Fic: (Non) Compos Mentis Hora Smoni, 2/2 [Inception]
Title: (Non) Compos Mentis Hora Smoni: (Not) in Control of One's Mind at the Hour of Sleep, 2/2
Character/Pairings: Arthur/Eames, Mal/Cobb, Ariadne, James, Phillipa, Saito, Yusuf
Rating: PG-13
Disclaimer: Mr. Nolan owns it all
Warnings: mentions of mental illness, attempted suicide
Summary: Arthur goes crazy very much in the same way he does everything else - efficiently, determinedly, and with a quiet steadfastness. Eames has always been a little crazy, and he doesn't need the wristband or straightjacket to prove it. The different faces he wears are enough.
Author's Notes: Written for the square "captivity" for hc_bingo and for the prompt on inception_kink : "Psych ward AU. Arthur and Eames meet in a mental institution because both have gone slightly crazy after too many jobs blurring the line between dream and reality."
"Look, Arthur," Dom says quietly, his voice hushed. He's cupping something in the palm of his hand: a small die, red with white dots. "You're awake." The die clatters to the tabletop, plastic against marble, and comes to rest with two small dots facing upwards. "This isn't a dream."
"That...that's a totem?"
"Yes. And now it's yours."
Arthur doesn't move to take it though; his fingers are gripping the sides of the sofa, as if he's afraid that he might go whirling into the endless chasms of hallucinations and nightmares if he lets go. "But no one's supposed to touch another dreamer's totem." He's actually never had one before, never felt the need for one; always confident of his ability to tell between the waking world and the dreaming. Apparently, that decision and his stupid pride is now coming back to bite him in the ass.
Dom sighs. "Arthur, don't you trust me?" There's something uncertain yet hopeful in his tone, and Arthur swallows hard. He hears Mal talking softly to James and Phillipa in the next room, thinks of Mal's face gone white with terror, thinks of the gun he stowed behind a sofa cushion with blinding swiftness as soon as he heard the children's voices. The very thought of possibly having hurt them, any of them, makes the point man's blood run cold and he looks back down to the die and to the two white dots facing upwards. He wants to get better; of course he does. Of course he trusts Dom.
"You're giving this to me?"
"It was made for you." Dom lifts a hand and pushes forward the glossy, brightly colored information brochure across the table, cheerful faces beaming upwards framed by blocky white letters extolling the praises and benefits of Penrose Psychiatric Ward for the Mentally Insane. "Don't worry about the financial cost of your stay either; Mal and I've got you covered for seven months."
Arthur reaches out and grasps the die, clutching it tightly in one fist, his reality and anchor to sanity and peace of mind.
For the next two months, as he languishes away in the depths of the mental ward, Arthur starts each and every morning rolling the die once, twice, three times against the wall and watching the two dots come face up, every time. He holds it clutched tightly in one fist when working steadily through the strangely familiar yet obviously original files from Dom (maybe he's already worked through so many jobs that his mind automatically assigns them to preconceived schemas?), memorizing its weight and the feel of the plastic against the pads of his fingers. When Eames kisses him for the first time in a stuffy linen closet, lips soft against his, fingers gently stroking the back of his neck, Arthur knees buckle as his breath is stolen away and he scrabbles for purchase with one hand, fingers twisting in the forger's shirt, and the other testing the reality of it all.
When he wakes from hours upon hours of fitful sleep filled with nightmares that leave him gasping for breath, the first thing he does is grab for his totem because he lost the ability to dream naturally countless years ago, even before he started working with Dom. When he doesn't find it, despite having fallen asleep with it clenched in one fist, the center obviously cannot hold because reality is splitting at the seams, things fall apart, and Arthur, panicking, does the only thing he can -
He tries to wake up.
- - - - -
"Arthur, what are you DOING?!" Ariadne screams, and rushes into the room where Arthur sits slumped against the far wall, the fingers of one hand buried deep within the wrist of his other arm, obviously trying his damn hardest to rip the veins out of his body. She gets no more than five steps into the room when Arthur's head lifts, his eyes glassy and unfocused.
"Get away from me," he snarls low in his throat, and the nurse freezes, lips half-parted and trembling. From down the hall, pounding footsteps herald the arrival of Dr. Saito who immediately pulls Ariadne behind his frame protectively, Dr. al Dwarian with a syringe in hand, and Eames, whose white t-shirt and sweatpants are wet and splattered with a muddy brown color. He must have been getting Arthur's coffee for him, and were Arthur not too busy trying to bleed himself dry, he would be appreciating the sentiment because rarely does anyone do anything for him just because.
Ah, well. He can thank the real Eames (and not just his projection) when he fucking wakes up. He looks down and sees that the growing puddle of blood staining his white clothing still isn't nearly large enough for his liking, and with a growl of frustration, digs his fingers even deeper. He's pretty sure he's already touching bone; so why can't he bleed any faster?!
"Arthur..." He looks up. It's Eames, and although his voice is shaking and his face is blanched with fear in a way that the real Eames's never would be, for a moment, Arthur is stupidly proud of himself for having projected the forger so well. He'll never be as great an architect as Dom or Mal, but he can memorize details with astonishing accuracy. Even Eames's stubble looks the same; the callouses on his fingers an exact replica of the real deal when he touches the side of Arthur's face gently. "Oh darling, what have you done to yourself?"
"I..." Arthur's eyelids are getting heavy; he shivers suddenly with cold. The words slip out without any sense of order because he's really very tired, and Eames's fingers carding through his hair that for once is an absolute mess (and he doesn't gave a damn) are wonderful. "Not real...'m dreaming. Lost. Totem. Lost my totem. Have to...die and then...then wake up, I have to...have to..."
"Alright," Eames says softly, reassuringly, kindly. "Alright, pet. Let me help." And isn't that nice of him, offering to help although Arthur wants to tell the forger that he isn't anyone's pet; Eames is gently laying a hand on his arm and circling fingers around his wrist, pulling his hand away from-
No.
Arthur brings his head forward with a sharp, controlled jerk of his neck, smashing his forehead into Eames's face, Eames who's trying to stop him from dying, Eames who's a projection and nothing more. As the forger falls back, releasing his grip, Arthur turns in a half circle, fist catching Dr. al Dwarian on the jaw; the physician, who'd been trying to sneak forward, drops the syringe as he staggers, reeling from the blow. It rolls across the floor, momentarily forgotten, and Arthur's ready when Saito rushes at him, taking the other man out with a clean, sharp jab to the ribs, then the neck, and a kick to the back of the knee, felling him like a tree.
That leaves only Ariadne and Arthur sets his jaw, preparing himself for the necessary. He's really grown to like Ariadne though; she was the first one to show him kindness here and he abhors the thought of killing an unarmed young woman, but consoles himself with the fact that she'll be fine when he wakes up. A relatively painless death then, maybe breaking her neck would work best-
"Arthur," Ariadne stutters, but falls silent when Arthur's eyes dart up and towards her-
"Arthur," Mal whispers, but stops when Arthur's eyes snap toward her and narrow-
"Arthur, please!" Ariadne wails; and her sobs only grow louder as Arthur turns his gaze upon her-
He blinks, disoriented, three different images from three different instances warring for visual comprehension and mental translation; one in the present and one from the past, and one that can't possibly be real-
A pair of arms grab him from behind, pinning his arms to his sides and Arthur bucks against the hold, fighting with all his might, but Eames's arms are iron bands, binding him fast and not letting go: not now, not ever as Dr. Saito dives for the syringe. And though Arthur thrashes and yells and curses him to five different damnations in six different languages, Eames holds him fast as the needle plunges into his neck, as he then spirals into nothingness.
- - - - -
"...wasn't supposed to do anything until my say so!" Cobb sounds infuriated. Arthur hears his voice as if from the other end of a long tunnel, but he doesn't think he's ever heard the other man sound so thoroughly pissed off, not even when he missed that vital piece of intel on the Fischer job...
Wait. Who the hell is Fishcer, and why did he just think of Dom as "Cobb"?
"You weren't here!" Ariadne isn't afraid of the thunder of Dom's (it's Dom, he has to remind himself) wrath though; and she's all spitfire and lightning, flashes of indignation here and there, but only for brief seconds. "...if we had thought...but no, and after two months...had to try-"
"...can't take any risks! He needs to see that he's not dreaming, damn it! Last time..."
Saito's voice joins in, and try as Arthur might to stay awake, the soft lilt of the Japanese accent lulls him back to sleep: "...well worth...but now have...fix it..."
- - - - -
When he comes to flat on his back in a bed with leather restraints around his wrists and ankles, and a huge belt strapped across his middle pinning him flat to the mattress, Arthur goes rigid - not because he's tied down like a stuck pig laid out on the altar as a sacrificial gift to the gods, but because he failed. And whoever the hell said 'if at first you don't succeed: try, try again' has clearly never tried to wake up from a waking nightmare. Dying comes spectacularly easy for a man like Arthur, whose final and only solution sometimes in his line of work is to die - it's the getting there that's the hard part.
Well. He supposes he could always bite through his tongue and...drown in his blood, but he'd rather not. The terrifying feeling of his lungs filling with water instead of air is already bad enough.
A soft sigh draws his attention, and he turns his head to see Eames sitting beside the bed. He's got a magnificent bruise blossoming purple and blue over his right eye, and Arthur feels sorry for that, because this projection of Eames really is nice, and the look on his face is just so sad, and the meds slowly being pumped into Arthur's system through the IV in his arm are really messing with his train of thought. His head feels like he's got cotton balls stuffed in between his ears, and Arthur blinks, slowly. Eames is saying something and he tries to focus on the other man's lips, reading syllable by syllable and letter by letter:
"You need to stop trying to off yourself."
"Why?" His tongue is thick in his mouth; his speech sluggish. But it seems like a perfectly reasonable question, and Arthur mentally congratulates himself on the challenge. Why should he stop trying to kill himself? He only wants to wake up.
Eames smiles, but it's the saddest smile Arthur has ever seen in the forger's entire arsenal of smirks, grins, and leers. "Because you won't wake up, and I will definitely miss you then."
Arthur frowns, trying to push through the haze of fogginess surrounding his mind in order to decipher exactly what Eames is saying. He returns his gaze upwards and stares at the small crack there in the plaster, a crack that winds its way through the entire ceiling, like the psych ward's only being held together by sheer will and hope. "...dreaming?" He mumbles more to himself than anyone else, and starts at light pressure against the restraint on his left wrist. "Eames...?"
Eames is unlatching the restraints, tearing the leather bands open with low grunt of disgust, freeing Arthur's right wrist (the one he'd been trying to rip apart) and soothing a thumb over the splotch of red seeping through the gauze and medical tape. He's lowering his head to brush his lips against it, and Arthur watches him, a strange warmth blossoming in his chest. "No, you're not," he murmurs with such kindness that Arthur almost wants to believe him. "You're not."
