04 / 12 ⚀ the Henry that is not a Henry, the Henry with a needle and thread.specificsApril 15 2011, 01:44:25 UTC
[ With half a length wrapped not too clumsily, Arthur catches onto the forthright motion in view a second too slow, his wrist caught then and elbow as well, familiar with the weight and articulation of hands making the frame. He stills his own movement, statuesque as he does nothing but peer at the other man, like he could take him apart with a glance; but that's never been Arthur's specialty to his own knowledge, so much as Eames'. His gaze smooths to something less searching, less grasping - boxed up, like much of everything else has given itself over to being, between Arthur and everyone. No exceptions. ]
It's not like I'm going to bleed out - it's fine.
[ This point feels definitively valid, reasonable to Arthur who doesn't mind the shallow blood on the bandage as long as the bandage is thickly layered enough to keep it from everything else. Part of him knows just how ridiculous the whole set of circumstances happens to be, not even the death but their living arrangement - one they haven't had in so long that Arthur almost doesn't dare to look back; he wonders if it would be worth it, or if he would even see what he thinks he will - if when he helped to place the needle on the second layer of the Fischer job, he himself had meant for it to mean more than he could say. At this point, it's too far away from his present to accurately dissect, so he doesn't.
Instead, his mind flashes to Eames throwing his totem at him on the beach for no immediately apparent reason and he flinches, which must seem especially out of place in the here and now. He knows the totems never meant to Eames what they did to Mal, to Dom, to Arthur himself, which explains at least why it was Arthur who traded his loaded die the last time - reportedly. It has to mean something.
Picturing it half slotted into the moonlit sand, Arthur pulls his wrist away, moves to step around Eames, taking the gauze with him, and while he does not quite reek of carelessness, it might be a near miss, but he doesn't need Eames' help. ]
04 / 12 ⚀ the Henry that is not a Henry, the Henry with a needle and thread.shiftsApril 15 2011, 01:59:06 UTC
Arthur.
[ And Eames is just so frustrated with him, all the fucking time - this is why they don't work together well, anymore, not in the way they used to fluidly come together in all things regarding projections or other people in the dreamshare program (some British, like Eames himself on lend from England, some French, most American, a few Germans interspersed). Arthur keeps him out and Eames always does better with those who let him in, a little bit, so that he doesn't have to use all of his skills to pry them open. Cobb is open to him in ways that are never intimate because it would be strange were it that, but he treats him like an equal on the field and that's all Eames really ever wants - respect for his age and for his intellect and more importantly his experience, though he's not a very good at spelling or math he's voracious with books and the maps of streets, good with people. He could have tried inception on his own, elsewhere, with his own team at the header, but he'd gone with Cobb because he was brilliant, and Arthur was the best even if he was becoming just this side of impossible to deal with.
Eames thinks, with the way that job went, regardless of their success, that he really should have declined. At the time he'd been too dazzled by the fact that Cobb had the balls to come to Mombasa despite the enormous price on his head.
Still, the point is that gauze isn't going to keep the blood flow (more like slow seep) at bay, isn't going to keep bacteria from seeping in and growing even if it doesn't effect Arthur any at current - because it will effect him when he regains his life. And then he'll promptly die again from septic shock, at the rate he's going. It isn't much to block Arthur's path by simply stepping in front of him. ]
Even if the cut wasn't so deep, you won't heal. You'll have to change those bandages every few hours before the blood stains your clothes. Stop being ridiculous and sit down- it'll take ten minutes to do, and be much neater than anything you'll be able to fix on your own.
04 / 12 ⚀ the Henry that is not a Henry, the Henry with a needle and thread.specificsApril 15 2011, 02:30:48 UTC
[ Jaw clenching, the scrape of his own teeth gritting sounds chalky, grated in his ears and pitching itself against the timbre of Eames' voice, a white noise rebuttal. Things weren't always this strained between them, which perhaps is part of what feeds into the tension now. Along the edge of his sight, Arthur can trace back as far as when they were different, skin deep and otherwise, though the bare bones have remained the same, gotten ground deeper into the blood. He could make his way past the forger, probably - maybe, or maybe not if he doesn't want to risk a broken limb in addition to a sliced one. The tightness in his jaw runs itself down into the set of his mouth and throughout the rigidity of his shoulders as he scrapes his vision from gray eyes - greener or bluer depending, or not gray at all, also depending - to the twist of Eames' own displeasure, a mouth and some words and the breadth of his frame in the doorway.
It's inherent in the way he turns half away that Eames has won this round, so to speak, or so it would seem as Arthur steps backward once, and wordlessly unwinds the slight length of gauze, disposes the bandage into the bin and picks up the first aid kit with the uninjured arm. ]
I didn't expect it to heal. [ He says, disconnected as he does force his way past a strong shoulder, headed for the kitchen where he turns the light on, fluorescence illuminating the tile and the counter, setting the kit down on the table and pulling out a chair. After a second, he kicks out the other chair as well. Time was, this would have been normal, and it wouldn't have required midnight stitches to bring them to it, and it's not at all that Arthur can't remember; he can.
