Leave the Children Behind
Pairings: Eames/Arthur
Warnings: Mentions of war and PTSD
Summary: In deserts, wheat fields, and rose gardens, Eames finds Arthur and shakes off the remnants of war. AU, very vaguely based on The Little Prince.
Notes: So vaguely based that it's more like some recognizable elements lifted from The Little Prince. XD Although the references to war and weaponry have been conflated to avoid setting the story in a specific time period (because things like EMDR are relatively recent developments, but Eames reeeally needed to crash in the Saharan desert!), futureperfect's Coming In (On a Wing) is such a wonderful WWII-era inspiration. ♥ Eames's symptoms are not representative of the majority of PTSD cases, and although PASIV therapy mixes elements of ACT and VRT, this story is of course not intended to promote any specific form of therapy. I mean, EMDR doesn't even really work that way fldgh;alk basically EVERYTHING IN THIS STORY IS A LIE AND THE NOTES SECTION IS TOO LONG
He can't see. He can't breathe. The panic tears its way out of his chest in a strangled sob, and Eames brings his hands up to his face, clawing at the useless sockets of his eyes.
Thank god, he hasn't been blinded; it's only the crusted blood and sand sealing his eyelids shut, peeling off in rough clayish lumps when he rubs at it. He licks his lips and comes away with sand, sticking to his parched tongue. He opens his eyes and sees sand.
Heaven is a desert, he thinks, before he twists his neck upright and the world reorients itself. He's halfway slumped out of the smashed cockpit of his fighter plane, more diagonal than upside-down. His cheek is abraded raw where it must have dragged a little across the sand. No wonder he can't breathe, the blood rushing to his head, still strapped into his seat.
He tumbles out of the cockpit in a heap of limbs when he pries himself loose. Winded, he rolls over onto his back, the cut on his forehead oozing again with the exertion. It dries to a still in the blaze of the sun overhead, hissing closed with a steaming sound like steak.
He knows he isn't dead because this has happened before. Memory reminds him that his ribs are bruised, his right leg broken somewhere near the knee. He bends it experimentally and groans at the streak of pain that shoots through him. Of course it hurts to breathe.
The way it happened, he lay in the shadow of his plane's crooked wing, dying of thirst and god knows what else, too weak to stir, the sand sizzling through the skin on his back. Three hours later some other squadron spotted the wreck, picked him up and carried him off. The bruises and the breaks and the burns were fixed in time, healing in pale splotches of new skin, and they scheduled him a medical discharge to be effective immediately when he could sleep on his back without pain.
So what is he doing here once again, revisiting his shattered body and aircraft beached in the Saharan wasteland-- he must be dreaming. It must be that new rehabilitation program they signed him up for. Somehow that involves him here on his back again, forcing himself to drag the dry air through his lungs, broken and wheezing. Somehow this is helping him.
But he's still a soldier, still confined to a soldier's hospital bed, and nothing about the war has ever helped him. War tore him open and ravaged him, like a bullet trapped inside the leather sack of someone's skin. Just three harrowing hours and they would probably rescue him like they did, lift him up out of the dream and fly him awake, but he can't fathom this war birthing anything other than death. He squeezes his eyes closed, and something hot rolls down his temples, blood or sweat or tears. The white porcelain curve of exposed bone, peeking out shyly from the shin of a mangled corpse. He can't breathe.
With a blast of sound and heat like the sky is splitting open, his plane bursts into flames. He opens his eyes and the fire rushes down upon him, an avalanche of searing metal, scorching the sand. Just before the fuel tank ignites, he realizes that he is relieved; because this is the way it was meant to be. This is the way things should be. This is the way things are.
+
He opts out of the program. Eventually he stops vomiting, the regurgitated gruel thinning away into the bitter wash of bile, and he rubs at the faint trace of puncture marks at his wrist as he listens to the doctor on duty explain what recourse he has.
"There's no need to be discouraged," says the doctor. "Not all forms of treatment are equally effective for all cases, even when the root cause of the condition stems from similar events. PASIV therapy is still highly experimental, and although we've been seeing some promising results with other test groups, that doesn't necessarily mean that it would also be a good fit for you."
"Yeah," mumbles Eames, "I want out," and means something else altogether.
+
He's already chewed through a line of psychiatric nurses and spat them back out in their perplexed dejection, so they enroll him in EMDR therapy and relocate the nurses to more communicative patients. He listens politely and mutters some answers for his latest handler, then stares into a pair of binoculars where a tiny hot air balloon floats back and forth across his line of vision.
"Am I being fitted for spectacles?" he asks.
"Try to follow the balloon with your eyes," says the nurse. "You can request that we stop whenever you start feeling uncomfortable with our conversation."
