Fic: A Hard Rain's Gonna Fall, 6/10 [Inception]
Title: A Hard Rain's Gonna Fall (6/10)
Characters/Pairings: Arthur/Eames, unrequited Robert/Arthur, past Cobb/Mal, hinted Robert/Ariadne, Browning, Saito
Rating: R
Word Count: 9,615
Disclaimer: Mr. Nolan owns it all
Warnings: Violence (graphic torture), strong language, sexual content, character death
Summary: In the aftermath of World War III and the Second Civil War of the United States, the members of the dream sharing industry have been turned into fugitives, driven underground and into hiding in order to escape assassination by Fischer Industries USA - except for one, the former leading point man in the business, who has turned traitor against the fugitives Dom Cobb, Public Enemy Number one; and the infamous Eames, leader of the Resistance.
Author's Note: Written for inception_bang . Endless thanks to my wonderful beta, niftywithan who worked tirelessly in looking over drafts, and to my dear celestineangel , without whose wonderful help (read: guidance, advice, cheerleading) this labor of love would not exist. You two are absolutely amazing!! ♥ ♥ ♥
The ride over to Gordon’s encampment is strangely quiet: Eames in the driver’s seat, mouth set in a grim line and eyes staring straight ahead, Cobb beside him in the passenger seat, the pad of his calloused index finger brushing the trigger of the Colt .45 he holds (terrible trigger discipline, but there’s no drill sergeant here to eviscerate him for it) and Michelle in backseat of the hollowed out Jeep, long limbs stretched out and with a Remington 870 laid out across her lap. The former two are apparently still pissed off at each other for various reasons and Michelle sees no reason to poke her nose where it doesn’t belong. Besides, she thinks as she tries to shift her leg into a more comfortable position with a slight grimace, she has no idea what their little tiff is about - although she can place a fair bet - and she has nothing to contribute to such a conversation, be it in favor of Captain Arthur Davidson or against him, given the fact that she’s never even seen the man, much less had any History with or concerning him.
(She does secretly want to meet him though, just once, so she can give him a piece of her mind and most likely her fist, too.)
The air around them in the densely wooded thicket is tense and unnaturally still, even more so than usual - the nuclear exchanges of WWIII had irreparably polluted the atmosphere, but the Second Civil War had more or less eradicated much (although not all) of the wildlife on the continental United States - and the only sound in the grey light of the early dawn is the rumble of the vehicle as it drives over rough terrain, dirt and small bits of rock catching in the tires and flying everywhere as the Jeep dips down into ravines and over muddy earth, and through small trickling brooks (more or less toxic, as most of the bodies of water are nowadays, water is always boiled back in camp before being able to even be considered fit for consumption; they’d found that out the hard way a long time ago), jolting its passengers to and fro. There’s another path on higher ground and with better roads, still dirt but cleared of debris and worn with more use; this one however, is faster, and given the nature of the scout’s message, this was the one Eames had taken without even so much as a if you please to the other two.
Michelle gives a short grunt of pain as the back tire rolls over a particularly large log and jostles her leg, fingers going to her bandaged thigh, trying to soothe the muscles still twinging with the fresh wounds left behind by the tourist’s merciless teeth.
“Should’ve stayed back at Sherwood, love.”
Her head snaps up and she glares at Eames, dark brown eyes meeting his steady gaze in the rearview mirror.
“Oh, hell no,” she growls, swiping a strand of hair away from her face and trying to sit up straight - a difficult feat in a Jeep hurtling through the woods at seventy miles per hour. “Don’t you dare patronize me, Eames.” She hates pet names and he knows it; the first time he’d called her by one, she’d left him with aching testicle, not caring that he’s British and thus has an excuse to get away with it.
For his part, Eames doesn’t look contrite. “You’re in pain.”
“Aren’t we all?” Michelle snarks back, but through gritted teeth. It’s true. With their failure during the last part of the recent raid, they’re still short of painkillers or anything of the like, and she’d been unwilling to take any from the emergency stock Natasha keeps. Out of the corner of her eye, she sees Cobb flicking her an assessing albeit quick glance and she glowers at him as he opens his mouth. “Don’t you start either, Broody,” she snaps. “I heard the message, and any trouble coming from Gordon’s place calls for at least a three man team.”
Cobb closes his mouth without a word.
She pauses for a moment, throat working in a tight swallow; Eames’ fingers tighten on the steering wheel and Cobb inhales a sharp breath, all of them undoubtedly remembering the last time a message of similar nature found its way to Sherwood and directly to Eames ear from Gordon’s base, citing a short, nondescript “trouble” and ending up with the bloated corpses of an entire truckload of Fishcer Industries USA soldiers, kids all wet behind the ears and barely old enough to grow a beard, slaughtered and laid out around the grounds of Gordon’s camp site. The message had come from Natasha as she made her rounds among the different camp sites and therefore a good half a week after the fact. By the time Eames and the others had gotten there, it’d been far too late to do anything but bury the bodies and hope Fischer Industries USA didn’t care enough about one missing truckload of newbies to send out a search party.
Michelle shakes her head like she’s trying to dislodge water from her ears, still seeing those bloated corpses in her mind, and turns her glare back to Eames. “Since Ezra left for his own base already and that leaves you a man short, you’re going to have to settle for me, love.
“Besides.” Her tone is soft but dangerous; her fingers move from her bandaged thigh to the shotgun in her lap. “I don’t trust Gordon.”
Her words are harsh, but they’re all on edge. After the massacre - despite all of Gordon’s insincere shows of remorse, the fact that none of the weapons toted by Fischer’s men had been fired even once told the true story - Eames should’ve stripped Gordon of his post, but he didn’t. Instead, he planted a man on Gordon’s base for the sole purpose of getting news back to Sherwood in case things got too bad (it’s common knowledge that Gordon only allows those of a like mind, aka slightly off kilter and completely without conscience in his inner circle) and this is the first time since then that said spy has sent out a missive to the scout stationed nearby for exactly this purpose. The keyword “trouble” indicates that a) Gordon is once again up to no good, b) it involves a third person, and c) differentiates it from a more urgent coded message that might spell out an attack by Fischer Industries USA or other threat to the resistance.
Eames makes a noncommittal noise in the back of his throat and pushes down even more on the accelerator; the Jeep lurches and roars to over eighty miles an hour.
As it turns out, “trouble” can’t even begin to describe what they’re going to find this time around.
* - * - *
It’s a simple structure, four wooden barriers roughly hewn from wood and fitted together like pieces of a puzzle joined together by a low ceiling. It had been created for the purposes of being a storage room; a cool, dry space to stock nonperishable goods and the like. Right now though, its interior is wet with blood; the walls reek with the stench of pain and agony, reverberate with the screams of the past thirty-six hours, cries that have yet to fade.
His breath comes in uneven, ragged gasps, head lolling limply, eyes closed - swollen shut, actually, both of them, and it’s doubtful he’ll be able to open them even if he tries. Hanging heavy from his wrists, he makes a broken silhouette in the dim light of the small room, a mass of molten purple-black bruises and open wounds, all raw and blistering and weeping pus. He barely twitches a muscle beyond the feeble shifting of his ribcage, the only thing to suggest his lungs still expand and deflate, suspended by his wrists from the ceiling like a slab of meat, more dead than alive.
The door opens then, and - “Morning, Captain!” Gordon greets sunnily, stepping right up to the other man, pursing his lips and imitating the morning wake up call of an army bugle. At the lack of any response, he raises a hand and slaps viciously at a bruised cheek, open-handed. “Hey! No croaking on me, Davidson; I’m not finished with you yet.” He reaches for the bloody baseball bat leaning against the wall, wraps his fingers around the improvised aluminum club and grins, shark-toothed and triumphant. “Haven’t even got to the best part.”
As the first swing connects with a solid crack across already fractured ribs, Arthur’s body jerks reflexively and he makes a choked sound halfway between a whimper and a sob, cracked lips parting on a strangled plea that makes Gordon laugh. But as the blows land again and again, increasing in brutality and frequency, the pitiful cry slips out again, barely audible and garbled, slurred in the delirium of pain and fever.
“Eames.”
* - * - *
Even with Eames driving like a fiend or like some drunken teenage boy who thinks he has the world at his feet and nothing left to lose, the sun is already high in the sky by the time they make it to Gordon’s camp and the instant the Jeep rounds the bend next to the telltale cluster of oak trees - one gnarled and twisted, its bark blackened and split from a direct lightening strike, another felled in the same storm and lying as a huge multi-pronged fork in the path, and a third with a huge knot at the base of its trunk - Michelle swears quietly under her breath and sits up straight, immediately at attention.
Eames kills the engine right by the oak trees, one quick flick of his wrist, and he motions for the other two to exit on the other side of the vehicle, flanking the Jeep. His right knee goes directly in the mud as he crouches down, eyes flicking quickly this way and that, gaze roving over the cold, ash-filled circular fire pit in the ground surrounded by a semi-circle of four canvas tents, the weapons lying haphazardly stacked by the tent entrances, the unnatural, utter stillness of everything - and his fingers tighten on the grip of his Beretta.
Gordon’s band is composed of only six members: two heavy-duty haulers, Eames’ informer, Gordon himself, and two eagle-eyed sentries who are always supposed to be on watch - and as of right now, there is not a single soul in sight.
Michelle watches Eames’ raised hand carefully, waiting for it to drop or for any other decision from her superior - because it’s more effective to think of him as such in situations such as this, though he is also her friend and was once a part-time lover - and at a twitch of his fingers, her muscles tense and she ignores the pain in her thigh as the three of them steal across the empty grounds, vigilant and silent, firearms at the ready. She looks for any signs of a struggle and finds none, for any indications of an attack by Fischer Industries USA and comes up with nothing, inwardly wondering if Gordon’s finally gone off the deep end and slaughtered his own men because she wouldn’t be surprised if that -
“Wait.”
Cobb and Eames halt, the latter having heard her warning and the former stopping at Eames’ lack of movement. Michelle motions at the far corner of the clearing where a little wooden structure stands, tilting her head, eyes narrowed, straining her ears.
“I thought there -”
CLANG.
The three of them are running then, sprinting toward the storehouse and the loud unidentifiable sound, bypassing two of Gordon’s extremely surprised looking men, off on what appears to be a smoke break, the cigarettes dangling from their mouths dropping to the ground as they gape. Michelle vaguely notices that both of them appear to be more startled by Eames lifting a booted foot to kick down the storehouse door than anything else, and has half a mind to ask what the fuck is going on when the door splinters off its hinges.
The sound that Eames makes is indescribable and nothing even remotely close to being human.
Arthur’s head is wrenched back so far that the angle should be impossible, all his extremities jerking as his battered body teeters on the verge of going into shock, eyes moving rapidly beneath the swollen lids. His throat, already red and raw from what looks like rope burn, works convulsively as he gags, choking on whatever one of Gordon’s men is pouring down his throat straight from the barrel as Gordon himself stands there, the fingers of one hand twisted in Arthur’s hair, holding him in place. At Eames’ sudden entrance, the man holding the barrel starts and flattens himself against the wall; the steel drum barrel falls to the concrete floor with the same sound that startled Michelle earlier, sending a wave of something black and murky across everyone’s feet: crude oil.
Cobb doesn’t make a sound, doesn’t stop to stare, doesn’t even take the time to draw a breath - he lifts his arm, takes aim, and calmly pulls the trigger, putting a bullet through Gordon’s left eye and dropping him like a slaughtered pig.
And all hell breaks loose.
- - - - -
The world is burning.
Flames, everywhere: the smell of sulfur permeates brick and clothes and flesh and bone; a rain of ashes falls over everything like a curtain, a dark veil, so very much like what he sees behind his closed eyelids and he thinks that if he reaches out, his hands will meet the darkness, tangible and cloying and so very terrifying.
Arthur can’t see anything at all.
He can feel it though, feel the world around him crumbling, feel the heat smoldering at his ankles and licking at his skin, threatening to devour him whole and forcing its way into his mouth, blocking his airway and expanding thickly - he can’t breathe, oh God, and the smoke is too much. But how can smoke fill his mouth with a viscosity like molasses and the taste of death itself?
