Fic: Quietus (Chapter 8)
Title: Quietus
Pairing: Eames/Arthur
Rating: R
Summary: (Modern day slave!AU) In life, Eames is a beaten down slave, but in the dreamworld he's smooth, dangerous, and sexy. And even though he's Dom's property, he's gotten under Arthur's skin.
TRIGGER WARNINGS: Slavery, implication of previous non-consensual sex, classism, brutality, and possible dubious consent depending on how you see it, treating people as objects, implied mild to moderate torture, suicide (in a dream), moral ambiguity by the good guys, and forced silencing.
I don't want to give the impression this is some sort of ultra-dark fic, because it isn't, but the last thing I want to do is trigger anyone. So if you are at all sensitive to these issues I ask that you give this fic a pass. You are reading at your own risk.
Chapter 1 | Chapter 2 | Chapter 3 | Chapter 4 | Chapter 5 | Chapter 6 | Chapter 7
*****
The dream-world around Arthur was cold and dimly lit, the sky above shaded purple and ran with unnatural racing fire. Fierce winds picked up loose sand from the nearby dunes and flung them, stinging, into Arthur's face. This was Eames' dream - his subconscious landscape as Arthur had hooked him up as both the dreamer and the subject.
Covering his eyes with his sleeve, Arthur called out, "Eames!" but there was no answer.
He walked blindly forward and eventually realized he was travelling up in an increasingly sharper incline. He risked a glance down at his shoes and noted stems of tough grass poking out from the sand. As he climbed, the wind slackened until, finally, he was able to lower his arm.
He was atop a grassy hill - a place midway between the sandstorm below and the violent purple sky above.
Eames stood fifty feet away. He had his back to Arthur, and was wearing the same dignified black peacoat Arthur had bought for him when they went shopping for the totem.
As Arthur drew closer, he realized Eames was standing before something - a simple headstone, its name and epitaph obscured by a thick layer of frost.
Eames glanced over his shoulder at Arthur's approach. His face was lined with stress and the remnants of pain, and for the first time in a dream Arthur saw a gleam of his silver collar around his neck. Still, it didn't seem to keep Eames from speaking.
"It was only ever a laugh," he said, as Arthur joined him. "Writing down notes in your and Master's handwriting. It was... there wasn't any harm in it, Arthur."
Arthur looked at him coldly. "You expect me to believe that?"
Eames glanced away uneasy. Arthur nodded to the headstone. "Who's this?"
Eames' lips tightened into a thin line. "You shouldn't ask questions to answers you already know."
And Arthur did. Or at least, he highly suspected. He knelt and brushed at the frost. The stone was so cold it sapped all of the warmth from his fingers, numbing them. He persisted, though, and a moment later the name was revealed.
Martin John Eames III
Arthur sat back on his heels, taking in the implications of Eames placing a grave in his own subconscious landscape, the underlying meaning. Something buried and forgotten-- something Eames had wanted to forget. Or was it a general wish for death?
"Does Dom know about this?"
"He does," Eames said, and his voice was the most bitter Arthur had ever heard from him. "He came in and dug it up on the day we met, didn't he? Extracted my secrets and laid them bare."
Arthur followed his gaze and saw a dirty shovel lying in the nearby grass as if it had been thrown carelessly to the side. Now that noticed, it seemed to stick out of the uniformly cut grass, like litter.
"What's buried down there?" Arthur asked, wondering if he was going to have to grab a shovel and do the same. The thought repelled him - it felt like a violation. Eames hesitated in answering and Arthur asked, "Eames?"
"Me," Eames said, lowly. "I'm what's down there." And he nodded to where some of the frost, warmed by Arthur's fingers, had melted into drips exposing more of the tombstone. The birthdate was just over thirty-four years ago, and the date of death a decade past - the day, presumably when Eames was made a slave.
Arthur stood slowly, frowning in thought. A skilled extractor such as Dom would be able to glean more meaning out of this, but he hadn't worked with him for years without picking up some tricks. "You split yourself and buried a portion down there. Which part?" But he had the answer even as he said it, in the way of dreams. Arthur's throat felt thick and he had to swallow hard to get the words out. "Your hope... maybe your ambition, too? Something else? Jesus, Eames."
Eames looked away, his hands clenching into fists. "I don't require your pity, Arthur. In fact, I don't want it."
In one swift move, Arthur swept Eames' legs out from under him, knocking him flat on his back to the ground. "You never had my pity," Arthur said, keeping his voice hard, and hoping Eames wouldn't hear the lie. "Get up, Mr. Eames."