He rests his forehead on the slab of rubber foam and his eyes unfocus. The sixth week of insomnia is hard as hell to take, and he drifts off into a sort of trance, nothing as thankful as sleep, just a milky cloud that fills the space between his ears until the nurse's hand touches his shoulder.
"What?" he asks. "Sorry?"
"Do you remember the last thing I said?" asks the nurse.
"I," says Eames, a little ashamed, "I can't remember the first thing you said."
They tell him to hold a buzzing remote control in each of his hands. He keeps his fingers dutifully locked around them, until he loses track of time and they go clattering onto the floor. They tell him to place the controllers under his thighs. He doesn't hear any of the questions until they ask, "What emotions does the memory of war elicit in you?"
He snaps his head up, cold sweat beading above his lip. He's wide awake, dizzy with the sudden leap of his heart, coiled so tense at the edge of his chair that the controllers writhe and jump beneath his legs. He doesn't feel it. The nurse says something, lips moving noiselessly, and then there is someone at the door to the therapy room, each knock a booming echo that shakes him apart.
"Sir," the nurse is saying, "you can't, we're in the middle of a--"
"This is Senior Aircraftman Eames?" asks the visitor, and pushes the door open a bit wider. "It's alright, I'm authorized under orders from command to ascertain his estimated date of discharge."
The dark sleeve of an officer's tunic reaches into the room, like a hook fishing him out of the ocean. Eames bolts out of his seat, nauseous and terrified, knocking his chair over. He drags himself to the corner and collapses, his right knee throbbing and giving out, and he huddles against the wall like he could fold himself invisible.
"Your squadron?" asks the officer, voice soft with pity.
His squadron? Their hospital is dressed as a halfway house, all signs of war swept carefully under the rug, warded off out of doors. And here he marches in, this Wing Commander, like he could coax the stench of rot into their noses by couching it in sympathy. A fly circling down to land on the flat of a purpled tongue, mouth torn at the corners where looters rummaged for gold fillings. What emotions does the memory of war--
"I don't have a discharge date," mumbles Eames. "I can't go home until I can sleep on my back."
"What's that?" asks the officer. "Speak up, son, if you can't stand."
"My back's fine now," says Eames, "but I can't fucking leave because I can't fucking sleep, because I can't stop thinking about what a useless fucking cunt I've become, since I'm no good for anything other than murdering anymore, which I doubt they'll have much of a use for, back home."
"Sir," he adds, to the wall.
+
No punitive measures are taken because the psychiatric nurse attests to the officer's intrusion on what should have been a confidential, if ultimately unrewarding, therapy session. Eames tosses back the sedatives they bring to him that evening, and asks for another cup of water to drown the knot in his stomach.
"Have a good night's sleep," says the night duty nurse.
"Thanks," he says, "I'll try."
"I heard about the EMDR," says the nurse. "Won't hurt to give it another go tomorrow, yeah?"
He nods and lies back. The pillow is stiff beneath his head, unyielding as always, a customary start to his nine nightly hours of bleary-eyed agitation. The nurse is almost out the door when Eames raises himself back onto his elbows and says, "The PASIV therapy program. Do you think they'd let me back in?"
+
The landscape is gentler this time, and he finds himself already on his feet, walking through a field of wheat. It must be close to harvest, neatly combed rows of lush grain rustling in the breeze. Definitely a sight better than crashing in the desert. The sky is a flood of powder-blue, the sun bright and close in that peculiar autumnal way, a warmth that prickles only at the back of your neck, the bridge of your nose, toasting you golden along with the wheat.
A few stray dragonflies flit away as he passes, the air lazy as it can only be in peacetime, a generous quiet unmarred by the prospect of ever coming to an end. The bottomless trust of innocence, he thinks. This land never knew war.
But there's nothing so fragile as the balance of tranquility. So as long as there is land to march on, an ocean for battleships to plow across, no peace is impenetrable. It takes only a light dash of fighter planes across the sky, dark and sparse as pepper--
Engines drone in the distance, faint, nibbling away at the edge of his subconscious. No, I'm dreaming, he tells himself. Those are my planes, I can stop them. Hold it together.
Picture them turning away, swerving back the way they came. Navigators, bombardiers, there is nothing for you here, nothing of interest to the crosshairs in your bombsight. His fingernails bite into his palms as he concentrates. Only wheat as far as the eye can see, and what good does it do to blow up a wheat field? There's no more to unearth here than a trembling family of mice.
The sound fades away, a gradual ebb. He uncurls his hand tentatively, pricking up his ears to chase the planes retreating, shooing them away by listening for them. For a moment it seems like he's won, single-handed defender of the stillness.
Then out in the middle of the field, he spots a figure standing knee-deep in the swaying stalks. A slight man in civilian clothes, trailing his fingers through the kernels, strolling-- and watching him. No weapons, but still, wasn't he told that he would be dreaming alone? Who is it? Eames startles, losing his jittery grip on the fabric of his dream.