But he has often, or at least often in the past two years, been of a wearier mind where his heart and other associated sentiments don't weigh in, where he has to think: some things don't bear repeating. Shaking his head, as if to himself, to clear it, he rests his hand on the back of the chair, not sitting despite having drawn it out. ]
04 / 12 ⚀ the Henry that is not a Henry, the Henry with a needle and thread.shiftsApril 15 2011, 02:58:45 UTC
[ Eames allows him to pass, staying silent (and he can't even add for once onto that because he has stayed silent about a myriad of things, in combination of simply not caring and larger things to be focused on, mostly to do with the ways he perceives Arthur to be idiotic). He flicks off the lights in the bathroom for now, if just to save on electricity even though he'll be back here to replace the kit soon enough. Following Arthur to the kitchen, he notes the chairs, notes the way Arthur's fingers are splayed out on the back of one rather than sitting, but still he says nothing - and isn't that something, really, the silence that settles. Eames doesn't sit right away, instead washing his hands in the kitchen sink and using a few paper towels to dry them, tossing those in the bin before easing down onto the chair that had been kicked out, pulling the kit toward himself to reopen.
He plucks a select few items out - latex gloves pressed into a plastic package, a sterile hold of catgut stitching, another of thread and needle-leads. Glancing toward Arthur, he tips his chin a little down at the seat of the chair, brow raising. ]
Sit down, then, won't you? Tell me the story of what happened.
04 / 12 ⚀ the Henry that is not a Henry, the Henry with a needle and thread.specificsApril 15 2011, 03:22:53 UTC
A new arrival ran into me with his...well it wasn't a sword. I don't know what it was, come to think of it.
[ There is, of course, a great deal more to that exchange - how the boy was chained up and Arthur decided to help him out with that, how the boy gave him the name 'Sora' but Arthur doesn't actually believe that that's his name, how the boy refused a hospital which was oddly something he could sympathize with except that this boy was bleeding from his wrists and his neck and could actually stand some legitimate medical treatment. He leaves all of that out, including the part where he gave the boy his jacket, though considering the absence of it - only in waistcoat and button-down on top now, it's self-evident. Arthur takes the seat he drew for himself, and drags it a few inches closer to facilitate the matter of stitching without making it unnecessarily - or additionally - irritating. His gaze snags on the number done on his forearm, the blood a strange depletion against the skin ripped back in a way that looks more problematic than it felt.
On this thought, he almost rolls his eyes. ] I barely felt it.
[ Arthur well knows that's not at all the point at play here between them, that in fact it isn't even largely about the arm or the stitches so much as Eames forcing in the practicality of someone living and Arthur trying to combat it with the new and flawed logic of the - comparatively - dead. In a way, Arthur knows it's a defense coiling in the pit of his awareness - the almost loathsome warning of don't get your hopes up, since he still isn't sure he has something he can trade for a life returned anyway. When his focus almost pauses on one of Eames' tattoos, he shifts it in a way he dares to suppose isn't obvious, angles his concentration back to the sorry excuse for an arm he was prepared to walk around with until he deemed it too infernal. ]
04 / 12 ⚀ the Henry that is not a Henry, the Henry with a needle and thread.shiftsApril 15 2011, 03:59:17 UTC
[ Ran into him.
With his sword or whatever.
Eames looks at him a little incredulously, admittedly unguarded in it, before he shakes his head and tears the gloves from their packaging to slide his hands into. Thankfully, out of luck mostly, they're sized large so that he doesn't have to fight to squeeze into the damn things, and he pulls the alcohol swabs out next, rubbing them firmly up and down the pale inside of Arthur's forearm. It doesn't matter that Arthur is dead now, it's a matter of time before he gains his life back - Eames is certain of this; it's his own dream, of course he wouldn't keep Arthur around and dead that would just be disturbing on so many levels he doesn't want to touch right now. He supposes he can't be skeptical, not here, and it's not like he's bewildered at the incident itself but maybe more at the flippant way Arthur regards it. It could have been much worse, he figures, involving Arthur hacked in two, but even then. ]
You musn't be so careless.
[ It's not the accident, no, for whatever it was - it's now, rather, the fact that Arthur seems to have become passive with his death, the idea that nothing matters because he's for all intents and purposes dead anyway. He glances up at the same time that Arthur angles his focus away, tossing the swabs toward the center of the table before reaching for the catgut, easing a length of it into the head of a thin needle and knotting it off at both ends. ]
04 / 12 ⚀ the Henry that is not a Henry, the Henry with a needle and thread.specificsApril 15 2011, 04:19:31 UTC
[ As with the injury itself, Arthur is only loosely aware of the contact. Eames' words don't carry the chiding tone of someone overly affectionate, of what an outsider might expect considering the chosen phrasing; but they were never so clear cut, so black and white, even when the days passed normally and the nights were communal instead of strained. The arm hanging at his side has the hand lightly caught on the edge of the chair, and his fingers flex almost imperceptibly. Really though, one of the last things Arthur wants or needs to deal with right now is Eames telling him something about how careful he is or isn't being.