Blind, he staggers along the city that he created, leaning against the dilapidated walls - he was the best point man in the business when the business still existed, but he’s not too shabby of an architect either; he was always rather fond of paradoxes and labyrinths - feeling out his way, and his fingers smear traces of guilt and shame and self-hatred. The wind shrieks, calling out everything but his given name, decrying him as traitor, Judas, traitor and he stumbles, falls, sobbing out apologies and pleading forgiveness.
And then he hears it, a voice that he thought was lost to him forever - and it’s rough like sandpaper against his heart, familiar like a lover’s touch, calling out to him. But the world is burning and then there’s pain and smoke and ash that his tears cut tracks through as they streak down his face, and he doesn’t deserve the kindness although he begged for it, begged for the man whose voice now calls out to him as he drowns in oblivion. But he can’t reach it, the voice, can’t reach him, the man he’s waited so long for because the agony is too great and he can’t possibly stand, he can’t.
He can’t.
So he crawls. And as Arthur crawls he writes that man’s name with his fingertips and his blood, with all that he is, across every square foot of the world that burns - Eames, Eames, William Thomas Eames.
- - - - -
Eames’ mien is an odd contortion of conflicting emotions, as if the muscles in his face can’t decide on any one expression as Arthur’s right arm swings free from the rope, the wrist chafed bloody, hand covered in small, circular cigarette burns. He moves to catch the slumping frame and Arthur moans quietly as his wounds make contact with Eames’ solid warmth, broken bones grinding together and abused flesh too sensitive to the touch.
“Eames?” Cobb murmurs, questioning, pausing in the midst of working the tip of his knife carefully through the knots on the rope securing Arthur’s left arm. He’s bleeding from the shoulder himself, where a bullet happened to graze him in the firefight that had ensued after he killed Gordon (loyal to the end, all of Gordon’s men bar Eames’ plant had put up quite an impressive fight, and now all lie quite still in coagulating pools of blood-soaked mud) but he only has eyes for his former point man. “Eames, is he-”
“Non!” Arthur croaks, voice cracking, “non, s’il vous plait, pitié, don’t, please…I can’t…” He babbles a bit more, completely incoherent now, and when Cobb frees his other arm, he slumps with something that sounds suspiciously like a sob, muffled against Eames’ chest.
Eames throws Cobb a frantic look and the other man immediately sheathes the knife and goes to carefully help shift Arthur’s weight, looping one of the slack arms over his shoulders. “Arthur.” Cobb’s voice is quiet, pitched low, going for soothing; he tries not to think about how the arm he’s put on his own shoulders is partially skinned from shoulder to elbow, the exposed reddish-pink flesh glistening sickly, how there are still dribbles of oil at the corners of Arthur’s mouth and down his neck, or how close to dead the former point man looks. “Arthur, can you walk?”
From her place by the door, Michelle starts, a shocked gasp escaping her throat. “Arthur?” she repeats, blinking rapidly, because she’s a smart woman and doesn’t need help connecting the dots. And up comes the Remington 870 she holds, an automatic response although she doesn’t seem to be aware of it. “As in, Captain Arthur Davidson?”
“Michelle,” Eames says quietly, looking at her with a steady gaze. “Please be so kind as to point that somewhere else.” His tone is pleasant enough as he nods at the shotgun, but it’s the type of friendliness that can precede something dangerous. His free hand moves a fraction of an inch toward his gun and it’s evident what the result will be if he has to choose.
“It is him, isn’t it.” No question this time, just a flat statement, and Michelle’s gaze is inscrutable as she takes in the sight of the beaten, tortured man barely standing on his own two feet. Her lips thin, fingers tightening fractionally on the shotgun, and both Cobb’s jaw and his grip on Arthur’s wrist tightens, although he lets up a bit on the latter when Arthur whimpers pathetically, head lolling limply, another stream of broken French slipping past his lips.
All that quickly then, the front sight is down and pointed at the dirt. Michelle’s shoulders are by no means relaxed, but they’re no longer tense in preparation of conflict either, and the look she levels at the half-delirious Arthur is careful and guarded, but lacking in venom. “I’ll get the car,” she says softly, then turns and goes to suit action to words, leaving Eames and Cobb alone with their burden. The two men exchange glances, then Cobb puts his other arm around Arthur’s waist and carefully, murmuring words of encouragement, he tries to lead Arthur forward as Eames gently nudges the back of one of Arthur’s shaking knees in wordless guidance.
Big mistake.
As soon as they prompt Arthur into taking one step, the sole of his boot (standard issue from Fischer Industries USA; both Eames and Cobb frown at that but now isn’t the time to fuss over something so petty) making full contact with the ground, his muscles lock up in a full body convulsion, and he more or less collapses with a choked scream, throwing his weight off balance and pitching forward as his knees give out. Eames barely manages to catch him before he faceplants in the dirt, one strong arm looping around Arthur’s chest, his clothes going a dirty copperish red with Arthur’s blood.
“Bit not good,” Eames mutters aloud, and despite his poor stab at nonchalance, the heightening panic in his voice is all too easy to identify. He looks to Cobb. “Pull him along?”
They distribute Arthur’s scant weight between the two of them as Michelle pulls up in the Jeep and watches them without a word or moving to assist. (At least the shotgun is safely stored and out of sight.) While Cobb is preoccupied with trying to speak to Arthur and putting two fingers to the bruised long expanse of throat, Eames finds himself looking down as he steps over Gordon’s fallen form, foot nudging the dead man’s shoulder, boot sinking deep into a pool of crimson.
- - - - -
05 May 2018
Mojave Desert, Nevada
1300 hours
“Ah, there they are.”
Eames grins widely, putting his hands behind his head as he watches the trucks roll into camp and release their passengers and cargo, all crew cuts and stern faces and well-muscled chests beneath black t-shirts and camouflage print trousers. “Gordon.” Tilting back in the chair, he puts one foot up on the cot opposite his and uses the other to nudge the man lounging on his back in the dirt. “Look alive for the new arrivals, yeah?”
Gordon swats at the boot prodding his shoulder and flips over, squinting at the new arrivals, and groans. “Aw, damn. They weren’t fucking around with us when they said they’d be bringing Marines in, huh?”
Eames chuckles, crossing tattooed arms across his chest and squinting through the haze of the desert heat and merciless Nevada sun. He’s never really understood the little tiff between the Army boys and the Marines, but it’s not like it’s any of his business anyway; he’s just here to work off a rather unfortunate debt. Cigarette dangling from his lips, he makes a noncommittal sound in reply to Gordon’s cynical complaint and stretches languidly; the obstacle course that morning had been a nice run through, just barely enough to keep his muscles singing and the blood pumping. “Marines, hmm?” he murmurs. “The few, the proud…” His eyes alight on one individual in particular, and he stares unabashedly, feet thumping down from the cot and narrowly missing Gordon’s head, ignoring his friend’s “hey!” of annoyance. “…And the absolutely bloody gorgeous.”
“The fuck?” Gordon’s laugh is a startled bark, slightly wary in the way one might respond to a comment that may or may not be a joke. As he follows Eames’ line of sight, his eyebrows go up. A moment later, they go down in a spectacular frown and he clears his throat, eyes going down as he scrapes a line in the dirt with the heel of his boot. “Might wanna quit drooling over that one, Eames.”
“And why is that?” Eames cocks an eyebrow; not taking his eyes from the dark-haired, lithe-limbed young man who looks like he’d be more suited to doing a pas de chat and pirouetting across a stage than stepping onto the base of operations for a highly clandestine joint military effort oh so creatively dubbed ‘The Program’. “Your government already did away with all that ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ nonsense nearly a decade ago.” The stress on the first word and refusal of ownership is emphasized by Eames’ lilting accent and the way he pokes dispassionately at the dog tags laying against his chest.
Gordon snorts. “Yeah, well that there is Davidson.”
“Is it now?”
Gordon looks at him, incredulous. “Davidson? Arthur Davidson? As in the orphan kid who was scooped up by the military at sixteen years old, and hailed as some prodigy soldier?” His tone is one of disgust; clearly there’s no love lost on this Arthur Davidson character. “CIA, the Army and the Marines actually fought over him for a while.”
“Arthur?” Eames murmurs, rolling the name around in his mouth like a particularly appetizing dessert. “Arthur. Oh, that’s lovely.”
“Trust me, man, you don’t want to get involved with him.” Gordon stands, dusting himself off, voice lowering as the aforementioned Marine walks past the canvas tent’s open flap, glaring. “Arrogant bastard even walks like he has a stick up his ass,” he mutters as a parting comment before he leaves for his own tent.
He barely notices Gordon’s departure, craning his neck to watch Arthur instead. “And what a fine arse it is.” Eames’ smirk grows wider, playful. “Semper fi, oh yes please.”
- - - - -
“Please…no, God, please…”
Arthur’s voice is wrecked, hoarse, stripped raw and broken, and not at all in a good way - for Eames has heard him wheezing and gasping before, out of breathless want and wanton pleasure, and this is nothing like that. Against his better judgment, his eyes go to the rearview mirror, gaze hard and betraying nothing as he watches Arthur writhe atop the uncomfortable seats, battered frame shaking as if arrested with a bone-deep chill. His skin burns fever hot though, going an unhealthy pink under the mass of bruises mapped out all over his skin and the whimpers that slip past his lips are barely audible and half of the time, unintelligible.
There really is no way for him to be comfortable; it’s an impossibility given the number and nature of the injuries Arthur’s sustained, so in the end there was nothing to do but to stretch him out in the backseat, laying him down with his head in Michelle’s lap (she really doesn’t look too happy about this new development but is holding her tongue and carefully holding Arthur’s limbs down to keep him from hurting himself further) as Eames drives like a madman because now there is the very real possibility of losing something - of losing someone - and he is not about to let that happen. In the passenger seat, Cobb sits with his upper torso twisted toward the back seat, jaw set tightly and unwavering gaze taking and cataloging all of Arthur’s visible wounds, frame as tightly coiled as a spring.
As the Jeep flies along the muddy path at dangerous speeds, the rough jostling pitches Arthur to and fro a bit, eliciting pained moans and more incoherent babbling, but Eames refuses to slow down. He doesn’t trust Arthur to refrain from going into shock or for the vicious infection from the raw, ugly wounds to hold off until they get back to Sherwood, and as the front tires dip down into a gully, the entire vehicle’s frame jolts and shudders, ruthless - and Arthur jackknifes up off Michelle’s lap, back arching like the curve of a bow, eyes open as wide as they can go - mere slits in his face, glassy and unseeing - and screams.
“SHIT!” Cobb yells, scrambling over the seat and lunging for Arthur, crashing into the former point man and wrapping his arms around Arthur’s broken frame as Michelle presses up against the side of the Jeep to give them as much room as possible, hands up in surrender, clearly out of her depth. “ARTHUR! Arthur, it’s okay, it’s alright; you’re alright-”
Deaf to Cobb’s voice and all reason, Arthur fights against the hold but his struggles are weak, and his next scream is a garbled mass of syllables that devolves into a full-fledged sob that tears its way into Eames’ chest, where something dark and sharp-clawed and bitter-fanged lurks, something that makes him want to turn the Jeep around and empty his clip into Gordon’s skull, regardless of the fact that the bastard’s already dead.
“Michelle, fuck - calm him down!” He barks instead, panic clawing its way up his throat, eyes on the snapping branches and muddy path now, both unwilling and unable to take in the sight of Arthur clinging to Cobb like a hurt, frightened child and muffling his screams into Cobb’s shoulder.
“The hell am I supposed to do?!”
“You’re the bloody woman, use your maternal nurturing instincts-”
“Shut up both of you; that’s not fucking helping-”
“MON DIEU!” Arthur shrieks hysterically, fingers clawing at Cobb’s back, convulsing helplessly, throat jerking with sobs. “Tuez-moi,” he stutters out then, and Eames goes cold. “Tuez-moi maintenant, maintenant, tuez-moi-” The words in the chant begin to blend together until it’s a litany, a plea, a desperate cry: “TUEZ-MOI MAINTENANT!”