In an instant the planes come roaring back. And why shouldn't they, so as long as there are skies above? Eames has bombed a field like this before. An endless stretch of grain is just a splash of color from fifteen thousand meters up, a negligible casualty in the path of a target. They were aiming to block off a supply route, and it didn't matter a bit if the field caught fire. It was just burning grass. He had to shatter peace to keep it intact, and a scorched plot of land was the least of their concerns, the fire spreading wild through the dry fields like ink in water, feeding off the chaff, quick as lightning.
The crumbling, gnarled husk of a woman left smoking in the embers. Eames turns to run and the field explodes in heat.
+
The orderlies have to hold him down when he surfaces, the outstretched lashing of his hands and feet catching them as he thrashes and struggles for breath. After six weeks without sleep, he tires easily, and he calms enough to let the tension drain out of him as soon as he's checked himself for burns.
"Fire?" asks the doctor on duty.
"Yeah," says Eames. "Didn't you say these sessions would be private? There was someone in there with me."
"That's impossible," says the doctor. "You were the only one plugged into the PASIV, and we were monitoring your condition from topside."
"It was a man," says Eames, "young, dark hair, I think around average height."
"Looks like butter wouldn't melt in his mouth?" asks the doctor. "Oh, don't worry about him, he's just a fail-safe mechanism. He's there to make sure you don't end up hurting yourself."
"He's built into the machine?" asks Eames.
"I've heard that," says the doctor. "He's either modeled on the shrink that helped invent PASIV therapy, or on one of the American soldiers that served as the military liaison for wartime implementation. Or so I've heard."
"You don't know," says Eames.
"Unfortunately, I don't have the security clearance," says the doctor. "What's certain is that he's always going to be there, so you might as well get used to him. You've still got four sessions left until progress assessment."
Eames is about to protest, but then he thinks of those careful dark eyes on his, quiet as the wheat fields, and he finds that he doesn't really mind.
+
"You can call me Arthur," he says. "I'm here to help you feel less alone."
"Arthur," repeats Eames. "Is that short for something? Is it an acronym?"
They're at the mazy heart of a garden walled in stone, huddled in a crouch around a rose in the ground like they need it to warm their hands. It's a pitiful thing, the lone red rose, spindly and yellowing, only barely upright.
"No," says Arthur. "Just my name."
He closes his thumb and forefinger around the stem of the rose, rolling it thoughtfully, a casual threat. Eames is seized by a sudden pang of dread. He reaches out, aimless, then draws back in an aborted gesture of remonstration, unwilling to slap Arthur's hand away.
"Maybe you shouldn't," says Eames, instead.
Arthur lets the rose go. He rests his chin in one hand, searching Eames's face for something. Eames is quickly daunted by the attentive interest in Arthur's gaze, his whole body listening, tilting toward Eames like a satellite dish.
"Here's something," says Arthur. "Try making the rose grow."
"By watering it?" asks Eames. "Is this even actually a rose? Don't they come in bushes? It's not going to work."
"Imagine it in full bloom," says Arthur. "Try it."
"I'm telling you," begins Eames.
"Try," says Arthur.
He does, but who asks for roses in wartime? Eames can't remember what it looks like for a rose to unfurl, the smooth nature-documentary magic of flowering. The petals shiver and turn liquid, dripping onto the ground, staining the earth. Each petal a spot of blood in the asphalt. The whole city leaking thin smoke, deserted, shrouding the sun. A swollen set of naked legs protrude from an alleyway, veins blue on plaster-grey skin. Soles studded thick with bits of gravel and glass. And then the air raid siren blares through the dust, a widow's wail, like there's anything left alive to bomb--
"I told you," yells Eames, "I told you it wouldn't work."
Arthur says something, but it's lost under the fevered shriek of a missile in flight.
+
The session directly after that one, Eames takes one look at where they are, and shakes his head in disbelief.
"It's not like a roof will keep anything out," he says.
They've ended up in a greenhouse, warm and humid as a jungle. Eames sucks in a breath to sigh, inhaling a lungful of mist, heavy with the wet smell of soil. The sprinklers fizz and sputter overhead. The rose, sickly as ever, looks like it's been stabbed into the ground.
"Maybe it'll help us feel more contained," says Arthur. "Safer."
He unbuttons the sleeves of his shirt to roll them up, and when he bends his head, Eames can see the hair curling faintly at the nape of his neck. Eames wonders if it would be damp to the touch, that soft inch of skin.
"I suppose," says Eames, "you want me to try growing the rose again."
"The trick is concentration," says Arthur. "You're a gardener, in this moment, and all you know how to do in the world is grow roses. This greenhouse is your entire universe. Don't think about anything else."
