The Boy Who Spoke With Ghosts (Chapter 5)
Title: The Boy Who Spoke With Ghosts
Parings: Eames/Arthur
Rating: R for graphic visuals.
Spoilers: Inception/Sixth Sense crossover. Major spoilers for both movies.
Word Count: 4500ish
Notes: Based from this excellent prompt on the Kink Meme: Arthur's real name is Cole Sear. Bonus points for an "I see ---- people" that's not totally cracky.
Chapter 1 | Chapter 2 | Chapter 3 | Chapter 4
*****
Arthur glanced at Eames, who looked concerned, but resolute. This thing between them - their mutual skeletons in the closet - would have to wait. They joined Crowe at the window and looked out.
Soong the extractor stood across the street, speaking to a slightly pudgy kid in a scarf and a puffy winter coat. It was too far away to hear what he said, but the kid smirked and held out his hand in a classic “this is gonna cost you some money’ pose.
“Tommy Tammisimo,” Arthur muttered, as Soong stuffed a wad of bills in Tommy's hand and the boy turned to point in their direction. “I’ve always hated that guy.”
“Do you have a back door?” Eames asked.
Arthur started to shake his head, but then stopped. “We had an old storm cellar with a door that led out.” He looked to Crowe. “Can you stall him?”
“Sure,” Crowe said, easily. “I’m an excellent communicator.” He clapped Arthur on the shoulder and gave a rather fatherly nod to Eames. "Good luck."
They ran back down the hall just as Soong started to pound on the front door.
There was a half-size door on the left side of the hallway, back towards the tent-fort. "Down here," Arthur said, jerking it open and gesturing Eames inside. "There's a ground-level window at the end. We-" he ducked inside as he spoke, and stopped, momentarily thrown as he and Eames stepped not into the basement, but to what looked like a stage set in a darkened auditorium.
Eames was looking about curiously, his hands shoved in his pockets. His casualness was an act, Arthur suspected, but it was the best he could probably hope for, right now.
"From your expression, I take it you weren't expecting to see this," Eames said, and when Arthur shook his head, he asked, "Where are we?"
"My old grammar school." And as soon as he said it, he scented the stale taint of smoke in the air. The fire had happened almost fifty years ago, well before he had been a student, but old buildings like this had memories of their own.
Eames nodded. "I suspect their architect memorized a basic layout of your neighborhood trusting that you as the dreamer would populate the details. But she was messy, and it left a few gaps for your mind to fill in."
"I created a loop." The sedative made Arthur feel slow and stupid and he had to think for a few moments about what exactly that meant. It was a paradox in the basic architecture - a cheat which could only happen in dream space.
He realized with a sinking feeling that for a few moments back there, with Doctor Crowe and trying to explain everything to Eames... he had forgotten he was dreaming at all.
And from the assessing look Eames was giving him, he'd guessed it as well.
It was hard to see in the low light, but Arthur remembered there had been a short staircase leading down off the stage to the left. He found it easily and led Eames through rows of theater seating to the back. "Why would my subconscious bring me back here?" he asked, though he didn't expect an answer. "I hated this place."
"That's odd," Eames said, an echo of his old humor in his voice. "I would have imagined you an excellent student."
Arthur couldn't help it. He laughed. "This place was one of the first court-houses in the state. They used to hang people here a few hundred years back - whole families."
There was a stunned silence from the other man, long enough for Arthur to regret his words.
"What are you trying to tell me?"
Arthur shrugged. "Look up," he said, and followed Eames' gaze. The shadows were thick among the rafters, and showed a bare gleam of metal from cables and light-rigging to illuminate the stage. But here and there, an odd shape hung down.
He saw the exact frozen, horrified moment when Eames realized he was looking at rows of shadowed, hanging feet.
"We have to keep going," Arthur said, before Eames could say anything. He didn't want or need his pity. He just wanted him to understand.
It wasn't until he stepped into the light and glanced down at himself that Arthur realized he was wearing an adult-sized version of his old school uniform, complete with clip-on tie. Face burning, he adjusted the tie so that it lay straight and did not look at Eames.
The corridor beyond was thankfully free of ghosts or projections. Arthur peeked around the corner to the stairwell and nodded to Eames to follow. He hoped that Eames would get the hint and keep the silence, lest they be overheard in the echoing halls, but being Eames he probably did take his meaning, but ignored it.
"Help me to understand, darling. I've known grown men in the service who have snapped after seeing horrific things on a mission. You're telling me that you've dealt with... seeing this since you were a child..."
Was he starting to believe him? Arthur glanced quickly to classroom door before he moved on.
"I didn't handle it very well at first," he admitted. "Everyone thought I was a freak, knowing things I shouldn't know and jumping at things no one else could see. My mom never told me, but I think it's a big reason why my father left us. He thought I should have been institutionalized." The next door wasn't what he was looking for, nor the one after. Doggedly, Arthur walked on with Eames close behind. "By the time I turned nine, it was getting... really bad. Then I met Doctor Crowe."
"He's the one who told you that you see spirits?" The disapproval in his voice was carefully covered by curiosity, but there all the same.
Arthur stopped and turned to him. "No, you don't understand. Crowe was dead before I met him."
Eames' eyebrows rose and Arthur went back to his search.
The next door down the hall had a frosted window and the words 'Principal Hampton' painted in primary colors.