"You're a liar." Blunt, but true, and the sedative turning his muscles into jelly seems to have erased any semblance of tact in the barrier between his mind and speech anyway, and Arthur bristles inwardly, both annoyed and embarrassed at his lack of control.
Eames slips him a look that's so raw and unguarded that Arthur nearly balks at the honesty so openly displayed. "Maybe I am, but this isn't." With a pft, click his other three limbs are free as well and Eames is curling in around his temporarily paralyzed form in the narrow bed that's really too small for two grown men, drawing him close with a pair of strong, secure arms. With one hand, he holds Arthur's head against his chest, pillowed right over his heart, and from his pocket the other withdraws a small flash of color - a poker chip.
"You see these notches?" His fingers are large and rough over the chip's glossy surface, but his voice reverberates in a low rumble beneath Arthur's ear. "I'm the only one who knows exactly where they are, and what they stand for. This is my reality, Arthur." Lips press against his forehead, and Eames's hold around him tightens. "And now I'm sharing it with you."
"No!" Arthur stutters, and his hand twitches weakly. "Don't. You shouldn't." Because I'm crazy, he thinks; because I've lost my own totem, because I don't even know if you're real or if I'm still dreaming. Because I'm not a good person; I'll hurt you in the worst way possible because that's all I know how to do. Being a point man means being privy to every last weakness one's team members bear; it's being the last line of defense and the man who knows everything - memorizing every nitty-gritty feature, putting a name and reason to every skeleton in the closet, figuring out the intricacies of every deep dark secret that can build empires or tear down the greatest of men. That's his job description, and it's simple and ugly. The lists and orderliness isn't neuroticism; it's the only way he's barely managed to keep himself human, the only way Arthur refrains from getting drunk on all that he knows and inadvertently hurting Dom and Mal job after job.
And here Eames is voluntarily giving up his secret of all meaningful existence, the greatest Achilles heel a man can possess, placing the entirety of his reality into the palm of Arthur's shaking hand and closing his fingers over it.
"I know I shouldn't," Eames concedes, but there's no hesitation in his tone. "But I want to. Because I trust you, Arthur." He runs a thumb over Arthur's cheekbone, closes his fingers over Arthur's over the poker chip. "All I'm asking is that you trust me in return. Please."
Arthur knows he shouldn't. He barely knows this man and should have more sense than to base his reality upon the word (however sincere) of a con man, a man who wears the faces of others for his own personal gain. But Eames is here, holding him as if to shield him from all the horrors of the dreaming world, gazing at him with pleading eyes, telling him that the first notch beside the black stripe is for his absent father, the second for his dead mother, the third carved ninety degrees this direction for the first time he changed his face- "Just trust me."
So Arthur does.
- * - * -
Arthur's wrist heals and scars over and he's taken off of suicide watch (throughout the duration of said watch though, interestingly enough, no one ever comes in to check on him and if they do, they don't say anything about him being unrestrained and curled into Eames's embrace). Ariadne smiles at him as if nothing ever happened; Dr. "but really now, it's Yusuf" al Dwarian waves off Arthur's apology with nonchalance; Dr. Saito's voice is hoarse for a matter of days, but that heals quickly too. Arthur and Eames begin a tentative...whatever - courtship? affair? Arthur's still trying to put a name to it (because that's just how he is, and not because he's having a freakout over his sexuality or anything; it's the twenty-first century after all) while Eames simply acts like he's been in it forever, whatever it is - and no one says a thing.
Days turn into weeks which then shift into months; Arthur watches them pass by with a renewed calm. And he gets better.
Although he often finds himself scrabbling for the totem - its flat, glossy surface is the first thing he searches for when he wakes to warmth at his back (One day, Ariadne had simply opened the door with a twinkle in her eye, revealing Eames carrying a small suitcase containing his collection of battered books and grinning like an idiot. The nurse offered no explanation other than smiling and asking who the wife was. Eames, of course, pointed at Arthur); it's clenched in his fist when Eames kisses his neck and claims him; he watches Eames flip it over and over his bumpy knuckles as he makes his way through Dom's files - he's finding that he really doesn't need the poker chip as much anymore. A knee touching his under the table, that annoying (and alright, it's a bit charming) grin, the accent and the flash of his eyes, the pet names (those, Arthur absolutely refuses to think as adorable) - those are what keeps him grounded. It's Eames keeps him sane.
"What's on your mind, pet?" Fingers play lazily down the slope of his spine and Arthur quickly tucks the poker chip out of sight.
"Nothing," he mumbles noncommittally into the pillow, and Eames smiles against his skin, presses another kiss to his neck, and Arthur smiles.
Sometimes it's Eames who gets far away though, an inscrutable look entering his eyes as he gazes off into thin air, fingers tapping out a rhythmless tempo against Arthur's thigh, and it scares Arthur like no other. When he points it out, Eames merely brushes it off before going back to pester Ariadne or recommencing his attempts to ruffle the point man's hair.
"All things considering, it's probably best to omit the sister entirely," Arthur says, peering at the rather unfortunate looking mark's rather stunning sister. "Their relationship isn't exactly a cordial one, and less animosity inside the dreamscape would be much preferred for a smoother job."
Silence meets his outspoken conclusion, and Arthur frowns; glances up. The frown deepens and he reaches out swiftly, fingers grabbing the forger's jaw with perhaps more force than necessary, and he turns Eames's face toward his own. "Eames."
Eames starts and blinks, then grins and tosses out a breezy "nothing to worry about, love."
But it does worry Arthur. That's the fifth time that's happened in a week.
And on those nights, he tries to stay awake for as long as he can, because he knows when he falls asleep he'll dream of the impossible and terrible: of Mal flickering in and out of existence like nothing but a memory, of Dom losing James and Phillipa forever, of Eames diving out of a helicopter and into the heart of a blizzard, of sweet Ariadne falling backwards off a building and into the streets below.
Eames, as far as Arthur can tell, never sleeps. He sometimes wakes to Eames's fingers tracing along his jaw, over his eyes, playing over his lips and so gentle, always so gentle. And, most every night, he hears Eames murmur quietly like a litany, a prayer: "What am I going to do without you?"
- - - - -
The day of Arthur's release dawns cold and clear, dead leaves barely clinging to twisted tree branches standing naked against the grey sky. Arthur's wearing his suit and standing at the nurse's station, his seven months of time served, his mind fully intact. His die is a comfortable and familiar weight in his breast pocket (apparently, its removal in the dead of night was supposed to help him bridge the gap between fantasy and reality without the need of any physical reminder; Dr. Saito sent a written apology that Ariadne delivered with a small shrug), Dom is waiting outside in the car, and Arthur should be ready to go.
Except Eames is leaning against the wall, arms crossed over his chest, one foot scuffling against the floor. The forger has a strange expression on his face, something like a bittersweet smile and something like the face one usually makes when trying to hold back tears: lips pursed, jaw tight, eyes narrowed. He watches Arthur sign out silently, flipping the poker chip over his knuckles; watches the point man hug Ariadne and shake Yusuf's hand, all without comment. His eyes do drift toward Arthur's tailored pinstripe-clad backside once or twice and his lips twitch upwards for a fraction of a second, but only for a second and when Arthur turns toward him, the man of a million different looks has absolutely no expression on his face at all.
"Eames?"
The forger pushes off the wall and strides slowly toward him, once again showing his utter lack of understanding of the concept of personal space (although, it really has become a moot point by now considering everything else they've done that involves a lot of space invasion) by standing so close that Arthur can see his own reflection in the other man's eyes.
"Eames?" He asks again uncertainly, hesitant as whether to - what, shake his hand? Pull him in for a hug? Nod his head and bid him farewell? It isn't anything official, their five month affair - most summer whirlwind flings last for about the same duration of time, and there's no telling what'll happen now that they're about to be on opposite sides of society. Before Arthur can make up his mind though, Eames leans forward, cradles his cheek in one hand, and kisses him softly.
Arthur's a fairly private man; his business is his own and he's certainly not a fan of public displays of affection. But now? To hell with propriety; he kisses right back.
"I'll see you on the flip side, darling," Eames says softly against his lips. They both know that no one's said anything about Eames being released anytime soon - Arthur's checked; he asked Ariadne to look it up at least upon five different occasions and received the same sad, little sympathetic shake of the head each time.
"I'll visit," Arthur blurts out stupidly, and it's the closest thing to what he really means to say, and both of them know it. Eames chuckles. The sound twists its way into Arthur's chest.
"No you won't, pet." His gaze is fond and lonely and melancholy; he reaches up to ruffle Arthur's hair one last time and, wordlessly, Arthur lets him. "No you won't."
When Arthur gets into the car, after greeting him warmly, Dom raises an eyebrow and asks if it was casino night last night, and the point man looks down to see a poker chip peeking out of the top of his breast pocket. It's still slightly warm to the touch and he lets the die remain in his pocket the entire ride back to his apartment, clutching the chip instead.
- - - - -
"Arthur?" It's Ariadne. She's obviously crying, sniffling and hiccuping into the phone and he sits straight up in bed, fingers searching for the lamp on the bedside table.
"Ariadne? What's wrong?" He vaguely wonders how she even got this number as he stumbles out of bed, cradling the phone between shoulder and ear, but pushes the thought to the back of his mind. It's not relevant anyways, not with what she says next, voice trembling.
"It's Eames. You have to get here quickly, please Arthur, just come back now!"
One day when Mal was six months pregnant with James, she started hemorrhaging severely, without reason and without ceasing. Dom was in Cairo at the time, and Arthur rushed the woman he saw as both a mother and a friend to the hospital, breaking every traffic law in LA (the few that are still obeyed, mind you; yes, there was some driving on the wrong side of the road) on his way there. The doctors told Dom that he had Arthur's quick reaction to thank for the life of both his wife and child. Swiftness is essential to being a point man, and there have been many times projections taking aim at Dominic Cobb suddenly found themselves with a bullet to the heart thanks to his point man's quick trigger finger and expert aim. Arthur knows the meaning of quick, and suits actions to words down to the letter.
He's out the door in five seconds flat, somehow managing to have shrugged on a suit in such a small amount of time. He loops the tie around his neck purely out of habit as he speeds through the grey light of dawn. He's gone so fast that he forgets the small poker chip lying under his pillow.
- - - - -
Ariadne's white uniform is splattered with blood.
None of it is hers since she bears no visible open wounds, but her right arm sits in a poorly and hastily fashioned sling; her face is pale and drawn, minimal cosmetics having long ago been washed away by the tears that still streak her cheeks and have turned her nose into something resembling a cherry tomato. She looks like a wreck.
But apparently, Eames is much worse.
"He was fine throughout the day after you left," the nurse sniffs, and Arthur withdraws a handkerchief from his pocket and hands it over. Ariadne takes it and grips the silk tightly in her hands. "He didn't eat anything at dinner though, and after all the patients went back to their rooms, he was still sitting at the table." The tears start afresh, and Arthur wonders if he ought to tell the young woman that the point of a handkerchief is not to hold it, but to use it, but settles for patting her shoulder awkwardly, encouraging her to go on.