Surrounded in steam, Eames digs the heels of his hands into his eyes. He wants to grow the bloody rose. He wishes it would listen, that sad and hollow thing, no better than a weed. Its thorns only brittle bumps, too ill to let its petals out. Turn colors, damn you, he would shout at it, show your face, but he's afraid the pitch of his voice might shrivel it to dust.
He imagines it in full bloom. Strong and vibrant, roots drinking deep. Guarded so close with thorns that human hands can't go near enough for a hold, a passionate little beast with its claws out, pulsing green and full of life. But life-- what has he done with the life given him, with the hands that should have cradled things, coaxed things into blossoming? What is life ever good for other than bringing death, the lavish spill of someone's insides spread out over the pavement?
"Wait," says Eames, as the ground rumbles underneath them, "shit, what is going on--"
At first he thinks the rose is growing, which isn't technically wrong; but in the blink of an eye its stem is already as thick as his leg, and then too wide the next instant to even wrap his arms around. He gapes. Arthur snatches at his wrist and yanks him upright, and they go sprinting out toward the exit of the greenhouse, the rose swelling at their heels with a deafening din, thorns like jousting lances.
The flat grassland air outside hits them, cool as peppermint. They don't look back until they hear the roof shatter behind them, and then the shrill glass scream of the walls bursting apart. The rose seems to be slowing down, only nudging a few shards and warped metal beams along the ground before it shudders to a still.
Eames tips his head back. The rose is the size of a baobab tree, its feet littered with debris, having smashed the entire greenhouse to bits. He has to shade his eyes to even make out the outline of the petals towering above them, nearly blotting out the sky. Each leaf is like tarpaulin rippling in the wind. It's grotesque and terrifying, completely unnatural.
"What a massive failure," he says, "excuse the pun."
"Why do you say that?" asks Arthur. "You did make it grow."
It's hard to explain exactly why he ended up with this disaster, why he considers it such a disaster. It's because the rose isn't the exuberant overachievement of an imagination running out of control, or the wanderings of a forgetful mind. Arthur must have thought it would help him to nurture something, to watch the potential of life at work, but Eames is too broken down to remember anything of the sort. Even life, in its own way, he thinks, is only an agent for destruction.
"If we lived on a smaller planet," says Eames, "the roots would have drilled straight through to the other side. Crushed everything in reach, and we'd be drifting aimlessly out into space right about now. So of course it's a massive failure. It's just not easy to recognize it as one because this planet happens to be larger than that."
"Well," says Arthur, "so what?"
"So what?" repeats Eames. "So I can't do it, that's what. This is all I can think of, Arthur. This is all that's in me anymore. Beautiful little thing like a flower, and all I can see in it is a gargantuan monster waiting to pulverize the Earth."
He steps over the iron and glass, putting his palm to the smooth waxy trunk of the rose. He thinks he can feel the rush of water under his fingertips, sucking the world dry, and he shivers.
"Then let it," says Arthur. "We'll drift out into space, if that's the worst it can do. The grass, this huge fucking rose, us, the pieces of our crumbled home planet-- all of it, we'll drift."
"And go where," asks Eames, baffled.
"You can always live somewhere else, so as long as you're still standing," says Arthur. "And you are, aren't you?"
He places a hand over Eames's heart, like he's checking for the answer.
"You're alive," says Arthur, "aren't you?"
God, it burns. That touch. A long tongue of flame licks its way up the trunk of the rose, the sweet singe of sap coming to a sudden boil. It laps at his fingers, and Eames jerks back, angry welts beginning to bubble up on his skin.
"Shit," he mutters, "oh, shit."
There's probably some way for him to stop it, maybe a rain-heavy cloud splitting open above their heads, but in his panic Eames can do nothing but stare up at the climbing fire, already too high for him to reach. It spreads and leaps in bounds, eating through the petals, setting them ablaze like a torch aimed at the sky.
"It's all right," Arthur says, before a leaf swallows the two of them, a smothering sheet of flame. "Next time we'll--"
+
The nausea is still there, but he doesn't feel so thoroughly churned with it, and he wonders if he's just too tired to care anymore. But he's been too tired to care all this while, it can't be that.
"Going to let the orderlies off easy, this time?" asks a nurse, withdrawing the IV line from him.
Eames accepts the sedatives they offer him that night. He washes them down and lies back, mind so busy he hardly notices the lumpy discomfort of the pillow under his head. We'll drift, he thinks, and it's all right. Arthur's hand on his chest, hot enough to burn the dream clean through.
He closes his eyes when they turn out the lights, and it's only in the morning when the trolley squeaks into the room that he realizes, the sound woke him. He slept.
+
"Last time, if you'll recall," says Eames, "was an accident."