Eames doesn’t even stop the car. He twists around in his seat, gun in hand, ignoring Michelle’s wide eyes, the look of horror on Cobb’s face, and the latter’s vehement roar of “EAMES, DON’T YOU FUCKING DARE!” as he raises the Beretta and brings the butt of the weapon down solidly against the base of Arthur’s skull with a crack.
Arthur slumps against Cobb’s chest, mercifully unconscious, and then Eames turns back around, putting the acceleration pedal to the floor and ignoring Cobb’s death-glare in the stunned silence that follows. He makes no apologies either, and refuses to offer up any explanation besides this: “You,” he barely manages to get out, hating to believe that the voice coming out of his mouth is actually his own; it’s like his throat has forgotten how words are supposed to sound. “You were just letting him scream.”
- - - - -
05 March 2018
Mojave Desert, Nevada
1800 hours
When Eames leaves the Mess Hall and gets back to the tent he shares with the three other members of his fireteam, he finds that a Marine fireteam has also been assigned to the living space, four other men - all of whom seem to be cordial enough, possessing little to none of the antagonistic attitude expected and as a result, have been welcomed as comrades of equal standing. After making the proper introductions with three of the Marines, Eames finds his gaze drawn toward a lean, dark-haired figure standing at the far side of the tent, watching him with dark, shrewd eyes.
“So,” is the first word Arthur Lawrence Davidson ever says to him, careful and assessing in the way that, in the months to come, Eames will learn is simply the younger man’s nature, “how does a British man end up in an inter-military cooperation venture as a part of the United States Army?”
Eames crosses his arms in mock contemplation. “Well,” he drawls, eyes on that smart, grim mouth that he wonders if he can goad into a smile, “it was either this or spending some time in a cozy little five by ten until I repay my dues to society.” He gestures to the sun setting below horizon. “View’s much nicer here.”
A dark eyebrow arches. “…I see.” Arthur turns away, and only now does Eames notice that everyone else has fallen silent and stopped his actions, waiting to see the outcome of the exchange - the army privates ready to leap to Eames’ defense if necessary, and the Marines clearly willing to do the same for one of their own as well - as if this is the ultimate factor in whether the two sides will spend the next eight months trying to kill each other or working together as a cohesive unit. There’s a tense pause, then Arthur speaks again, voice laced with a hint of good humor and tinged with exasperation. “You can stop ogling me any time now, Eames.”
Eames grins, now in familiar territory. “Oh, but where’s the fun in that, darling?”
Arthur’s shoulders stiffen, but the laughter from the other men break the uneasy atmosphere and Eames simply smirks at the glare he receives, chuckling under his breath as Arthur looks him up and down and mutters, “Christ, tuez-moi maintenant.”
Kill me now.
There’s a smirk twitching at the corner of his lips though, and when Eames catches that momentary flash of a dimple, he finds his own grin growing stupidly wider, and all he can think about is how to devise a way to make this lovely, intriguing creature smile again.
* - * - *
May 8, 2028
Well, it seems like Sherwood is stocked for at least another two weeks or so, or at least Eames says it’s safe enough to go on another raid. I don’t know how twenty rolls of toilet paper or three boxes of canned goods is supposed to last twenty-some people for that amount of time, but I’ve had worse, so I’m not complaining. Fischer Industries really doesn’t care much for sanitation in their little hellholes of refugee camps.
Ariadne stops, brow wrinkling in disgust at the memory, tapping the nib of the pen against the paper and creating a constellation of tiny black dots across the creamy white page. With a thoughtful twist of her lips, she begins to connect the dots and a wry smile pulls at her lips as a maze slowly begins to appear in the margins; for a moment then - and not for the first time - she wonders at what could have been, in an alternate universe perhaps, if World War III never happened and the United States hadn’t erupted in a Second Civil War, if she’d followed through with her dreams of going into architecture. She’d always wanted to go study in Paris…
“Ariadne?” This time she doesn’t jump at the voice and instead looks up with a smile, patting the space beside her on the log in invitation while simultaneously flipping to a clean page in the notebook, hiding her journal entry from sight. With a shy grin, Tommy takes the offered seat, elbows on his knees and chin in his hands. “Er…are you busy?” He raises his eyebrows at the journal. “Working on another one of Cobb’s mazes or something?”
Not really.
“Oh, well.” Tommy backtracks quickly, and it’s clear that despite his athletic build and background, he never really was a ladies’ man. It is, Ariadne thinks, quite adorable. “I mean, I just thought…’cause you’re always carrying that diary around, so I thought…”
Well, she writes smoothly, deciding to take pity on him, for the people who don’t know how to sign, it’s easier to write out what’s on my mind than putting on a game of charades every time I have something to say.
“Oh.” Cheeks flushed, he digs the toe of his boot into the mud. “Yeah…I guess that makes sense.”
In the silence that follows, Ariadne waits patiently for this poor boy (who obviously has little to no game) to make his next move, secretly thinking it would be much easier if he just kisses her already. She would make the decisive move herself, if she doesn’t think such forwardness would scare him off, so for now she just twirls her pen between her fingers, staring across the way as Natasha packs her things, temporarily holding down the fort at Sherwood but ready to set off as soon as Eames and the others get back; something about a pregnant woman in the third refugee camp over. Even at this distance, Ariadne can hear the older woman grumbling about midwives and general anesthesia, or the lack thereof.
Beside her, Tommy takes in a deep breath, hands curled into fists. “Ariadne,” he starts, tone oddly formal, “would you be interested in…I mean…”
But someone or something in the universe must have something against Ariadne’s nonexistent romantic life or the possibility of her ever being able to start one (to find a relationship in the time of war, imagine that) - maybe some otherworldly or cosmic force that fancies itself an overprotective big brother - because whatever Tommy may have been considering saying is abruptly halted by the squeal of brakes as a muddied Jeep tears through the gates and across the grounds, throwing up clumps of mud and clods of grass in its frantic wake. It screeches to a stop right in front of the medical cabin and this time it’s Michelle jumping out of the vehicle and calling for Natasha as Eames kills the engine and goes around to the back.
Even from this distance, the look on his face - something caught between terrible pain and a twisted fury so agonized and heart-wrenching that it’s a countenance only ever written of in stories or seen in the imagination of a tortured artist - causes Ariadne’s chest to constrict painfully, like all the air has suddenly been squeezed from her lungs. She’s off the log and charging across the muddy field like a sprinter off the starting block without the faintest idea why, drawn towards that look like a moth to a flame. Her journal lies abandoned next to the similarly forgotten Tommy and her heels slip-slide in the mud as she draws alongside the Jeep, breath coming hard and fast.
“Give him here, Cobb.”
Cobb is a statue of steel and marble, stern and unforgiving, unrelenting and untrusting as he holds the bruised and bloodied form against his chest protectively as one would a prized possession or a very dear child. “No.”
“Oh for pity’s sake - I’m not going to bloody hurt him!” Eames’ front is partially covered in dried blood and the burnt copper stains his fingers as well; the expression on his face is even more painful up close as he tries to wrestle the badly beaten individual out of Cobb’s firm hold, pinched and pale, making the scar stand out like a slash of white across his features. His efforts are relentless but surprisingly gentle and those supposedly oxymoronic descriptions can only work with someone like Eames, someone who is a soldier and a chameleon who can just as easily stare down a menacing, flinty-eyed Gordon as he can hide the hurt of his past behind a handsome, roguish grin and his scarred mien.
Eames makes no effort to hide now though, as he finally succeeds in prying the limp body away from Cobb’s stiff fingers, the former extractor having apparently realized the impossibility of climbing out of the backseat of the Jeep with his burden still tightly clasped in his arms and reluctantly let go. The young man slumps backwards and his head falls back against Eames’ shoulder, arms obeying the rules of gravity and sliding downwards heavily, hands flopping limply at the wrists like a puppet in an odd, slightly off-center version of Michelangelo’s Pietá - not so much chiseled marble as ugly, livid splotches of purple-black spanning the length of pale skin flushed with fever and streaked with blood - and Ariadne gasps, a silent inhalation of breath.
She knows him.
Click.
Ariadne’s eyes snap open in her tear-streaked face; the dirty fingers splayed over her hip have frozen and the look on her would-be rapist’s face is a combination of mounting terror and undisguised dread. Understandable, for anyone with the muzzle of a shiny Glock 17 pressed against the base of his skull.
The voice belonging to the razor-slim dark figure holding the gun - Ariadne can’t see his features clearly through her film of tears - is cold, flat, and laced with steel, the voice of a man whose orders are never disobeyed if one wishes to see the light of another day. “Get off of her, you sorry son of a bitch, before I put a bullet in your fucking skull.”
The Fischer Industries lackey scrambles to obey, hands held up in surrender. “S-sir, I-”
“Don’t speak.” The barrel of the gun tilts toward the line of armored trucks in the background. “I’ll deal with you later. Now MOVE, soldier!”
Ariadne turns onto her side, curling up into a tight fetal position, every muscle tense, her entire frame rigid. Her shirt is beyond saving and she grabs desperately at the tattered remains of cloth, stifling a silent sob against her fist, trying to ignore everything and everyone in the world that exists right now or might have existed at one point; holy CHRIST she just wants to take a goddamn shower-
A careful hand on her shoulder sends a lightning bolt directly to her sympathetic nervous system and she jerks away with a terrified, silent scream that nonetheless reverberates in her mind even as her vocal chords lock up. (Although, in retrospect, she should’ve known that anyone with a touch that gentle would never harm her, but she can’t be held responsible for any knee-jerk reactions at that moment in time.)
The man crouched on the ground in front of her is young but by no means naïve, eyes dark and world weary and - can it possibly be - caring in a way Ariadne hasn’t seen in the longest time, much less from someone wearing the Fischer Industries USA uniform and insignia; he quickly pulls his leather-gloved hand away to give her space. “Hey,” he says quietly, and his voice is soft now, soothing. “Hey, it’s alright. I’m not going to hurt you.” In one smooth movement, he takes off his dark jacket and offers it up to her freely, face devoid of any trickery or expectation of anything in return. “Here.”
She stares at him, half in fear and half in distrust, her arms crossed over her chest and shivering at the chill of the frigid November air. After a moment she hesitantly reaches out and takes the jacket with trembling fingers, draping it around her shoulders and clasping the edges like a lifeline, knuckles going white.
He watches her, eyes respectfully remaining on her face the entire time, his gaze careful and concerned. “Are you hurt?”
Ariadne shakes her head once, then jerks back with wide eyes as the man inches closer. He offers her a wry smile, a bitter twist of his lips. “I’m sorry,” he says with utter sincerity - another shock - and casts a glance around them at the bombed out ruins of what might’ve once been an apartment complex. “But I can honestly say that staying here is going to be worse for you than if you come to one of Fischer’s camps.” He holds out a hand, palm facing the sky. “No one’s going to hurt you. I won’t let them.”
Her fingers clench even tighter in the fabric of the jacket’s lining and she searches his eyes with the gaze of a wounded animal caught in a trap: hurt and wary, teeth chattering, eyes darting to his hand - and then she makes a choice, reaching out, shaking fingers intertwining with black leather as he helps her to her feet.
“Out of the way, Shorty,” Michelle says right beside her, putting an arm around her shoulders and Ariadne starts, allowing the other woman to steer her clear of Eames’ path. He moves quickly around the Jeep and towards the medical cabin, cradling the nameless young man against his chest as he storms past the door Natasha holds open, directly a wordless warning glare at the small crowd of onlookers that have started to gather. She continues to stare as Cobb goes in after them - “Quick, on the table - careful now, damn it!” - and Natasha spouting off frantic phrases in a mix of Russian and English, asking for bandages and gauze, seychas, chyort voz’mi, seychas!
“Come on.” Michelle nudges her, then raises her voice to address the curious bystanders, “Alright people, let’s move it! Nothing to see here, go on!”