Eames blinked at the unfamiliar title. He said nothing, but when he sat up, his neck was bare of the collar.
Arthur knelt again to brush away the rest of the frost. Eames let out a soft, "Don't," but Arthur ignored it and Eames made no move to stop him. The stone was so cold it nearly felt hot and his fingers had turned blue at the tips by the time the final words were uncovered.
Sentenced to enslavement until death for treason against the crown.
Out of all the possible crimes Arthur had allowed himself to contemplate, treason had not been one of them. Or, he thought, with the bottom dropping out from his stomach, a life sentence. He glanced at Eames to see him on his knees as well, staring at his own sentence with a bleak expression.
"Were you guilty?" Arthur asked.
Eames' adam's apple bobbed as he swallowed. "Yes-yes, of course I was."
What did you do? Arthur wanted to know, but something in Eames' face begged him not to ask.
Collared until death. Eames' sentence didn't have an expiration at all. No wonder Dom had bought him, even with the risks. "How were you allowed to come up for private sale?" he asked. Eames' skills alone should have put him way out of Dom's price range, forty years or more of promised labor ahead of him should have made Eames doubly expensive. Triple.
When Eames spoke, his voice was oddly detached, as if it was telling a story of what happened to someone else. "I wasn't meant to," he said, staring unblinking at the headstone. "When I was first put into collar, I was sent to work in a state run granite quarry in Cornwall. It was hard labor, brutal discipline and... promised a rather short lifespan. " He closed his eyes. "It took my sister eighteen months to bribe an official to mix up my paperwork. I understand she had to put a second mortgage on her house to do it. I had no idea of her plan, and would have told her not to bother if I could have. Obviously," he said, bitterly, "I was unable."
"You were sent to general auction," Arthur guessed.
"Yes." Eames opened his eyes to stare fixedly at the headstone again. "My master at the time didn't realize what he'd bought, my skills. He sold me soon after, in any case. After that, it was a succession of others over the years until I fell into the hands of the farmer."
Arthur's heart lurched in his chest. He wanted to tell Eames to stop - that he didn't have to go on. The truth of the fact was that he didn't want to hear the abuse Eames had clearly suffered, recounted like this when he was beaten down and vulnerable. Arthur wasn't sure he could stand to hear it.
"He was the one you killed," he said, and if there was one thing he could do right it was keeping his own voice even and professional.
For his part, Eames didn't look surprised that Arthur knew. "Not soon enough," was all he said. "I wasn't the only one he..." He trailed off, shook his head. "I dusted his medication over time with pesticides. It was a cumulative effect, but when he finally died... he had already loaned me out to a neighbor of his for the weekend. And when he realized the farmer was dead, he sold me back to the market with false paperwork he had me prepare."
Which went a long way to explain how Eames had ended up in that back alley shop. Arthur had to resist the urge to grab his hand, or pull him close, but he was afraid that Eames might take that as a sign of pity. Or worse.
Eames was silent for a long minute, his hands flat on his thighs, his head bowed. He didn't look at Arthur as he said. "I thought learning to forge yours and Master's handwriting would be wise, should it come in handy someday. But... there was no specific plan for it, Arthur. Do you believe me?"
"No," Arthur said, and saw Eames flinch. "I think if it were me I would do whatever it took to escape."
Eames' head snapped up, anger and despair flashing in his grey eyes. "There is no escape possible for me. You see that, don't you?" He jabbed angrily at the epitaph. "I'm in the collar until the day I die, or unless I piss off a master enough to do the favor for me."
"Is that what this was about?" Arthur didn't want to hug Eames anymore. He wanted to hit him. "You -what-wanted to push Dom? Make it a suicide by owner?"
"No! No," Eames said again, deflating a little, lifting a hand to his eyes. He looked as if he had a headache. Over head, the racing fire had turned to a dull crimson with patches of blue sky appearing through the purple clouds. "Learning your hand was... it was a valuable to have. So when things inevitably go wrong, I'd be ready. That was all. It-- You do realize that the day is coming where Master will overstep his bounds and get himself arrested or worse. He's not like you or I. He's not fit to be a criminal."
Arthur nearly told him that he wasn't a criminal, either. Or at least, he didn't have a warrant sworn out under his true name. There was no point in handing over that information to Eames, so he simply said, "It's my job to make sure that doesn't happen. But if something were to get out of control, you have my promise you weren't placed back in general auction."