"Why are we here?" Eames, it seemed, had taken over the role of the questioner - or extractor. Arthur couldn't tell, and he wasn't sure at this point that he actually cared.
"I need a gun," he said, as he opened the door.
"A gun?" Eames repeated, glancing to the frosted door. "Here?"
"This is a public school," Arthur said.
The office was simply furnished with a wooden desk and two chairs set before it. The last time Arthur had been in there was when he was eight and drew those upsetting pictures of people being murdered and his mother had been called in. Arthur continued, "The last principal before Mr. Hampton died of a heart attack. He spent a whole afternoon one time telling me complaining about his successor. He told me that Hampton drank like a fish and kept a gun in his desk." Arthur walked behind the desk and jerked open the top drawer. An old-style pistol lay amid sharpened pencils.
He picked it up and checked to see that there were six rounds loaded before handing over it over to Eames. "In case the sedative is affecting my reaction time."
Eames took the pistol and jammed it in his waistband without comment, but Arthur caught his expression - the hesitance to meet his gaze.
Recrossing the office, Arthur opened the door a crack and glanced down the hall. It was empty so he turned back to Eames. “You can ask,” he said, softly.
"I'm not certain that would be a good idea," Eames said quietly.
Arthur let out a breath. "I'm not delusional. I don't know why I've been able to see them, but I just have."
"Arthur-Cole..."
"Just Arthur," he said, trying to smile, but it came out as more of a grimace. "It's how you know me." And he liked the way Eames said his name, although he would never admit it out loud.
The other man looked down at the floor for a long moment before he spoke. “Is she in any pain?”
There was no doubt in his mind who 'she' was. The girl in the yellow dress. “Some are,” Arthur said, wanting to be honest, “but not her. She… they don’t know they’re dead for the most part. Some of them are so caught up in their own death that they relive it over and over, but not her. She plays,” he added, as Eames swallowed hard. “And she watches the team work, or gets bored after awhile and leaves. She’s not one of the angry ones.”
“That’s… good to know.” Eames ran his hand down his face, his eyes suspiciously red-rimmed. "What has she told you?"
This time the smile came easier. "That her mother called you Jamie."
Eames' face blanked for a moment in shock. Then he huffed, a low, strained thing which was a far cry from his normal laugh, but it was something. "Now you know why I call myself Eames."
He was starting to believe him, Arthur realized, and he was surprised at the warm relief that came with that thought.
“Right,” Eames said, after a moment, making a visible effort to change the conversation. Arthur let him, knowing from long experience that people spoke to him about things when they were ready. “We can’t give you the usual kick since it will drop you down into limbo. I could shoot myself awake, but I can’t see what the point will be since we’re both tied up there anyway.”
“It would be one less person for them to try to torture information out of again,” Arthur said.
“I’d rather not,” Eames said, bluntly. “Dreaming of a familiar location like this can disorient anyone. You know that. Should you lose track of what is real and what is the dream…”
Arthur pressed his lips together. He wanted to argue that wouldn’t happen, but two years ago he would have said the same thing about the Cobbs. “Ariadne knew we were in trouble. She would have contacted the others by now. We could dig in, try to hold out as long as-“
He was interrupted by the sound of a door slam, and booted feet upon the tile floor outside. The door was still cracked open and Arthur went to look.
It was Soong.
The extractor swung his head right and left, eyes sweeping the building for any signs of them. His face was pinched in fury. Seeing that, Arthur flashed back to a moment in a half-remembered dream - Soong's face, above him and looking like that while Arthur screamed in pain and Eames begged for them to stop.
It was almost enough for him to turn to Eames, ask him to shoot him in the head. He'd rather be hiding out in limbo for the next fifty years than deal with that again, with only the projections of the dead for company.
Then Eames put a hand on his shoulder. It was a light touch, but warm and solid and alive. Enough to push back the momentary spike of fear.
"How would you like to play this?" Eames asked softly.
If this were his own job, Arthur would know the layout like the back of his hand, already have several escape routes planned and maybe a few paradoxical architectural traps to trip up his pursuers. But Arthur was caught in a dream, not fully in control of one. Besides, he was too exhausted, physically and emotionally, for specificity.
"Come out shooting," he said, grimly, "and run like hell."
Eames flashed him a grin just as Soong's sweeping eyes landed upon the door - noticing, perhaps, that it was slightly ajar.
Arthur pushed the door open and shot twice. Soong jerked back in surprise and then cried out, hunching as he clutched his shoulder.
They sprinted down the hall, back towards the stairs. Behind him Arthur heard Soong yell out - probably into some sort of a radio, "They're here! Second level. Second level!"
The rest of Soong's team would be converging on them within moments, Arthur knew, as he and Eames turned the corner and took the stairs. If they could make it downstairs and out of the school, there would be a park nearby with plenty of places to hide. They could-
A small statured woman stood in front of them, on the landing two sets of staircases joined. Her gun was already pointed.
Abruptly, Arthur felt himself being shoved to the side as Eames moved to put himself between them. Arthur's yell of protest was drowned out by the sound of gunfire. And Eames collapsed where he stood, his body landing heavily and sliding down several steps, the pistol sliding out of his limp, dead grasp.
It didn't matter that Arthur knew, logically, Eames was still alive - he had not been under additional sedation had been kicked back awake. In that moment, he saw red.
He took the last three steps in a leap. The woman fired at him, but the shot was meant to wing, not kill, and ended up going wide. Grabbing her wrist, he twisted viciously and felt something break. Then, he shoved her hard.