- - - - -
10 July 2018
San Pedro Bay, California
1200 hours
“Nothing to see here, Eames.” Arthur’s voice is muffled as he pulls the sopping wet shirt over his head, revealing a long expanse of pale skin (and how the bloody hell is it possible for anyone to be that white after spending weeks under the blistering sun in basic training?) stretching over lean muscles in a way that makes Eames realize just how tight his trousers have suddenly become. “So move along.”
“Oh, I beg to differ, darling.” It is fucking unfair, Eames decides, as he crosses his arms over his chest and leans against the solid wooden frames of the bunks to admire the view. It’s unfair because Arthur probably has no earthly idea what he’s capable of doing, of what he does to Eames just by standing there, or barking out orders (in a fashion that clearly foreshadows some inevitable promotion to officer status in the very near future), or even his prima donna-like insistence on shaving each and every morning - and with a straight razor no less, the skillful bastard.
Gordon was right to call him an arrogant bastard because most of the time, Arthur is curt in manner and the textbook definition of a proper Marine: straight-laced, sharp as a blade and with no imagination to speak of - but he lives up to his name and all that comes with being only nineteen and far too good at what he does, a standout even among the best of the best, handpicked by the higher ups in The Program itself. He’s the one who is always one step ahead of the already exceptional pack, who mentally runs through a hundred strategic options and comes to a definite conclusion in the time it takes others to even start contemplating one, the type of soldier who is almost machine-like in his methodical orderliness, in the way he swiftly disassembles an M40 sniping rifle with nimble fingers, in the way he can inspire deference and even awe in his peers, but never anything even remotely close to a comradely bond of friendship.
(Sometimes, Eames secretly wonders if Arthur ever gets lonely.)
He’s poncy and condescending and bloody gorgeous to boot, not to mention terribly clever (Eames thinks of himself as a pretty smart man, but to guess what’s going on inside Arthur’s lovely head most of the time is a near impossible task) and Eames makes no apologies for all the flirting and the pet names if it means he can get Arthur to smile every one in a fucking blue moon.
“I saw what you did back there.”
Eames blinks, shaken from his thoughts. “Sorry, what’s that?”
Arthur’s seated on his lower bunk now, unlacing the sodden laces of his combat boots - one day out of the desert and what they get is a bloody series of obstacle courses in and out of the sodding Pacific Ocean - but at Eames’ evident confusion, he looks up. “Helping Preston through the last leg of the course,” he clarifies, his expression unreadable. Leaning back, he crosses his arms and narrows his eyes. “He wouldn’t have made it otherwise.”
And here Eames hesitates ever so slightly because although Arthur is no snitch - far too upstanding for such juvenile behavior - he is an unimaginative soldier with a stick up his arse, and it had been made quite clear to all those participating in The Program right from the start that each man is to rely upon his own abilities in order for the powers that be to collate the proper data, thereby ensuring the smallest possible margin of error. Eames is a marvelous liar, though - or so he’s been told on many an occasion - but eventually he simply tilts his head and replies with a nonchalant, “And what of it?”
“Didn’t take you for the type to never leave a man behind.” Arthur smiles then, a crooked pull at the corner of his lips. “Rather decent of you.”
For a moment, Eames finds himself honestly struck dumb at the sincerity in Arthur’s tone, but he recovers quickly, an easy grin sliding onto his face. “Oh Arthur, love,” he purrs, “you are simply too kind to say so.”
The soggy boot aimed straight at his face does nothing to diffuse the strange warmth in his chest.
- - - - -
Arthur jerks, his entire frame seizing up in a full-body convulsion as Natasha pulls at one of his leather boots and she immediately lets go, casting a harried, frenzied glance at Eames. “What is it?” she barks, accent sharpened and temper shortened by frantic urgency. “There are broken bones, open fractures, wounds that have already been infected and he is missing the skin from half of this arm - but you said nothing of his feet, William!” Her eyes then shoot to Cobb. “Dominic?!”
Cobb frowns at her, clearly puzzled, but Eames’ face darkens as understanding dawns, and then he’s reaching into his own boot and pulling out a hunting knife. “Hold him down.”
“What the fuck-” Cobb starts, blanching at the blade, but Eames interrupts him.
“I know what Gordon did.” He motions to Arthur, whose face is tight with pain, even in unconsciousness, and covered in a thin sheen of sweat. “Across the hips, mind you. He’ll fight.” With that, he sticks the blade in against the leather and cuts away everything above the heel, and then carefully, leaning his entire weight across Arthur’s shins, starts to peel the poor remains of the footwear from the bottom of Arthur’s foot.
And Arthur screams, the cords in his neck standing out, head thrown back against the elevated padded operating table, fighting against the pain. Cobb grunts with effort, trying to hold down the lithe frame without doing further damage or aggravating the raw, open wounds. Natasha scurries out of the way of Arthur’s weakly flailing fists - she’s about a hundred pounds soaking wet and too old to be wrestling uncooperative patients down anymore - and hurries over to where Eames is grimly continuing the ministration. And she swears, Russian words flying thick and fast as she all but races over to the wall of the cabin, grabbing tweezers and cotton rounds and rubbing alcohol.
“What is it?” Cobb all but snaps, his frustration and worry mounting. “Goddamn it, Eames-”
“The bastard burned them!” Eames growls back, his face contorted in half-grimace, half-snarl, teeth bared in a scarily feral manner, intended for the dead man who did this. “Gordon fucking burned the soles of his feet, then put the bloody boots back on!”
For a moment, Cobb does a rather spectacular impression of a goldfish. The next, though, Natasha touches a cotton round saturated with rubbing alcohol to the weeping, blistered mass on one heel - and Arthur bucks with a strangled sob, wrenching free of Cobb’s hold, the muscles in his leg twitching. His knee clips Eames on the jaw as he turns in a violent motion, nearly falling off the table, and Cobb barely manages to catch him with a frantic - “Arthur!”
Natasha gasps, her eyes going wide, and she’s the one who stumbles back although Eames is the one bleeding from the mouth, probably having bitten his tongue. “Arthur?” she repeats shakily. “William…what is this? Is this man-”
“Tash, love,” Eames says thickly, wiping at the corner of his mouth with the back of his wrist. “Listen to me.” He holds his hands out in the universal gesture of conciliation. “Yes, he is the man you think he is, but I need him -” and here he pauses, goes back, and corrects himself. “We need him well enough for…interrogation.” From behind him, Cobb makes strangled noise of protest as he gently lays Arthur back on the table, but Eames ignores him, looking to the woman cautiously. “Tash?”
She still looks relatively shell-shocked, but steps forward, nodding to Cobb hovering protectively over Arthur, and reaches for a roll of bandages.
- - - - -
10 August 2018
Mojave Desert, Nevada
1700 hours
“Charming,” Eames remarks dryly as Arthur sweeps into the tent space after the debrief, lying down on his back and staring up at the canvas. “Well done, you.”
“Don’t start, Eames,” Arthur snaps. He’s quite a sight - the color is high on his cheeks (more from anger and frustration any anything else) and his long fingers are clenched into tight fists, every muscle in his body tense, every nerve shrieking in agitation. As temporary leader, and generally, as a rule of thumb and part of his personality, Arthur shoulders the brunt of the blame for their team’s failure in the exercise, and it obviously stings.
The rest of the men are quiet, sitting on their respective cots like children watching their parents squabble and not knowing what to do. It’s understandable, really, given that anyone, even the most battle-hardened soldier would quell and shrink under the intensity of Arthur’s dark-eyed, furious glare. He paces back and forth, steps short and measured, one hand coming up to run through his hair, growing longer now from the standard buzz-cut and slicked back with gel, the other held stiffly at his side. “The logistics were off,” he mutters under his breath, voice low and dangerously tight. “But that’s not possible.”
“Maybe there was a mistake?” Sheldon asks from a corner of the tent, and when Arthur rounds on him, he makes a small squeaking sound. “…Sir?”
The sight of a man about ten years Arthur’s senior with half a foot and probably fifty pounds on him more or less cowering would be an amusing sight, but no one feels like laughing.
“Not fucking possible,” Arthur repeats, a growl. The atmosphere is electric; no one speaks or moves. Then Eames swings his legs over the side of the cot and stands, swinging his arms, stretching languidly.
“Oh, do stop your brooding,” he drawls. “So we lost out the training exercise to Gordon’s team and right, it was a bit of a cock-up, but you aren’t the only one at fault. Ease up, yeah?”
Arthur shoots him a poisonous look. “Don’t fucking condescend to me, Eames,” he hisses, sharp and biting, cutting off the syllables at the end of each word. “I know my responsibilities, and-”
“Yes, well, you’re just in sparkling form then, aren’t you, darling?” Eames interjects rudely. The heat is fucking unbearable, tempers are short, and as he’s certain he saw one or two of Gordon’s teammates doing something that should be quite illegal during the course of the exercise, he would really prefer Arthur drop the issue rather than try to work out the how and the why of Gordon’s unsavory victory. However, he’s rather knackered, as well, and thus completely unprepared for one hundred and sixty-some pounds of pure muscle of an infuriated Marine plowing into him in a full-body tackle, bringing the both of them into an ungraceful sprawl, Eames’ back and skull colliding solidly with the ground first.
Arthur hauls himself up just far enough to pull his fist back and then Eames tastes blood as his vision explodes in white sparks. Bloody hell, Arthur’s got a rather impressive left hook on him. It’s reflex, then - his own fist shoots upwards, connecting with Arthur’s cheek, and then they’re off.
“EAMES!”
“DAVIDSON!”
“Sir!!”
It’s a vicious fight, full of tension that comes only partially from Arthur’s frustration and slight embarrassment at losing out to another team in a training exercise, each touch sparking off into something even larger, unspoken, and quite potentially even more dangerous than this. No punches are pulled and each man has his own pride, so no holding back. They scuffle in the dirt like schoolboys and Eames can hear the shouts of men congregating around them, some yelling encouragement and among them Sheldon’s low baritone, Merande’s slightly effeminate tenor, and perhaps Durden and Arthur’s Marine mates as well, trying to get them to stop. He narrowly avoids a kick to the family jewels - because Arthur’s proving himself to be just as clever in a fistfight as in strategic procedures so of course he fights fast and hard and just a bit dirty - but then knuckles meet his nose straight on, there’s the crack of cartilage and a burst of blood.
“Bloody-” Growling under his breath, Eames grinds his knuckles into a pressure point on the inside of Arthur’s elbow, gets rewarded by a hiss of pain, and the arm bends automatically, allowing easy access. Pinning the limb, he grapples for dominance, slinging a leg over the slim hips and putting the knee of the other leg right against Arthur’s sternum, using his weight to his advantage. Nose dripping blood, panting heavily, and with the left side of his face and torso throbbing painfully, Eames looks down at his opponent - and freezes.
Dark eyes that are twin sparks of obsidian glare upward, a muscle in a finely sculpted jaw twitches in obvious ire at being pinned and his lips are curved back slightly in a silent growl. This is not the soldier who takes on his sparring partners in routine hand-to-hand combat sessions with ease, that man’s face is always smooth and calm, utterly devoid of emotion, eyes shuttered and mouth pressed into a thin line, betraying nothing. No, this is a man who vibrates with tension and anger, who takes everything he might know about composure and propriety and puts it in his fist, who bares his teeth with an intensity that makes Eames stare in wordless wonder - this is the Arthur that makes William Eames’ blood sing hot and causes heat to sear low in his belly, because this Arthur is mussed and bloodied, bruised and absolutely glorious.
“Christ, but look at you,” Eames breathes, honestly considering leaning down and kissing Arthur right then and there. The desire to do so must show on his face and he gains the split second satisfaction of seeing those dark eyes widening ever so slightly and a flush that spreads like wildfire up Arthur’s neck and across his cheekbones - before Arthur brings his shoulders up off the ground and slams his forehead against Eames’ in a brutal head butt.
CRACK.