"Last time was last time," says Arthur. "Will you try it?"
Eames looks out over the sea of grain around them. A wind ghosts across the wheat field and the waves crest golden, lit with the autumn sun. A fat grasshopper chirrups somewhere among the stalks.
"I've done it before," says Eames. "This field, not just the rose, I've set it on fire before-- in dreams, out of dreams. I hated every moment of it. How could you not regret burning down something like this?"
"I'm glad that you hated it," says Arthur. "That's good."
Hesitantly, Eames reaches for a head of wheat. When his finger brushes across its tip, it fizzes into sparks like a dynamite fuse, like a firecracker, a long narrow line of flame hissing down toward their feet. He has half a mind to grab the stalk and smother it with his palms, but Arthur touches his elbow and roots him to the ground. He clenches his eyes shut.
He can tell exactly when the field catches fire, a blazing huff of air from down below, like the molten core of the Earth has opened up into a sigh. The heat shoots through his skin until he can't tell if he's burning from the inside or out, his ears singing, too hot to breathe. There's a burst of sound, muffled through the fire and his own blood, the terse chain explosion of landmines popping all over the field, geysers of shrapnel and dirt. The screaming might be his own; it might not. He hopes to god it's him. Smoke prickles through his nose and the corners of his eyes start to sting, the tear tracks on his cheeks drying stiff in the blast of heat.
"It won't stop," he's gasping, "I can't make it stop."
When Arthur speaks into his ear, his voice is turned down low, quiet enough to hear beneath the roar of the fire.
"Eames, it's okay," he says. "Let it burn."
"But I," says Eames, "I never meant to burn it, I never meant any of it, but it's all I know how to do-- I'd stop it if only I knew what to do, tell me what to do, please, I'll do it--"
"Just let it burn," says Arthur. "It's already over."
"What do you mean it's over, it's not over," says Eames, because the heat is scorching him. He would look, but he's too afraid.
"It's been over for months now," says Arthur. "No matter how many times you dream of this, there was only ever one field, Eames. No matter how many times you live it, the field can only burn down once. The fire's out. Don't you want to look?"
Arthur's hand is still curled around his elbow, cool as a daub of river mud. Eames starts when he feels it there, all at once, and the touch spreads through his limbs, quenching him.
He opens his eyes. A breeze stirs his hair-- he expects the ashes to cloud up their feet, but there's nothing there but soil. A little dried-out and dusty, but not the embers he was expecting, nor the acrid cling of smoke.
The sky is clear and the air tastes like water in his throat.
"Still," he says, "it's so flat now, isn't it. I liked it much better before."
"I know," says Arthur. "Everyone did. But it's not your fault. It's a few months overdue, but would you mind if we took a moment to mourn? Because there's nothing wrong with that."
Eames nods and blinks quickly, holding his breath in dread, but the world stays the same even when he stops looking. There's a flutter of movement on the far side of the field, a magpie pecking at something in the earth. Arthur raises his head.
"What happens now?" asks Eames.
"Well, you're still standing," says Arthur. "I suppose, when one finds oneself on one's feet, it's not a bad idea to use them to walk. Shall we?"
The magpie watches them with amber-bead eyes, and hops away when it decides they've come too close. Wings outstretched, its feathers are bluer than Eames ever thought anything alive could be. Nothing happens.
+
"Jesus Christ," says the nurse when he drifts awake. "Are you alright?"
"There's something very funny about your question," says Eames. "As far as I can tell, this is the first time that I've actually been alright when I woke up."
The nurse makes a thorough note of all his vitals, looking unconvinced. Eames pulls a face at the cold taste of the saline flush, but keeps himself still until the nurse draws his tubing out, which earns him another wary look.
"The timer on the PASIV ran out," says the nurse. "You stayed in the whole time. That's never happened before."
"Good news, though, isn't it?" asks Eames.
"Sure, but you had us worried," says the nurse. "Obviously this is something you don't need to answer, but-- what were you doing in there?"
"Walking," says Eames. "I was walking."
"For an hour?" asks the nurse.
"I enjoyed it very much," he says. The world was at peace, even in a field without wheat, and there was gold flecked through Arthur's eyes when he turned to look at Eames.
+
"The nurse told me--" begins Eames, then stops himself. "Be careful. The fuel tank caught on fire, last time."
"Last time, of course," says Arthur, "was last time."
He spreads his arms for balance, places one foot in front of the other, and continues walking along the long metal body of Eames's downed fighter. Eames shades his eyes with a hand and watches him, shifting his own feet in the sand.
"It's my final session," says Eames.
"Is this your aircraft?" asks Arthur. "Did they shoot you down?"
"Yeah," says Eames. "But I wasn't here long, three hours or so. Then a squadron on patrol found me and carried me out-- in real life, I mean. In the dream, the fuel tank caught on fire."