"I went over to see if everything was okay, and...and..."
Arthur opens and closes his mouth twice before any sound comes out. "Eames did this to you?" His voice is incredulous.
He doesn't believe it. He can't believe it. Eames obviously has the build to do some proper damage when he sees fit; Arthur has traced the curve of defined biceps and pectorals with both fingers and lips before, and Ariadne, who looks like she'd be a hundred pounds soaking wet is clearly no match. But Eames has never been anything but kind to the petite nurse, a perfect gentlemen: pushing the giant laundry cart around for her without being asked, teasing her about potential boyfriends with a definite protective air, pecking her on the cheek when he sees she's having a bad day. Such a turn in behavior and galvanizing action can only mean a complete erasure of that gentleman and the emergence of a persona far darker, probably spurred on by a fairly traumatic stressor.
She nods miserably. "He accused me of not...of being a - a projection. And he kept asking for you."
Other shoe, meet floor. Arthur swallows thickly; he runs his fingers over the two grooves on a face of his die. "Where is he now?"
Ariadne's eyes flit away, guilty. "In solitary."
- - - - -
"Dreaming, dreaming, dreaming..."
The mumbled mantra is the first thing Arthur hears when he steps inside the white padded room, and when he sees Eames's frame strapped uncomfortably into a straightjacket huddled in a corner of the tiny space, it feels like a sucker punch to the gut.
"Eames?" The name leaves his mouth in an exhale of breath and his shoes make no sound as he pads silently across the room, dropping into an easy crouch beside the forger, not caring whether or not the action wrinkles his slacks. "Eames."
Ariadne claims Eames is drugged up to the eyeballs in order to keep from harming anyone else or himself (he's already fought his way out of four straightjackets), but the moment Arthur lays a tentative hand on his knee, Eames glances up and positively beams, like Christmas come early. "Arthur." He makes as if to get to his feet or stretch his arms out toward the point man, remembering too late he can't, and pitches forward unsteadily, his motions uncoordinated and clumsy.
"Oh God, Eames." Eames's face is a mess of bruises, layer upon layer of swollen blood vessels beneath discolored flesh; the bridge of his nose sits at an odd angle, clearly broken; both his lips are cut and swollen to some degree, and one eye is nothing but a slit in his face. He looks like he tried to pick a fight with a brick wall by slamming into it repeatedly, face first, and Arthur can only wordlessly wrap his arms around the other man and pull him in close, throat tight with emotion. Eames sighs happily and lays his cheek on Arthur's shoulder, face buried in his collar, mumbling nonsense words against his neck, and Arthur closes his eyes, praying for strength from whichever deity cares enough to give a damn.
Eames pulls back a fraction of an inch and smiles up at him, speaking then with sudden, amazing clarity. "This isn't real, darling."
His own words from months ago have never stung so much: salt in an open wound. "Yes, it is. Of course it is." Too late, he remembers the poker chip lying under his pillow, forgotten in his haste, and Arthur curses his momentary lapse of memory. "What happened to you?"
"You left," the forger mumbles, answer blunt and simple, and fuck if that doesn't hurt like hell. Arthur feels wetness against his skin and hesitantly brings his fingers to Eames's face, gently wipes away the tears there, mindful of the bruises. "And then I started dreaming again." Eames struggles momentarily, but then relaxes into Arthur's hold, limp and boneless. "Pet?"
"What is it?" Arthur's voice is low, hollow. He doesn't know what to do in this type of situation, doesn't know how to fix Eames, doesn't know if he can stand to see the forger like this another minute. And he hates himself for his helplessness, hates himself for having dragged Eames down like this, because he knew, he knew that this would happen; he even hates Eames for being such a sneaky, selfless bastard and resigning himself to this fate.
"It's time for both of us to leave now."
"Leave where?" He dreads the answer and sure enough, Eames doesn't disappoint. Eames never disappoints Arthur, no matter what he does. He never has.
"Here. Leave here. Arthur." Eames stares at him, voice a hushed whisper. "We have to wake up."
He wants to slap Eames, wants to shake him until his teeth rattle in his skull, wants to yell this is real, we're both awake, you idiot into his face, but he doesn't. Instead, Arthur simply shushes the other man gently and sits with his back against a white padded wall, cradling Eames's head against his neck.
Arthur waits.
He doesn't have the slightest idea what he's waiting for, but it's coming and he can feel it, like a thrum beneath the skin of the universe, a rumble through his veins, and so he waits, waits with Eames's continuous murmur of babbling nonsense in his ears.
- - - - -
He smells ash, sulfur, and the undeniable stench of death that he's experienced far too many times to not know with a strange and intimate certainty. Arthur opens his eyes and stares: the world around him is crumbling at the edges, crinkling like flames licking at a sheet of paper with smoldering landscape, bombed out buildings, ash cascading down like dirty snow and all.
He's waken up to hell.
Dreaming, dreaming, dreaming, sounds Eames's voice in his mind, and Arthur jumps up, panic coursing through him like the burn of lactic acid in his muscles, eyes casting around wildly, frantically. Beneath his feet the ground tilts dangerously and he stumbles, leans against the crumbling, graffitied wall of a deserted and broken down building for support. "Eames?"
His throat is parched, mouth dry and filled with dust and soot. Arthur coughs and tries to squash down the ever-increasing fear bubbling in his chest and threatening to evolve into full-blown hysteria because he was just in the solitary room with Eames, now Eames is nowhere to be found, and Arthur hasn't the foggiest how the hell he's landed in something that looks like a scene out of some post apocalyptic movie. "Eames!"
Dreams feel real when you're in them, Dom once told him. Only after you wake up do you realize something was strange. Well, too bad the extractor never taught him how to deal with realizations of strangeness in the dream itself - only this isn't a dream because although none of it makes sense, when he jerks the die out of his pocket and throws it to the ground, the surface that comes to rest facing upwards proudly displays two white dots.
Scooping up the die, Arthur tosses it again (once for chance, two for luck, three for certainty) and it bounces once against the cracked and parched ground, rolls, and comes to a halt under the round toe of a brown oxford, the toe of a brown oxford that steps down and grinds the die into the dust.
Arthur, on his knees, makes a strangled sound of protest in his throat, swiping a fallen lock of hair out of his field of vision as he glares upwards - and all words of anger and objection die on his lips.
"Eames?"
But it's not. It can't be. The man that stands before him has the same features and body language, the same gentle gaze Eames favored Arthur with the night of the point man's ill-fated suicide attempt; oh God, even the same scent, sandalwood and spice mixed with the stench of death; but this can't possibly be Eames -
Except it is. Arthur's never seen Eames in anything but white cotton and then nothing at all, but the sight of this man wearing a hideous maroon shirt paired with grey trousers and a brown blazer (Christ, is that tweed?) just as proudly as any three piece suit Arthur owns strikes a chord of familiarity within the point man, deep, deep down somewhere, hidden behind walls erected not to keep out, but to wall in.
Dom says he's the best (and if Arthur's not fully sold until Mal tells him of how this Eames character decided to pull her out of the way of an incoming bullet out of pure instinct, Dom never needs to know): a master of disguise and a true professional with a ninety-nine percent success rate (Arthur silently thinks about his own ninety-nine point nine success rate - that stupid Borges job...) and a knack for getting the job done, no matter the stakes. Arthur's prepared to respect if not necessarily like this forger, even if he's never really been fond of those who can change nearly everything about themselves into an imitation of someone else (and besides, it's something he himself has never been able to achieve) - but that plan quickly goes sour when he catches glimpse of the man lounging against the bar, casually tossing peanuts into his mouth.
Good Lord, this man has reputedly been over hundreds different people, and he can't even manage to match patterns and colors in his own personal wardrobe?
Eames holds his hand out with a grin; Arthur's spine is stiff when he takes the pre-offered hand and introduces himself with a curt, simple "Arthur."
"A pleasure, darling," the forger says, and bends his head to kiss the back of Arthur's hand before he can snatch it away, stubble brushing against the point man's knuckles. Mal giggles behind her hand, Dom checks his watch impatiently, and Eames glances slyly upwards, and smirks cattily. "Truly, I'm charmed."
Arthur's neck flames red, and he honestly considers shooting Eames on the spot.
"Arthur?" A pair of hands settle on his shoulders and shake him lightly. "Arthur."
He looks up, brow beaded with sweat. His vision is spinning weirdly - Eames's lips brushing against the back of his hand, Eames backing him in against the wall, Eames kneeling on the dirt in front of him: first meetings, all of them, but how can he have met the same man three times? God, his head aches, and Arthur holds onto Eames out of pure habit, fingers digging into the familiar curve of muscular arms.
Eames grips back just as tightly, eyes searching his. "The trigger worked, yeah?" His voice is hopeful. "You remember. This is what I wore the first time we met."
"Met?" Arthur sputters. "What are you talking about? We met seven months ago. In the psych ward. Eames, where are we - how are you...what can't I remember how-"
Eames shakes his head firmly once, no. "We met a long time ago, Arthur. The Rynders job." His fingers tighten, as if he's trying to force the words into becoming truth by mere touch alone, and he's probably leaving bruises, but Arthur doesn't care, doesn't care because Eames is talking crazy, he has to be.
"You were twenty-two and wearing that black suit with the white pinstripes."
"Magnificent view," Eames comments appreciatively as Arthur bends down to retrieve the PASIV device and the point man immediately straightens, upper half snapping upwards like a spring. Eames merely shrugs at the heated glare he receives, making a vague motion with one hand that can quite possibly stand for any manner of lewd and suggestive remarks. "I'm especially fond of the pinstripes. Very flattering to your form."
"I had to forge myself into a tall, blonde Adonis, and kept flirting with you the entire time."
"Come now darling," he practically purrs, and Arthur stares very determinedly at the far wall. "Live a little, yeah? What's one glass of champagne as we wait for Mr. Brown to show?" Eames is standing close, very close, too close, and Arthur tries very hard to resist the urge to put his foot to the other man's groin. "All work and no play makes Arthur one very dull boy."
He raises an eyebrow and turns away smoothly, lips pursed. "Are you always this unprofessional on the job?"
Eames is smiling, fond and reminiscent, yet tinged with a hint of pain. "You shot me in the head."
"Bloody hell-" Arthur shoots the seventy year-old grandmother springing at him and brandishing her cane like a club without even batting an eye, then turns at Eames's pain-filled curse. The forger has lost the disguise and is bleeding from a gaping wound in his stomach, courtesy of a carving knife plunged hilt-deep, and Arthur doesn't even stop to think - he raises his gun, aims, and puts a bullet in between Eames's eyes.
"No, no, no," Arthur mumbles at the ground; his head is killing him, the dull ache between his eyes spreading everywhere. "This is crazy, this is...this is-"
"This is a dream. Look around yourself, Arthur. You've seen this before; this is what happens when a dream loses its architect." Fingers grip his jaw firmly but not roughly, turning his head this way and that. "You know our architect. Ariadne?"