Stars, a rush of colors spinning rapidly away into blackness, then nothing.
* - * - *
Part 7a
Characters/Pairings: Arthur/Eames, unrequited Robert/Arthur, past Cobb/Mal, hinted Robert/Ariadne, Browning, Saito
Rating: R
Word Count: 9,615
Disclaimer: Mr. Nolan owns it all
Warnings: Violence (graphic torture), strong language, sexual content, character death
Summary: In the aftermath of World War III and the Second Civil War of the United States, the members of the dream sharing industry have been turned into fugitives, driven underground and into hiding in order to escape assassination by Fischer Industries USA - except for one, the former leading point man in the business, who has turned traitor against the fugitives Dom Cobb, Public Enemy Number one; and the infamous Eames, leader of the Resistance.
Author's Note: Written for inception_bang . Endless thanks to my wonderful beta, niftywithan who worked tirelessly in looking over drafts, and to my dear celestineangel , without whose wonderful help (read: guidance, advice, cheerleading) this labor of love would not exist. You two are absolutely amazing!! ♥ ♥ ♥
The ride over to Gordon’s encampment is strangely quiet: Eames in the driver’s seat, mouth set in a grim line and eyes staring straight ahead, Cobb beside him in the passenger seat, the pad of his calloused index finger brushing the trigger of the Colt .45 he holds (terrible trigger discipline, but there’s no drill sergeant here to eviscerate him for it) and Michelle in backseat of the hollowed out Jeep, long limbs stretched out and with a Remington 870 laid out across her lap. The former two are apparently still pissed off at each other for various reasons and Michelle sees no reason to poke her nose where it doesn’t belong. Besides, she thinks as she tries to shift her leg into a more comfortable position with a slight grimace, she has no idea what their little tiff is about - although she can place a fair bet - and she has nothing to contribute to such a conversation, be it in favor of Captain Arthur Davidson or against him, given the fact that she’s never even seen the man, much less had any History with or concerning him.
(She does secretly want to meet him though, just once, so she can give him a piece of her mind and most likely her fist, too.)
The air around them in the densely wooded thicket is tense and unnaturally still, even more so than usual - the nuclear exchanges of WWIII had irreparably polluted the atmosphere, but the Second Civil War had more or less eradicated much (although not all) of the wildlife on the continental United States - and the only sound in the grey light of the early dawn is the rumble of the vehicle as it drives over rough terrain, dirt and small bits of rock catching in the tires and flying everywhere as the Jeep dips down into ravines and over muddy earth, and through small trickling brooks (more or less toxic, as most of the bodies of water are nowadays, water is always boiled back in camp before being able to even be considered fit for consumption; they’d found that out the hard way a long time ago), jolting its passengers to and fro. There’s another path on higher ground and with better roads, still dirt but cleared of debris and worn with more use; this one however, is faster, and given the nature of the scout’s message, this was the one Eames had taken without even so much as a if you please to the other two.
Michelle gives a short grunt of pain as the back tire rolls over a particularly large log and jostles her leg, fingers going to her bandaged thigh, trying to soothe the muscles still twinging with the fresh wounds left behind by the tourist’s merciless teeth.
“Should’ve stayed back at Sherwood, love.”
Her head snaps up and she glares at Eames, dark brown eyes meeting his steady gaze in the rearview mirror.
“Oh, hell no,” she growls, swiping a strand of hair away from her face and trying to sit up straight - a difficult feat in a Jeep hurtling through the woods at seventy miles per hour. “Don’t you dare patronize me, Eames.” She hates pet names and he knows it; the first time he’d called her by one, she’d left him with aching testicle, not caring that he’s British and thus has an excuse to get away with it.
For his part, Eames doesn’t look contrite. “You’re in pain.”
“Aren’t we all?” Michelle snarks back, but through gritted teeth. It’s true. With their failure during the last part of the recent raid, they’re still short of painkillers or anything of the like, and she’d been unwilling to take any from the emergency stock Natasha keeps. Out of the corner of her eye, she sees Cobb flicking her an assessing albeit quick glance and she glowers at him as he opens his mouth. “Don’t you start either, Broody,” she snaps. “I heard the message, and any trouble coming from Gordon’s place calls for at least a three man team.”
Cobb closes his mouth without a word.
She pauses for a moment, throat working in a tight swallow; Eames’ fingers tighten on the steering wheel and Cobb inhales a sharp breath, all of them undoubtedly remembering the last time a message of similar nature found its way to Sherwood and directly to Eames ear from Gordon’s base, citing a short, nondescript “trouble” and ending up with the bloated corpses of an entire truckload of Fishcer Industries USA soldiers, kids all wet behind the ears and barely old enough to grow a beard, slaughtered and laid out around the grounds of Gordon’s camp site. The message had come from Natasha as she made her rounds among the different camp sites and therefore a good half a week after the fact. By the time Eames and the others had gotten there, it’d been far too late to do anything but bury the bodies and hope Fischer Industries USA didn’t care enough about one missing truckload of newbies to send out a search party.
Michelle shakes her head like she’s trying to dislodge water from her ears, still seeing those bloated corpses in her mind, and turns her glare back to Eames. “Since Ezra left for his own base already and that leaves you a man short, you’re going to have to settle for me, love.
“Besides.” Her tone is soft but dangerous; her fingers move from her bandaged thigh to the shotgun in her lap. “I don’t trust Gordon.”
Her words are harsh, but they’re all on edge. After the massacre - despite all of Gordon’s insincere shows of remorse, the fact that none of the weapons toted by Fischer’s men had been fired even once told the true story - Eames should’ve stripped Gordon of his post, but he didn’t. Instead, he planted a man on Gordon’s base for the sole purpose of getting news back to Sherwood in case things got too bad (it’s common knowledge that Gordon only allows those of a like mind, aka slightly off kilter and completely without conscience in his inner circle) and this is the first time since then that said spy has sent out a missive to the scout stationed nearby for exactly this purpose. The keyword “trouble” indicates that a) Gordon is once again up to no good, b) it involves a third person, and c) differentiates it from a more urgent coded message that might spell out an attack by Fischer Industries USA or other threat to the resistance.
Eames makes a noncommittal noise in the back of his throat and pushes down even more on the accelerator; the Jeep lurches and roars to over eighty miles an hour.
As it turns out, “trouble” can’t even begin to describe what they’re going to find this time around.
* - * - *
It’s a simple structure, four wooden barriers roughly hewn from wood and fitted together like pieces of a puzzle joined together by a low ceiling. It had been created for the purposes of being a storage room; a cool, dry space to stock nonperishable goods and the like. Right now though, its interior is wet with blood; the walls reek with the stench of pain and agony, reverberate with the screams of the past thirty-six hours, cries that have yet to fade.
His breath comes in uneven, ragged gasps, head lolling limply, eyes closed - swollen shut, actually, both of them, and it’s doubtful he’ll be able to open them even if he tries. Hanging heavy from his wrists, he makes a broken silhouette in the dim light of the small room, a mass of molten purple-black bruises and open wounds, all raw and blistering and weeping pus. He barely twitches a muscle beyond the feeble shifting of his ribcage, the only thing to suggest his lungs still expand and deflate, suspended by his wrists from the ceiling like a slab of meat, more dead than alive.
The door opens then, and - “Morning, Captain!” Gordon greets sunnily, stepping right up to the other man, pursing his lips and imitating the morning wake up call of an army bugle. At the lack of any response, he raises a hand and slaps viciously at a bruised cheek, open-handed. “Hey! No croaking on me, Davidson; I’m not finished with you yet.” He reaches for the bloody baseball bat leaning against the wall, wraps his fingers around the improvised aluminum club and grins, shark-toothed and triumphant. “Haven’t even got to the best part.”
As the first swing connects with a solid crack across already fractured ribs, Arthur’s body jerks reflexively and he makes a choked sound halfway between a whimper and a sob, cracked lips parting on a strangled plea that makes Gordon laugh. But as the blows land again and again, increasing in brutality and frequency, the pitiful cry slips out again, barely audible and garbled, slurred in the delirium of pain and fever.
“Eames.”
* - * - *
Even with Eames driving like a fiend or like some drunken teenage boy who thinks he has the world at his feet and nothing left to lose, the sun is already high in the sky by the time they make it to Gordon’s camp and the instant the Jeep rounds the bend next to the telltale cluster of oak trees - one gnarled and twisted, its bark blackened and split from a direct lightening strike, another felled in the same storm and lying as a huge multi-pronged fork in the path, and a third with a huge knot at the base of its trunk - Michelle swears quietly under her breath and sits up straight, immediately at attention.
Eames kills the engine right by the oak trees, one quick flick of his wrist, and he motions for the other two to exit on the other side of the vehicle, flanking the Jeep. His right knee goes directly in the mud as he crouches down, eyes flicking quickly this way and that, gaze roving over the cold, ash-filled circular fire pit in the ground surrounded by a semi-circle of four canvas tents, the weapons lying haphazardly stacked by the tent entrances, the unnatural, utter stillness of everything - and his fingers tighten on the grip of his Beretta.
Gordon’s band is composed of only six members: two heavy-duty haulers, Eames’ informer, Gordon himself, and two eagle-eyed sentries who are always supposed to be on watch - and as of right now, there is not a single soul in sight.
Michelle watches Eames’ raised hand carefully, waiting for it to drop or for any other decision from her superior - because it’s more effective to think of him as such in situations such as this, though he is also her friend and was once a part-time lover - and at a twitch of his fingers, her muscles tense and she ignores the pain in her thigh as the three of them steal across the empty grounds, vigilant and silent, firearms at the ready. She looks for any signs of a struggle and finds none, for any indications of an attack by Fischer Industries USA and comes up with nothing, inwardly wondering if Gordon’s finally gone off the deep end and slaughtered his own men because she wouldn’t be surprised if that -
“Wait.”
Cobb and Eames halt, the latter having heard her warning and the former stopping at Eames’ lack of movement. Michelle motions at the far corner of the clearing where a little wooden structure stands, tilting her head, eyes narrowed, straining her ears.
“I thought there -”
CLANG.
The three of them are running then, sprinting toward the storehouse and the loud unidentifiable sound, bypassing two of Gordon’s extremely surprised looking men, off on what appears to be a smoke break, the cigarettes dangling from their mouths dropping to the ground as they gape. Michelle vaguely notices that both of them appear to be more startled by Eames lifting a booted foot to kick down the storehouse door than anything else, and has half a mind to ask what the fuck is going on when the door splinters off its hinges.
The sound that Eames makes is indescribable and nothing even remotely close to being human.
Arthur’s head is wrenched back so far that the angle should be impossible, all his extremities jerking as his battered body teeters on the verge of going into shock, eyes moving rapidly beneath the swollen lids. His throat, already red and raw from what looks like rope burn, works convulsively as he gags, choking on whatever one of Gordon’s men is pouring down his throat straight from the barrel as Gordon himself stands there, the fingers of one hand twisted in Arthur’s hair, holding him in place. At Eames’ sudden entrance, the man holding the barrel starts and flattens himself against the wall; the steel drum barrel falls to the concrete floor with the same sound that startled Michelle earlier, sending a wave of something black and murky across everyone’s feet: crude oil.
Cobb doesn’t make a sound, doesn’t stop to stare, doesn’t even take the time to draw a breath - he lifts his arm, takes aim, and calmly pulls the trigger, putting a bullet through Gordon’s left eye and dropping him like a slaughtered pig.
And all hell breaks loose.
- - - - -
The world is burning.
Flames, everywhere: the smell of sulfur permeates brick and clothes and flesh and bone; a rain of ashes falls over everything like a curtain, a dark veil, so very much like what he sees behind his closed eyelids and he thinks that if he reaches out, his hands will meet the darkness, tangible and cloying and so very terrifying.
Arthur can’t see anything at all.
He can feel it though, feel the world around him crumbling, feel the heat smoldering at his ankles and licking at his skin, threatening to devour him whole and forcing its way into his mouth, blocking his airway and expanding thickly - he can’t breathe, oh God, and the smoke is too much. But how can smoke fill his mouth with a viscosity like molasses and the taste of death itself?