He looks at the forger, follows an unofficial line from a shoulder to the crook of his neck, to the hard line of his jaw up to just beyond the right eye. ]
Believe it or not, he caught me off guard.
[ While this is utterly true, it's only fair to strike down now for the record that Eames isn't wrong; Arthur has gotten blithe about his mere existence, though part of him understands it's heavily erroneous - this behavior that stems from something deeper he can't even dig down to anymore. It's not that he's fine with his death, or his non-life -- depending on who you ask. No, that's not it. So what then?
He roots around and comes up empty-handed, and when he settles back a little more against the chair, it's an unconscious shift of posture, like a breath released even though he hasn't taken one, which makes the actuality impossible outside of muscle memory. ] Not [ he pauses, adding with a slight grimace borderlining on a smile so out of place he'd be better off not making the expression at all ] that it would've made a difference. [ Being dead, he could have taken that 'trident' or whatever through his stomach and walked away with the larger collateral done to his waistcoat. ]
04 / 12 ⚀ the Henry that is not a Henry, the Henry with a needle and thread.shiftsApril 15 2011, 11:42:52 UTC
I meant in general.
[ Eames thinks about offering Arthur something to drink, or something to take the edge off of what he's about to do - or even sending him to the bloody hospital, for Christ's sake - but the point seems much more intent on focusing on how much he isn't living, how he doesn't need anything, that Eames thinks fuck it. He keeps Arthur's arm flat against the table, leaning over it as he lines up the split edges of the wound best he can. The lack of blood leaking profusely makes the entire affair much easier, more like working with a practice doll than a real person, and Eames starts sewing the split muscle together with the catgut thread. He'll get the skin afterward, naturally, but a process is a process and - living or not - he's going to treat Arthur as he would anyone else. ]
If it hurts- [ He prompts, glancing at Arthur's features again, but doesn't expand on it. ]
You aren't dead, Arthur. [ Not dead like his precious Mallorie, in any case. ] It's only a dream, but treating your body this way isn't going to make leaving any easier. [ There was a reason none of them had attempted this route the time last, but he can no longer pinpoint it aside from the fact that Ariadne had been worried it was real and they indulged her for a little while. There was something else, just on the edge of his mind, but Eames has been able to remember everything important thus far so assumes this small little detail is less-so.
Besides, Arthur's general behavior is starting to grate on his nerves. ]
04 / 12 ⚀ the Henry that is not a Henry, the Henry with a needle and thread.specificsApril 15 2011, 18:05:31 UTC
[ His first response silence, he watches Eames align the split skin. Arthur doesn't flinch even a little, just observes like it's happening to someone else, the hand at his side a loose angle of wrist-bone jutting out for how the fingers remain lightly hooked on the chair edge. The ruling awareness lets the vague flicker of warmth from Eames' hands, from his proximity register more so than the needle and subsequent administrations, but it wouldn't be a surprise to anyone who knows Arthur that he would prefer the latter. He slips into a quasi-comfortable distance - trying yet again to look at what is happening here from a new overpass, one where he can remotely approach the possibility of sense being made - and only comes out of it with his head jerking up (as if he can feel his arm, as if it hurts like it shoulder) at the next utterance.
You aren't dead.
And Arthur can hear the unspoken even if he can't read minds. Not like Mal. The stillness of him seems to ingrain itself for a moment, for two moments, for three. It's only a dream... It doesn't follow, that anger should sneak in at high speeds, fill up the soundless would-be staccato of his pulse, not at this point. Yet he is angry, frustrated with the situation, a dozen types of sentiment Arthur only seems inspired to when Dom is involved, or the memory of Mal; they're showing up, as if to remind him precisely how little he controls here, which should be proof enough maybe - in its own perverse right - that this is not only a dream, but Eames' dream, where Arthur is only a projection.
But he's a projection that the forger insists on stitching up however difficult Arthur rallies to being, a visceral discontent that sparks outward in his eyes like a shattered catch of the light. How does this fall together? Or doesn't it? He looks away and when he speaks, his voice comes across closer to raw, scraped than he would like but he's trying to keep a remaining chain on the disorientation of simply not knowing under wraps. Dead. Not dead. Only a dream. But whose dream? ]
Exactly whose dream do you think this is?
[ And it's a callous question but Arthur hasn't played any version of nice with Eames at any length for a very long time. He had what he supposes amounts to a flicker of nostalgia, a human longing for an old warmth on that hotel room floor, Eames' wrist in his grasp, an amused rejoinder slipping out the corner of his mouth.
Whose dream?
The reason it's tasteless, is that Arthur already knows what Eames thinks on this matter, but he's asking anyway as if to make him say it.