Ariadne. Petite, dark-haired, smiling Ariadne dressed in her nurse's scrubs and leading him to his room, shoving him into a linen closet with Eames, giggling as she follows Eames around the sitting area in a tuneless waltz. Ariadne and her brightly colored cardigans, her hipster scarves, her brilliant, brilliant mind and endless creativity, her goodness of heart and thirst for all things constructible. Ariadne and her mazes, majestic wonders of paradox-
"Penrose stairs," Arthur whispers, and his eyes suddenly catch sight of a sign lying battered and twisted on the ground, useless, reading: Penrose Psychiatric Ward for the Mentally Insane. "Paradox." And suddenly it makes sense, why the psychiatric ward boasts of five different levels and all sorts of living accommodations but he's never seen anything but the first floor, why there are elevators that have neither an up nor down button, why there are no stairs leading upwards and why the floor plans kept on changing after he thought he'd memorized the blueprints by heart before checking in.
"It's a dream," Eames tells him, "a dream literally plucked from the fabric of your mind and constructed right inside another dream. Ariadne made it just for you."
"Another dream?" He croaks, but he knows, he knows, and it hurts like hell but he knows:
Dom calling him in the middle of the night, yelling and screaming and sobbing into the phone that Mal's killed herself, that she jumped off a fucking window ledge on the forty-fifth story. Phillipa crawling into his lap and asking Uncle Arthur where her mommy is. James doing the same thing not fifteen minutes later. It's Phillipa's sixth birthday and Mal doesn't buy a pink princess cake because Mal isn't there; she's a shade haunting Cobb (it's always Cobb now, because Mal called him Dom and she's six feet under) and lurking about his subconscious, shooting Arthur in the heart, pulling him under the surface of the Dead Sea until he drowns, sticking a carving knife up in between his ribs.
"You know." Sometime between then and now, Arthur must have slumped because his fingers are still clutching Eames's ugly brown jacket but he's sitting flat on his ass, breath coming shallow as invisible ice picks embed themselves in his skull. "You've always known but you've simply forced it all away, locking it up in a box in that mind of yours-"
Arthur recoils from him, movements sharp and jerky. "You're wrong. You're wrong; this is real. It's real; you showed me-"
"Why did all those files you researched for Cobb seem so easy?" Arthur stills because he didn't tell anyone about that. "It's because they're all actual jobs you've already completed, Arthur. In reality. And," Eames continues, holding up a hand to halt any potential arguments, "why was your therapist so familiar, even though you don't remember any of your sessions with him? That was Saito. You remember Saito."
Cobol Engineering. Following the business mogul onto the bullet train and recruiting the kid, Tadashi, to keep lookout. Another one grand out of the pocket, no big deal. Two level of dreams; Mal shooting him in the kneecap, Nash stupidly getting the fibers of the carpet wrong. Saito offering Cobb one last job - not to extract an idea, but to plant one...
"Cobb, we should walk away from this."
Saito playing the part of a goddamn tourist. Saito getting himself shot.
"Inception." The word bursts from his mouth and Arthur pitches forward with a low cry as his vision explodes in white-
Fischer. Recruiting Ariadne in Paris. Eames is in Mombosa; there are plenty of good thieves out there.
"This, Ariadne, would be a kick."
"Security's going to run you down hard."
"Then I shall lead them on a merry chase."
How the fucking hell did he miss that Fischer's mind had been militarized? An error. An oversight. Arthur's sorry and it won't happen again, but Cobb is furious and he has a right to be, because he has the most to lose if they fail; little James and Phillipa waiting back home for their Daddy.
"You mustn't be afraid to dream a little bigger, darling."
His forehead is pressed against Eames's shoulder, breath reduced to ragged gasps as his fingers clench and unclench convulsively in the folds of the forger's shirt; Eames has gathered him close and his voice is a low murmur of explanation and apology directly in Arthur's ear: "We were losing you, darling. We had to."
- - - - -
"Arthur, listen to me," Dom demands, his voice firm and commanding, but his hands are shaking ever so slightly as he holds them up in a placating manner. "Put the gun down."
"No."
"Will you just think about what you're about to do?!" Fear and desperation burst forth like the waters of a deluge smashing through a dam.
"I have thought about it. You've trained me to tell the difference between reality and fantasy, and this, Dom...this isn't real."
"Arthur," Mal whispers, but stops when Arthur's eyes snap toward her and narrow-
- - - - -
"Arthur, please!" Ariadne wails; and her sobs only grow louder as Arthur turns his gaze upon her-
"This isn't real," he tells her. "You're not real."
Cobb moves to stand in front of the young woman, fear trailing an icy finger up his spine. He knows that normally, Arthur would sooner cut his own head off than do anything to harm Ariadne, but Arthur's eyes are glassy and unfocused, his breathing hard and irregular, his mind warped and confused by the bastards who tried to take a spin inside Ariadne's head and took a detour into Arthur's instead, tearing up his subconscious like a bunch of drunken teenagers on a joyride. There's no telling what's going on behind that wild, frenzied gaze and in Arthur's scarily sharp but (currently) very disturbed mind.
For a moment the three of them simply stand there - and then Eames charges up from behind Arthur, tackling the slighter man and pinning him to the floor.
- - - - -
Behind him, Dom reaches out with one hand and squeezes his shoulder gently, apologetically. "It's just for a little while," he says quietly, and Arthur nods once, silent. He walks forward then, shoulders straight and jaw set, chin lifted defiantly, walking toward the nurse's station to check himself in.
- - - - -
Arthur fights and bucks like a wild bull, hollering at the top of his lungs and switching from English to French to Japanese to Arabic to Spanish in a seamless babble, muscles spasming uncontrollably as Eames and Cobb try to wrestle him down to the mattress so Yusuf can find a vein, syringe full of sedative in one hand and a line from the PASIV device in the other. He lets out a low cry as the needle jabs in painfully and Cobb's eyes are suspiciously wet; he squeezes Arthur's shoulder gently, apologetically:
"It'll be okay, Arthur. We're trying to help you. It's just for a little while."
- - - - -
"I know I shouldn't," Eames concedes, but there's no hesitation in his tone. "But I want to. Because I trust you, Arthur." He runs a thumb over Arthur's cheekbone, closes his fingers over Arthur's over the poker chip. "All I'm asking is that you trust me in return. Please."
- - - - -
"No," Arthur protests weakly as the sedative begins to seep into his system, as he begins to fall asleep. Eames's voice is a broken whisper as he runs a thumb over Arthur's cheekbone, interlaces their fingers together.
"Trust me. Please, Arthur. That's all I ask. Just trust me."
From the other side of the room, Cobb slides the needle into his wrist, and the first layer of inception begins.
- - - - -
"We were going to put you in a location where your damaged mind could accept the consequences of your dream not being real, and allow you to 'wake up', as you so desperately believed you needed to do after what those bloody bastards did to your mind." Eames's voice is tired, as if he's reciting a speech rehearsed so many times that it's long lost its meaning. "Thus, your fake break with 'reality' in the dream worlds. Oh Arthur, there have been so many..."
Ariadne takes his hand as the landscape crumbles around them, beseeching him with her large, pleading eyes, telling him that this isn't real, Arthur, this isn't real.
Saito stands with him on a rooftop overlooking Tokyo, telling him that he has to wake up, before taking two large steps forward and stepping off the edge of the roof.
Cobb sits at the table, his top spinning and spinning forever and ever and ever...
"This is the first time we've gone so deep into you. Your clever mind kept figuring out the game too soon, and we had to put you here so you wouldn't kill yourself and drop into limbo. We even constructed a fake totem for you, fake memories to barricade your own mental defenses."
Arthur glances down at the die, rolls it - and it lands on two. His eyes widen; that can't be, his die always has and always will land on three. Eames leaps forward with a shout, but Arthur's already drawn his gun, putting the muzzle under his chin.
And as he dies, he spirals ever downwards into another level of dreams.
"You remember what those idiot scientists did to you, don't you? Conditioned your brain to submerge into another level of dreaming with each death?" Eames sounds like he's choking back tears; Arthur feels wetness against his head, but can't really deal with that, because his mind is on fire, and of course he fucking remembers.
"She's nothing," he spits, and sends the unconscious Ariadne a silent apology, but mentally cheers in triumph when the quacks with medical degrees turn his way. "She builds worlds, yes, but so what? I can navigate through anything she or anyone else builds; that's what I do. I can survive anything you want to put me through, so take me, you fucking bastards; just take me."
So they do. With scalpels and electrodes and plain and simple torture, they take Arthur's mind.
"The only way to bring you back is through a series of successive kicks, like we did with Fischer. Cobb and the others already rode the first one back. We just have to wait for the second and we've come this far, Arthur, please-"
The point man is lost. His mind is straining under the sheer magnitude of such a weighty reveal, and so he clings to Eames, clings to him as the forger's pleas fall upon deaf ears. His head feels like it's about to explode and he grabs the sides of his skull and begins to scream in agony.
- * - * -
Eames jerks awake, breathing hard, shirt sticking to his back with sweat. His mouth tastes foul (no wonder, he's been under for ages now, the equivalent of seven months in Arthur's deep level dreaming) and his muscles atrophied, but there's no thought in his mind for himself as he leans forward, head in his hands.
"Eames?" Cobb. The forger can't bring himself to look at the other man.
A small hand falls on his back, and he looks up to see Ariadne, and the look of hope lighting up her features as she glances expectantly between him and Arthur's still form breaks his heart.
"The idea didn't take," he says quietly, and the tears come then, hot and unforgiving. "We have to try again."
- * - * -
EPILOGUE
Arthur steps out into the lobby and catches sight of Dom standing by the concierge desk, talking quietly to the young woman there, a petite and pretty young thing - and he frowns, wondering if Dom's really ready to move on after Mal's abrupt decision to end their marriage.
He stops short suddenly - there's a man standing beside Dom, wearing the most heinous combination of a maroon shirt and grey trousers, with a brown tweed blazer. It's not the obvious fashion faux pas that makes Arthur frown though, it's the striking...familiarity of the sight: the man flipping a poker chip over and over his knuckles, smirking cattily and watching Arthur approach before sticking out his hand with aplomb.
"A pleasure, darling."
Arthur's frown deepens and he takes the pre-offered hand. "And you are?"
"Charmed, truly," the man says with a wink, and bends to brush his lips against Arthur's knuckles. A shiver runs up the point man's spine and Arthur doesn't snatch his hand away, doesn't glare, simply stares at this man, stares because he feels like he knows him from somewhere, somehow, some dream...
"Arthur?" Dom is watching him closely, as is the concierge girl. "Is something wrong?"
All Arthur can focus on though is that look in the stranger's blue-grey eyes, tired but hopeful and warm, gentle - and there's something on the tip of his tongue; a name perhaps, a memory, a dream:
He breathes it out: "Eames."
And Eames smiles.
- * - * -
A/N: Surprise post!! So, that miracle happened, and I now have wifi. *dances*
Whew, what a monster. Hey, that could've been my Big Bang!! *shrugs* Oh well. Hope you guys enjoyed!!
