -- it’s hard to be sure, any more. Arthur's job is to be where he is needed, to do whatever he has to. And he is the best at his job.
He finds Tollefsrud's body lying in the doorway surrounded by a radius of dead projections. "Fuck," he says softly, watching the pool of blood spread around her, soaking the carpet black. She is holding a key; he pries it out of her grasp easily, her fingers not yet gone stiff with rigor mortis (it sets on fast, in the dream) and turns just in time to see the elevator’s mirrored doors open and a half-dozen angry projections, spilling out of it.
Arthur doesn’t have to say anything to Nimue - she flies at them, her teeth bared, snarling. They aren't aiming for her, anyway, focused entirely on Arthur as their daemons spring for Nimue. The mark's subconscious isn't militarized, and they shoot at Arthur with the kind of clumsiness he would expect from real security guards.
Arthur feels nothing as he shoots back, ducking into the doorway, clambering over Tollefsrud's body. He’s empty of all emotion, simply a mechanism who exists to pull the trigger and hold his hand steady against the recoil. Faintly there is pain where the projections' daemons have torn at Nimue with teeth and claws, but it isn't Arthur's pain, not really.
One by one, they go down, until the hallway is littered with more corpses. Arthur rises from his cautious crouch, and Nimue turns back toward him, her tongue lolling, her fur matted down with blood in wide swathes. Arthur goes toward her, reaching for her affectionately.
A doorway opens, somewhere down the hall, and before Arthur has a chance to turn fully, he feels pain, and this time it's real, the hot, impossible tear of a bullet through his flesh. It's his thigh; it misses the artery, but it doesn't matter, he's done for anyway. He fires as he goes down, misses, hears Nimue's yelp and sees her fly past him to sink her teeth into the throat of the projection's German Shepherd daemon, and the man falls to the ground, screaming, clutching at his own body even as arterial spray coats the walls around him.
Nimue comes limping back toward Arthur; the hurt isn't as bad for her as it is for him. In moments like these, she becomes more animal, and now she is whining and licking at the edges of the wound, as if she can keep the blood from flowing.
Arthur closes his eyes for a moment, pressing both hands against his leg. "Nimue," he says, and the intent behind his voice is clear enough. He's not going anywhere, not like this, and even three-legged, Nimue is still faster than he could ever hope to be.
She whines his name, dancing back and forth in front of him.
"Go to the end of the hall, Nimue," he says.
"Please don't make me," she begs him, her voice brittle, but she starts to back away from him anyway. He feels the sick tug somewhere deep in his chest, but it's only discomfort, not real pain. Just like it used to be. They can still do this.
She comes back to him for a moment, just long enough to get the key out of his jacket pocket, and then she starts to back away again, her ears pinned, her expression tragic.
"Go, Nimue," says Arthur. "Find Eames."
Whimpering, she disappears into the stairwell.
+
He's focused on not passing out from some combination of pain and blood loss, when he sees Eames come out of the elevator. Nimue is behind him, her limp worse than before, her tail tucked between her legs. "What the fuck are you doing here?" he manages to hiss at Eames, around the thickness of his tongue in his mouth. Mekhmet comes over faster than even Nimue, and her whiskers almost touch his leg as she sniffs the wound, making a low discontent noise in her throat.
"I --" says Eames. He looks stricken; he's himself again, having dropped the forge.
"What the fuck are you doing here?" Arthur repeats, propping himself up a little further against the wall. "You were supposed to go down to the vault and open it, not come back here and stare at me, you -- fucking --"
"Arthur, you -- she came to find me," Eames says. He's totally, obviously dumbfounded. Arthur would find it funny, if he weren't so furious. He bites his own tongue to distract from the pain in his leg. "She came to find me, Arthur, and at first I couldn't understand, I just kept asking her - where's Arthur? Where is he? And I made her bring me back here, to you. Arthur -" he runs a hand through his hair, an uncharacteristically nervous gesture. "Arthur, how--?"
Arthur feels a wave of nausea wash over him, and the building shakes. "Go to the vault," he says. "Finish the job, Eames."
"I can't -- leave you here --"
"Fuck," Arthur says. "Now is not the time, Eames. Just do it, and I'll explain later. I don't know how much longer I can give you before I pass out."