Arthur caught a glimpse of her wide eyes as she took a step backwards at the edge of the next flight of stairs and her foot hit nothing but air. Her arms pin-wheeled and she gave a shout as she fell.
Her body vanished before she hit. Kicked awake.
Kicked awake? Yusuf's blend of somnacin was mixed to allow a dreamer to wake by way of falling, but he had been working with Cobb's team - exclusively with their team - for the past few weeks. It shouldn't be possible.
But Arthur didn't have time to consider it. He could Soong's heavy footfalls as he ran up from behind, and the rest of the team couldn't be far.
Either he was going to wake up, or be knocked right into limbo. Either way, Arthur didn't want to be around when Soong caught up with him. Turning, he balanced on the edge of the nearest step and let himself fall backwards...
****
He half expected to wake up on the shores of his own subconscious, lost for what would be years for him but minutes for everyone else.
When Arthur opened his eyes, however, it was to the dirty little shack, his hands and feet aching from being tied, and the sound of a scared little girl's weeping.
Eames was awake as well, and looked at him from across the room with sad, tired eyes. The kick had worked. They had escaped that dream, but what of the next? And the one after that?
The woman Arthur had pushed off the steps was already up and moving to the PASIV device. Soon, Soong and the other two members of their team would be awake as well.
Arthur felt a cold touch to his arm - icy fingers brushing past the nylon rope that bit into his wrists. The little girl in the yellow dress looked up at him with Eames' eyes.
"Can you help my daddy?"
"I can't," Arthur whispered.
The girl drew back, eyes wide. "But you have to!" she wailed, and the temperate around the room seemed to plummet several degrees. "Please, you have to do something!"
Arthur remembered holding the ghost girl's hand as she led him down the hotel hallway towards Eames - how solid she'd felt then. And hope, small and tenuous, flickered to life in his heart. He had never tried what he had had in mind - most ghosts were so lost in their own world that they could only echo back strong memories of how they lived, often their final moments.
But Arthur had a feeling that this girl had seen this type of situation before, back when she had been alive.
"I need you to be brave," Arthur said, ignoring Soong waking up with a curse and Eames' watching him whisper to no one as if he were mad. "Your daddy needs your help. Can you do that? Can you give him something sharp to cut the rope? He needs-"
He was interrupted as Soong seemed to leap out of his chair, nearly ripping the cannula out of his own arm in his fury. "I've had enough of this bullshit!" he growled, grabbing Arthur and hauling him bodily to his feet. "I saw your projections of dead bodies down there, you sick freak. Women and children!" Soong spat in his face, and Arthur felt the press of a cold muzzle against his temple. "You sick fuck. You get off on that shit, yeah?"
Arthur said nothing. Out of the corner of his eye he saw a flash of yellow dart across the room, towards the PASIV and what looked to be a med-kit.
"Soong," the woman said, "We can take him down again. I got the layout memorized, now. I'll just re-dose him and take him down alone. You can watch the forger and make sure he doesn't-"
"No." Soong licked his lips. His eyes skittered over Arthur's face, almost manic. "I've had enough of this. He's going to give us his client list right now, or he's going to die." The muzzle pressed harder into Arthur's temple and he struggled not to wince.
All eyes were on him and Soong, though, and none on sharp pair of scissors that must look, to anyone else, like it was free floating across the room.
"We need him alive," the woman insisted. "He's no good to us if he can't testify."
Testify? "Which government are you working for?" Arthur demanded, and was ignored. No wonder they wanted his list of client - he and Eames were only a link in the chain.
"That's what we have the other one for," Soong said. "Seems to me we'll be doing society a favor getting rid of this psychopath." Soong's eyes were locked on his and Arthur read his own death in them. "We already know Saito was your last client. You have three seconds to tell me who you and Dom Cobb were working for before him."
"Cobol Engineering," Arthur blurted, not because he was afraid - he didn't fear death itself, and from his experience fear and regret in the last moments was what helped make a ghost. It was because the girl in the yellow dress had knelt next to her father, bending to whisper something in his ear.
Eames had gone very still, his eyes very wide.
"Good," Soong said, and the woman snatched up a nearby folder to jot a few notes. "And your client before Cobol?"
Arthur forced himself to keep his gaze off of Eames and the ghost, lest he draw attention to them. It was difficult, though. He shook his head, stalling. "Why does she want us to testify? To who?"
Song's thin lips peeled back into a wolfish grin. "That's none of your concern. Who hired you prior to Cobol?"
"Clifton. Maurin Clifford."
He had dropped that name deliberately, knowing him to be one of the giants in the telecommunication field. He was clean as a preacher's sheets, though, and as far as Arthur knew, had never hired anyone for extraction. He was stalling for time, not truth.
Sure enough, Soong's eyes narrowed. "Maurin Clifford? What did you do for Clifford?"
"I'm not at liberty to say-" Arthur began and Soong struck him across the head with the side of his gun. Stars seemed to explode behind his eyes and his legs buckled. He landed painfully on the floor, the room spinning.
He heard two voices arguing with another, as if from far away, and his vision cleared in time to see the girl in the yellow dress place a kiss to her father's cheek before she faded away.
Just as Mal had.
He couldn't read Eames' expression. The other man sat slumped against the opposite wall, his head bowed as if in despair.