Character/Pairings: Arthur/Eames, Mal/Cobb, Ariadne, James, Phillipa, Saito, Yusuf
Rating: PG-13
Disclaimer: Mr. Nolan owns it all
Warnings: mentions of mental illness, attempted suicide
Summary: Arthur goes crazy very much in the same way he does everything else - efficiently, determinedly, and with a quiet steadfastness. Eames has always been a little crazy, and he doesn't need the wristband or straightjacket to prove it. The different faces he wears are enough.
Author's Notes: Written for the square "captivity" for hc_bingo and for the prompt on inception_kink : "Psych ward AU. Arthur and Eames meet in a mental institution because both have gone slightly crazy after too many jobs blurring the line between dream and reality."
"Look, Arthur," Dom says quietly, his voice hushed. He's cupping something in the palm of his hand: a small die, red with white dots. "You're awake." The die clatters to the tabletop, plastic against marble, and comes to rest with two small dots facing upwards. "This isn't a dream."
"That...that's a totem?"
"Yes. And now it's yours."
Arthur doesn't move to take it though; his fingers are gripping the sides of the sofa, as if he's afraid that he might go whirling into the endless chasms of hallucinations and nightmares if he lets go. "But no one's supposed to touch another dreamer's totem." He's actually never had one before, never felt the need for one; always confident of his ability to tell between the waking world and the dreaming. Apparently, that decision and his stupid pride is now coming back to bite him in the ass.
Dom sighs. "Arthur, don't you trust me?" There's something uncertain yet hopeful in his tone, and Arthur swallows hard. He hears Mal talking softly to James and Phillipa in the next room, thinks of Mal's face gone white with terror, thinks of the gun he stowed behind a sofa cushion with blinding swiftness as soon as he heard the children's voices. The very thought of possibly having hurt them, any of them, makes the point man's blood run cold and he looks back down to the die and to the two white dots facing upwards. He wants to get better; of course he does. Of course he trusts Dom.
"You're giving this to me?"
"It was made for you." Dom lifts a hand and pushes forward the glossy, brightly colored information brochure across the table, cheerful faces beaming upwards framed by blocky white letters extolling the praises and benefits of Penrose Psychiatric Ward for the Mentally Insane. "Don't worry about the financial cost of your stay either; Mal and I've got you covered for seven months."
Arthur reaches out and grasps the die, clutching it tightly in one fist, his reality and anchor to sanity and peace of mind.
For the next two months, as he languishes away in the depths of the mental ward, Arthur starts each and every morning rolling the die once, twice, three times against the wall and watching the two dots come face up, every time. He holds it clutched tightly in one fist when working steadily through the strangely familiar yet obviously original files from Dom (maybe he's already worked through so many jobs that his mind automatically assigns them to preconceived schemas?), memorizing its weight and the feel of the plastic against the pads of his fingers. When Eames kisses him for the first time in a stuffy linen closet, lips soft against his, fingers gently stroking the back of his neck, Arthur knees buckle as his breath is stolen away and he scrabbles for purchase with one hand, fingers twisting in the forger's shirt, and the other testing the reality of it all.
When he wakes from hours upon hours of fitful sleep filled with nightmares that leave him gasping for breath, the first thing he does is grab for his totem because he lost the ability to dream naturally countless years ago, even before he started working with Dom. When he doesn't find it, despite having fallen asleep with it clenched in one fist, the center obviously cannot hold because reality is splitting at the seams, things fall apart, and Arthur, panicking, does the only thing he can -
He tries to wake up.
- - - - -
"Arthur, what are you DOING?!" Ariadne screams, and rushes into the room where Arthur sits slumped against the far wall, the fingers of one hand buried deep within the wrist of his other arm, obviously trying his damn hardest to rip the veins out of his body. She gets no more than five steps into the room when Arthur's head lifts, his eyes glassy and unfocused.
"Get away from me," he snarls low in his throat, and the nurse freezes, lips half-parted and trembling. From down the hall, pounding footsteps herald the arrival of Dr. Saito who immediately pulls Ariadne behind his frame protectively, Dr. al Dwarian with a syringe in hand, and Eames, whose white t-shirt and sweatpants are wet and splattered with a muddy brown color. He must have been getting Arthur's coffee for him, and were Arthur not too busy trying to bleed himself dry, he would be appreciating the sentiment because rarely does anyone do anything for him just because.
Ah, well. He can thank the real Eames (and not just his projection) when he fucking wakes up. He looks down and sees that the growing puddle of blood staining his white clothing still isn't nearly large enough for his liking, and with a growl of frustration, digs his fingers even deeper. He's pretty sure he's already touching bone; so why can't he bleed any faster?!
"Arthur..." He looks up. It's Eames, and although his voice is shaking and his face is blanched with fear in a way that the real Eames's never would be, for a moment, Arthur is stupidly proud of himself for having projected the forger so well. He'll never be as great an architect as Dom or Mal, but he can memorize details with astonishing accuracy. Even Eames's stubble looks the same; the callouses on his fingers an exact replica of the real deal when he touches the side of Arthur's face gently. "Oh darling, what have you done to yourself?"
"I..." Arthur's eyelids are getting heavy; he shivers suddenly with cold. The words slip out without any sense of order because he's really very tired, and Eames's fingers carding through his hair that for once is an absolute mess (and he doesn't gave a damn) are wonderful. "Not real...'m dreaming. Lost. Totem. Lost my totem. Have to...die and then...then wake up, I have to...have to..."
"Alright," Eames says softly, reassuringly, kindly. "Alright, pet. Let me help." And isn't that nice of him, offering to help although Arthur wants to tell the forger that he isn't anyone's pet; Eames is gently laying a hand on his arm and circling fingers around his wrist, pulling his hand away from-
No.
Arthur brings his head forward with a sharp, controlled jerk of his neck, smashing his forehead into Eames's face, Eames who's trying to stop him from dying, Eames who's a projection and nothing more. As the forger falls back, releasing his grip, Arthur turns in a half circle, fist catching Dr. al Dwarian on the jaw; the physician, who'd been trying to sneak forward, drops the syringe as he staggers, reeling from the blow. It rolls across the floor, momentarily forgotten, and Arthur's ready when Saito rushes at him, taking the other man out with a clean, sharp jab to the ribs, then the neck, and a kick to the back of the knee, felling him like a tree.
That leaves only Ariadne and Arthur sets his jaw, preparing himself for the necessary. He's really grown to like Ariadne though; she was the first one to show him kindness here and he abhors the thought of killing an unarmed young woman, but consoles himself with the fact that she'll be fine when he wakes up. A relatively painless death then, maybe breaking her neck would work best-
"Arthur," Ariadne stutters, but falls silent when Arthur's eyes dart up and towards her-
"Arthur," Mal whispers, but stops when Arthur's eyes snap toward her and narrow-
"Arthur, please!" Ariadne wails; and her sobs only grow louder as Arthur turns his gaze upon her-
He blinks, disoriented, three different images from three different instances warring for visual comprehension and mental translation; one in the present and one from the past, and one that can't possibly be real-
A pair of arms grab him from behind, pinning his arms to his sides and Arthur bucks against the hold, fighting with all his might, but Eames's arms are iron bands, binding him fast and not letting go: not now, not ever as Dr. Saito dives for the syringe. And though Arthur thrashes and yells and curses him to five different damnations in six different languages, Eames holds him fast as the needle plunges into his neck, as he then spirals into nothingness.
- - - - -
"...wasn't supposed to do anything until my say so!" Cobb sounds infuriated. Arthur hears his voice as if from the other end of a long tunnel, but he doesn't think he's ever heard the other man sound so thoroughly pissed off, not even when he missed that vital piece of intel on the Fischer job...
Wait. Who the hell is Fishcer, and why did he just think of Dom as "Cobb"?
"You weren't here!" Ariadne isn't afraid of the thunder of Dom's (it's Dom, he has to remind himself) wrath though; and she's all spitfire and lightning, flashes of indignation here and there, but only for brief seconds. "...if we had thought...but no, and after two months...had to try-"
"...can't take any risks! He needs to see that he's not dreaming, damn it! Last time..."
Saito's voice joins in, and try as Arthur might to stay awake, the soft lilt of the Japanese accent lulls him back to sleep: "...well worth...but now have...fix it..."
- - - - -
When he comes to flat on his back in a bed with leather restraints around his wrists and ankles, and a huge belt strapped across his middle pinning him flat to the mattress, Arthur goes rigid - not because he's tied down like a stuck pig laid out on the altar as a sacrificial gift to the gods, but because he failed. And whoever the hell said 'if at first you don't succeed: try, try again' has clearly never tried to wake up from a waking nightmare. Dying comes spectacularly easy for a man like Arthur, whose final and only solution sometimes in his line of work is to die - it's the getting there that's the hard part.
Well. He supposes he could always bite through his tongue and...drown in his blood, but he'd rather not. The terrifying feeling of his lungs filling with water instead of air is already bad enough.
A soft sigh draws his attention, and he turns his head to see Eames sitting beside the bed. He's got a magnificent bruise blossoming purple and blue over his right eye, and Arthur feels sorry for that, because this projection of Eames really is nice, and the look on his face is just so sad, and the meds slowly being pumped into Arthur's system through the IV in his arm are really messing with his train of thought. His head feels like he's got cotton balls stuffed in between his ears, and Arthur blinks, slowly. Eames is saying something and he tries to focus on the other man's lips, reading syllable by syllable and letter by letter:
"You need to stop trying to off yourself."
"Why?" His tongue is thick in his mouth; his speech sluggish. But it seems like a perfectly reasonable question, and Arthur mentally congratulates himself on the challenge. Why should he stop trying to kill himself? He only wants to wake up.
Eames smiles, but it's the saddest smile Arthur has ever seen in the forger's entire arsenal of smirks, grins, and leers. "Because you won't wake up, and I will definitely miss you then."
Arthur frowns, trying to push through the haze of fogginess surrounding his mind in order to decipher exactly what Eames is saying. He returns his gaze upwards and stares at the small crack there in the plaster, a crack that winds its way through the entire ceiling, like the psych ward's only being held together by sheer will and hope. "...dreaming?" He mumbles more to himself than anyone else, and starts at light pressure against the restraint on his left wrist. "Eames...?"
Eames is unlatching the restraints, tearing the leather bands open with low grunt of disgust, freeing Arthur's right wrist (the one he'd been trying to rip apart) and soothing a thumb over the splotch of red seeping through the gauze and medical tape. He's lowering his head to brush his lips against it, and Arthur watches him, a strange warmth blossoming in his chest. "No, you're not," he murmurs with such kindness that Arthur almost wants to believe him. "You're not."
"You're a liar." Blunt, but true, and the sedative turning his muscles into jelly seems to have erased any semblance of tact in the barrier between his mind and speech anyway, and Arthur bristles inwardly, both annoyed and embarrassed at his lack of control.