04 / 12 ⚀ the Henry that is not a Henry, the Henry with a needle and thread.shiftsApril 15 2011, 18:40:33 UTC
[ Eames knows it for what it is - a little volatile, the twist of a knife to spill onto the table. Were he more mature, he would ignore it entirely - serve Arthur his own dosage of a cold shoulder - but there's something about the air, when they're in the same room nowadays, that pulls on him to never treat Arthur like a proper professional, to pull at his proverbial pigtails until he snaps.
It's a little bit strange, to see it twist back to him, when Arthur had let the remarks roll off of him in waves when preparing for the Fischer job, as was his usual focus and Eames' calculation for it. Arthur already knows whose dream Eames believes it to be, for he's been straight of it since the beginning, but there's anger and a bitterness to it that he shouldn't approach. He shouldn't acknowledge it, because it'll open something they've been letting well enough alone for years now, the way it's always been - a certain amount of versus, obligations, a strain that had admittedly developed even before Mallorie's death, a casuality to walking off and the strangers they made of themselves thereafter. People come together and move apart all the time, Arthur and Eames are no different in this, it's just that at some points they were more violent about it. Friendship had never been worth much, anyway, not in the face of larger-scaled things when it matters little in the face of respect.
He focuses, instead, on threading the needle through Arthur's flesh, wondering where the days of Arthur saying nothing at all have gone. ]
You're being childish, Arthur.
[ You'll upset yourself only for the sake of making a point that we already know. ]
04 / 12 ⚀ the Henry that is not a Henry, the Henry with a needle and thread.specificsApril 15 2011, 19:10:23 UTC
[ Saying nothing? That's for people who understand each other's silences. Childish? Arthur doesn't know whether he's more incredulous or angry or something not quite either. Maybe, a thin voice as far back as he can reach whispers, maybe it's because he's right. Maybe not. Arthur can't square with that, is the real thing blockading this argument all the way around. Under the fingers and the needle and the focus all pinpointed, he considers just wrenching away and some of that may be clear in the sudden tension that laces itself throughout his frame, cut up arm included. ]
And you were so adult when I turned it around on you.
[ He can't laugh about it, not even sardonically, but the way he refuses to look at Eames again serves a similar function: contradiction, acknowledging without acknowledging. That Eames stormed out of here when Arthur had implied it might not be his dream, that he might not be real, and suddenly, now, here, his arm lain open and the echo of a heartbeat cresting his awareness, it's childish of Arthur to make Eames admit what they both know already? Childish.
In his pocket, the loaded die could, for a split instant, belong to someone else. Arthur could be someone who isn't Arthur at all. He could be a face in the crowd, mistaken. He could be a stranger. He could be no one.
But he can't accept it.
How does he even begin to touch that ghost? How can he? What do you say about how you've heard this before? And would it even matter? Eames knows. He may have never been as close to Mal as Arthur was, the way Arthur was a little in love with her and didn't know it until Mal no longer knew him at all; but Eames knew what was happening. This was before everything went into hiding, before everything got cataloged and separated until it became almost nothing, an open door leading Arthur away - wherever Dom could stand being.
It's quiet in here, just one person breathing.
Rationally, Arthur shouldn't compare, but he's sitting here, he's staring at the ceiling like it has answers for him, he's lining up all the pieces on the board and sending them scattering when they won't do what he knows they're supposed to, he's running headlong toward the only familiar thing and casting it off at the same time. He wants something simple for once, he wants to know he can get on with his life after cleaving to the well-being of someone who could make jokes with him but never once tell him what was killing him from the inside, he wants...
...well he's not sure there's a word for it after all.
And suddenly he's tired, but that's a trick too, because whatever Eames says or refuses to say, Arthur is dead, biologically. Sleep isn't on the agenda.
04 / 12 ⚀ the Henry that is not a Henry, the Henry with a needle and thread.shiftsApril 15 2011, 19:29:50 UTC
I didn't say I was, now did I? The difference is that you like to uphold yourself a pedestal higher.
[ As though it makes him the morally better person. As though throwing shit away for the sake of someone else leaves him anything to stand for other than stupid behavior that, in the end, gets him nowhere. Cobb would have created his successes, travelled his miles, eventually brought himself into the predicament with Saito regardless of whether or not Arthur had come along. That Arthur believes his presence is of much importance to a grieving man is silly, maybe even a bit vain, because Cobb has never needed anyone's help except for when he travels the span of distance to ask for it himself. Arthur readily just makes himself a resource out of what, Eames presumes, he believes is friendship and properly supportive to a man whose wife you were in love with, as if trying to make up for it. But this is the shit Eames stopped giving mind to so long ago, because Arthur's a grown man with childish ideals and he's accepted that. There's nothing for him to change on the basis of wants, and he could take the time to throw open the shutters Arthur blinds himself to on some label of loyalty, but it's Eames who doesn't have the time nor interest in being fought on it.
If Arthur wants to play the resource, then he's allowed, but Eames doesn't have to respect it - Arthur is no much more a better person than him, he's just disillusioned himself into justifications. There's no upstanding morality to be had in mind crime - it's all about extortion and exploitation of trust. They're all very bad men, no matter what limelight Arthur prefers to hold Cobb to, because Eames knows Cobb has always been terrible and dirty but that had been (and it is still) what makes him so brilliant, what puts him in the arms and company of thieves, this proposed family man. It's also what makes him an awful father. Eames rather feels bad for those children, in the end.