Then Arthur's line of sight was blocked as Soong stood over him, muzzle pointed right in between Arthur's eyes as he yelled, "I don't care, Angela! They'll just have to be happy with one of them. The forger knows enough, and by the time the feds are done with him, they'll have evidence to bring down rings of dream criminals."
"Fine. Whatever. Just make it quick," the woman sighed, and Arthur knew he was about to die.
He shut his eyes, not wanting Soong's triumphant face to be the last thing he saw.
Arthur heard a sharp crash, a choked gasp of surprise and then the gun went off - so loud that he was temporarily deafened. When his hearing came back, a few moments later, it was accompanied by a shrill whine.
He wasn't dead.
Arthur's eyes snapped open in time to see Soong's female associate fall, grasping the handle of a pair of sharp scissors lodged halfway up her calf.
Soong was turning - it was the woman's surprised gasp that had made his hand twitch and the shot go wide. Eames, free of his bonds, was that much quicker. Eames knocked the weapon away as Soong brought it around, and punched him in the mouth, sending the would-be extractor crashing to the ground.
The other two team members - two slow witted, heavy footed men - were rising to their feet, but Eames had gotten a hold of Soong's gun and shot them both in quick precision. He turned to Soong and the woman who were down on the floor, ready to finish them off as well. But Arthur, who had seen a lifetime of violence suddenly couldn't stand to see any more.
"Eames," he croaked, "Stop."
The other man started in surprise and whipped around towards him. "Arthur?" he asked, and, grabbing up a knife from the medkit near the PASIV, bent to cut the ropes from his wrist and ankles. "I thought he'd shot you."
Arthur's head ached. "He missed," he said, shortly, wincing as blood returned to his limbs.
Eames' eyes were clear as he looked at him - clear and freed of a burden that Arthur never realized he had carried until he had seen him without. Eames reached out and touched the sore, swollen mark on Arthur's forehead that Soong had left when he hit him - a moment of tenderness before he helped him to stand on his feet.
Soong was out cold. His female associate, Angela, was still alive with the stab wound painful but not life threatening. She said nothing, only glared hatefully as Arthur stood watch over her with the gun in hand. Eames took their cell phones and stepped briefly outside to call backup.
A quick check of the somnacin verified they had indeed come from Yusuf's lab, but the expiration dates indicated that the mixture had been purchased well before the Fischer job. One less betrayal to worry about, at least.
There were two folders lying on a short table nearby. The first, thicker file, was filled with the information they'd gleaned from Eames' extraction: a basic dossier complete with a list of all of the clients he'd worked under, along with his important contacts. Arthur's file was much thinner, but at a glance he saw scribbled notes mentioning his unusual projections.
He thought of Mal and her cryptic warning in the warehouse all those months ago.
"Why?" Arthur asked, feeling the weight of Angela's gaze on him. "I understand that the Fellman job was a trap to lure Cobb's team in, but why did you have to kill off Sander's entire team?"
She lifted her chin almost proudly - a woman who had lost, but was not yet defeated.
"We were being paid for Cobb and his men. Soong felt Sander's would just get in the way, and might warn you if they realized the Fellman job was a setup." Her face was utterly devoid of remorse as she added, "It was Soong's call, not mine. He felt it would be cleaner if they were disposed of."
Arthur felt a sudden, sharp chill in the air, as if the gathering darkness in the room had acquired a coating of frost. He glanced to the other side of the room and noted the pale, angry man with coppery hair and the single bullet hole over his left eye. Sanders watched the exchange with his fists clenched, anger distorting his features.
"You're wrong. You didn't get rid of Sanders at all," he said, hearing Eames return from outside. Eames nodded once to him in a silent signal that backup was on the way.
The woman's eyes narrowed. "What do you mean?"
They'd searched the pockets of the men Eames had shot already. Arthur picked up a spare lighter, flicked the flame to life and set it against the edge of the folders containing his and Eames' information. The fire caught and he placed it on the floor, watching the paper curl before he spoke.
"You saw what was in my subconscious. You see what I see, who I interact with. How do you think I found Eames when your team had him in that hotel room?"
She said nothing, but Arthur could read doubt and then slow realization flickering across her face.
"Sanders followed you two from Johannesburg. That chill down your spine, the feeling of hair rising up on the back of your neck when you think you're alone? That's him." He said, and saw her go tense in surprise. "He's not the type to find peace and go to rest for a very long time. You have my word on that."
The woman paled slightly and Arthur turned away from her in disgust. The flames had eaten the folder and the contents within to ash and he watched it die out, exhausted and more than a little sick to his heart.
He felt Eames' light touch to his elbow. "Saito and his people will be here shortly to take over," he said, lowly. "He seemed very interested in who had hired Soong's team."
It would be in Saito's best interest to keep dream share as it was, with its current criminal rings intact, lest he need it again. Arthur nodded and Eames went on in a lower tone, "It's over, darling."
Was it? Arthur could still feel Sander's angry presence chilling the darkest corner of the shed, but for the first time in a long time there was no Mal stalking the edge of shadows. No girl in a yellow dress following her father like a puppy.
And Arthur had someone he could confide in - someone who wasn't dead, and who could know him as Cole Sear as well as Arthur the point man. Eames knew his secret, and Ariadne would have to be told something, but...
No, it wasn't over, but Arthur thought things were on their way to becoming better. Much better.