Eames slips him a look that's so raw and unguarded that Arthur nearly balks at the honesty so openly displayed. "Maybe I am, but this isn't." With a pft, click his other three limbs are free as well and Eames is curling in around his temporarily paralyzed form in the narrow bed that's really too small for two grown men, drawing him close with a pair of strong, secure arms. With one hand, he holds Arthur's head against his chest, pillowed right over his heart, and from his pocket the other withdraws a small flash of color - a poker chip.
"You see these notches?" His fingers are large and rough over the chip's glossy surface, but his voice reverberates in a low rumble beneath Arthur's ear. "I'm the only one who knows exactly where they are, and what they stand for. This is my reality, Arthur." Lips press against his forehead, and Eames's hold around him tightens. "And now I'm sharing it with you."
"No!" Arthur stutters, and his hand twitches weakly. "Don't. You shouldn't." Because I'm crazy, he thinks; because I've lost my own totem, because I don't even know if you're real or if I'm still dreaming. Because I'm not a good person; I'll hurt you in the worst way possible because that's all I know how to do. Being a point man means being privy to every last weakness one's team members bear; it's being the last line of defense and the man who knows everything - memorizing every nitty-gritty feature, putting a name and reason to every skeleton in the closet, figuring out the intricacies of every deep dark secret that can build empires or tear down the greatest of men. That's his job description, and it's simple and ugly. The lists and orderliness isn't neuroticism; it's the only way he's barely managed to keep himself human, the only way Arthur refrains from getting drunk on all that he knows and inadvertently hurting Dom and Mal job after job.
And here Eames is voluntarily giving up his secret of all meaningful existence, the greatest Achilles heel a man can possess, placing the entirety of his reality into the palm of Arthur's shaking hand and closing his fingers over it.
"I know I shouldn't," Eames concedes, but there's no hesitation in his tone. "But I want to. Because I trust you, Arthur." He runs a thumb over Arthur's cheekbone, closes his fingers over Arthur's over the poker chip. "All I'm asking is that you trust me in return. Please."
Arthur knows he shouldn't. He barely knows this man and should have more sense than to base his reality upon the word (however sincere) of a con man, a man who wears the faces of others for his own personal gain. But Eames is here, holding him as if to shield him from all the horrors of the dreaming world, gazing at him with pleading eyes, telling him that the first notch beside the black stripe is for his absent father, the second for his dead mother, the third carved ninety degrees this direction for the first time he changed his face- "Just trust me."
So Arthur does.
- * - * -
Arthur's wrist heals and scars over and he's taken off of suicide watch (throughout the duration of said watch though, interestingly enough, no one ever comes in to check on him and if they do, they don't say anything about him being unrestrained and curled into Eames's embrace). Ariadne smiles at him as if nothing ever happened; Dr. "but really now, it's Yusuf" al Dwarian waves off Arthur's apology with nonchalance; Dr. Saito's voice is hoarse for a matter of days, but that heals quickly too. Arthur and Eames begin a tentative...whatever - courtship? affair? Arthur's still trying to put a name to it (because that's just how he is, and not because he's having a freakout over his sexuality or anything; it's the twenty-first century after all) while Eames simply acts like he's been in it forever, whatever it is - and no one says a thing.
Days turn into weeks which then shift into months; Arthur watches them pass by with a renewed calm. And he gets better.
Although he often finds himself scrabbling for the totem - its flat, glossy surface is the first thing he searches for when he wakes to warmth at his back (One day, Ariadne had simply opened the door with a twinkle in her eye, revealing Eames carrying a small suitcase containing his collection of battered books and grinning like an idiot. The nurse offered no explanation other than smiling and asking who the wife was. Eames, of course, pointed at Arthur); it's clenched in his fist when Eames kisses his neck and claims him; he watches Eames flip it over and over his bumpy knuckles as he makes his way through Dom's files - he's finding that he really doesn't need the poker chip as much anymore. A knee touching his under the table, that annoying (and alright, it's a bit charming) grin, the accent and the flash of his eyes, the pet names (those, Arthur absolutely refuses to think as adorable) - those are what keeps him grounded. It's Eames keeps him sane.
"What's on your mind, pet?" Fingers play lazily down the slope of his spine and Arthur quickly tucks the poker chip out of sight.
"Nothing," he mumbles noncommittally into the pillow, and Eames smiles against his skin, presses another kiss to his neck, and Arthur smiles.
Sometimes it's Eames who gets far away though, an inscrutable look entering his eyes as he gazes off into thin air, fingers tapping out a rhythmless tempo against Arthur's thigh, and it scares Arthur like no other. When he points it out, Eames merely brushes it off before going back to pester Ariadne or recommencing his attempts to ruffle the point man's hair.
"All things considering, it's probably best to omit the sister entirely," Arthur says, peering at the rather unfortunate looking mark's rather stunning sister. "Their relationship isn't exactly a cordial one, and less animosity inside the dreamscape would be much preferred for a smoother job."
Silence meets his outspoken conclusion, and Arthur frowns; glances up. The frown deepens and he reaches out swiftly, fingers grabbing the forger's jaw with perhaps more force than necessary, and he turns Eames's face toward his own. "Eames."
Eames starts and blinks, then grins and tosses out a breezy "nothing to worry about, love."
But it does worry Arthur. That's the fifth time that's happened in a week.
And on those nights, he tries to stay awake for as long as he can, because he knows when he falls asleep he'll dream of the impossible and terrible: of Mal flickering in and out of existence like nothing but a memory, of Dom losing James and Phillipa forever, of Eames diving out of a helicopter and into the heart of a blizzard, of sweet Ariadne falling backwards off a building and into the streets below.
Eames, as far as Arthur can tell, never sleeps. He sometimes wakes to Eames's fingers tracing along his jaw, over his eyes, playing over his lips and so gentle, always so gentle. And, most every night, he hears Eames murmur quietly like a litany, a prayer: "What am I going to do without you?"
- - - - -
The day of Arthur's release dawns cold and clear, dead leaves barely clinging to twisted tree branches standing naked against the grey sky. Arthur's wearing his suit and standing at the nurse's station, his seven months of time served, his mind fully intact. His die is a comfortable and familiar weight in his breast pocket (apparently, its removal in the dead of night was supposed to help him bridge the gap between fantasy and reality without the need of any physical reminder; Dr. Saito sent a written apology that Ariadne delivered with a small shrug), Dom is waiting outside in the car, and Arthur should be ready to go.
Except Eames is leaning against the wall, arms crossed over his chest, one foot scuffling against the floor. The forger has a strange expression on his face, something like a bittersweet smile and something like the face one usually makes when trying to hold back tears: lips pursed, jaw tight, eyes narrowed. He watches Arthur sign out silently, flipping the poker chip over his knuckles; watches the point man hug Ariadne and shake Yusuf's hand, all without comment. His eyes do drift toward Arthur's tailored pinstripe-clad backside once or twice and his lips twitch upwards for a fraction of a second, but only for a second and when Arthur turns toward him, the man of a million different looks has absolutely no expression on his face at all.
"Eames?"
The forger pushes off the wall and strides slowly toward him, once again showing his utter lack of understanding of the concept of personal space (although, it really has become a moot point by now considering everything else they've done that involves a lot of space invasion) by standing so close that Arthur can see his own reflection in the other man's eyes.
"Eames?" He asks again uncertainly, hesitant as whether to - what, shake his hand? Pull him in for a hug? Nod his head and bid him farewell? It isn't anything official, their five month affair - most summer whirlwind flings last for about the same duration of time, and there's no telling what'll happen now that they're about to be on opposite sides of society. Before Arthur can make up his mind though, Eames leans forward, cradles his cheek in one hand, and kisses him softly.
Arthur's a fairly private man; his business is his own and he's certainly not a fan of public displays of affection. But now? To hell with propriety; he kisses right back.
"I'll see you on the flip side, darling," Eames says softly against his lips. They both know that no one's said anything about Eames being released anytime soon - Arthur's checked; he asked Ariadne to look it up at least upon five different occasions and received the same sad, little sympathetic shake of the head each time.
"I'll visit," Arthur blurts out stupidly, and it's the closest thing to what he really means to say, and both of them know it. Eames chuckles. The sound twists its way into Arthur's chest.
"No you won't, pet." His gaze is fond and lonely and melancholy; he reaches up to ruffle Arthur's hair one last time and, wordlessly, Arthur lets him. "No you won't."
When Arthur gets into the car, after greeting him warmly, Dom raises an eyebrow and asks if it was casino night last night, and the point man looks down to see a poker chip peeking out of the top of his breast pocket. It's still slightly warm to the touch and he lets the die remain in his pocket the entire ride back to his apartment, clutching the chip instead.
- - - - -
"Arthur?" It's Ariadne. She's obviously crying, sniffling and hiccuping into the phone and he sits straight up in bed, fingers searching for the lamp on the bedside table.
"Ariadne? What's wrong?" He vaguely wonders how she even got this number as he stumbles out of bed, cradling the phone between shoulder and ear, but pushes the thought to the back of his mind. It's not relevant anyways, not with what she says next, voice trembling.
"It's Eames. You have to get here quickly, please Arthur, just come back now!"
One day when Mal was six months pregnant with James, she started hemorrhaging severely, without reason and without ceasing. Dom was in Cairo at the time, and Arthur rushed the woman he saw as both a mother and a friend to the hospital, breaking every traffic law in LA (the few that are still obeyed, mind you; yes, there was some driving on the wrong side of the road) on his way there. The doctors told Dom that he had Arthur's quick reaction to thank for the life of both his wife and child. Swiftness is essential to being a point man, and there have been many times projections taking aim at Dominic Cobb suddenly found themselves with a bullet to the heart thanks to his point man's quick trigger finger and expert aim. Arthur knows the meaning of quick, and suits actions to words down to the letter.
He's out the door in five seconds flat, somehow managing to have shrugged on a suit in such a small amount of time. He loops the tie around his neck purely out of habit as he speeds through the grey light of dawn. He's gone so fast that he forgets the small poker chip lying under his pillow.
- - - - -
Ariadne's white uniform is splattered with blood.
None of it is hers since she bears no visible open wounds, but her right arm sits in a poorly and hastily fashioned sling; her face is pale and drawn, minimal cosmetics having long ago been washed away by the tears that still streak her cheeks and have turned her nose into something resembling a cherry tomato. She looks like a wreck.
But apparently, Eames is much worse.
"He was fine throughout the day after you left," the nurse sniffs, and Arthur withdraws a handkerchief from his pocket and hands it over. Ariadne takes it and grips the silk tightly in her hands. "He didn't eat anything at dinner though, and after all the patients went back to their rooms, he was still sitting at the table." The tears start afresh, and Arthur wonders if he ought to tell the young woman that the point of a handkerchief is not to hold it, but to use it, but settles for patting her shoulder awkwardly, encouraging her to go on.
"I went over to see if everything was okay, and...and..."