But far from reassuring him, Eames went a little pale. "Arthur," he said quietly, intently, still not looking at him. "It would kill me to call you master."
Arthur's heart gave a hard thud - he tried to push the burgeoning feeling back and reach for the cold anger and sense of betrayal he had felt in the warehouse, but it was nowhere to be found. Shit, he thought helplessly, staring at Eames - complicated, witty, intelligent, and so, so strong despite everything he'd undergone. Shit, I do care for him, don't I? Eames was so much more than Dom's talented slave, or even a coworker Arthur had grown to depend on, despite his better judgment. He knew that if everything went to hell tomorrow - if Dom were to be arrested, Arthur would move heaven and Earth to make sure Eames was taken care of. And he knew, too, that it still wouldn't be enough for either of them.
"And I don't want a slave," Arthur said, quietly, his chest feeling tight.
Eames didn't answer right away. He risked a glance at Arthur, a tentative question in his eyes.
"We'll figure something out," Arthur said, holding Eames' gaze. Although he didn't know how.
He might feel something for Eames, but that didn't mean he trusted him even as far as he trusted Dom. How could he, knowing that if he were in Eames place he would say anything, do anything to be free? And Eames, too, likely didn't have his full trust in Arthur. He had been treated as a workhorse at best, an object at worst... and loaned out by uncaring masters. It was no surprise that he was headshy about trust.
A slow, sad smile curved Eames' lips as if he saw the path of Arthur's thoughts and agreed. Then he nodded once and looked around, more actively alert than he'd been in the dream so far. The smile faded when his eyes landed on the shovel laying a few feet away. "Are you going to do it, then?" he asked. "Extract my secrets and see if I've been telling you the truth?"
A shudder Arthur couldn't quite suppress rolled down his spine. "No."
Eames' eyes snapped back to him. "I could have been making the whole thing up," he said, voice careful.
"You didn't." Arthur rose to his feet, dusting off bits of grass stuck to his pants. His legs ached from kneeling so long. He held out his hand to help Eames to his feet, but when Eames only stared at him and didn't take it he said, "I'm sick of this dream."
His eyes were bright, his expression fragile. "Arthur..."
"Let's go somewhere else, Mr. Eames," Arthur said, firmly.
Eames' lips parted into a smile. He took Arthur's hand and stood. "I know just the place."
Pairing: Eames/Arthur
Rating: R
Summary: (Modern day slave!AU) In life, Eames is a beaten down slave, but in the dreamworld he's smooth, dangerous, and sexy. And even though he's Dom's property, he's gotten under Arthur's skin.
TRIGGER WARNINGS: Slavery, implication of previous non-consensual sex, classism, brutality, and possible dubious consent depending on how you see it, treating people as objects, implied mild to moderate torture, suicide (in a dream), moral ambiguity by the good guys, and forced silencing.
I don't want to give the impression this is some sort of ultra-dark fic, because it isn't, but the last thing I want to do is trigger anyone. So if you are at all sensitive to these issues I ask that you give this fic a pass. You are reading at your own risk.
Chapter 1 | Chapter 2 | Chapter 3 | Chapter 4 | Chapter 5 | Chapter 6 | Chapter 7
*****
The dream-world around Arthur was cold and dimly lit, the sky above shaded purple and ran with unnatural racing fire. Fierce winds picked up loose sand from the nearby dunes and flung them, stinging, into Arthur's face. This was Eames' dream - his subconscious landscape as Arthur had hooked him up as both the dreamer and the subject.
Covering his eyes with his sleeve, Arthur called out, "Eames!" but there was no answer.
He walked blindly forward and eventually realized he was travelling up in an increasingly sharper incline. He risked a glance down at his shoes and noted stems of tough grass poking out from the sand. As he climbed, the wind slackened until, finally, he was able to lower his arm.
He was atop a grassy hill - a place midway between the sandstorm below and the violent purple sky above.
Eames stood fifty feet away. He had his back to Arthur, and was wearing the same dignified black peacoat Arthur had bought for him when they went shopping for the totem.
As Arthur drew closer, he realized Eames was standing before something - a simple headstone, its name and epitaph obscured by a thick layer of frost.
Eames glanced over his shoulder at Arthur's approach. His face was lined with stress and the remnants of pain, and for the first time in a dream Arthur saw a gleam of his silver collar around his neck. Still, it didn't seem to keep Eames from speaking.
"It was only ever a laugh," he said, as Arthur joined him. "Writing down notes in your and Master's handwriting. It was... there wasn't any harm in it, Arthur."