*****
(Thanks for reading, everyone! The epilogue will be up tomorrow!)
Parings: Eames/Arthur
Rating: R for graphic visuals.
Spoilers: Inception/Sixth Sense crossover. Major spoilers for both movies.
Word Count: 4500ish
Notes: Based from this excellent prompt on the Kink Meme: Arthur's real name is Cole Sear. Bonus points for an "I see ---- people" that's not totally cracky.
Chapter 1 | Chapter 2 | Chapter 3 | Chapter 4
*****
Arthur glanced at Eames, who looked concerned, but resolute. This thing between them - their mutual skeletons in the closet - would have to wait. They joined Crowe at the window and looked out.
Soong the extractor stood across the street, speaking to a slightly pudgy kid in a scarf and a puffy winter coat. It was too far away to hear what he said, but the kid smirked and held out his hand in a classic “this is gonna cost you some money’ pose.
“Tommy Tammisimo,” Arthur muttered, as Soong stuffed a wad of bills in Tommy's hand and the boy turned to point in their direction. “I’ve always hated that guy.”
“Do you have a back door?” Eames asked.
Arthur started to shake his head, but then stopped. “We had an old storm cellar with a door that led out.” He looked to Crowe. “Can you stall him?”
“Sure,” Crowe said, easily. “I’m an excellent communicator.” He clapped Arthur on the shoulder and gave a rather fatherly nod to Eames. "Good luck."
They ran back down the hall just as Soong started to pound on the front door.
There was a half-size door on the left side of the hallway, back towards the tent-fort. "Down here," Arthur said, jerking it open and gesturing Eames inside. "There's a ground-level window at the end. We-" he ducked inside as he spoke, and stopped, momentarily thrown as he and Eames stepped not into the basement, but to what looked like a stage set in a darkened auditorium.
Eames was looking about curiously, his hands shoved in his pockets. His casualness was an act, Arthur suspected, but it was the best he could probably hope for, right now.
"From your expression, I take it you weren't expecting to see this," Eames said, and when Arthur shook his head, he asked, "Where are we?"
"My old grammar school." And as soon as he said it, he scented the stale taint of smoke in the air. The fire had happened almost fifty years ago, well before he had been a student, but old buildings like this had memories of their own.
Eames nodded. "I suspect their architect memorized a basic layout of your neighborhood trusting that you as the dreamer would populate the details. But she was messy, and it left a few gaps for your mind to fill in."
"I created a loop." The sedative made Arthur feel slow and stupid and he had to think for a few moments about what exactly that meant. It was a paradox in the basic architecture - a cheat which could only happen in dream space.
He realized with a sinking feeling that for a few moments back there, with Doctor Crowe and trying to explain everything to Eames... he had forgotten he was dreaming at all.
And from the assessing look Eames was giving him, he'd guessed it as well.
It was hard to see in the low light, but Arthur remembered there had been a short staircase leading down off the stage to the left. He found it easily and led Eames through rows of theater seating to the back. "Why would my subconscious bring me back here?" he asked, though he didn't expect an answer. "I hated this place."
"That's odd," Eames said, an echo of his old humor in his voice. "I would have imagined you an excellent student."
Arthur couldn't help it. He laughed. "This place was one of the first court-houses in the state. They used to hang people here a few hundred years back - whole families."
There was a stunned silence from the other man, long enough for Arthur to regret his words.
"What are you trying to tell me?"
Arthur shrugged. "Look up," he said, and followed Eames' gaze. The shadows were thick among the rafters, and showed a bare gleam of metal from cables and light-rigging to illuminate the stage. But here and there, an odd shape hung down.
He saw the exact frozen, horrified moment when Eames realized he was looking at rows of shadowed, hanging feet.
"We have to keep going," Arthur said, before Eames could say anything. He didn't want or need his pity. He just wanted him to understand.
It wasn't until he stepped into the light and glanced down at himself that Arthur realized he was wearing an adult-sized version of his old school uniform, complete with clip-on tie. Face burning, he adjusted the tie so that it lay straight and did not look at Eames.
The corridor beyond was thankfully free of ghosts or projections. Arthur peeked around the corner to the stairwell and nodded to Eames to follow. He hoped that Eames would get the hint and keep the silence, lest they be overheard in the echoing halls, but being Eames he probably did take his meaning, but ignored it.
"Help me to understand, darling. I've known grown men in the service who have snapped after seeing horrific things on a mission. You're telling me that you've dealt with... seeing this since you were a child..."
Was he starting to believe him? Arthur glanced quickly to classroom door before he moved on.
"I didn't handle it very well at first," he admitted. "Everyone thought I was a freak, knowing things I shouldn't know and jumping at things no one else could see. My mom never told me, but I think it's a big reason why my father left us. He thought I should have been institutionalized." The next door wasn't what he was looking for, nor the one after. Doggedly, Arthur walked on with Eames close behind. "By the time I turned nine, it was getting... really bad. Then I met Doctor Crowe."
"He's the one who told you that you see spirits?" The disapproval in his voice was carefully covered by curiosity, but there all the same.
Arthur stopped and turned to him. "No, you don't understand. Crowe was dead before I met him."
Eames' eyebrows rose and Arthur went back to his search.
The next door down the hall had a frosted window and the words 'Principal Hampton' painted in primary colors.
"Why are we here?" Eames, it seemed, had taken over the role of the questioner - or extractor. Arthur couldn't tell, and he wasn't sure at this point that he actually cared.
