(Untitled)

[uncleeinar]

Who: Einar & Ephraim
Where: Physically in Ephraim's room, mostly in his dream.
Status: Locked, incomplete
Warnings: None yet, will update as necessary

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[thesolipsism]

Ephraim had been under for years and those years, in the dream world, have spread into decades. Maybe even centuries. In the beginning, when he first realized something was wrong, he still tried to keep count, tried to translate the hours that passed by into real time, but it got to be useless after awhile.

What was the point in trying to stay in touch with a place he would probably never return to?

It was upsetting at first, sure. Earth-shattering. Nightmarish. But he couldn’t sit around moping forever. He decided to make the best of it. He built. Modest, realistic structures at first, showing his fear of losing touch with reality but eventually they got to be more and more experimental, twisting and darkening and narrowing until they resembled strange organic clumps more than buildings. He created strange animals, entire cultures, alternate histories, surrealist countries, non-Euclidean continents, entire systems that worked or failed entirely on their own with no interference from him.

For awhile, it scared him. But once he figured out how to get back into his own subconscious from Limbo, he didn’t even have to worry about dying anymore. Then he got cocky. And then he got bored.

On this particular day Ephraim sat in leaning on his fist, in a drawing room recreated from memory. It was the drawing room of one his teachers in Prague, slightly modified with some of the furnishings of a Turkish home he had once been to. And the ceiling, well, that was a copy from a Baroque church he saw in Rome. The way the figures move around was all him, though.

Straightening up as he feels the intrusion, he looked at his partner in a way that suggested he wasn‘t quite sure how he felt about him today. At least he hadn’t had to go looking for him this time. He’s not in any mood to go outside today; yesterday, there were hostile Apache scouts all over the place.

"You're here again," he said.

[uncleeinar]

He nodded once, a slow, even movement, something like an aged lion out on the veldt, leaning comfortably against the doorframe with his arms folded. There was the barest crease between his brows, he'd studied Ephraim for a moment before the other man had turned around.

He was glad, really, that he'd ended up inside this time, the last time had been ... difficult, to say the least, and really he should have known better than to come in unarmed, something he'd corrected for this visit, "How are you? Seems like there's some trouble outside, a coup perhaps."

He shook his head then, pushing himself up away from the doorframe, "How long was it this time?" Sometimes time here was shifting, different than time in the usual sort of shared dream, sometimes it went backwards, sometimes it got caught in a loop, sometimes it progressed at roughly the same pace as time outside did, but it was hardly ever the same thing twice.

[thesolipsism]

Frowning, Ephraim began to dig in the drawers of his desk, sighing as he moved the contents around to find what he was looking for. Nothing in this damn place was organized anymore. Finally, his hands returned to the top of the desk with what he had wanted.

“Oh, that,” he said blandly, carefully rolling a cigarette and passing it between his lips a few times to seal it. “That’s got nothing to do with me. They have to sort it out on their own.”

Lighting his cigarette with an antique elephant that spurted fire from its trunk, he regarded his old friend. Bitterness, jealously, guilt - these always colored his thoughts of the other man when he wasn’t around. But Ephraim’s expression began to soften, almost turning into a smile. His face never quite got there, but the way the light coming in through the windows gradually turned golden gave a hint to the fact Ephraim was warming up to Einar’s presence.

“It’s been a few months, maybe. How long has it been up there?” This was just idle curiosity, but it got him to thinking…how long had he been out, so to speak? “How long has it been since…you know it makes me sick to think of myself lying in a bed somewhere, a brain in a vat. I must look a mess.”

[uncleeinar]

"About a week." He said with a shrug, crossing the room to move a stack of drawings and overdue library books from the other chair, settling himself lightly, "Not as much distortion as last time." He said with a nod, "That's good."

He settled the same as he usually did, perfectly comfortable, right ankle atop left knee, fingers laced loosely in his lap, "And it's been quite some time since then." He said, shaking his head, "The same as always." Long enough that he'd forgotten the exact count, he used to keep track of it down to the day, but had given up on that after the first ten or fifteen years.

The slow warming was better than he'd expected, given as how things had turned out the last time, but he was glad for it, "Been keeping yourself busy?"

[thesolipsism]

A week. He could remember enough about how the normal passage of time goes to know that a visit coming a week after the last is sweet. You visit people you care for that often. And you lie to them, saying they look fine in their bed with tubes coming out of them, an useless shell. But, yes, Ephraim remembered the last time as well. He almost thought to make an apology but couldn’t bring himself to do it. Ephraim had moods, he’d always had moods. Einar knew this, probably better than anyone.

Not interested in talking about time anymore, he focused instead on Einar's question. "Everything is the same here. I'd rather hear about what you've been up to."

[uncleeinar]

He leaned back in the chair, it was more comfortable than it looked, which was just fine with him, "I may be hiring on a new assistant, once she's finished with her degree." He shrugged, "And if none of her brood has warned her off too lastingly." He hadan't heard back from her yet, but it hadn't been that long, and she had said she'd need three months before she was out of school, and he wasn't expecting a call before then, unless it was one of her crew attempting to warn him off.

He shook his head, "Otherwise the work is as slow as always, though I did run across Aggie not so long ago, yesterday or the day before." A faint smile followed, "She's still just as sharp as ever, though you'll never hear her say so."

[thesolipsism]

"Aggie." He snorted once, but apparently had nothing else to say on the matter. Aggie. He didn’t like to think of the people he once knew still up and about, moving around and without a thought about him. Even Einar, who still at least visited…Ephraim knew he was moving around too, in another time.