Arthur opens and closes his mouth twice before any sound comes out. "Eames did this to you?" His voice is incredulous.
He doesn't believe it. He can't believe it. Eames obviously has the build to do some proper damage when he sees fit; Arthur has traced the curve of defined biceps and pectorals with both fingers and lips before, and Ariadne, who looks like she'd be a hundred pounds soaking wet is clearly no match. But Eames has never been anything but kind to the petite nurse, a perfect gentlemen: pushing the giant laundry cart around for her without being asked, teasing her about potential boyfriends with a definite protective air, pecking her on the cheek when he sees she's having a bad day. Such a turn in behavior and galvanizing action can only mean a complete erasure of that gentleman and the emergence of a persona far darker, probably spurred on by a fairly traumatic stressor.
She nods miserably. "He accused me of not...of being a - a projection. And he kept asking for you."
Other shoe, meet floor. Arthur swallows thickly; he runs his fingers over the two grooves on a face of his die. "Where is he now?"
Ariadne's eyes flit away, guilty. "In solitary."
- - - - -
"Dreaming, dreaming, dreaming..."
The mumbled mantra is the first thing Arthur hears when he steps inside the white padded room, and when he sees Eames's frame strapped uncomfortably into a straightjacket huddled in a corner of the tiny space, it feels like a sucker punch to the gut.
"Eames?" The name leaves his mouth in an exhale of breath and his shoes make no sound as he pads silently across the room, dropping into an easy crouch beside the forger, not caring whether or not the action wrinkles his slacks. "Eames."
Ariadne claims Eames is drugged up to the eyeballs in order to keep from harming anyone else or himself (he's already fought his way out of four straightjackets), but the moment Arthur lays a tentative hand on his knee, Eames glances up and positively beams, like Christmas come early. "Arthur." He makes as if to get to his feet or stretch his arms out toward the point man, remembering too late he can't, and pitches forward unsteadily, his motions uncoordinated and clumsy.
"Oh God, Eames." Eames's face is a mess of bruises, layer upon layer of swollen blood vessels beneath discolored flesh; the bridge of his nose sits at an odd angle, clearly broken; both his lips are cut and swollen to some degree, and one eye is nothing but a slit in his face. He looks like he tried to pick a fight with a brick wall by slamming into it repeatedly, face first, and Arthur can only wordlessly wrap his arms around the other man and pull him in close, throat tight with emotion. Eames sighs happily and lays his cheek on Arthur's shoulder, face buried in his collar, mumbling nonsense words against his neck, and Arthur closes his eyes, praying for strength from whichever deity cares enough to give a damn.
Eames pulls back a fraction of an inch and smiles up at him, speaking then with sudden, amazing clarity. "This isn't real, darling."
His own words from months ago have never stung so much: salt in an open wound. "Yes, it is. Of course it is." Too late, he remembers the poker chip lying under his pillow, forgotten in his haste, and Arthur curses his momentary lapse of memory. "What happened to you?"
"You left," the forger mumbles, answer blunt and simple, and fuck if that doesn't hurt like hell. Arthur feels wetness against his skin and hesitantly brings his fingers to Eames's face, gently wipes away the tears there, mindful of the bruises. "And then I started dreaming again." Eames struggles momentarily, but then relaxes into Arthur's hold, limp and boneless. "Pet?"
"What is it?" Arthur's voice is low, hollow. He doesn't know what to do in this type of situation, doesn't know how to fix Eames, doesn't know if he can stand to see the forger like this another minute. And he hates himself for his helplessness, hates himself for having dragged Eames down like this, because he knew, he knew that this would happen; he even hates Eames for being such a sneaky, selfless bastard and resigning himself to this fate.
"It's time for both of us to leave now."
"Leave where?" He dreads the answer and sure enough, Eames doesn't disappoint. Eames never disappoints Arthur, no matter what he does. He never has.
"Here. Leave here. Arthur." Eames stares at him, voice a hushed whisper. "We have to wake up."
He wants to slap Eames, wants to shake him until his teeth rattle in his skull, wants to yell this is real, we're both awake, you idiot into his face, but he doesn't. Instead, Arthur simply shushes the other man gently and sits with his back against a white padded wall, cradling Eames's head against his neck.
Arthur waits.
He doesn't have the slightest idea what he's waiting for, but it's coming and he can feel it, like a thrum beneath the skin of the universe, a rumble through his veins, and so he waits, waits with Eames's continuous murmur of babbling nonsense in his ears.
- - - - -
He smells ash, sulfur, and the undeniable stench of death that he's experienced far too many times to not know with a strange and intimate certainty. Arthur opens his eyes and stares: the world around him is crumbling at the edges, crinkling like flames licking at a sheet of paper with smoldering landscape, bombed out buildings, ash cascading down like dirty snow and all.
He's waken up to hell.
Dreaming, dreaming, dreaming, sounds Eames's voice in his mind, and Arthur jumps up, panic coursing through him like the burn of lactic acid in his muscles, eyes casting around wildly, frantically. Beneath his feet the ground tilts dangerously and he stumbles, leans against the crumbling, graffitied wall of a deserted and broken down building for support. "Eames?"
His throat is parched, mouth dry and filled with dust and soot. Arthur coughs and tries to squash down the ever-increasing fear bubbling in his chest and threatening to evolve into full-blown hysteria because he was just in the solitary room with Eames, now Eames is nowhere to be found, and Arthur hasn't the foggiest how the hell he's landed in something that looks like a scene out of some post apocalyptic movie. "Eames!"
Dreams feel real when you're in them, Dom once told him. Only after you wake up do you realize something was strange. Well, too bad the extractor never taught him how to deal with realizations of strangeness in the dream itself - only this isn't a dream because although none of it makes sense, when he jerks the die out of his pocket and throws it to the ground, the surface that comes to rest facing upwards proudly displays two white dots.
Scooping up the die, Arthur tosses it again (once for chance, two for luck, three for certainty) and it bounces once against the cracked and parched ground, rolls, and comes to a halt under the round toe of a brown oxford, the toe of a brown oxford that steps down and grinds the die into the dust.
Arthur, on his knees, makes a strangled sound of protest in his throat, swiping a fallen lock of hair out of his field of vision as he glares upwards - and all words of anger and objection die on his lips.
"Eames?"
But it's not. It can't be. The man that stands before him has the same features and body language, the same gentle gaze Eames favored Arthur with the night of the point man's ill-fated suicide attempt; oh God, even the same scent, sandalwood and spice mixed with the stench of death; but this can't possibly be Eames -
Except it is. Arthur's never seen Eames in anything but white cotton and then nothing at all, but the sight of this man wearing a hideous maroon shirt paired with grey trousers and a brown blazer (Christ, is that tweed?) just as proudly as any three piece suit Arthur owns strikes a chord of familiarity within the point man, deep, deep down somewhere, hidden behind walls erected not to keep out, but to wall in.
Dom says he's the best (and if Arthur's not fully sold until Mal tells him of how this Eames character decided to pull her out of the way of an incoming bullet out of pure instinct, Dom never needs to know): a master of disguise and a true professional with a ninety-nine percent success rate (Arthur silently thinks about his own ninety-nine point nine success rate - that stupid Borges job...) and a knack for getting the job done, no matter the stakes. Arthur's prepared to respect if not necessarily like this forger, even if he's never really been fond of those who can change nearly everything about themselves into an imitation of someone else (and besides, it's something he himself has never been able to achieve) - but that plan quickly goes sour when he catches glimpse of the man lounging against the bar, casually tossing peanuts into his mouth.
Good Lord, this man has reputedly been over hundreds different people, and he can't even manage to match patterns and colors in his own personal wardrobe?
Eames holds his hand out with a grin; Arthur's spine is stiff when he takes the pre-offered hand and introduces himself with a curt, simple "Arthur."
"A pleasure, darling," the forger says, and bends his head to kiss the back of Arthur's hand before he can snatch it away, stubble brushing against the point man's knuckles. Mal giggles behind her hand, Dom checks his watch impatiently, and Eames glances slyly upwards, and smirks cattily. "Truly, I'm charmed."
Arthur's neck flames red, and he honestly considers shooting Eames on the spot.
"Arthur?" A pair of hands settle on his shoulders and shake him lightly. "Arthur."
He looks up, brow beaded with sweat. His vision is spinning weirdly - Eames's lips brushing against the back of his hand, Eames backing him in against the wall, Eames kneeling on the dirt in front of him: first meetings, all of them, but how can he have met the same man three times? God, his head aches, and Arthur holds onto Eames out of pure habit, fingers digging into the familiar curve of muscular arms.
Eames grips back just as tightly, eyes searching his. "The trigger worked, yeah?" His voice is hopeful. "You remember. This is what I wore the first time we met."
"Met?" Arthur sputters. "What are you talking about? We met seven months ago. In the psych ward. Eames, where are we - how are you...what can't I remember how-"
Eames shakes his head firmly once, no. "We met a long time ago, Arthur. The Rynders job." His fingers tighten, as if he's trying to force the words into becoming truth by mere touch alone, and he's probably leaving bruises, but Arthur doesn't care, doesn't care because Eames is talking crazy, he has to be.
"You were twenty-two and wearing that black suit with the white pinstripes."
"Magnificent view," Eames comments appreciatively as Arthur bends down to retrieve the PASIV device and the point man immediately straightens, upper half snapping upwards like a spring. Eames merely shrugs at the heated glare he receives, making a vague motion with one hand that can quite possibly stand for any manner of lewd and suggestive remarks. "I'm especially fond of the pinstripes. Very flattering to your form."
"I had to forge myself into a tall, blonde Adonis, and kept flirting with you the entire time."
"Come now darling," he practically purrs, and Arthur stares very determinedly at the far wall. "Live a little, yeah? What's one glass of champagne as we wait for Mr. Brown to show?" Eames is standing close, very close, too close, and Arthur tries very hard to resist the urge to put his foot to the other man's groin. "All work and no play makes Arthur one very dull boy."
He raises an eyebrow and turns away smoothly, lips pursed. "Are you always this unprofessional on the job?"
Eames is smiling, fond and reminiscent, yet tinged with a hint of pain. "You shot me in the head."
"Bloody hell-" Arthur shoots the seventy year-old grandmother springing at him and brandishing her cane like a club without even batting an eye, then turns at Eames's pain-filled curse. The forger has lost the disguise and is bleeding from a gaping wound in his stomach, courtesy of a carving knife plunged hilt-deep, and Arthur doesn't even stop to think - he raises his gun, aims, and puts a bullet in between Eames's eyes.
"No, no, no," Arthur mumbles at the ground; his head is killing him, the dull ache between his eyes spreading everywhere. "This is crazy, this is...this is-"
"This is a dream. Look around yourself, Arthur. You've seen this before; this is what happens when a dream loses its architect." Fingers grip his jaw firmly but not roughly, turning his head this way and that. "You know our architect. Ariadne?"
