[ closed / incomplete ]

[specificities]

Characters: specificities & forgedindreams
Setting/Location: The town of Lere'unfru, outside one of the candy shops.
Date & Time: Day 23, early afternoon.
Warnings: n/a
Summary: Adult Arthur and tiny baby Eames meet up.

Comments

[counterfeiture]

Eames learned to pinch things from other people at the tender age of ten

[specificities]

Arthur turned towards the voice, brow furrowing slightly when he couldn't spot the source - before his eyes swung downwards. His lips twitched in a struggle to keep his bemusement off of his face, and he cleared his throat, tucking his hands into the pockets of his trousers. He hadn't really been expecting the kid before him, regardless of Eames' previous statements. "Eames," he greeted. It wasn't difficult to spot the man he knew in the features of the ten year old, down to the way he held himself despite the height difference.

Though he didn't have much by ways for explanation for the entire situation. He lifted his gaze to turn an eye on their surroundings, squinting against the glare of the sun and bringing a hand up to shade his eyes. He spotted what looked to be a saloon across the street, and gestured towards it with a nod. "Let's get out of the heat."

[counterfeiture]

Eames arched a brow; his posture was slouching, almost louche for a ten year old, and the way he tossed his weight from one foot spoke well enough of what he thought about the suggestion as well as it would have carried in his adult version.

He could barely keep a smile from slipping, as he looked up at Arthur.

"Mister Arthur," Eames pronounced, rolling the syllables around, layering his accents into a cross of British and Swahili. No, he really couldn't stop himself from smiling if he tried. "And you're not even wearing a waistcoat. Color me surprised

[specificities]

Arthur's frown was obvious. There was plenty he could say to those statements - most of them a slight to Eames', well, slightness for starters. Beyond that, it wasn't the first time Arthur had to relent to his usual habits of dress to the heat. But he didn't rise to the cheap bait for banter, too preoccupied with the matter of hand, how to word the fact that he knew Eames had been here before to avoid the inevitable initial assumption that it had been a projection. Same with Mal. He'd known the two of them for a few years, true, but to the extent of the details in front of him - Eames' specific body language, Mal's solemn and almost cold despair - that extent would just be, in a way, egoist to assume he'd know it well enough to project it properly. He was observant, sure, but he wasn't as intimate with the inner workings as people as much as the workings of a paradox

[counterfeiture]

Eames made a face in favor of the orange juice over answering Arthur's question. "Trade you for the water

[specificities]

Arthur's eyebrow twitched and he frowned briefly at the swap, but his fingers descended on the lip of the glass of orange juice and he pulled it across the table towards himself without a word. He took a sip, grimacing slightly at the overly sweet taste, but it was cold and went down easy - no pulp. There was a twinge in his throat - Saito had either survived long enough for them to complete the plant, or someone had managed to pull him out of limbo. Eitherway, it meant that his kick using the propulsion of the elevator had worked - something that was both pleasing and alarming. If they'd gotten out of the dream, why was it that Arthur couldn't recall the events that occurred after the kick? There was a gap of loss of time, the week they would have to wait in Fischer's mind long enough for Yusuf's sedative to wear off even after the plant, the landing of the plane, collecting luggage. It wasn't as though Arthur hadn't made it, if Eames had - his reaction to Arthur's appearance would have suggested something amiss, and the idea didn't

[counterfeiture]

I used a gun, but I ended up in the caravan when I awoke.

And then, almost as an aside, a by-the-way, Mal's here.

Eames barely managed to keep his brow from arching up. No, scratch that, he didn't manage.

"A kick that didn't work and a shade that should no longer exist," he repeated, in paraphrase, running a finger along his lower lip. Eames watched the condensation on his own glass thicken then clear up, little beads of water slipping down the sides until the space where the glass and table met had little puddles. The implications of everything Arthur's just said felt the same way; a cold trickling down the ridged surfaces of his mind. "Far be it from me to suggest it, Arthur, but have you considered that you might be having residual effects from whatever kick you implemented?"