"I need a gun," he said, as he opened the door.
"A gun?" Eames repeated, glancing to the frosted door. "Here?"
"This is a public school," Arthur said.
The office was simply furnished with a wooden desk and two chairs set before it. The last time Arthur had been in there was when he was eight and drew those upsetting pictures of people being murdered and his mother had been called in. Arthur continued, "The last principal before Mr. Hampton died of a heart attack. He spent a whole afternoon one time telling me complaining about his successor. He told me that Hampton drank like a fish and kept a gun in his desk." Arthur walked behind the desk and jerked open the top drawer. An old-style pistol lay amid sharpened pencils.
He picked it up and checked to see that there were six rounds loaded before handing over it over to Eames. "In case the sedative is affecting my reaction time."
Eames took the pistol and jammed it in his waistband without comment, but Arthur caught his expression - the hesitance to meet his gaze.
Recrossing the office, Arthur opened the door a crack and glanced down the hall. It was empty so he turned back to Eames. “You can ask,” he said, softly.
"I'm not certain that would be a good idea," Eames said quietly.
Arthur let out a breath. "I'm not delusional. I don't know why I've been able to see them, but I just have."
"Arthur-Cole..."
"Just Arthur," he said, trying to smile, but it came out as more of a grimace. "It's how you know me." And he liked the way Eames said his name, although he would never admit it out loud.
The other man looked down at the floor for a long moment before he spoke. “Is she in any pain?”
There was no doubt in his mind who 'she' was. The girl in the yellow dress. “Some are,” Arthur said, wanting to be honest, “but not her. She… they don’t know they’re dead for the most part. Some of them are so caught up in their own death that they relive it over and over, but not her. She plays,” he added, as Eames swallowed hard. “And she watches the team work, or gets bored after awhile and leaves. She’s not one of the angry ones.”
“That’s… good to know.” Eames ran his hand down his face, his eyes suspiciously red-rimmed. "What has she told you?"
This time the smile came easier. "That her mother called you Jamie."
Eames' face blanked for a moment in shock. Then he huffed, a low, strained thing which was a far cry from his normal laugh, but it was something. "Now you know why I call myself Eames."
He was starting to believe him, Arthur realized, and he was surprised at the warm relief that came with that thought.
“Right,” Eames said, after a moment, making a visible effort to change the conversation. Arthur let him, knowing from long experience that people spoke to him about things when they were ready. “We can’t give you the usual kick since it will drop you down into limbo. I could shoot myself awake, but I can’t see what the point will be since we’re both tied up there anyway.”
“It would be one less person for them to try to torture information out of again,” Arthur said.
“I’d rather not,” Eames said, bluntly. “Dreaming of a familiar location like this can disorient anyone. You know that. Should you lose track of what is real and what is the dream…”
Arthur pressed his lips together. He wanted to argue that wouldn’t happen, but two years ago he would have said the same thing about the Cobbs. “Ariadne knew we were in trouble. She would have contacted the others by now. We could dig in, try to hold out as long as-“
He was interrupted by the sound of a door slam, and booted feet upon the tile floor outside. The door was still cracked open and Arthur went to look.
It was Soong.
The extractor swung his head right and left, eyes sweeping the building for any signs of them. His face was pinched in fury. Seeing that, Arthur flashed back to a moment in a half-remembered dream - Soong's face, above him and looking like that while Arthur screamed in pain and Eames begged for them to stop.
It was almost enough for him to turn to Eames, ask him to shoot him in the head. He'd rather be hiding out in limbo for the next fifty years than deal with that again, with only the projections of the dead for company.
Then Eames put a hand on his shoulder. It was a light touch, but warm and solid and alive. Enough to push back the momentary spike of fear.
"How would you like to play this?" Eames asked softly.
If this were his own job, Arthur would know the layout like the back of his hand, already have several escape routes planned and maybe a few paradoxical architectural traps to trip up his pursuers. But Arthur was caught in a dream, not fully in control of one. Besides, he was too exhausted, physically and emotionally, for specificity.
"Come out shooting," he said, grimly, "and run like hell."
Eames flashed him a grin just as Soong's sweeping eyes landed upon the door - noticing, perhaps, that it was slightly ajar.
Arthur pushed the door open and shot twice. Soong jerked back in surprise and then cried out, hunching as he clutched his shoulder.
They sprinted down the hall, back towards the stairs. Behind him Arthur heard Soong yell out - probably into some sort of a radio, "They're here! Second level. Second level!"
The rest of Soong's team would be converging on them within moments, Arthur knew, as he and Eames turned the corner and took the stairs. If they could make it downstairs and out of the school, there would be a park nearby with plenty of places to hide. They could-
A small statured woman stood in front of them, on the landing two sets of staircases joined. Her gun was already pointed.
Abruptly, Arthur felt himself being shoved to the side as Eames moved to put himself between them. Arthur's yell of protest was drowned out by the sound of gunfire. And Eames collapsed where he stood, his body landing heavily and sliding down several steps, the pistol sliding out of his limp, dead grasp.
It didn't matter that Arthur knew, logically, Eames was still alive - he had not been under additional sedation had been kicked back awake. In that moment, he saw red.
He took the last three steps in a leap. The woman fired at him, but the shot was meant to wing, not kill, and ended up going wide. Grabbing her wrist, he twisted viciously and felt something break. Then, he shoved her hard.