Arthur steps onto the tail of the plane and skids down the incline, hands thrust into his trouser pockets. It's a boyish gesture, not quite as impenetrably professional as Eames is used to seeing, and he wonders if there's more where that came from.
"I don't think I want it to be my final session," says Eames.
They circle the plane like claims investigators, inspecting each injury. Eames isn't exactly sure what Arthur is looking for, so he trails after him, talking at him.
"I could steal the PASIV case and run," says Eames. "I could be addicted to dream therapy. It's plausible. It could be just like morphine addiction, as far as anyone knows. I probably sound like I'm joking, but I think I mean more than half of it, really."
Arthur doesn't answer.
"And you," adds Eames, a bit miserably. "I wouldn't be able to see you anymore."
"When one finds oneself on one's feet," says Arthur, "it's also possible to use them to climb into the cockpit of one's fighter plane. You're still standing, aren't you? What do you think?"
"What, start flying again?" asks Eames. "Go back into the field?"
"No, I remember you don't want that," says Arthur. "But this time, you can leave the desert on your own. Fixing something down here is as easy as thinking about it-- you're done with this war, Eames. There's no need to cook in the sand while you wait for the patrol."
"I did always love these things," says Eames, and pretends to pet the scalding surface of his plane. The heat radiates off of it in shimmering waves, and he lets his hand hover without making contact, but he doesn't feel threatened by it. Like it couldn't possibly hurt him, like it's only the warm rise and fall of a cat curled up on the rug.
He fixes his plane like growing it anew. The wreck comes to life, shivering for a moment before it lists upright, creaking from its joints. Grains cascade in rivulets out of its crevices. The snapped wing twists itself back into alignment, leveling straight out from the side of the plane, and metal winds back over the gashes torn into its fuselage, sealing up the holes.
Its sides quake and tremor, his whirring giant, pawing at the sand like an excited horse. The engine begins to hum. It rises to rest its wheels gently on top of the sand, and the afterburners sputter experimental sparks, the fighter clearing its throat, stretching its legs for takeoff. The spiderweb cracks veining the cockpit canopy smooth out into glass.
"Sight for sore eyes," says Eames.
"Wouldn't you like to take it up?" asks Arthur. "You walk when you've got feet, and you fly when you've got a plane. Right?"
"I suppose so," says Eames, "but what about--"
"If you get in," says Arthur, "I'll tell you a secret."
Reluctantly, inexorably, Eames climbs into his seat, because there's no other way it can go. He wonders what would happen if he really did steal the PASIV, how long it would take them to catch up with him, what would happen when they did. Would he be court-martialed?
But more than that, uncertain as he is of the more detailed aspects of therapy technology, he has a sinking feeling that Arthur would somehow know, if Eames stole a PASIV. And worse yet, he would disapprove. The first illicit session he plugged into would probably end up being his last.
He leaves himself unstrapped, the canopy tipped open, his safety gear untouched. Arthur is only barely within reach where he's standing next to the cockpit, the bridge of his nose flushed pink in the heat.
Eames steadies his breath and asks, "What's the secret?"
"Ah, the secret," says Arthur. "It's very important, so don't forget it, please."
He smiles, a small tug of his lips as brilliant as the glitter of the sand around him.
+
Life is in the little things, is what Arthur tells Eames. Always.
"And that's the problem with searching for any deeper meaning to life," says Arthur. "Because that's the secret-- there isn't any deeper meaning to it, at least not where everyone seems to be looking. When everyone seems to be so dissatisfied with what they can see, like they could find something truly beautiful if they could just learn to stare beyond the surface of things. Searching for some mythical well in the middle of the desert, or some message written in the faraway stars."
"Per ardua ad astra, I guess," says Eames. "Not just in service, either. We've always been told to fly high."
"Like life wouldn't be worth living with your feet on the ground," says Arthur. "They'll tell you to fly when you're content to walk, and then to touch the stars when you're happy to skim the clouds. Love the desert for its sand and the night for its darkness, Eames. That's what I think the secret is. Everything they teach you to trample underfoot as you grasp at something out of reach-- that's where life is, right beneath your feet, if only you have the peace of mind to look."
He gives the body of the plane a smart double knock. The engines are off and the control panels are still wiped blank, but it begins to roll slowly along the sand, smooth as it would down a runway. It's no faster than a strolling pace, Arthur walking alongside like taking it out for fresh air, but Eames fumbles with his straps, unsure of whether he might be able to put it off for a little while longer.
"So you see how it would only disappoint you to steal the PASIV," says Arthur. "Maybe, in the middle of the night in your darkened kitchen, you could think of me when you hear the kettle whistling at your back. Or you might find me in the sunshine burst of bright lemon on your tongue, or in the smell of gasoline in your garage like you're back in the hangars again. I'd like that, if you happen to think of me then. If you saw me in everything beneath your feet, in all the jumbled and motley corners of your life, instead of caging me inside a briefcase and a few drops of Somnacin."