But he doesn't say any of that, because he never has, and he has no interest in laying down the shit Arthur refuses to see for himself.
This is why Eames knows this is his dream.
Because Arthur is too single-minded to think in the delicate ways that encompass anything here, and Arthur would never have the knowledge that Eames knows composes himself - right now, in this moment - for him to be the point's projection.
He feels Arthur try to pull his arm away, and he abandons the needle midway through a cut of muscle to pin one hand over the thin of Arthur's wrist, the other at the crook of his elbow. ]
04 / 12 ⚀ the Henry that is not a Henry, the Henry with a needle and thread.specificsApril 15 2011, 20:03:39 UTC
[ The problem with Arthur stems from his strength, as most weaknesses do. It comes out of history and drags along whoever might be so unfortunate as to get snagged by a stray hook or razor's eye. How Arthur fell in love with Mal was not how he loved Dom, things he can't even think to himself now, doesn't admit because it feels foolish and obsolete and a number of other adjectives that he hasn't got the time for. He can acknowledge that there was something bright back then though, days that lit up from the inside: gold rooms, dreams where the sky and the water became just one thing, and Arthur walked through it with them, he walked through it all - and it felt like home.
Then came the jump, came running, came tailoring himself to the kinds of capabilities that best suited this line of work they know inhabit - or, did, in Dom's case. Arthur knows they aren't good people, and he'll never claim otherwise. It's not like he's proud of the invasions but he can admit to never having had moral distress over them either. The things Arthur covets on those sorts of lines and spaces are deeply personal, and in that sense, yes, he might also have to concede to some pedestal pushing - easier to get away with regarding Mal and more or less the stuff that makes him look insane in regards to Dom; he knows. It hasn't changed how he's operated though.
If he could read Eames' mind, Arthur would lash out, would demand how Eames could ever really know what Dom had needed, and what he hadn't. You didn't see him, Arthur would say, would not tell Eames because it isn't any of Eames' business exactly how bad it was, how it is to watch up close as someone dies from the inside out. In a way, it grinds on his nerves because the forger specializes in people; he should know some of this anyway, at this point, but he pushes, and the point doesn't have to be telepathic to be aware of some of Eames' broader sentiments on the whole arrangement. To some, Arthur knows, he is a well-dressed facilitator, and little more. But possibly it wasn't about that, chasing Dom - possibly, he wants to say, has to think: it was about what they had been, and how had been never mattered to Arthur before Eames, or Dom, or Mal - all in different ways, though in the end the Cobbs had the scale tilting in their direction. Arthur didn't know how to walk away from them.
Maybe he still doesn't.
As it is, the only thing he ends up doing is staring at the hand over his wrist, aware of the one at his elbow, and thinking how warm they are, which only makes him hate Eames a little bit more at the moment.
Don't know what? His quick glance over punctuates before dropping again as he relents, lets his arm stay properly flat again on the table.
And here is the silence in return, but it's not one he understands. ]
It's not like I'm going to bleed out - it's fine.
[ This point feels definitively valid, reasonable to Arthur who doesn't mind the shallow blood on the bandage as long as the bandage is thickly layered enough to keep it from everything else. Part of him knows just how ridiculous the whole set of circumstances happens to be, not even the death but their living arrangement - one they haven't had in so long that Arthur almost doesn't dare to look back; he wonders if it would be worth it, or if he would even see what he thinks he will - if when he helped to place the needle on the second layer of the Fischer job, he himself had meant for it to mean more than he could say. At this point, it's too far away from his present to accurately dissect, so he doesn't.
Instead, his mind flashes to Eames throwing his totem at him on the beach for no immediately apparent reason and he flinches, which must seem especially out of place in the here and now. He knows the totems never meant to Eames what they did to Mal, to Dom, to Arthur himself, which explains at least why it was Arthur who traded his loaded die the last time - reportedly. It has to mean something.
Picturing it half slotted into the moonlit sand, Arthur pulls his wrist away, moves to step around Eames, taking the gauze with him, and while he does not quite reek of carelessness, it might be a near miss, but he doesn't need Eames' help. ]
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[ And Eames is just so frustrated with him, all the fucking time - this is why they don't work together well, anymore, not in the way they used to fluidly come together in all things regarding projections or other people in the dreamshare program (some British, like Eames himself on lend from England, some French, most American, a few Germans interspersed). Arthur keeps him out and Eames always does better with those who let him in, a little bit, so that he doesn't have to use all of his skills to pry them open. Cobb is open to him in ways that are never intimate because it would be strange were it that, but he treats him like an equal on the field and that's all Eames really ever wants - respect for his age and for his intellect and more importantly his experience, though he's not a very good at spelling or math he's voracious with books and the maps of streets, good with people. He could have tried inception on his own, elsewhere, with his own team at the header, but he'd gone with Cobb because he was brilliant, and Arthur was the best even if he was becoming just this side of impossible to deal with.