Arthur looked at him coldly. "You expect me to believe that?"
Eames glanced away uneasy. Arthur nodded to the headstone. "Who's this?"
Eames' lips tightened into a thin line. "You shouldn't ask questions to answers you already know."
And Arthur did. Or at least, he highly suspected. He knelt and brushed at the frost. The stone was so cold it sapped all of the warmth from his fingers, numbing them. He persisted, though, and a moment later the name was revealed.
Martin John Eames III
Arthur sat back on his heels, taking in the implications of Eames placing a grave in his own subconscious landscape, the underlying meaning. Something buried and forgotten-- something Eames had wanted to forget. Or was it a general wish for death?
"Does Dom know about this?"
"He does," Eames said, and his voice was the most bitter Arthur had ever heard from him. "He came in and dug it up on the day we met, didn't he? Extracted my secrets and laid them bare."
Arthur followed his gaze and saw a dirty shovel lying in the nearby grass as if it had been thrown carelessly to the side. Now that noticed, it seemed to stick out of the uniformly cut grass, like litter.
"What's buried down there?" Arthur asked, wondering if he was going to have to grab a shovel and do the same. The thought repelled him - it felt like a violation. Eames hesitated in answering and Arthur asked, "Eames?"
"Me," Eames said, lowly. "I'm what's down there." And he nodded to where some of the frost, warmed by Arthur's fingers, had melted into drips exposing more of the tombstone. The birthdate was just over thirty-four years ago, and the date of death a decade past - the day, presumably when Eames was made a slave.
Arthur stood slowly, frowning in thought. A skilled extractor such as Dom would be able to glean more meaning out of this, but he hadn't worked with him for years without picking up some tricks. "You split yourself and buried a portion down there. Which part?" But he had the answer even as he said it, in the way of dreams. Arthur's throat felt thick and he had to swallow hard to get the words out. "Your hope... maybe your ambition, too? Something else? Jesus, Eames."
Eames looked away, his hands clenching into fists. "I don't require your pity, Arthur. In fact, I don't want it."
In one swift move, Arthur swept Eames' legs out from under him, knocking him flat on his back to the ground. "You never had my pity," Arthur said, keeping his voice hard, and hoping Eames wouldn't hear the lie. "Get up, Mr. Eames."
Eames blinked at the unfamiliar title. He said nothing, but when he sat up, his neck was bare of the collar.
Arthur knelt again to brush away the rest of the frost. Eames let out a soft, "Don't," but Arthur ignored it and Eames made no move to stop him. The stone was so cold it nearly felt hot and his fingers had turned blue at the tips by the time the final words were uncovered.
Sentenced to enslavement until death for treason against the crown.
Out of all the possible crimes Arthur had allowed himself to contemplate, treason had not been one of them. Or, he thought, with the bottom dropping out from his stomach, a life sentence. He glanced at Eames to see him on his knees as well, staring at his own sentence with a bleak expression.
"Were you guilty?" Arthur asked.
Eames' adam's apple bobbed as he swallowed. "Yes-yes, of course I was."
What did you do? Arthur wanted to know, but something in Eames' face begged him not to ask.
Collared until death. Eames' sentence didn't have an expiration at all. No wonder Dom had bought him, even with the risks. "How were you allowed to come up for private sale?" he asked. Eames' skills alone should have put him way out of Dom's price range, forty years or more of promised labor ahead of him should have made Eames doubly expensive. Triple.
When Eames spoke, his voice was oddly detached, as if it was telling a story of what happened to someone else. "I wasn't meant to," he said, staring unblinking at the headstone. "When I was first put into collar, I was sent to work in a state run granite quarry in Cornwall. It was hard labor, brutal discipline and... promised a rather short lifespan. " He closed his eyes. "It took my sister eighteen months to bribe an official to mix up my paperwork. I understand she had to put a second mortgage on her house to do it. I had no idea of her plan, and would have told her not to bother if I could have. Obviously," he said, bitterly, "I was unable."
"You were sent to general auction," Arthur guessed.
"Yes." Eames opened his eyes to stare fixedly at the headstone again. "My master at the time didn't realize what he'd bought, my skills. He sold me soon after, in any case. After that, it was a succession of others over the years until I fell into the hands of the farmer."
Arthur's heart lurched in his chest. He wanted to tell Eames to stop - that he didn't have to go on. The truth of the fact was that he didn't want to hear the abuse Eames had clearly suffered, recounted like this when he was beaten down and vulnerable. Arthur wasn't sure he could stand to hear it.