Blind, he staggers along the city that he created, leaning against the dilapidated walls - he was the best point man in the business when the business still existed, but he’s not too shabby of an architect either; he was always rather fond of paradoxes and labyrinths - feeling out his way, and his fingers smear traces of guilt and shame and self-hatred. The wind shrieks, calling out everything but his given name, decrying him as traitor, Judas, traitor and he stumbles, falls, sobbing out apologies and pleading forgiveness.
And then he hears it, a voice that he thought was lost to him forever - and it’s rough like sandpaper against his heart, familiar like a lover’s touch, calling out to him. But the world is burning and then there’s pain and smoke and ash that his tears cut tracks through as they streak down his face, and he doesn’t deserve the kindness although he begged for it, begged for the man whose voice now calls out to him as he drowns in oblivion. But he can’t reach it, the voice, can’t reach him, the man he’s waited so long for because the agony is too great and he can’t possibly stand, he can’t.
He can’t.
So he crawls. And as Arthur crawls he writes that man’s name with his fingertips and his blood, with all that he is, across every square foot of the world that burns - Eames, Eames, William Thomas Eames.
- - - - -
Eames’ mien is an odd contortion of conflicting emotions, as if the muscles in his face can’t decide on any one expression as Arthur’s right arm swings free from the rope, the wrist chafed bloody, hand covered in small, circular cigarette burns. He moves to catch the slumping frame and Arthur moans quietly as his wounds make contact with Eames’ solid warmth, broken bones grinding together and abused flesh too sensitive to the touch.
“Eames?” Cobb murmurs, questioning, pausing in the midst of working the tip of his knife carefully through the knots on the rope securing Arthur’s left arm. He’s bleeding from the shoulder himself, where a bullet happened to graze him in the firefight that had ensued after he killed Gordon (loyal to the end, all of Gordon’s men bar Eames’ plant had put up quite an impressive fight, and now all lie quite still in coagulating pools of blood-soaked mud) but he only has eyes for his former point man. “Eames, is he-”
“Non!” Arthur croaks, voice cracking, “non, s’il vous plait, pitié, don’t, please…I can’t…” He babbles a bit more, completely incoherent now, and when Cobb frees his other arm, he slumps with something that sounds suspiciously like a sob, muffled against Eames’ chest.
Eames throws Cobb a frantic look and the other man immediately sheathes the knife and goes to carefully help shift Arthur’s weight, looping one of the slack arms over his shoulders. “Arthur.” Cobb’s voice is quiet, pitched low, going for soothing; he tries not to think about how the arm he’s put on his own shoulders is partially skinned from shoulder to elbow, the exposed reddish-pink flesh glistening sickly, how there are still dribbles of oil at the corners of Arthur’s mouth and down his neck, or how close to dead the former point man looks. “Arthur, can you walk?”
From her place by the door, Michelle starts, a shocked gasp escaping her throat. “Arthur?” she repeats, blinking rapidly, because she’s a smart woman and doesn’t need help connecting the dots. And up comes the Remington 870 she holds, an automatic response although she doesn’t seem to be aware of it. “As in, Captain Arthur Davidson?”
“Michelle,” Eames says quietly, looking at her with a steady gaze. “Please be so kind as to point that somewhere else.” His tone is pleasant enough as he nods at the shotgun, but it’s the type of friendliness that can precede something dangerous. His free hand moves a fraction of an inch toward his gun and it’s evident what the result will be if he has to choose.
“It is him, isn’t it.” No question this time, just a flat statement, and Michelle’s gaze is inscrutable as she takes in the sight of the beaten, tortured man barely standing on his own two feet. Her lips thin, fingers tightening fractionally on the shotgun, and both Cobb’s jaw and his grip on Arthur’s wrist tightens, although he lets up a bit on the latter when Arthur whimpers pathetically, head lolling limply, another stream of broken French slipping past his lips.
All that quickly then, the front sight is down and pointed at the dirt. Michelle’s shoulders are by no means relaxed, but they’re no longer tense in preparation of conflict either, and the look she levels at the half-delirious Arthur is careful and guarded, but lacking in venom. “I’ll get the car,” she says softly, then turns and goes to suit action to words, leaving Eames and Cobb alone with their burden. The two men exchange glances, then Cobb puts his other arm around Arthur’s waist and carefully, murmuring words of encouragement, he tries to lead Arthur forward as Eames gently nudges the back of one of Arthur’s shaking knees in wordless guidance.
Big mistake.
As soon as they prompt Arthur into taking one step, the sole of his boot (standard issue from Fischer Industries USA; both Eames and Cobb frown at that but now isn’t the time to fuss over something so petty) making full contact with the ground, his muscles lock up in a full body convulsion, and he more or less collapses with a choked scream, throwing his weight off balance and pitching forward as his knees give out. Eames barely manages to catch him before he faceplants in the dirt, one strong arm looping around Arthur’s chest, his clothes going a dirty copperish red with Arthur’s blood.
“Bit not good,” Eames mutters aloud, and despite his poor stab at nonchalance, the heightening panic in his voice is all too easy to identify. He looks to Cobb. “Pull him along?”
They distribute Arthur’s scant weight between the two of them as Michelle pulls up in the Jeep and watches them without a word or moving to assist. (At least the shotgun is safely stored and out of sight.) While Cobb is preoccupied with trying to speak to Arthur and putting two fingers to the bruised long expanse of throat, Eames finds himself looking down as he steps over Gordon’s fallen form, foot nudging the dead man’s shoulder, boot sinking deep into a pool of crimson.
- - - - -
05 May 2018
Mojave Desert, Nevada
1300 hours
“Ah, there they are.”
Eames grins widely, putting his hands behind his head as he watches the trucks roll into camp and release their passengers and cargo, all crew cuts and stern faces and well-muscled chests beneath black t-shirts and camouflage print trousers. “Gordon.” Tilting back in the chair, he puts one foot up on the cot opposite his and uses the other to nudge the man lounging on his back in the dirt. “Look alive for the new arrivals, yeah?”
Gordon swats at the boot prodding his shoulder and flips over, squinting at the new arrivals, and groans. “Aw, damn. They weren’t fucking around with us when they said they’d be bringing Marines in, huh?”
Eames chuckles, crossing tattooed arms across his chest and squinting through the haze of the desert heat and merciless Nevada sun. He’s never really understood the little tiff between the Army boys and the Marines, but it’s not like it’s any of his business anyway; he’s just here to work off a rather unfortunate debt. Cigarette dangling from his lips, he makes a noncommittal sound in reply to Gordon’s cynical complaint and stretches languidly; the obstacle course that morning had been a nice run through, just barely enough to keep his muscles singing and the blood pumping. “Marines, hmm?” he murmurs. “The few, the proud…” His eyes alight on one individual in particular, and he stares unabashedly, feet thumping down from the cot and narrowly missing Gordon’s head, ignoring his friend’s “hey!” of annoyance. “…And the absolutely bloody gorgeous.”
“The fuck?” Gordon’s laugh is a startled bark, slightly wary in the way one might respond to a comment that may or may not be a joke. As he follows Eames’ line of sight, his eyebrows go up. A moment later, they go down in a spectacular frown and he clears his throat, eyes going down as he scrapes a line in the dirt with the heel of his boot. “Might wanna quit drooling over that one, Eames.”
“And why is that?” Eames cocks an eyebrow; not taking his eyes from the dark-haired, lithe-limbed young man who looks like he’d be more suited to doing a pas de chat and pirouetting across a stage than stepping onto the base of operations for a highly clandestine joint military effort oh so creatively dubbed ‘The Program’. “Your government already did away with all that ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ nonsense nearly a decade ago.” The stress on the first word and refusal of ownership is emphasized by Eames’ lilting accent and the way he pokes dispassionately at the dog tags laying against his chest.
Gordon snorts. “Yeah, well that there is Davidson.”
“Is it now?”
Gordon looks at him, incredulous. “Davidson? Arthur Davidson? As in the orphan kid who was scooped up by the military at sixteen years old, and hailed as some prodigy soldier?” His tone is one of disgust; clearly there’s no love lost on this Arthur Davidson character. “CIA, the Army and the Marines actually fought over him for a while.”
“Arthur?” Eames murmurs, rolling the name around in his mouth like a particularly appetizing dessert. “Arthur. Oh, that’s lovely.”
“Trust me, man, you don’t want to get involved with him.” Gordon stands, dusting himself off, voice lowering as the aforementioned Marine walks past the canvas tent’s open flap, glaring. “Arrogant bastard even walks like he has a stick up his ass,” he mutters as a parting comment before he leaves for his own tent.
He barely notices Gordon’s departure, craning his neck to watch Arthur instead. “And what a fine arse it is.” Eames’ smirk grows wider, playful. “Semper fi, oh yes please.”
- - - - -
“Please…no, God, please…”
Arthur’s voice is wrecked, hoarse, stripped raw and broken, and not at all in a good way - for Eames has heard him wheezing and gasping before, out of breathless want and wanton pleasure, and this is nothing like that. Against his better judgment, his eyes go to the rearview mirror, gaze hard and betraying nothing as he watches Arthur writhe atop the uncomfortable seats, battered frame shaking as if arrested with a bone-deep chill. His skin burns fever hot though, going an unhealthy pink under the mass of bruises mapped out all over his skin and the whimpers that slip past his lips are barely audible and half of the time, unintelligible.
There really is no way for him to be comfortable; it’s an impossibility given the number and nature of the injuries Arthur’s sustained, so in the end there was nothing to do but to stretch him out in the backseat, laying him down with his head in Michelle’s lap (she really doesn’t look too happy about this new development but is holding her tongue and carefully holding Arthur’s limbs down to keep him from hurting himself further) as Eames drives like a madman because now there is the very real possibility of losing something - of losing someone - and he is not about to let that happen. In the passenger seat, Cobb sits with his upper torso twisted toward the back seat, jaw set tightly and unwavering gaze taking and cataloging all of Arthur’s visible wounds, frame as tightly coiled as a spring.
As the Jeep flies along the muddy path at dangerous speeds, the rough jostling pitches Arthur to and fro a bit, eliciting pained moans and more incoherent babbling, but Eames refuses to slow down. He doesn’t trust Arthur to refrain from going into shock or for the vicious infection from the raw, ugly wounds to hold off until they get back to Sherwood, and as the front tires dip down into a gully, the entire vehicle’s frame jolts and shudders, ruthless - and Arthur jackknifes up off Michelle’s lap, back arching like the curve of a bow, eyes open as wide as they can go - mere slits in his face, glassy and unseeing - and screams.
“SHIT!” Cobb yells, scrambling over the seat and lunging for Arthur, crashing into the former point man and wrapping his arms around Arthur’s broken frame as Michelle presses up against the side of the Jeep to give them as much room as possible, hands up in surrender, clearly out of her depth. “ARTHUR! Arthur, it’s okay, it’s alright; you’re alright-”
Deaf to Cobb’s voice and all reason, Arthur fights against the hold but his struggles are weak, and his next scream is a garbled mass of syllables that devolves into a full-fledged sob that tears its way into Eames’ chest, where something dark and sharp-clawed and bitter-fanged lurks, something that makes him want to turn the Jeep around and empty his clip into Gordon’s skull, regardless of the fact that the bastard’s already dead.
“Michelle, fuck - calm him down!” He barks instead, panic clawing its way up his throat, eyes on the snapping branches and muddy path now, both unwilling and unable to take in the sight of Arthur clinging to Cobb like a hurt, frightened child and muffling his screams into Cobb’s shoulder.
“The hell am I supposed to do?!”
“You’re the bloody woman, use your maternal nurturing instincts-”
“Shut up both of you; that’s not fucking helping-”
“MON DIEU!” Arthur shrieks hysterically, fingers clawing at Cobb’s back, convulsing helplessly, throat jerking with sobs. “Tuez-moi,” he stutters out then, and Eames goes cold. “Tuez-moi maintenant, maintenant, tuez-moi-” The words in the chant begin to blend together until it’s a litany, a plea, a desperate cry: “TUEZ-MOI MAINTENANT!”