Eames thinks, with the way that job went, regardless of their success, that he really should have declined. At the time he'd been too dazzled by the fact that Cobb had the balls to come to Mombasa despite the enormous price on his head.
Still, the point is that gauze isn't going to keep the blood flow (more like slow seep) at bay, isn't going to keep bacteria from seeping in and growing even if it doesn't effect Arthur any at current - because it will effect him when he regains his life. And then he'll promptly die again from septic shock, at the rate he's going. It isn't much to block Arthur's path by simply stepping in front of him. ]
Even if the cut wasn't so deep, you won't heal. You'll have to change those bandages every few hours before the blood stains your clothes. Stop being ridiculous and sit down- it'll take ten minutes to do, and be much neater than anything you'll be able to fix on your own.
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It's inherent in the way he turns half away that Eames has won this round, so to speak, or so it would seem as Arthur steps backward once, and wordlessly unwinds the slight length of gauze, disposes the bandage into the bin and picks up the first aid kit with the uninjured arm. ]
I didn't expect it to heal. [ He says, disconnected as he does force his way past a strong shoulder, headed for the kitchen where he turns the light on, fluorescence illuminating the tile and the counter, setting the kit down on the table and pulling out a chair. After a second, he kicks out the other chair as well. Time was, this would have been normal, and it wouldn't have required midnight stitches to bring them to it, and it's not at all that Arthur can't remember; he can.
But he has often, or at least often in the past two years, been of a wearier mind where his heart and other associated sentiments don't weigh in, where he has to think: some things don't bear repeating. Shaking his head, as if to himself, to clear it, he rests his hand on the back of the chair, not sitting despite having drawn it out. ]
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He plucks a select few items out - latex gloves pressed into a plastic package, a sterile hold of catgut stitching, another of thread and needle-leads. Glancing toward Arthur, he tips his chin a little down at the seat of the chair, brow raising. ]
Sit down, then, won't you? Tell me the story of what happened.
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[ There is, of course, a great deal more to that exchange - how the boy was chained up and Arthur decided to help him out with that, how the boy gave him the name 'Sora' but Arthur doesn't actually believe that that's his name, how the boy refused a hospital which was oddly something he could sympathize with except that this boy was bleeding from his wrists and his neck and could actually stand some legitimate medical treatment. He leaves all of that out, including the part where he gave the boy his jacket, though considering the absence of it - only in waistcoat and button-down on top now, it's self-evident. Arthur takes the seat he drew for himself, and drags it a few inches closer to facilitate the matter of stitching without making it unnecessarily - or additionally - irritating. His gaze snags on the number done on his forearm, the blood a strange depletion against the skin ripped back in a way that looks more problematic than it felt.
On this thought, he almost rolls his eyes. ] I barely felt it.
[ Arthur well knows that's not at all the point at play here between them, that in fact it isn't even largely about the arm or the stitches so much as Eames forcing in the practicality of someone living and Arthur trying to combat it with the new and flawed logic of the - comparatively - dead. In a way, Arthur knows it's a defense coiling in the pit of his awareness - the almost loathsome warning of don't get your hopes up, since he still isn't sure he has something he can trade for a life returned anyway. When his focus almost pauses on one of Eames' tattoos, he shifts it in a way he dares to suppose isn't obvious, angles his concentration back to the sorry excuse for an arm he was prepared to walk around with until he deemed it too infernal. ]
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With his sword or whatever.
Eames looks at him a little incredulously, admittedly unguarded in it, before he shakes his head and tears the gloves from their packaging to slide his hands into. Thankfully, out of luck mostly, they're sized large so that he doesn't have to fight to squeeze into the damn things, and he pulls the alcohol swabs out next, rubbing them firmly up and down the pale inside of Arthur's forearm. It doesn't matter that Arthur is dead now, it's a matter of time before he gains his life back - Eames is certain of this; it's his own dream, of course he wouldn't keep Arthur around and dead that would just be disturbing on so many levels he doesn't want to touch right now. He supposes he can't be skeptical, not here, and it's not like he's bewildered at the incident itself but maybe more at the flippant way Arthur regards it. It could have been much worse, he figures, involving Arthur hacked in two, but even then. ]
You musn't be so careless.
[ It's not the accident, no, for whatever it was - it's now, rather, the fact that Arthur seems to have become passive with his death, the idea that nothing matters because he's for all intents and purposes dead anyway. He glances up at the same time that Arthur angles his focus away, tossing the swabs toward the center of the table before reaching for the catgut, easing a length of it into the head of a thin needle and knotting it off at both ends. ]
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He looks at the forger, follows an unofficial line from a shoulder to the crook of his neck, to the hard line of his jaw up to just beyond the right eye. ]
Believe it or not, he caught me off guard.
