[ 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 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."

He wasn't expecting a great deal of explanations, here; if there were any, Eames figured, Arthur would be rattling it off as soon as he can, outlining everything neatly before Eames can untangle the flow of information properly. Arthur was stalling, he thinks, or at least revising his file in a way that would make sense outside of his head. It was the latter that Eames is certain is the case here; it's nothing to smile about, but seeing as he's stuck as a child in a dream, unable to affect his own form as forgers do, he supposes he could be excused for a bleak outlook for now.

"Your frown lines are more obvious from this vantage point," he commented blithely, with one foot tucked behind the other, his shoe scuffing against his ankle. Eames was already missing being at eye level with the point man. "Lead the way, then?"

[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.

The saloon was several degrees cooler than outdoors, the air slightly damp. It was musky, but a respite from the unrelenting heat of the sun. It was like something out of a western movie, but instead of gun-toting men knocking back shots of whiskey, there were kids of all ages lined up on the bar, talking excitedly amongst themselves with their chubby hands wrapped around glasses of milk and fruit juice. In combination with an older man playing the piano in the corner, some sort of diddy, the saloon wasn't loud enough to have to shout to be heard but noisy enough to avoid eavesdropping on their conversation. He chose a booth tucked into a windowless corner, sliding into the surprisingly comfortably padded seats. An elderly woman shuffled by them to place a glass of water in front of Arthur, and a tall glass of orange juice in front of Eames, before padding off - silent.

He refocused his attention on the ten year old forger. "The last thing you remember is the plane?" he prompted without further ado, direct and to the point.

[counterfeiture]

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

He didn't wait for Arthur to answer, either; simply reached across the table, picked up the glass and drained half of it in a single go, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. It was a simple action, but enough for Eames to settle into his seat, and by settle he means this: sitting back to take in the details of the place, the way the crowd moves, the exits and entrances and the way Arthur doesn't deign to pick up the baiting. Eames measures the distance between his seat and the rest of the crowd, knows he'd have to take fifteen paces instead of eight to reach them, twenty-three instead of sixteen to reach an exit.

Five instead of three to walk around the table to cover Arthur - unnecessary, here, because of his damnable size. Eames rapped his knuckles on the scrubbed surface of the table.

"The luggage carousel, actually," he answered Arthur, after a beat. There's a H&K compact pistol belted to his side. Between waking up here, finding his 'room' and meeting with Arthur, Eames had taken time to to stick his things into the place he's been assigned, leaving all of it behind save for the poker chip (too valuable) and the gun (too many questions). It pressed heavily against him, nothing like the comfortable weight on his side like it would have been if he was in his normal build. Eames contemplated on letting Arthur carry it until the whole situation sorted itself out, but decided otherwise - it was too much trust, all too soon. "Cobb's been waved in through arrivals. After that, there's little I can recall."

Arthur wore all the signs of having adjusted to this - whatever this is, Eames' mind supplied - and it was making him restless. How did he get here, if Eames can't remember his own way? More importantly, why?

"You don't seem to have much of a clue why we're here, I'm guessing."

[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 hold much logic to begin with.

"No," Arthur replied haltingly, almost unwilling to admit his lack of knowledge. "I've been here for two weeks. I woke up in a forest, initially." He smoothed out a bead of condensation that had collected on the side of the glass with his thumb. "You were there, Eames, but you didn't have recollection of the plane - just the kick you initiated in the fortress. I lost contact with you about a week after." He took another sip of the juice. "I used a gun, but I ended up in the caravan when I awoke."

He spared the details concerning the wax, and his fingers went to the side of his head, the area still tender with his hair covering the heavy bruising as he debated his next words. "Mal's here."

[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.

Instead of waiting for an answer, though, Eames plowed on, picked up a napkin and folded it into little shapes as he recounted the events on his level - the highly militarized subconscious at the hospital fortress; the kick that they missed (and one Eames is certain Arthur already knew); Saito's dying, then Fischer's dying, and the veritable clusterfuck ("oh, right, language," Eames added, out of humor) of Mal having shown up that ended with Cobb's and Ariadne's own merry chase down the rabbit hole of the mind.

It's a long story. By the end, Eames is already done with his glass, and there's a waiting look on his face.

"I think, at this point," he began, as he tipped the glass over and settled the rim on the table, the glass now upside-down. "My saying I'm confused by you would be a gross understatement, Arthur."

That Arthur had to practically drag it out of himself that he didn't have a clue about this place didn't bode well for the rest of the conversation, but then - but then - "Is it possible that we're still under?"

[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.

"I'd thought about it," Arthur began in relation to Eames' last prompting, "but the rules of this place are inherently different than the entire concept of shared dreaming. I can't manipulate anything here, and my totem's useless." He paused. "Maybe your experience on the plane was a transitional dream state, considering I don't have any memory of even waking up." He would have remembered Cobb being able to pass through customs, to finally be able to go back to his kids. The back of his mind continued to needle at him, suggesting various possibilities - sabotage of the job, if the flight attendant was working both sides despite Saito buying her out and her background suggesting no connection to Fischer, the idea of limbo. Arthur had no experience with it, he wouldn't be able to tell what sort of parameters were different than a usual dreamscape. But even in limbo, you should have the ability to build - something he couldn't do here.