With other people.

Somewhere from within the depths of the house, a strain of Johnny Cash’s “Folsom Prison Blues” began playing. But those people keep a-movin’ and that’s what tortures me… Clouds passed over the sun briefly as Ephraim tapped his finger against his desk, the smoke from his cigarette forming a blue wreath above his head.

“So, nothing new. What’s the cause for the visit, then?”

[uncleeinar]

He tilted his head, studying the other man, brow creasing just slightly, "Do I have to have a reason to visit? I didn't used to." But that was because he'd visited as often as possible the first year, every day or two, three at the most, but it had slowly gotten to the point where he had to stop himself so he didn't let himself get trapped there as well, because somebody had to make sure that Ephraim had someplace to come back to, if he ever came back.

The more time Einar spent away, the harder it got to go back, both because of how vast and how tangled, and occasionally how dangerous, the other man's subconscious had become, but also because it still made him heartsick, even after so long.

[thesolipsism]

If Ephraim ever came back. Would he ever be able to now? Would he even want to? He hadn’t been in the real world for so long, he’d nearly forgotten what it was like and if he was honest, he’d probably lost at least half of his mind already. Waking up might have caused him to lose the other half.

A raven swooped down from the whirlpool of saints on the ceiling, settling on Ephraim's chair, ruffling its feathers grouchily and letting out an ugly squawk. “No, you didn’t used to.” Scowling, Ephraim flailed his arm backwards and struck at the bird, his anger and annoyance that might have been directed elsewhere. Once the bird had flown away, he folds his hands in his lap and took a deep breath, trying with great effort to collect himself.

“I appreciate that you come. Without you, I would have gone mad long ago.”

[uncleeinar]

He chuckled at that, a low, rolling sound, almost tactile in and of itself, the same as it always had been, "And I'm afraid I've already gone half mad, if I wasn't already." He shook his head, "Sometimes I think I must have been to do the things we did." Well, mostly the things Einar did, he was always the one to push the limits.

He shrugged, "And if I was already half mad before, and another half now, suppose that means I'm only a quarter sane, these days." He tilted his head from side to side, weighing that out, apparently, "Which is better than can be said of some in our line of work, no?"

[thesolipsism]

Ephraim answered this with a smile, getting up to cross the room and perch himself on the arm of the Einar’s chair. Being able to be close to someone, an actual someone, was something he couldn’t replicate. In substance, Einar was no different than a projection, but he was still more real.

“All that time, I thought I was keeping you sane. All that worry…for nothing.” He chuckled, a real laugh, with no hint of bitterness. “At least you’re returning the favor now.”

[uncleeinar]

He laughed again, an actual laugh that time, just as tactile as the chuckle had been, shaking his head and running his fingers along the back of the other man's hand for a moment, "I wouldn't say for nothing. I'd have been only a quarter sane far earlier if it weren't for you and your worrying." And being there to pull him out if things went wrong, but as far as Einar was concerned it was the same thing.

He shook his head then, fingers just resting lightly against Ephraim's wrist, feeling his pulse there, thrumming away against his fingers, as steady as ever, "Did I remember to tell you last time that it's been done? A successful inception?"

[thesolipsism]

Ephraim grinned back at his old partner. Obviously, he wanted to lean over and kiss him, but he had to stop him himself. He had to remember that Einar was real and had a mind outside of Ephraim’s, unlike the projections that he could pretty much abuse as much as he wanted and have no major pangs of conscious. Funny how libertine he had become, how reckless…but he found it easy enough to go back to his old, careful self around Einar.

He contented himself with letting the man touch his wrist for a time before sliding his hand over and around to interlace their fingers, raising his eyebrows at Einar’s statement. “No, you didn’t mention…I’m not entirely surprised; I knew it was probably possible. But I’m curious as to how they did it.”

[uncleeinar]

He nodded as the other man laced their fingers, a small smile catching at the corners of his mouth, "Details are still sketchy, though that's the way it goes in this business." He shook his head then, thumb just brushing idly back and forth along the side of Ephraim's hand, "It has always been possible, it just took the right sort of leverage."

Another faint smile, "It was Dominic of course." Because to do something like that required someone with his level of... well, everything, training, skill, cunning, and also his way with people, both the right ones and the wrong ones.

[thesolipsism]

“Of course. It would have to be him or you. The things you used to do, I wouldn’t be surprised…”

Oh, there’s that jealousy again. Einar wasn’t involved and Ephraim barely even knew Cobb, but he knew what it was to do a job, to try new and dangerous things in the interest of being paid vast sums of money.

“Do you remember our last job?” Averting his eyes momentarily, he added “Our last successful job?” Strangely, Ephraim can’t remember the particulars of the extraction himself, the plans that used to fascinate him down to the last detail and the rush of being in the moment of a heist in the midst of an impossible world. What interests him more now is the memory of what happened after, in reality, how he’d flopped down on the bed like a giddy schoolboy in Einar and his grimy, real-world hotel room. How ugly and unimaginative the place was! And looking back now, how novel.

[uncleeinar]

"The railroad barons." He said without hesitation, though even the job that had resulted in things being the way they were now had still been a success, in that they'd gotten paid for it.

The men weren't model train enthusiasts, because that implied the little trains that went around Christmas trees, no, they were miniature train enthusiasts, which were the quarter to half-size scale models, and it was, apparently a more bloodthirsty business than most people thought. But then again, anything full of middle-aged men with too much money would be, it was just the nature of things.