[ While this is utterly true, it's only fair to strike down now for the record that Eames isn't wrong; Arthur has gotten blithe about his mere existence, though part of him understands it's heavily erroneous - this behavior that stems from something deeper he can't even dig down to anymore. It's not that he's fine with his death, or his non-life -- depending on who you ask. No, that's not it. So what then?
He roots around and comes up empty-handed, and when he settles back a little more against the chair, it's an unconscious shift of posture, like a breath released even though he hasn't taken one, which makes the actuality impossible outside of muscle memory. ] Not [ he pauses, adding with a slight grimace borderlining on a smile so out of place he'd be better off not making the expression at all ] that it would've made a difference. [ Being dead, he could have taken that 'trident' or whatever through his stomach and walked away with the larger collateral done to his waistcoat. ]
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[ Eames thinks about offering Arthur something to drink, or something to take the edge off of what he's about to do - or even sending him to the bloody hospital, for Christ's sake - but the point seems much more intent on focusing on how much he isn't living, how he doesn't need anything, that Eames thinks fuck it. He keeps Arthur's arm flat against the table, leaning over it as he lines up the split edges of the wound best he can. The lack of blood leaking profusely makes the entire affair much easier, more like working with a practice doll than a real person, and Eames starts sewing the split muscle together with the catgut thread. He'll get the skin afterward, naturally, but a process is a process and - living or not - he's going to treat Arthur as he would anyone else. ]
If it hurts- [ He prompts, glancing at Arthur's features again, but doesn't expand on it. ]
You aren't dead, Arthur. [ Not dead like his precious Mallorie, in any case. ] It's only a dream, but treating your body this way isn't going to make leaving any easier. [ There was a reason none of them had attempted this route the time last, but he can no longer pinpoint it aside from the fact that Ariadne had been worried it was real and they indulged her for a little while. There was something else, just on the edge of his mind, but Eames has been able to remember everything important thus far so assumes this small little detail is less-so.
Besides, Arthur's general behavior is starting to grate on his nerves. ]
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You aren't dead.
And Arthur can hear the unspoken even if he can't read minds. Not like Mal. The stillness of him seems to ingrain itself for a moment, for two moments, for three. It's only a dream... It doesn't follow, that anger should sneak in at high speeds, fill up the soundless would-be staccato of his pulse, not at this point. Yet he is angry, frustrated with the situation, a dozen types of sentiment Arthur only seems inspired to when Dom is involved, or the memory of Mal; they're showing up, as if to remind him precisely how little he controls here, which should be proof enough maybe - in its own perverse right - that this is not only a dream, but Eames' dream, where Arthur is only a projection.
But he's a projection that the forger insists on stitching up however difficult Arthur rallies to being, a visceral discontent that sparks outward in his eyes like a shattered catch of the light. How does this fall together? Or doesn't it? He looks away and when he speaks, his voice comes across closer to raw, scraped than he would like but he's trying to keep a remaining chain on the disorientation of simply not knowing under wraps. Dead. Not dead. Only a dream. But whose dream? ]
Exactly whose dream do you think this is?
[ And it's a callous question but Arthur hasn't played any version of nice with Eames at any length for a very long time. He had what he supposes amounts to a flicker of nostalgia, a human longing for an old warmth on that hotel room floor, Eames' wrist in his grasp, an amused rejoinder slipping out the corner of his mouth.
Whose dream?
The reason it's tasteless, is that Arthur already knows what Eames thinks on this matter, but he's asking anyway as if to make him say it.
Go ahead.
Tell me I'm not dead.
Tell me I can't be dead.
Because I'm not real to begin with.
Tell me all about it. ]
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It's a little bit strange, to see it twist back to him, when Arthur had let the remarks roll off of him in waves when preparing for the Fischer job, as was his usual focus and Eames' calculation for it. Arthur already knows whose dream Eames believes it to be, for he's been straight of it since the beginning, but there's anger and a bitterness to it that he shouldn't approach. He shouldn't acknowledge it, because it'll open something they've been letting well enough alone for years now, the way it's always been - a certain amount of versus, obligations, a strain that had admittedly developed even before Mallorie's death, a casuality to walking off and the strangers they made of themselves thereafter. People come together and move apart all the time, Arthur and Eames are no different in this, it's just that at some points they were more violent about it. Friendship had never been worth much, anyway, not in the face of larger-scaled things when it matters little in the face of respect.
He focuses, instead, on threading the needle through Arthur's flesh, wondering where the days of Arthur saying nothing at all have gone. ]
You're being childish, Arthur.
[ You'll upset yourself only for the sake of making a point that we already know. ]
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And you were so adult when I turned it around on you.
[ He can't laugh about it, not even sardonically, but the way he refuses to look at Eames again serves a similar function: contradiction, acknowledging without acknowledging. That Eames stormed out of here when Arthur had implied it might not be his dream, that he might not be real, and suddenly, now, here, his arm lain open and the echo of a heartbeat cresting his awareness, it's childish of Arthur to make Eames admit what they both know already? Childish.
In his pocket, the loaded die could, for a split instant, belong to someone else. Arthur could be someone who isn't Arthur at all. He could be a face in the crowd, mistaken. He could be a stranger. He could be no one.