Arthur caught a glimpse of her wide eyes as she took a step backwards at the edge of the next flight of stairs and her foot hit nothing but air. Her arms pin-wheeled and she gave a shout as she fell.
Her body vanished before she hit. Kicked awake.
Kicked awake? Yusuf's blend of somnacin was mixed to allow a dreamer to wake by way of falling, but he had been working with Cobb's team - exclusively with their team - for the past few weeks. It shouldn't be possible.
But Arthur didn't have time to consider it. He could Soong's heavy footfalls as he ran up from behind, and the rest of the team couldn't be far.
Either he was going to wake up, or be knocked right into limbo. Either way, Arthur didn't want to be around when Soong caught up with him. Turning, he balanced on the edge of the nearest step and let himself fall backwards...
****
He half expected to wake up on the shores of his own subconscious, lost for what would be years for him but minutes for everyone else.
When Arthur opened his eyes, however, it was to the dirty little shack, his hands and feet aching from being tied, and the sound of a scared little girl's weeping.
Eames was awake as well, and looked at him from across the room with sad, tired eyes. The kick had worked. They had escaped that dream, but what of the next? And the one after that?
The woman Arthur had pushed off the steps was already up and moving to the PASIV device. Soon, Soong and the other two members of their team would be awake as well.
Arthur felt a cold touch to his arm - icy fingers brushing past the nylon rope that bit into his wrists. The little girl in the yellow dress looked up at him with Eames' eyes.
"Can you help my daddy?"
"I can't," Arthur whispered.
The girl drew back, eyes wide. "But you have to!" she wailed, and the temperate around the room seemed to plummet several degrees. "Please, you have to do something!"
Arthur remembered holding the ghost girl's hand as she led him down the hotel hallway towards Eames - how solid she'd felt then. And hope, small and tenuous, flickered to life in his heart. He had never tried what he had had in mind - most ghosts were so lost in their own world that they could only echo back strong memories of how they lived, often their final moments.
But Arthur had a feeling that this girl had seen this type of situation before, back when she had been alive.
"I need you to be brave," Arthur said, ignoring Soong waking up with a curse and Eames' watching him whisper to no one as if he were mad. "Your daddy needs your help. Can you do that? Can you give him something sharp to cut the rope? He needs-"
He was interrupted as Soong seemed to leap out of his chair, nearly ripping the cannula out of his own arm in his fury. "I've had enough of this bullshit!" he growled, grabbing Arthur and hauling him bodily to his feet. "I saw your projections of dead bodies down there, you sick freak. Women and children!" Soong spat in his face, and Arthur felt the press of a cold muzzle against his temple. "You sick fuck. You get off on that shit, yeah?"
Arthur said nothing. Out of the corner of his eye he saw a flash of yellow dart across the room, towards the PASIV and what looked to be a med-kit.
"Soong," the woman said, "We can take him down again. I got the layout memorized, now. I'll just re-dose him and take him down alone. You can watch the forger and make sure he doesn't-"
"No." Soong licked his lips. His eyes skittered over Arthur's face, almost manic. "I've had enough of this. He's going to give us his client list right now, or he's going to die." The muzzle pressed harder into Arthur's temple and he struggled not to wince.
All eyes were on him and Soong, though, and none on sharp pair of scissors that must look, to anyone else, like it was free floating across the room.
"We need him alive," the woman insisted. "He's no good to us if he can't testify."
Testify? "Which government are you working for?" Arthur demanded, and was ignored. No wonder they wanted his list of client - he and Eames were only a link in the chain.
"That's what we have the other one for," Soong said. "Seems to me we'll be doing society a favor getting rid of this psychopath." Soong's eyes were locked on his and Arthur read his own death in them. "We already know Saito was your last client. You have three seconds to tell me who you and Dom Cobb were working for before him."
"Cobol Engineering," Arthur blurted, not because he was afraid - he didn't fear death itself, and from his experience fear and regret in the last moments was what helped make a ghost. It was because the girl in the yellow dress had knelt next to her father, bending to whisper something in his ear.
Eames had gone very still, his eyes very wide.
"Good," Soong said, and the woman snatched up a nearby folder to jot a few notes. "And your client before Cobol?"
Arthur forced himself to keep his gaze off of Eames and the ghost, lest he draw attention to them. It was difficult, though. He shook his head, stalling. "Why does she want us to testify? To who?"
Song's thin lips peeled back into a wolfish grin. "That's none of your concern. Who hired you prior to Cobol?"
"Clifton. Maurin Clifford."
He had dropped that name deliberately, knowing him to be one of the giants in the telecommunication field. He was clean as a preacher's sheets, though, and as far as Arthur knew, had never hired anyone for extraction. He was stalling for time, not truth.
Sure enough, Soong's eyes narrowed. "Maurin Clifford? What did you do for Clifford?"
"I'm not at liberty to say-" Arthur began and Soong struck him across the head with the side of his gun. Stars seemed to explode behind his eyes and his legs buckled. He landed painfully on the floor, the room spinning.
He heard two voices arguing with another, as if from far away, and his vision cleared in time to see the girl in the yellow dress place a kiss to her father's cheek before she faded away.
Just as Mal had.
He couldn't read Eames' expression. The other man sat slumped against the opposite wall, his head bowed as if in despair.