Eames feels a gentle pressure like the plane is going to pick up speed, and he realizes, Arthur is about to let him go. And Arthur is right, he knows -- both of them should be letting go -- but he leans out of the cockpit to offer some parting words of his own, desperate for something to come to him, each precious moment spent wrestling for the right turn of phrase, and he sees the look on Arthur's face.
The back of Arthur's neck is hot when Eames wraps his hand around it, pulling him in for a dry-lipped kiss.
"You looked like you needed it," says Eames, against his cheek, by way of an explanation.
"Did I?" asks Arthur, and his smile is apologetic as the plane catches the wind like a sailboat and the canopy locks closed, wheels lifting, like a kite floating up into the sky, gliding into noiseless flight.
From up above, the rolling sand dunes are like vast golden oceans, and Arthur is a speck of dark color lost in the endless stretch of desert. Eames touches his heart where it beats, because he's still standing. He's still alive. His chest feels like one giant bruise, tender in his ribcage, so he decides to take a moment to mourn.
He flies, but not too high. Nowhere close to the stars.
Mais je ne veux pas cinq cents millions de fontaines: warning, the following unnecessary wall of text is not at all relevant to the content of the fic and it's probably a waste of your time. If I've blathered on at you before about how I don't think a story is ever over before a happy ending, then you probably already understand how I feel about the ending to this story...! Truth is, there were a couple short sections after this point, dealing with who exactly Arthur is and what exactly Eames does after he finds out. But that coda would have been about how the messy, human mistakes and regrets of life are more valuable than a transcendental acceptance of ~the workings of the universe~, which on the one hand might be more in line with my current personal beliefs, but on the other hand, stories probably shouldn't be platforms for people to expound upon their own views at the expense of the story itself. And the coda was totally fucking with the pacing and doing this weird multifocal thing where there was ANOTHER VOLTA after the initial volta, which, it's not a fucking wrestling match, it shouldn't have that many flips. D: So basically tl;dr but what I mean is, I think I would have found an "Eames looks for Arthur even though THEY CAN NEVER BE TOGETHER, SOB" ending more satisfying than the current "Eames learns to not look for Arthur" ending, and maybe some iterations of Eames are more likely to choose the former course of action, but I thought I would try out this transcendental closing anyway! You never know with these things, maybe years from now I'll prefer the transcendental approach to life after all, and marvel at how immature I was to think that wanting something badly enough was a happier alternative to coming to terms with the things you can't have. Or maybe I won't, I mean-- you never know with these things. Thank you so much for reading and for putting up with this incomprehensible rambling. ;____; what the fuck is any of this shit
Warnings: Mentions of war and PTSD
Summary: In deserts, wheat fields, and rose gardens, Eames finds Arthur and shakes off the remnants of war. AU, very vaguely based on The Little Prince.
Notes: So vaguely based that it's more like some recognizable elements lifted from The Little Prince. XD Although the references to war and weaponry have been conflated to avoid setting the story in a specific time period (because things like EMDR are relatively recent developments, but Eames reeeally needed to crash in the Saharan desert!), futureperfect's Coming In (On a Wing) is such a wonderful WWII-era inspiration. ♥ Eames's symptoms are not representative of the majority of PTSD cases, and although PASIV therapy mixes elements of ACT and VRT, this story is of course not intended to promote any specific form of therapy. I mean, EMDR doesn't even really work that way fldgh;alk basically EVERYTHING IN THIS STORY IS A LIE AND THE NOTES SECTION IS TOO LONG
He can't see. He can't breathe. The panic tears its way out of his chest in a strangled sob, and Eames brings his hands up to his face, clawing at the useless sockets of his eyes.
Thank god, he hasn't been blinded; it's only the crusted blood and sand sealing his eyelids shut, peeling off in rough clayish lumps when he rubs at it. He licks his lips and comes away with sand, sticking to his parched tongue. He opens his eyes and sees sand.
Heaven is a desert, he thinks, before he twists his neck upright and the world reorients itself. He's halfway slumped out of the smashed cockpit of his fighter plane, more diagonal than upside-down. His cheek is abraded raw where it must have dragged a little across the sand. No wonder he can't breathe, the blood rushing to his head, still strapped into his seat.
He tumbles out of the cockpit in a heap of limbs when he pries himself loose. Winded, he rolls over onto his back, the cut on his forehead oozing again with the exertion. It dries to a still in the blaze of the sun overhead, hissing closed with a steaming sound like steak.