Eames doesn’t even stop the car. He twists around in his seat, gun in hand, ignoring Michelle’s wide eyes, the look of horror on Cobb’s face, and the latter’s vehement roar of “EAMES, DON’T YOU FUCKING DARE!” as he raises the Beretta and brings the butt of the weapon down solidly against the base of Arthur’s skull with a crack.
Arthur slumps against Cobb’s chest, mercifully unconscious, and then Eames turns back around, putting the acceleration pedal to the floor and ignoring Cobb’s death-glare in the stunned silence that follows. He makes no apologies either, and refuses to offer up any explanation besides this: “You,” he barely manages to get out, hating to believe that the voice coming out of his mouth is actually his own; it’s like his throat has forgotten how words are supposed to sound. “You were just letting him scream.”
- - - - -
05 March 2018
Mojave Desert, Nevada
1800 hours
When Eames leaves the Mess Hall and gets back to the tent he shares with the three other members of his fireteam, he finds that a Marine fireteam has also been assigned to the living space, four other men - all of whom seem to be cordial enough, possessing little to none of the antagonistic attitude expected and as a result, have been welcomed as comrades of equal standing. After making the proper introductions with three of the Marines, Eames finds his gaze drawn toward a lean, dark-haired figure standing at the far side of the tent, watching him with dark, shrewd eyes.
“So,” is the first word Arthur Lawrence Davidson ever says to him, careful and assessing in the way that, in the months to come, Eames will learn is simply the younger man’s nature, “how does a British man end up in an inter-military cooperation venture as a part of the United States Army?”
Eames crosses his arms in mock contemplation. “Well,” he drawls, eyes on that smart, grim mouth that he wonders if he can goad into a smile, “it was either this or spending some time in a cozy little five by ten until I repay my dues to society.” He gestures to the sun setting below horizon. “View’s much nicer here.”
A dark eyebrow arches. “…I see.” Arthur turns away, and only now does Eames notice that everyone else has fallen silent and stopped his actions, waiting to see the outcome of the exchange - the army privates ready to leap to Eames’ defense if necessary, and the Marines clearly willing to do the same for one of their own as well - as if this is the ultimate factor in whether the two sides will spend the next eight months trying to kill each other or working together as a cohesive unit. There’s a tense pause, then Arthur speaks again, voice laced with a hint of good humor and tinged with exasperation. “You can stop ogling me any time now, Eames.”
Eames grins, now in familiar territory. “Oh, but where’s the fun in that, darling?”
Arthur’s shoulders stiffen, but the laughter from the other men break the uneasy atmosphere and Eames simply smirks at the glare he receives, chuckling under his breath as Arthur looks him up and down and mutters, “Christ, tuez-moi maintenant.”
Kill me now.
There’s a smirk twitching at the corner of his lips though, and when Eames catches that momentary flash of a dimple, he finds his own grin growing stupidly wider, and all he can think about is how to devise a way to make this lovely, intriguing creature smile again.
* - * - *
May 8, 2028
Well, it seems like Sherwood is stocked for at least another two weeks or so, or at least Eames says it’s safe enough to go on another raid. I don’t know how twenty rolls of toilet paper or three boxes of canned goods is supposed to last twenty-some people for that amount of time, but I’ve had worse, so I’m not complaining. Fischer Industries really doesn’t care much for sanitation in their little hellholes of refugee camps.
Ariadne stops, brow wrinkling in disgust at the memory, tapping the nib of the pen against the paper and creating a constellation of tiny black dots across the creamy white page. With a thoughtful twist of her lips, she begins to connect the dots and a wry smile pulls at her lips as a maze slowly begins to appear in the margins; for a moment then - and not for the first time - she wonders at what could have been, in an alternate universe perhaps, if World War III never happened and the United States hadn’t erupted in a Second Civil War, if she’d followed through with her dreams of going into architecture. She’d always wanted to go study in Paris…
“Ariadne?” This time she doesn’t jump at the voice and instead looks up with a smile, patting the space beside her on the log in invitation while simultaneously flipping to a clean page in the notebook, hiding her journal entry from sight. With a shy grin, Tommy takes the offered seat, elbows on his knees and chin in his hands. “Er…are you busy?” He raises his eyebrows at the journal. “Working on another one of Cobb’s mazes or something?”
Not really.
“Oh, well.” Tommy backtracks quickly, and it’s clear that despite his athletic build and background, he never really was a ladies’ man. It is, Ariadne thinks, quite adorable. “I mean, I just thought…’cause you’re always carrying that diary around, so I thought…”
Well, she writes smoothly, deciding to take pity on him, for the people who don’t know how to sign, it’s easier to write out what’s on my mind than putting on a game of charades every time I have something to say.
“Oh.” Cheeks flushed, he digs the toe of his boot into the mud. “Yeah…I guess that makes sense.”
In the silence that follows, Ariadne waits patiently for this poor boy (who obviously has little to no game) to make his next move, secretly thinking it would be much easier if he just kisses her already. She would make the decisive move herself, if she doesn’t think such forwardness would scare him off, so for now she just twirls her pen between her fingers, staring across the way as Natasha packs her things, temporarily holding down the fort at Sherwood but ready to set off as soon as Eames and the others get back; something about a pregnant woman in the third refugee camp over. Even at this distance, Ariadne can hear the older woman grumbling about midwives and general anesthesia, or the lack thereof.
Beside her, Tommy takes in a deep breath, hands curled into fists. “Ariadne,” he starts, tone oddly formal, “would you be interested in…I mean…”
But someone or something in the universe must have something against Ariadne’s nonexistent romantic life or the possibility of her ever being able to start one (to find a relationship in the time of war, imagine that) - maybe some otherworldly or cosmic force that fancies itself an overprotective big brother - because whatever Tommy may have been considering saying is abruptly halted by the squeal of brakes as a muddied Jeep tears through the gates and across the grounds, throwing up clumps of mud and clods of grass in its frantic wake. It screeches to a stop right in front of the medical cabin and this time it’s Michelle jumping out of the vehicle and calling for Natasha as Eames kills the engine and goes around to the back.
Even from this distance, the look on his face - something caught between terrible pain and a twisted fury so agonized and heart-wrenching that it’s a countenance only ever written of in stories or seen in the imagination of a tortured artist - causes Ariadne’s chest to constrict painfully, like all the air has suddenly been squeezed from her lungs. She’s off the log and charging across the muddy field like a sprinter off the starting block without the faintest idea why, drawn towards that look like a moth to a flame. Her journal lies abandoned next to the similarly forgotten Tommy and her heels slip-slide in the mud as she draws alongside the Jeep, breath coming hard and fast.
“Give him here, Cobb.”
Cobb is a statue of steel and marble, stern and unforgiving, unrelenting and untrusting as he holds the bruised and bloodied form against his chest protectively as one would a prized possession or a very dear child. “No.”
“Oh for pity’s sake - I’m not going to bloody hurt him!” Eames’ front is partially covered in dried blood and the burnt copper stains his fingers as well; the expression on his face is even more painful up close as he tries to wrestle the badly beaten individual out of Cobb’s firm hold, pinched and pale, making the scar stand out like a slash of white across his features. His efforts are relentless but surprisingly gentle and those supposedly oxymoronic descriptions can only work with someone like Eames, someone who is a soldier and a chameleon who can just as easily stare down a menacing, flinty-eyed Gordon as he can hide the hurt of his past behind a handsome, roguish grin and his scarred mien.
Eames makes no effort to hide now though, as he finally succeeds in prying the limp body away from Cobb’s stiff fingers, the former extractor having apparently realized the impossibility of climbing out of the backseat of the Jeep with his burden still tightly clasped in his arms and reluctantly let go. The young man slumps backwards and his head falls back against Eames’ shoulder, arms obeying the rules of gravity and sliding downwards heavily, hands flopping limply at the wrists like a puppet in an odd, slightly off-center version of Michelangelo’s Pietá - not so much chiseled marble as ugly, livid splotches of purple-black spanning the length of pale skin flushed with fever and streaked with blood - and Ariadne gasps, a silent inhalation of breath.
She knows him.
Click.
Ariadne’s eyes snap open in her tear-streaked face; the dirty fingers splayed over her hip have frozen and the look on her would-be rapist’s face is a combination of mounting terror and undisguised dread. Understandable, for anyone with the muzzle of a shiny Glock 17 pressed against the base of his skull.
The voice belonging to the razor-slim dark figure holding the gun - Ariadne can’t see his features clearly through her film of tears - is cold, flat, and laced with steel, the voice of a man whose orders are never disobeyed if one wishes to see the light of another day. “Get off of her, you sorry son of a bitch, before I put a bullet in your fucking skull.”
The Fischer Industries lackey scrambles to obey, hands held up in surrender. “S-sir, I-”
“Don’t speak.” The barrel of the gun tilts toward the line of armored trucks in the background. “I’ll deal with you later. Now MOVE, soldier!”
Ariadne turns onto her side, curling up into a tight fetal position, every muscle tense, her entire frame rigid. Her shirt is beyond saving and she grabs desperately at the tattered remains of cloth, stifling a silent sob against her fist, trying to ignore everything and everyone in the world that exists right now or might have existed at one point; holy CHRIST she just wants to take a goddamn shower-
A careful hand on her shoulder sends a lightning bolt directly to her sympathetic nervous system and she jerks away with a terrified, silent scream that nonetheless reverberates in her mind even as her vocal chords lock up. (Although, in retrospect, she should’ve known that anyone with a touch that gentle would never harm her, but she can’t be held responsible for any knee-jerk reactions at that moment in time.)
The man crouched on the ground in front of her is young but by no means naïve, eyes dark and world weary and - can it possibly be - caring in a way Ariadne hasn’t seen in the longest time, much less from someone wearing the Fischer Industries USA uniform and insignia; he quickly pulls his leather-gloved hand away to give her space. “Hey,” he says quietly, and his voice is soft now, soothing. “Hey, it’s alright. I’m not going to hurt you.” In one smooth movement, he takes off his dark jacket and offers it up to her freely, face devoid of any trickery or expectation of anything in return. “Here.”
She stares at him, half in fear and half in distrust, her arms crossed over her chest and shivering at the chill of the frigid November air. After a moment she hesitantly reaches out and takes the jacket with trembling fingers, draping it around her shoulders and clasping the edges like a lifeline, knuckles going white.
He watches her, eyes respectfully remaining on her face the entire time, his gaze careful and concerned. “Are you hurt?”
Ariadne shakes her head once, then jerks back with wide eyes as the man inches closer. He offers her a wry smile, a bitter twist of his lips. “I’m sorry,” he says with utter sincerity - another shock - and casts a glance around them at the bombed out ruins of what might’ve once been an apartment complex. “But I can honestly say that staying here is going to be worse for you than if you come to one of Fischer’s camps.” He holds out a hand, palm facing the sky. “No one’s going to hurt you. I won’t let them.”
Her fingers clench even tighter in the fabric of the jacket’s lining and she searches his eyes with the gaze of a wounded animal caught in a trap: hurt and wary, teeth chattering, eyes darting to his hand - and then she makes a choice, reaching out, shaking fingers intertwining with black leather as he helps her to her feet.
“Out of the way, Shorty,” Michelle says right beside her, putting an arm around her shoulders and Ariadne starts, allowing the other woman to steer her clear of Eames’ path. He moves quickly around the Jeep and towards the medical cabin, cradling the nameless young man against his chest as he storms past the door Natasha holds open, directly a wordless warning glare at the small crowd of onlookers that have started to gather. She continues to stare as Cobb goes in after them - “Quick, on the table - careful now, damn it!” - and Natasha spouting off frantic phrases in a mix of Russian and English, asking for bandages and gauze, seychas, chyort voz’mi, seychas!
“Come on.” Michelle nudges her, then raises her voice to address the curious bystanders, “Alright people, let’s move it! Nothing to see here, go on!”