Then Arthur's line of sight was blocked as Soong stood over him, muzzle pointed right in between Arthur's eyes as he yelled, "I don't care, Angela! They'll just have to be happy with one of them. The forger knows enough, and by the time the feds are done with him, they'll have evidence to bring down rings of dream criminals."
"Fine. Whatever. Just make it quick," the woman sighed, and Arthur knew he was about to die.
He shut his eyes, not wanting Soong's triumphant face to be the last thing he saw.
Arthur heard a sharp crash, a choked gasp of surprise and then the gun went off - so loud that he was temporarily deafened. When his hearing came back, a few moments later, it was accompanied by a shrill whine.
He wasn't dead.
Arthur's eyes snapped open in time to see Soong's female associate fall, grasping the handle of a pair of sharp scissors lodged halfway up her calf.
Soong was turning - it was the woman's surprised gasp that had made his hand twitch and the shot go wide. Eames, free of his bonds, was that much quicker. Eames knocked the weapon away as Soong brought it around, and punched him in the mouth, sending the would-be extractor crashing to the ground.
The other two team members - two slow witted, heavy footed men - were rising to their feet, but Eames had gotten a hold of Soong's gun and shot them both in quick precision. He turned to Soong and the woman who were down on the floor, ready to finish them off as well. But Arthur, who had seen a lifetime of violence suddenly couldn't stand to see any more.
"Eames," he croaked, "Stop."
The other man started in surprise and whipped around towards him. "Arthur?" he asked, and, grabbing up a knife from the medkit near the PASIV, bent to cut the ropes from his wrist and ankles. "I thought he'd shot you."
Arthur's head ached. "He missed," he said, shortly, wincing as blood returned to his limbs.
Eames' eyes were clear as he looked at him - clear and freed of a burden that Arthur never realized he had carried until he had seen him without. Eames reached out and touched the sore, swollen mark on Arthur's forehead that Soong had left when he hit him - a moment of tenderness before he helped him to stand on his feet.
Soong was out cold. His female associate, Angela, was still alive with the stab wound painful but not life threatening. She said nothing, only glared hatefully as Arthur stood watch over her with the gun in hand. Eames took their cell phones and stepped briefly outside to call backup.
A quick check of the somnacin verified they had indeed come from Yusuf's lab, but the expiration dates indicated that the mixture had been purchased well before the Fischer job. One less betrayal to worry about, at least.
There were two folders lying on a short table nearby. The first, thicker file, was filled with the information they'd gleaned from Eames' extraction: a basic dossier complete with a list of all of the clients he'd worked under, along with his important contacts. Arthur's file was much thinner, but at a glance he saw scribbled notes mentioning his unusual projections.
He thought of Mal and her cryptic warning in the warehouse all those months ago.
"Why?" Arthur asked, feeling the weight of Angela's gaze on him. "I understand that the Fellman job was a trap to lure Cobb's team in, but why did you have to kill off Sander's entire team?"
She lifted her chin almost proudly - a woman who had lost, but was not yet defeated.
"We were being paid for Cobb and his men. Soong felt Sander's would just get in the way, and might warn you if they realized the Fellman job was a setup." Her face was utterly devoid of remorse as she added, "It was Soong's call, not mine. He felt it would be cleaner if they were disposed of."
Arthur felt a sudden, sharp chill in the air, as if the gathering darkness in the room had acquired a coating of frost. He glanced to the other side of the room and noted the pale, angry man with coppery hair and the single bullet hole over his left eye. Sanders watched the exchange with his fists clenched, anger distorting his features.
"You're wrong. You didn't get rid of Sanders at all," he said, hearing Eames return from outside. Eames nodded once to him in a silent signal that backup was on the way.
The woman's eyes narrowed. "What do you mean?"
They'd searched the pockets of the men Eames had shot already. Arthur picked up a spare lighter, flicked the flame to life and set it against the edge of the folders containing his and Eames' information. The fire caught and he placed it on the floor, watching the paper curl before he spoke.
"You saw what was in my subconscious. You see what I see, who I interact with. How do you think I found Eames when your team had him in that hotel room?"
She said nothing, but Arthur could read doubt and then slow realization flickering across her face.
"Sanders followed you two from Johannesburg. That chill down your spine, the feeling of hair rising up on the back of your neck when you think you're alone? That's him." He said, and saw her go tense in surprise. "He's not the type to find peace and go to rest for a very long time. You have my word on that."
The woman paled slightly and Arthur turned away from her in disgust. The flames had eaten the folder and the contents within to ash and he watched it die out, exhausted and more than a little sick to his heart.
He felt Eames' light touch to his elbow. "Saito and his people will be here shortly to take over," he said, lowly. "He seemed very interested in who had hired Soong's team."
It would be in Saito's best interest to keep dream share as it was, with its current criminal rings intact, lest he need it again. Arthur nodded and Eames went on in a lower tone, "It's over, darling."
Was it? Arthur could still feel Sander's angry presence chilling the darkest corner of the shed, but for the first time in a long time there was no Mal stalking the edge of shadows. No girl in a yellow dress following her father like a puppy.
And Arthur had someone he could confide in - someone who wasn't dead, and who could know him as Cole Sear as well as Arthur the point man. Eames knew his secret, and Ariadne would have to be told something, but...
No, it wasn't over, but Arthur thought things were on their way to becoming better. Much better.
*****
(Thanks for reading, everyone! The epilogue will be up tomorrow!)