Maybe you've gone a little off the deep end, Eames didn't say. He didn't have to say it - Arthur would have picked up on it, if he was worth his salt

[specificities]

Arthur's frown deepened at the underlying accusation. "I'm not. I've used drop kicks multiple times before, Eames." Not in zero gravity, granted, but that didn't change the circumstances all that much. The collision still created that sudden drop, regardless with the way he went about it. He wasn't hallucinating, or projecting - why would he project Eames, of all people? No, he would have been able to tell that it was one. The Eames across from him was the same as the Eames he'd encountered in that forest, even with the current age difference. He quietened, though, listening to Eames' telling of the occurrences Arthur hadn't been witness to. Of course Mal had shown up - she had been with increasing frequency lately, leaving Arthur in the awkward position of not being quite sure how to approach Cobb about it. All the same, the timeline didn't quite match up. At some point, Eames had continued on, and Arthur had ended up here

[counterfeiture]

That was the turning point to this whole thing, isn't it? Why Mal was so convinced. A resilient parasite, indeed.

"Before I did, yes," Eames answered, not bothering to pretend that he's a more than a little irritated now. "You even smiled, I think."

Like that's the worst that could happen.

"What rules are there?" If he was going to be stuck here, with half-delusions and a tangible sense of being utterly lost, Eames can afford to play by Arthur's word - never mind that his word barely makes any sense, if at all. This was almost definitely a dream, but the almost is cracking into a lot of the hard-lined rules that they work by, and Eames is losing his patience with the place

[specificities]

"If this circumstance had the same rules as what we're used to," Arthur began unhesitatingly, "wouldn't you have chosen something other than a ten-year-old body?" It was apparent that they couldn't change any partition of this dream - their surroundings, nor their own appearances. If they weren't the cause of it, then, how could those changes be implemented upon them? First the fish tail, now Eames being stuck as a prepubescent boy. The changes didn't seem to be permanent, for whatever that was worth, but he had no leads on how it had even occurred in the first place. A cursed trident, sure, but there wasn't any logic that could stand behind that. Even for a dream, something had to be controlling the mechanics of it - and it wasn't his own subconscious, that much he knew of. He wouldn't trap himself in something he couldn't change

[counterfeiture]

If Eames ever found out about the fish tail, oh Arthur

[specificities]

Arthur enjoyed paradoxes, but less when they were angled against himself. Challenges were one thing - a chance to push himself into using every inch of thought and body to succeed - but this? This instance Arthur could do without, jarring and unplanned for. It wasn't something he could mold into his favor - rather, his attempts hadn't had any effect other than ruin his clothes and give him a migraine. If a shot to the head hadn't worked, what was their next move? He gazed at the line of Eames' shoulders as he thought, at the unfamiliar slope of it versus the thick fullness Arthur was used to seeing in the other's form

[counterfeiture]

Fitting name, Eames agreed without voicing the thought, folding one leg over the other. There weren't any toothpicks to bite on, he noticed; no salt-and-pepper shakers, none of the usual things you'd find in proper diners, but then this is a saloon, yes? Or whatever "saloon" entailed, in this quaint little town straight out of a fairytale

[specificities]

"You were ill for awhile," Arthur responded, pausing and leaning back as the old woman came around again with a fresh set of glasses - water for himself, a bright red fruit juice for Eames - and a small bowl of multi-colored candies, taking their empty glasses. Her movements seemed to creak with age. She didn't say a word, looking - to Arthur - almost solemn and slightly sad, as if she wanted to be anywhere but here. What was a woman her age doing working in a saloon, of all places? He waited until she left before leaning forward to rest his elbows on the table, linking his fingers together and resting his chin against them in brief thought before returning his attention to Eames.

"You were trying to see if you could get any information out of the people here, but you disappeared before we could collaborate intel on it." With Eames' disappearance had come Mal.

"I've been testing the limitations of the dream. We can't do much of anything here, and the people populating the environment don't operate like your usual set of projections

[counterfeiture]

Candies

[specificities]

"Manipulations, kicks - neither have been successful." Obviously. "As for now, I've been trying to determine whether or not all of the people here are- projections or, somehow, individual people. If there's a theme to what they last remember before waking up here." He didn't have any sense of mechanics for it, how - if all of these people were real, if Mal was real - they would have managed to even get into the same shared dreamscape. Or why some of them claimed to know timetravel, or why Mal seemed to be confused about her death.

"I'm not seeing any alternatives other than to wait to see if anything else occurs," he said - though that answer didn't satisfy even himself. "It'd be pertinent to find out how we got here, first, before we can find a way to exit - considering the usual ways aren't working." He didn't exactly want to attempt shooting himself again - and he doubted the man with the weapons would let him use them after the first incident. "We need to know exactly what it is we're actually dealing with. If this is limbo."