- - - - -
10 July 2018
San Pedro Bay, California
1200 hours
“Nothing to see here, Eames.” Arthur’s voice is muffled as he pulls the sopping wet shirt over his head, revealing a long expanse of pale skin (and how the bloody hell is it possible for anyone to be that white after spending weeks under the blistering sun in basic training?) stretching over lean muscles in a way that makes Eames realize just how tight his trousers have suddenly become. “So move along.”
“Oh, I beg to differ, darling.” It is fucking unfair, Eames decides, as he crosses his arms over his chest and leans against the solid wooden frames of the bunks to admire the view. It’s unfair because Arthur probably has no earthly idea what he’s capable of doing, of what he does to Eames just by standing there, or barking out orders (in a fashion that clearly foreshadows some inevitable promotion to officer status in the very near future), or even his prima donna-like insistence on shaving each and every morning - and with a straight razor no less, the skillful bastard.
Gordon was right to call him an arrogant bastard because most of the time, Arthur is curt in manner and the textbook definition of a proper Marine: straight-laced, sharp as a blade and with no imagination to speak of - but he lives up to his name and all that comes with being only nineteen and far too good at what he does, a standout even among the best of the best, handpicked by the higher ups in The Program itself. He’s the one who is always one step ahead of the already exceptional pack, who mentally runs through a hundred strategic options and comes to a definite conclusion in the time it takes others to even start contemplating one, the type of soldier who is almost machine-like in his methodical orderliness, in the way he swiftly disassembles an M40 sniping rifle with nimble fingers, in the way he can inspire deference and even awe in his peers, but never anything even remotely close to a comradely bond of friendship.
(Sometimes, Eames secretly wonders if Arthur ever gets lonely.)
He’s poncy and condescending and bloody gorgeous to boot, not to mention terribly clever (Eames thinks of himself as a pretty smart man, but to guess what’s going on inside Arthur’s lovely head most of the time is a near impossible task) and Eames makes no apologies for all the flirting and the pet names if it means he can get Arthur to smile every one in a fucking blue moon.
“I saw what you did back there.”
Eames blinks, shaken from his thoughts. “Sorry, what’s that?”
Arthur’s seated on his lower bunk now, unlacing the sodden laces of his combat boots - one day out of the desert and what they get is a bloody series of obstacle courses in and out of the sodding Pacific Ocean - but at Eames’ evident confusion, he looks up. “Helping Preston through the last leg of the course,” he clarifies, his expression unreadable. Leaning back, he crosses his arms and narrows his eyes. “He wouldn’t have made it otherwise.”
And here Eames hesitates ever so slightly because although Arthur is no snitch - far too upstanding for such juvenile behavior - he is an unimaginative soldier with a stick up his arse, and it had been made quite clear to all those participating in The Program right from the start that each man is to rely upon his own abilities in order for the powers that be to collate the proper data, thereby ensuring the smallest possible margin of error. Eames is a marvelous liar, though - or so he’s been told on many an occasion - but eventually he simply tilts his head and replies with a nonchalant, “And what of it?”
“Didn’t take you for the type to never leave a man behind.” Arthur smiles then, a crooked pull at the corner of his lips. “Rather decent of you.”
For a moment, Eames finds himself honestly struck dumb at the sincerity in Arthur’s tone, but he recovers quickly, an easy grin sliding onto his face. “Oh Arthur, love,” he purrs, “you are simply too kind to say so.”
The soggy boot aimed straight at his face does nothing to diffuse the strange warmth in his chest.
- - - - -
Arthur jerks, his entire frame seizing up in a full-body convulsion as Natasha pulls at one of his leather boots and she immediately lets go, casting a harried, frenzied glance at Eames. “What is it?” she barks, accent sharpened and temper shortened by frantic urgency. “There are broken bones, open fractures, wounds that have already been infected and he is missing the skin from half of this arm - but you said nothing of his feet, William!” Her eyes then shoot to Cobb. “Dominic?!”
Cobb frowns at her, clearly puzzled, but Eames’ face darkens as understanding dawns, and then he’s reaching into his own boot and pulling out a hunting knife. “Hold him down.”
“What the fuck-” Cobb starts, blanching at the blade, but Eames interrupts him.
“I know what Gordon did.” He motions to Arthur, whose face is tight with pain, even in unconsciousness, and covered in a thin sheen of sweat. “Across the hips, mind you. He’ll fight.” With that, he sticks the blade in against the leather and cuts away everything above the heel, and then carefully, leaning his entire weight across Arthur’s shins, starts to peel the poor remains of the footwear from the bottom of Arthur’s foot.
And Arthur screams, the cords in his neck standing out, head thrown back against the elevated padded operating table, fighting against the pain. Cobb grunts with effort, trying to hold down the lithe frame without doing further damage or aggravating the raw, open wounds. Natasha scurries out of the way of Arthur’s weakly flailing fists - she’s about a hundred pounds soaking wet and too old to be wrestling uncooperative patients down anymore - and hurries over to where Eames is grimly continuing the ministration. And she swears, Russian words flying thick and fast as she all but races over to the wall of the cabin, grabbing tweezers and cotton rounds and rubbing alcohol.
“What is it?” Cobb all but snaps, his frustration and worry mounting. “Goddamn it, Eames-”
“The bastard burned them!” Eames growls back, his face contorted in half-grimace, half-snarl, teeth bared in a scarily feral manner, intended for the dead man who did this. “Gordon fucking burned the soles of his feet, then put the bloody boots back on!”
For a moment, Cobb does a rather spectacular impression of a goldfish. The next, though, Natasha touches a cotton round saturated with rubbing alcohol to the weeping, blistered mass on one heel - and Arthur bucks with a strangled sob, wrenching free of Cobb’s hold, the muscles in his leg twitching. His knee clips Eames on the jaw as he turns in a violent motion, nearly falling off the table, and Cobb barely manages to catch him with a frantic - “Arthur!”
Natasha gasps, her eyes going wide, and she’s the one who stumbles back although Eames is the one bleeding from the mouth, probably having bitten his tongue. “Arthur?” she repeats shakily. “William…what is this? Is this man-”
“Tash, love,” Eames says thickly, wiping at the corner of his mouth with the back of his wrist. “Listen to me.” He holds his hands out in the universal gesture of conciliation. “Yes, he is the man you think he is, but I need him -” and here he pauses, goes back, and corrects himself. “We need him well enough for…interrogation.” From behind him, Cobb makes strangled noise of protest as he gently lays Arthur back on the table, but Eames ignores him, looking to the woman cautiously. “Tash?”
She still looks relatively shell-shocked, but steps forward, nodding to Cobb hovering protectively over Arthur, and reaches for a roll of bandages.
- - - - -
10 August 2018
Mojave Desert, Nevada
1700 hours
“Charming,” Eames remarks dryly as Arthur sweeps into the tent space after the debrief, lying down on his back and staring up at the canvas. “Well done, you.”
“Don’t start, Eames,” Arthur snaps. He’s quite a sight - the color is high on his cheeks (more from anger and frustration any anything else) and his long fingers are clenched into tight fists, every muscle in his body tense, every nerve shrieking in agitation. As temporary leader, and generally, as a rule of thumb and part of his personality, Arthur shoulders the brunt of the blame for their team’s failure in the exercise, and it obviously stings.
The rest of the men are quiet, sitting on their respective cots like children watching their parents squabble and not knowing what to do. It’s understandable, really, given that anyone, even the most battle-hardened soldier would quell and shrink under the intensity of Arthur’s dark-eyed, furious glare. He paces back and forth, steps short and measured, one hand coming up to run through his hair, growing longer now from the standard buzz-cut and slicked back with gel, the other held stiffly at his side. “The logistics were off,” he mutters under his breath, voice low and dangerously tight. “But that’s not possible.”
“Maybe there was a mistake?” Sheldon asks from a corner of the tent, and when Arthur rounds on him, he makes a small squeaking sound. “…Sir?”
The sight of a man about ten years Arthur’s senior with half a foot and probably fifty pounds on him more or less cowering would be an amusing sight, but no one feels like laughing.
“Not fucking possible,” Arthur repeats, a growl. The atmosphere is electric; no one speaks or moves. Then Eames swings his legs over the side of the cot and stands, swinging his arms, stretching languidly.
“Oh, do stop your brooding,” he drawls. “So we lost out the training exercise to Gordon’s team and right, it was a bit of a cock-up, but you aren’t the only one at fault. Ease up, yeah?”
Arthur shoots him a poisonous look. “Don’t fucking condescend to me, Eames,” he hisses, sharp and biting, cutting off the syllables at the end of each word. “I know my responsibilities, and-”
“Yes, well, you’re just in sparkling form then, aren’t you, darling?” Eames interjects rudely. The heat is fucking unbearable, tempers are short, and as he’s certain he saw one or two of Gordon’s teammates doing something that should be quite illegal during the course of the exercise, he would really prefer Arthur drop the issue rather than try to work out the how and the why of Gordon’s unsavory victory. However, he’s rather knackered, as well, and thus completely unprepared for one hundred and sixty-some pounds of pure muscle of an infuriated Marine plowing into him in a full-body tackle, bringing the both of them into an ungraceful sprawl, Eames’ back and skull colliding solidly with the ground first.
Arthur hauls himself up just far enough to pull his fist back and then Eames tastes blood as his vision explodes in white sparks. Bloody hell, Arthur’s got a rather impressive left hook on him. It’s reflex, then - his own fist shoots upwards, connecting with Arthur’s cheek, and then they’re off.
“EAMES!”
“DAVIDSON!”
“Sir!!”
It’s a vicious fight, full of tension that comes only partially from Arthur’s frustration and slight embarrassment at losing out to another team in a training exercise, each touch sparking off into something even larger, unspoken, and quite potentially even more dangerous than this. No punches are pulled and each man has his own pride, so no holding back. They scuffle in the dirt like schoolboys and Eames can hear the shouts of men congregating around them, some yelling encouragement and among them Sheldon’s low baritone, Merande’s slightly effeminate tenor, and perhaps Durden and Arthur’s Marine mates as well, trying to get them to stop. He narrowly avoids a kick to the family jewels - because Arthur’s proving himself to be just as clever in a fistfight as in strategic procedures so of course he fights fast and hard and just a bit dirty - but then knuckles meet his nose straight on, there’s the crack of cartilage and a burst of blood.
“Bloody-” Growling under his breath, Eames grinds his knuckles into a pressure point on the inside of Arthur’s elbow, gets rewarded by a hiss of pain, and the arm bends automatically, allowing easy access. Pinning the limb, he grapples for dominance, slinging a leg over the slim hips and putting the knee of the other leg right against Arthur’s sternum, using his weight to his advantage. Nose dripping blood, panting heavily, and with the left side of his face and torso throbbing painfully, Eames looks down at his opponent - and freezes.
Dark eyes that are twin sparks of obsidian glare upward, a muscle in a finely sculpted jaw twitches in obvious ire at being pinned and his lips are curved back slightly in a silent growl. This is not the soldier who takes on his sparring partners in routine hand-to-hand combat sessions with ease, that man’s face is always smooth and calm, utterly devoid of emotion, eyes shuttered and mouth pressed into a thin line, betraying nothing. No, this is a man who vibrates with tension and anger, who takes everything he might know about composure and propriety and puts it in his fist, who bares his teeth with an intensity that makes Eames stare in wordless wonder - this is the Arthur that makes William Eames’ blood sing hot and causes heat to sear low in his belly, because this Arthur is mussed and bloodied, bruised and absolutely glorious.
“Christ, but look at you,” Eames breathes, honestly considering leaning down and kissing Arthur right then and there. The desire to do so must show on his face and he gains the split second satisfaction of seeing those dark eyes widening ever so slightly and a flush that spreads like wildfire up Arthur’s neck and across his cheekbones - before Arthur brings his shoulders up off the ground and slams his forehead against Eames’ in a brutal head butt.
CRACK.
Stars, a rush of colors spinning rapidly away into blackness, then nothing.
* - * - *
Part 7a