"He was the one you killed," he said, and if there was one thing he could do right it was keeping his own voice even and professional.
For his part, Eames didn't look surprised that Arthur knew. "Not soon enough," was all he said. "I wasn't the only one he..." He trailed off, shook his head. "I dusted his medication over time with pesticides. It was a cumulative effect, but when he finally died... he had already loaned me out to a neighbor of his for the weekend. And when he realized the farmer was dead, he sold me back to the market with false paperwork he had me prepare."
Which went a long way to explain how Eames had ended up in that back alley shop. Arthur had to resist the urge to grab his hand, or pull him close, but he was afraid that Eames might take that as a sign of pity. Or worse.
Eames was silent for a long minute, his hands flat on his thighs, his head bowed. He didn't look at Arthur as he said. "I thought learning to forge yours and Master's handwriting would be wise, should it come in handy someday. But... there was no specific plan for it, Arthur. Do you believe me?"
"No," Arthur said, and saw Eames flinch. "I think if it were me I would do whatever it took to escape."
Eames' head snapped up, anger and despair flashing in his grey eyes. "There is no escape possible for me. You see that, don't you?" He jabbed angrily at the epitaph. "I'm in the collar until the day I die, or unless I piss off a master enough to do the favor for me."
"Is that what this was about?" Arthur didn't want to hug Eames anymore. He wanted to hit him. "You -what-wanted to push Dom? Make it a suicide by owner?"
"No! No," Eames said again, deflating a little, lifting a hand to his eyes. He looked as if he had a headache. Over head, the racing fire had turned to a dull crimson with patches of blue sky appearing through the purple clouds. "Learning your hand was... it was a valuable to have. So when things inevitably go wrong, I'd be ready. That was all. It-- You do realize that the day is coming where Master will overstep his bounds and get himself arrested or worse. He's not like you or I. He's not fit to be a criminal."
Arthur nearly told him that he wasn't a criminal, either. Or at least, he didn't have a warrant sworn out under his true name. There was no point in handing over that information to Eames, so he simply said, "It's my job to make sure that doesn't happen. But if something were to get out of control, you have my promise you weren't placed back in general auction."
But far from reassuring him, Eames went a little pale. "Arthur," he said quietly, intently, still not looking at him. "It would kill me to call you master."
Arthur's heart gave a hard thud - he tried to push the burgeoning feeling back and reach for the cold anger and sense of betrayal he had felt in the warehouse, but it was nowhere to be found. Shit, he thought helplessly, staring at Eames - complicated, witty, intelligent, and so, so strong despite everything he'd undergone. Shit, I do care for him, don't I? Eames was so much more than Dom's talented slave, or even a coworker Arthur had grown to depend on, despite his better judgment. He knew that if everything went to hell tomorrow - if Dom were to be arrested, Arthur would move heaven and Earth to make sure Eames was taken care of. And he knew, too, that it still wouldn't be enough for either of them.
"And I don't want a slave," Arthur said, quietly, his chest feeling tight.
Eames didn't answer right away. He risked a glance at Arthur, a tentative question in his eyes.
"We'll figure something out," Arthur said, holding Eames' gaze. Although he didn't know how.
He might feel something for Eames, but that didn't mean he trusted him even as far as he trusted Dom. How could he, knowing that if he were in Eames place he would say anything, do anything to be free? And Eames, too, likely didn't have his full trust in Arthur. He had been treated as a workhorse at best, an object at worst... and loaned out by uncaring masters. It was no surprise that he was headshy about trust.
A slow, sad smile curved Eames' lips as if he saw the path of Arthur's thoughts and agreed. Then he nodded once and looked around, more actively alert than he'd been in the dream so far. The smile faded when his eyes landed on the shovel laying a few feet away. "Are you going to do it, then?" he asked. "Extract my secrets and see if I've been telling you the truth?"
A shudder Arthur couldn't quite suppress rolled down his spine. "No."
Eames' eyes snapped back to him. "I could have been making the whole thing up," he said, voice careful.
"You didn't." Arthur rose to his feet, dusting off bits of grass stuck to his pants. His legs ached from kneeling so long. He held out his hand to help Eames to his feet, but when Eames only stared at him and didn't take it he said, "I'm sick of this dream."
His eyes were bright, his expression fragile. "Arthur..."
"Let's go somewhere else, Mr. Eames," Arthur said, firmly.
Eames' lips parted into a smile. He took Arthur's hand and stood. "I know just the place."