He finished off the rest of his orange juice, his frustration made apparent only by the way he set the empty glass down a little too sharply. "Did I wake up, Eames? On the plane." He knew what the answer would be - of course he'd woken up - so why couldn't he remember it?

Why was Mal convinced she'd never died?

[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.

Patience. Eames hasn't felt this impatient since he was-

Since he was ten.

That made him sit straight, perking like a bloodhound might with the ears pricked up. There aren't any proper adults around in this town, are there? None of the type that could bear children - all that he's seen are well into senility, or on their way, and the young ones are ever barely over ten at the oldest.

Well, screw that.

"What was that, about totems being useless here?" Eames prompted, shifting the line of his shoulders to disguise - thinly, but the effort matter - how he's ready to up and leave. Now. "I think I'm buying it."

Something's more than wrong here.

[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.

"I'm not sure how," he admitted - that was becoming a rather unfortunately common statement, wasn't it? "They've been compromised." Either whoever was hosting this dream knew the face Arthur's die should fall on - which, admittedly, was a one in six chance of random guessing - or somehow their subconscious was working against them. It made enough sense, if somehow they subconsciously thought this was reality as much as they tried to consciously deny it - the inkling of thought would manipulate their totem to whatever they knew it should be to suggest reality. It could even be what was limiting their ability to manipulate their surroundings. If you don't know you're dreaming, you can't change a thing. But Arthur had never been secure with just blind speculation without any residue of fact, and a manipulated mindset to that extent would have to mean that they had been somehow incepted while trying enact it on Fischer. It didn't make much sense, either way.

He was more willing to believe in the chance of backhandling than such a would-be obvious disruption of his mind.

Theories never did any good if you couldn't support them.

[counterfeiture]

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

But that aside.

"Seeing as there's no logical reason for all of this," he commented with a vague hand gesture, "I'd suppose the only explanation is that there isn't any." Eames had to smile at that, too. "It fits right into those paradoxes that you so love, don't you think?"

Eames leaned back into his seat then, deceptively calm now that some of the things that had bothered him have now been addressed. Not enough of them have been, though, and it showed in the way Eames carried himself, even when seated - how this whole... whatever this is has bothered him. It's not as if the concept of self-deception didn't hold any with Eames; it happened often enough in real life that it wasn't much of a stretch for it to happen in dream state as well, but that was usually accompanied by a unique equation of trauma and timing, and that, more than the rest, made him restless.

In echo to the words said when things went pear-shaped in the first level of the Fischer job, the deeper the damage, the strong the deception. What had happened? They have absolutely nothing to work with, here.

"So what do we do?"

[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.

"The caravan is headed for a place called Loophole," Arthur began, cupping the glass between his hands and pushing his thumbs along the curve of it. "Obvious name choice aside, they're saying it's supposed to return us to wherever we were last." He knew how ridiculous that sounded, he didn't need to look at Eames' face for an expression to solidify it. The entire sound of it suggested that something was able to pull them out of separate times, aside from separate areas. He shook his head briefly, not liking the way it sounded in his own head.

[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.

It was the sort of place Philippa might come up with if she were ten and armed with crayons. Or Mal's precocious talent for the dreams.

Hmm, maybe not.

"It's a pretty silly name for a place, yeah," Eames began, his gaze wandering when Arthur delved into his thoughts deeper than he had the patience for. The sleeves of his shirt were wet with the water droplets from the glass, and they left damp patches along the inside of Eames' arms with every gesture he made. It's another useless detail that doesn't help; even texture, even taste is vividly real in this place.

How could anyone come up with so much detail and keep the dream up like this?

"What did I do while I was here?" He was already starting to consider just slopping his feet on top of the table, scuffs be damned, but Eames figured Arthur wouldn't take too kindly to having dirtied soles shoved into his line of vision. "What have you done, as well?"

[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.

Eames picked up a pebble-sized candy, something a bit soft and sticky to the touch, then dropped it back into the bowl. He'd have preferred something less pedestrian with his confections, really, but he supposed this wasn't the time and place to be picky. He didn't switch glasses with Arthur this time, at least.

"What sort of tests? Other than the part where you offed yourself." He's had his share of re-entering dreams after being untimely exited, one way or another, but this would be the first he's heard that doesn't fit into any of the tenuous rules they have for dreams. Say he's really been here before - why didn't he remember? And what if Arthur was a projection, what about that line of thought? Eames certainly had enough material to make a believable forge of the point man, but this was a little too detailed to be a projection. Even the way Arthur folds his fingers was exact in a way Eames would have expected; frankly it's a little creepy.

Eames popped what looked like a jelly bean into his mouth. He made a face; it was a little too sour. "I suppose it couldn't hurt to do the same as my previous version, if we're really just going to wait until the kick comes."

[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."

[counterfeiture]

"Kicks are off the list, forging is off the list, deaths, shades are off the list with a penciled strike-through," Eames listed off, one counted for every finger of one hand. This dream seemed to be tied down to more rules than they're aware, the actual rules have been hidden away from them instead. "Either we're dealing with someone who knows more about dreaming than we do, or there's more here than we're seeing."

"This is some hole we've fallen into, hm." They know what they don't know - that was a good start. They have a list of things that weren't acting according to how they should act, a list considerably longer than the one enumerating the things that worked. What does that tell Eames? He has too little to work with. They both do. "Good old-fashioned hoofing it, then. Traditional sleuthing would likely yield us more than theorizing would."

There was only the small matter of Eames being, well, small.