He looks up to find Mekhmet staring at him with huge golden eyes, her pink tongue darting out nervously. "Go," he repeats. "Please, finish the job."
Nimue sits down next to him, shivering, and he strokes a hand over her back, leaden as his body feels. Eames and Mekhmet turn and go back down the hallway, and he closes his eyes, rests his head back against the wall, and waits.
Author: yjudaes
Team: angst.
Prompt: blood.
Word Count: 1520.
Rating: R, this part, for language and violence.
Summary: Eames likes to play games; Arthur has a secret. Fulfilling my desire to write a self-indulgent His Dark Materials crossover, though it is otherwise canon-compliant. Nimue is an amber-morph red fox and Mekhmet is a melanistic leopard. Beta by silvrey, who is not what England wants, but what it needs him to be.
Part One | Part Two | Part Three
Even expecting the job to go bad, Arthur hadn't expected it to go bad so fast, or so violently. It had gone smoothly enough, at the beginning - Arthur watching the security cameras, the body of one of the guards on the floor next to him, Nimue an extra set of eyes. In the restaurant, Eames as Camille, with Mekhmet the little antelope-creature by his side. Arthur has been focused on them, watching the mark's expression change as Camille approaches him. "Oh my god," Eames exclaims, seeming completely unpracticed even with those cliched words coming out of Camille's mouth. "Oh my god, Charlie, is that you?"
Arthur would have put the little nickname just over the edge into 'too much,' but Eames plays it perfectly, a consummate actor as always. And for all the mark is a paranoid, jaded fuck, Arthur can see his expression opening up, like a book, and all his secrets are Eames's for the taking.
"I've got it," Tollefsrud says, victorious, over the walkie-talkies. Arthur's eyes track her as she moves through the hallways of the hotel, from the mark's room, down toward the vault.
"Don't take the elevator," Arthur answers, feeling more cautious than ever. He looks away from the monitors for a moment, peeling his gaze from their cool blue glow, and meets Nimue's eyes as she looks back at him.
"Arthur," she says, "I don't know --" and then he hears the muffled sound of gunfire over the shitty speakers of the building's security system (at least there is a speaker system, he's made sure of that).
He can't find Tollefsrud; she must be in one of the blind spots. "Fuck," he says, getting up. He spares a glance for Eames and the mark, and that is when he sees it - the mark's little glances toward Mekhmet, whose long, thin limbs are folded up underneath her where she is lying next to Eames-Camille's chair. They had all been hoping that the surprise of seeing Camille would have been enough to distract the mark; they had all been hoping that the forge they'd decided on would be close enough to the real thing to serve its purpose.
Arthur remembers with a sudden fierce clarity why he never bothers hoping for much.
Eames isn't wearing a walkie or a wire; he'd judged it too dangerous, unnecessary. Arthur wants to scream at him get out of there, but he has no way to do so. He pulls his cell phone out of his pocket and dials Eames's number; it goes straight to voicemail, just like he knew it would. "You're not going to get this," Arthur says to empty air, "but if you do, get out of there, and do it now. You've been made."
"Let's go," he says to Nimue, drawing his gun. He peels the heavy metal door open, slowly, looks out into the long stretch of the corridor, and, finding it empty, slips out.
The last place he'd seen Tollefsrud had been on the fourth floor, and Arthur is currently in the basement. There isn't any time to waste; he takes the steps two at a time, Nimue flying past him and waiting ahead of him on the landings. The stairwells are empty in a way that makes Arthur think there must be a crowd of projections gathering around Tollefsrud somewhere, and he can only hope that Eames will last at least long enough that Arthur can get to him as well. Draw some of the attention away - he’s used to making these kinds of plays, suicidal gambits he learned during his time with Cobb, or maybe a long time before that -- it’s hard to be sure, any more. Arthur's job is to be where he is needed, to do whatever he has to. And he is the best at his job.
He finds Tollefsrud's body lying in the doorway surrounded by a radius of dead projections. "Fuck," he says softly, watching the pool of blood spread around her, soaking the carpet black. She is holding a key; he pries it out of her grasp easily, her fingers not yet gone stiff with rigor mortis (it sets on fast, in the dream) and turns just in time to see the elevator’s mirrored doors open and a half-dozen angry projections, spilling out of it.