But he can't accept it.
How does he even begin to touch that ghost? How can he? What do you say about how you've heard this before? And would it even matter? Eames knows. He may have never been as close to Mal as Arthur was, the way Arthur was a little in love with her and didn't know it until Mal no longer knew him at all; but Eames knew what was happening. This was before everything went into hiding, before everything got cataloged and separated until it became almost nothing, an open door leading Arthur away - wherever Dom could stand being.
It's quiet in here, just one person breathing.
Rationally, Arthur shouldn't compare, but he's sitting here, he's staring at the ceiling like it has answers for him, he's lining up all the pieces on the board and sending them scattering when they won't do what he knows they're supposed to, he's running headlong toward the only familiar thing and casting it off at the same time. He wants something simple for once, he wants to know he can get on with his life after cleaving to the well-being of someone who could make jokes with him but never once tell him what was killing him from the inside, he wants...
...well he's not sure there's a word for it after all.
And suddenly he's tired, but that's a trick too, because whatever Eames says or refuses to say, Arthur is dead, biologically. Sleep isn't on the agenda.
He tries to pull his arm away. ]
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[ As though it makes him the morally better person. As though throwing shit away for the sake of someone else leaves him anything to stand for other than stupid behavior that, in the end, gets him nowhere. Cobb would have created his successes, travelled his miles, eventually brought himself into the predicament with Saito regardless of whether or not Arthur had come along. That Arthur believes his presence is of much importance to a grieving man is silly, maybe even a bit vain, because Cobb has never needed anyone's help except for when he travels the span of distance to ask for it himself. Arthur readily just makes himself a resource out of what, Eames presumes, he believes is friendship and properly supportive to a man whose wife you were in love with, as if trying to make up for it. But this is the shit Eames stopped giving mind to so long ago, because Arthur's a grown man with childish ideals and he's accepted that. There's nothing for him to change on the basis of wants, and he could take the time to throw open the shutters Arthur blinds himself to on some label of loyalty, but it's Eames who doesn't have the time nor interest in being fought on it.
If Arthur wants to play the resource, then he's allowed, but Eames doesn't have to respect it - Arthur is no much more a better person than him, he's just disillusioned himself into justifications. There's no upstanding morality to be had in mind crime - it's all about extortion and exploitation of trust. They're all very bad men, no matter what limelight Arthur prefers to hold Cobb to, because Eames knows Cobb has always been terrible and dirty but that had been (and it is still) what makes him so brilliant, what puts him in the arms and company of thieves, this proposed family man. It's also what makes him an awful father. Eames rather feels bad for those children, in the end.
But he doesn't say any of that, because he never has, and he has no interest in laying down the shit Arthur refuses to see for himself.
This is why Eames knows this is his dream.
Because Arthur is too single-minded to think in the delicate ways that encompass anything here, and Arthur would never have the knowledge that Eames knows composes himself - right now, in this moment - for him to be the point's projection.
He feels Arthur try to pull his arm away, and he abandons the needle midway through a cut of muscle to pin one hand over the thin of Arthur's wrist, the other at the crook of his elbow. ]
You still don't know, do you?
[ How to let anyone do anything for you. ]
Let me fucking finish.
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Then came the jump, came running, came tailoring himself to the kinds of capabilities that best suited this line of work they know inhabit - or, did, in Dom's case. Arthur knows they aren't good people, and he'll never claim otherwise. It's not like he's proud of the invasions but he can admit to never having had moral distress over them either. The things Arthur covets on those sorts of lines and spaces are deeply personal, and in that sense, yes, he might also have to concede to some pedestal pushing - easier to get away with regarding Mal and more or less the stuff that makes him look insane in regards to Dom; he knows. It hasn't changed how he's operated though.
If he could read Eames' mind, Arthur would lash out, would demand how Eames could ever really know what Dom had needed, and what he hadn't. You didn't see him, Arthur would say, would not tell Eames because it isn't any of Eames' business exactly how bad it was, how it is to watch up close as someone dies from the inside out. In a way, it grinds on his nerves because the forger specializes in people; he should know some of this anyway, at this point, but he pushes, and the point doesn't have to be telepathic to be aware of some of Eames' broader sentiments on the whole arrangement. To some, Arthur knows, he is a well-dressed facilitator, and little more. But possibly it wasn't about that, chasing Dom - possibly, he wants to say, has to think: it was about what they had been, and how had been never mattered to Arthur before Eames, or Dom, or Mal - all in different ways, though in the end the Cobbs had the scale tilting in their direction. Arthur didn't know how to walk away from them.
Maybe he still doesn't.
As it is, the only thing he ends up doing is staring at the hand over his wrist, aware of the one at his elbow, and thinking how warm they are, which only makes him hate Eames a little bit more at the moment.
Don't know what? His quick glance over punctuates before dropping again as he relents, lets his arm stay properly flat again on the table.
And here is the silence in return, but it's not one he understands. ]
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