Ariadne. Petite, dark-haired, smiling Ariadne dressed in her nurse's scrubs and leading him to his room, shoving him into a linen closet with Eames, giggling as she follows Eames around the sitting area in a tuneless waltz. Ariadne and her brightly colored cardigans, her hipster scarves, her brilliant, brilliant mind and endless creativity, her goodness of heart and thirst for all things constructible. Ariadne and her mazes, majestic wonders of paradox-
"Penrose stairs," Arthur whispers, and his eyes suddenly catch sight of a sign lying battered and twisted on the ground, useless, reading: Penrose Psychiatric Ward for the Mentally Insane. "Paradox." And suddenly it makes sense, why the psychiatric ward boasts of five different levels and all sorts of living accommodations but he's never seen anything but the first floor, why there are elevators that have neither an up nor down button, why there are no stairs leading upwards and why the floor plans kept on changing after he thought he'd memorized the blueprints by heart before checking in.
"It's a dream," Eames tells him, "a dream literally plucked from the fabric of your mind and constructed right inside another dream. Ariadne made it just for you."
"Another dream?" He croaks, but he knows, he knows, and it hurts like hell but he knows:
Dom calling him in the middle of the night, yelling and screaming and sobbing into the phone that Mal's killed herself, that she jumped off a fucking window ledge on the forty-fifth story. Phillipa crawling into his lap and asking Uncle Arthur where her mommy is. James doing the same thing not fifteen minutes later. It's Phillipa's sixth birthday and Mal doesn't buy a pink princess cake because Mal isn't there; she's a shade haunting Cobb (it's always Cobb now, because Mal called him Dom and she's six feet under) and lurking about his subconscious, shooting Arthur in the heart, pulling him under the surface of the Dead Sea until he drowns, sticking a carving knife up in between his ribs.
"You know." Sometime between then and now, Arthur must have slumped because his fingers are still clutching Eames's ugly brown jacket but he's sitting flat on his ass, breath coming shallow as invisible ice picks embed themselves in his skull. "You've always known but you've simply forced it all away, locking it up in a box in that mind of yours-"
Arthur recoils from him, movements sharp and jerky. "You're wrong. You're wrong; this is real. It's real; you showed me-"
"Why did all those files you researched for Cobb seem so easy?" Arthur stills because he didn't tell anyone about that. "It's because they're all actual jobs you've already completed, Arthur. In reality. And," Eames continues, holding up a hand to halt any potential arguments, "why was your therapist so familiar, even though you don't remember any of your sessions with him? That was Saito. You remember Saito."
Cobol Engineering. Following the business mogul onto the bullet train and recruiting the kid, Tadashi, to keep lookout. Another one grand out of the pocket, no big deal. Two level of dreams; Mal shooting him in the kneecap, Nash stupidly getting the fibers of the carpet wrong. Saito offering Cobb one last job - not to extract an idea, but to plant one...
"Cobb, we should walk away from this."
Saito playing the part of a goddamn tourist. Saito getting himself shot.
"Inception." The word bursts from his mouth and Arthur pitches forward with a low cry as his vision explodes in white-
Fischer. Recruiting Ariadne in Paris. Eames is in Mombosa; there are plenty of good thieves out there.
"This, Ariadne, would be a kick."
"Security's going to run you down hard."
"Then I shall lead them on a merry chase."
How the fucking hell did he miss that Fischer's mind had been militarized? An error. An oversight. Arthur's sorry and it won't happen again, but Cobb is furious and he has a right to be, because he has the most to lose if they fail; little James and Phillipa waiting back home for their Daddy.
"You mustn't be afraid to dream a little bigger, darling."
His forehead is pressed against Eames's shoulder, breath reduced to ragged gasps as his fingers clench and unclench convulsively in the folds of the forger's shirt; Eames has gathered him close and his voice is a low murmur of explanation and apology directly in Arthur's ear: "We were losing you, darling. We had to."
- - - - -
"Arthur, listen to me," Dom demands, his voice firm and commanding, but his hands are shaking ever so slightly as he holds them up in a placating manner. "Put the gun down."
"No."
"Will you just think about what you're about to do?!" Fear and desperation burst forth like the waters of a deluge smashing through a dam.
"I have thought about it. You've trained me to tell the difference between reality and fantasy, and this, Dom...this isn't real."
"Arthur," Mal whispers, but stops when Arthur's eyes snap toward her and narrow-
- - - - -
"Arthur, please!" Ariadne wails; and her sobs only grow louder as Arthur turns his gaze upon her-
"This isn't real," he tells her. "You're not real."
Cobb moves to stand in front of the young woman, fear trailing an icy finger up his spine. He knows that normally, Arthur would sooner cut his own head off than do anything to harm Ariadne, but Arthur's eyes are glassy and unfocused, his breathing hard and irregular, his mind warped and confused by the bastards who tried to take a spin inside Ariadne's head and took a detour into Arthur's instead, tearing up his subconscious like a bunch of drunken teenagers on a joyride. There's no telling what's going on behind that wild, frenzied gaze and in Arthur's scarily sharp but (currently) very disturbed mind.
For a moment the three of them simply stand there - and then Eames charges up from behind Arthur, tackling the slighter man and pinning him to the floor.
- - - - -
Behind him, Dom reaches out with one hand and squeezes his shoulder gently, apologetically. "It's just for a little while," he says quietly, and Arthur nods once, silent. He walks forward then, shoulders straight and jaw set, chin lifted defiantly, walking toward the nurse's station to check himself in.
- - - - -
Arthur fights and bucks like a wild bull, hollering at the top of his lungs and switching from English to French to Japanese to Arabic to Spanish in a seamless babble, muscles spasming uncontrollably as Eames and Cobb try to wrestle him down to the mattress so Yusuf can find a vein, syringe full of sedative in one hand and a line from the PASIV device in the other. He lets out a low cry as the needle jabs in painfully and Cobb's eyes are suspiciously wet; he squeezes Arthur's shoulder gently, apologetically:
"It'll be okay, Arthur. We're trying to help you. It's just for a little while."
- - - - -
"I know I shouldn't," Eames concedes, but there's no hesitation in his tone. "But I want to. Because I trust you, Arthur." He runs a thumb over Arthur's cheekbone, closes his fingers over Arthur's over the poker chip. "All I'm asking is that you trust me in return. Please."
- - - - -
"No," Arthur protests weakly as the sedative begins to seep into his system, as he begins to fall asleep. Eames's voice is a broken whisper as he runs a thumb over Arthur's cheekbone, interlaces their fingers together.
"Trust me. Please, Arthur. That's all I ask. Just trust me."
From the other side of the room, Cobb slides the needle into his wrist, and the first layer of inception begins.
- - - - -
"We were going to put you in a location where your damaged mind could accept the consequences of your dream not being real, and allow you to 'wake up', as you so desperately believed you needed to do after what those bloody bastards did to your mind." Eames's voice is tired, as if he's reciting a speech rehearsed so many times that it's long lost its meaning. "Thus, your fake break with 'reality' in the dream worlds. Oh Arthur, there have been so many..."
Ariadne takes his hand as the landscape crumbles around them, beseeching him with her large, pleading eyes, telling him that this isn't real, Arthur, this isn't real.
Saito stands with him on a rooftop overlooking Tokyo, telling him that he has to wake up, before taking two large steps forward and stepping off the edge of the roof.
Cobb sits at the table, his top spinning and spinning forever and ever and ever...
"This is the first time we've gone so deep into you. Your clever mind kept figuring out the game too soon, and we had to put you here so you wouldn't kill yourself and drop into limbo. We even constructed a fake totem for you, fake memories to barricade your own mental defenses."
Arthur glances down at the die, rolls it - and it lands on two. His eyes widen; that can't be, his die always has and always will land on three. Eames leaps forward with a shout, but Arthur's already drawn his gun, putting the muzzle under his chin.
And as he dies, he spirals ever downwards into another level of dreams.
"You remember what those idiot scientists did to you, don't you? Conditioned your brain to submerge into another level of dreaming with each death?" Eames sounds like he's choking back tears; Arthur feels wetness against his head, but can't really deal with that, because his mind is on fire, and of course he fucking remembers.
"She's nothing," he spits, and sends the unconscious Ariadne a silent apology, but mentally cheers in triumph when the quacks with medical degrees turn his way. "She builds worlds, yes, but so what? I can navigate through anything she or anyone else builds; that's what I do. I can survive anything you want to put me through, so take me, you fucking bastards; just take me."
So they do. With scalpels and electrodes and plain and simple torture, they take Arthur's mind.
"The only way to bring you back is through a series of successive kicks, like we did with Fischer. Cobb and the others already rode the first one back. We just have to wait for the second and we've come this far, Arthur, please-"
The point man is lost. His mind is straining under the sheer magnitude of such a weighty reveal, and so he clings to Eames, clings to him as the forger's pleas fall upon deaf ears. His head feels like it's about to explode and he grabs the sides of his skull and begins to scream in agony.
- * - * -
Eames jerks awake, breathing hard, shirt sticking to his back with sweat. His mouth tastes foul (no wonder, he's been under for ages now, the equivalent of seven months in Arthur's deep level dreaming) and his muscles atrophied, but there's no thought in his mind for himself as he leans forward, head in his hands.
"Eames?" Cobb. The forger can't bring himself to look at the other man.
A small hand falls on his back, and he looks up to see Ariadne, and the look of hope lighting up her features as she glances expectantly between him and Arthur's still form breaks his heart.
"The idea didn't take," he says quietly, and the tears come then, hot and unforgiving. "We have to try again."
- * - * -
EPILOGUE
Arthur steps out into the lobby and catches sight of Dom standing by the concierge desk, talking quietly to the young woman there, a petite and pretty young thing - and he frowns, wondering if Dom's really ready to move on after Mal's abrupt decision to end their marriage.
He stops short suddenly - there's a man standing beside Dom, wearing the most heinous combination of a maroon shirt and grey trousers, with a brown tweed blazer. It's not the obvious fashion faux pas that makes Arthur frown though, it's the striking...familiarity of the sight: the man flipping a poker chip over and over his knuckles, smirking cattily and watching Arthur approach before sticking out his hand with aplomb.
"A pleasure, darling."
Arthur's frown deepens and he takes the pre-offered hand. "And you are?"
"Charmed, truly," the man says with a wink, and bends to brush his lips against Arthur's knuckles. A shiver runs up the point man's spine and Arthur doesn't snatch his hand away, doesn't glare, simply stares at this man, stares because he feels like he knows him from somewhere, somehow, some dream...
"Arthur?" Dom is watching him closely, as is the concierge girl. "Is something wrong?"
All Arthur can focus on though is that look in the stranger's blue-grey eyes, tired but hopeful and warm, gentle - and there's something on the tip of his tongue; a name perhaps, a memory, a dream:
He breathes it out: "Eames."
And Eames smiles.
- * - * -
A/N: Surprise post!! So, that miracle happened, and I now have wifi. *dances*
Whew, what a monster. Hey, that could've been my Big Bang!! *shrugs* Oh well. Hope you guys enjoyed!!