Arthur doesn’t have to say anything to Nimue - she flies at them, her teeth bared, snarling. They aren't aiming for her, anyway, focused entirely on Arthur as their daemons spring for Nimue. The mark's subconscious isn't militarized, and they shoot at Arthur with the kind of clumsiness he would expect from real security guards.
Arthur feels nothing as he shoots back, ducking into the doorway, clambering over Tollefsrud's body. He’s empty of all emotion, simply a mechanism who exists to pull the trigger and hold his hand steady against the recoil. Faintly there is pain where the projections' daemons have torn at Nimue with teeth and claws, but it isn't Arthur's pain, not really.
One by one, they go down, until the hallway is littered with more corpses. Arthur rises from his cautious crouch, and Nimue turns back toward him, her tongue lolling, her fur matted down with blood in wide swathes. Arthur goes toward her, reaching for her affectionately.
A doorway opens, somewhere down the hall, and before Arthur has a chance to turn fully, he feels pain, and this time it's real, the hot, impossible tear of a bullet through his flesh. It's his thigh; it misses the artery, but it doesn't matter, he's done for anyway. He fires as he goes down, misses, hears Nimue's yelp and sees her fly past him to sink her teeth into the throat of the projection's German Shepherd daemon, and the man falls to the ground, screaming, clutching at his own body even as arterial spray coats the walls around him.
Nimue comes limping back toward Arthur; the hurt isn't as bad for her as it is for him. In moments like these, she becomes more animal, and now she is whining and licking at the edges of the wound, as if she can keep the blood from flowing.
Arthur closes his eyes for a moment, pressing both hands against his leg. "Nimue," he says, and the intent behind his voice is clear enough. He's not going anywhere, not like this, and even three-legged, Nimue is still faster than he could ever hope to be.
She whines his name, dancing back and forth in front of him.
"Go to the end of the hall, Nimue," he says.
"Please don't make me," she begs him, her voice brittle, but she starts to back away from him anyway. He feels the sick tug somewhere deep in his chest, but it's only discomfort, not real pain. Just like it used to be. They can still do this.
She comes back to him for a moment, just long enough to get the key out of his jacket pocket, and then she starts to back away again, her ears pinned, her expression tragic.
"Go, Nimue," says Arthur. "Find Eames."
Whimpering, she disappears into the stairwell.
+
He's focused on not passing out from some combination of pain and blood loss, when he sees Eames come out of the elevator. Nimue is behind him, her limp worse than before, her tail tucked between her legs. "What the fuck are you doing here?" he manages to hiss at Eames, around the thickness of his tongue in his mouth. Mekhmet comes over faster than even Nimue, and her whiskers almost touch his leg as she sniffs the wound, making a low discontent noise in her throat.
"I --" says Eames. He looks stricken; he's himself again, having dropped the forge.
"What the fuck are you doing here?" Arthur repeats, propping himself up a little further against the wall. "You were supposed to go down to the vault and open it, not come back here and stare at me, you -- fucking --"
"Arthur, you -- she came to find me," Eames says. He's totally, obviously dumbfounded. Arthur would find it funny, if he weren't so furious. He bites his own tongue to distract from the pain in his leg. "She came to find me, Arthur, and at first I couldn't understand, I just kept asking her - where's Arthur? Where is he? And I made her bring me back here, to you. Arthur -" he runs a hand through his hair, an uncharacteristically nervous gesture. "Arthur, how--?"
Arthur feels a wave of nausea wash over him, and the building shakes. "Go to the vault," he says. "Finish the job, Eames."
"I can't -- leave you here --"
"Fuck," Arthur says. "Now is not the time, Eames. Just do it, and I'll explain later. I don't know how much longer I can give you before I pass out."
He looks up to find Mekhmet staring at him with huge golden eyes, her pink tongue darting out nervously. "Go," he repeats. "Please, finish the job."
Nimue sits down next to him, shivering, and he strokes a hand over her back, leaden as his body feels. Eames and Mekhmet turn and go back down the hallway, and he closes his eyes, rests his head back against the wall, and waits.