He knows he isn't dead because this has happened before. Memory reminds him that his ribs are bruised, his right leg broken somewhere near the knee. He bends it experimentally and groans at the streak of pain that shoots through him. Of course it hurts to breathe.
The way it happened, he lay in the shadow of his plane's crooked wing, dying of thirst and god knows what else, too weak to stir, the sand sizzling through the skin on his back. Three hours later some other squadron spotted the wreck, picked him up and carried him off. The bruises and the breaks and the burns were fixed in time, healing in pale splotches of new skin, and they scheduled him a medical discharge to be effective immediately when he could sleep on his back without pain.
So what is he doing here once again, revisiting his shattered body and aircraft beached in the Saharan wasteland-- he must be dreaming. It must be that new rehabilitation program they signed him up for. Somehow that involves him here on his back again, forcing himself to drag the dry air through his lungs, broken and wheezing. Somehow this is helping him.
But he's still a soldier, still confined to a soldier's hospital bed, and nothing about the war has ever helped him. War tore him open and ravaged him, like a bullet trapped inside the leather sack of someone's skin. Just three harrowing hours and they would probably rescue him like they did, lift him up out of the dream and fly him awake, but he can't fathom this war birthing anything other than death. He squeezes his eyes closed, and something hot rolls down his temples, blood or sweat or tears. The white porcelain curve of exposed bone, peeking out shyly from the shin of a mangled corpse. He can't breathe.
With a blast of sound and heat like the sky is splitting open, his plane bursts into flames. He opens his eyes and the fire rushes down upon him, an avalanche of searing metal, scorching the sand. Just before the fuel tank ignites, he realizes that he is relieved; because this is the way it was meant to be. This is the way things should be. This is the way things are.
+
He opts out of the program. Eventually he stops vomiting, the regurgitated gruel thinning away into the bitter wash of bile, and he rubs at the faint trace of puncture marks at his wrist as he listens to the doctor on duty explain what recourse he has.
"There's no need to be discouraged," says the doctor. "Not all forms of treatment are equally effective for all cases, even when the root cause of the condition stems from similar events. PASIV therapy is still highly experimental, and although we've been seeing some promising results with other test groups, that doesn't necessarily mean that it would also be a good fit for you."
"Yeah," mumbles Eames, "I want out," and means something else altogether.
+
He's already chewed through a line of psychiatric nurses and spat them back out in their perplexed dejection, so they enroll him in EMDR therapy and relocate the nurses to more communicative patients. He listens politely and mutters some answers for his latest handler, then stares into a pair of binoculars where a tiny hot air balloon floats back and forth across his line of vision.
"Am I being fitted for spectacles?" he asks.
"Try to follow the balloon with your eyes," says the nurse. "You can request that we stop whenever you start feeling uncomfortable with our conversation."
He rests his forehead on the slab of rubber foam and his eyes unfocus. The sixth week of insomnia is hard as hell to take, and he drifts off into a sort of trance, nothing as thankful as sleep, just a milky cloud that fills the space between his ears until the nurse's hand touches his shoulder.
"What?" he asks. "Sorry?"
"Do you remember the last thing I said?" asks the nurse.
"I," says Eames, a little ashamed, "I can't remember the first thing you said."
They tell him to hold a buzzing remote control in each of his hands. He keeps his fingers dutifully locked around them, until he loses track of time and they go clattering onto the floor. They tell him to place the controllers under his thighs. He doesn't hear any of the questions until they ask, "What emotions does the memory of war elicit in you?"
He snaps his head up, cold sweat beading above his lip. He's wide awake, dizzy with the sudden leap of his heart, coiled so tense at the edge of his chair that the controllers writhe and jump beneath his legs. He doesn't feel it. The nurse says something, lips moving noiselessly, and then there is someone at the door to the therapy room, each knock a booming echo that shakes him apart.
"Sir," the nurse is saying, "you can't, we're in the middle of a--"
"This is Senior Aircraftman Eames?" asks the visitor, and pushes the door open a bit wider. "It's alright, I'm authorized under orders from command to ascertain his estimated date of discharge."
The dark sleeve of an officer's tunic reaches into the room, like a hook fishing him out of the ocean. Eames bolts out of his seat, nauseous and terrified, knocking his chair over. He drags himself to the corner and collapses, his right knee throbbing and giving out, and he huddles against the wall like he could fold himself invisible.
"Your squadron?" asks the officer, voice soft with pity.
His squadron? Their hospital is dressed as a halfway house, all signs of war swept carefully under the rug, warded off out of doors. And here he marches in, this Wing Commander, like he could coax the stench of rot into their noses by couching it in sympathy. A fly circling down to land on the flat of a purpled tongue, mouth torn at the corners where looters rummaged for gold fillings. What emotions does the memory of war--
"I don't have a discharge date," mumbles Eames. "I can't go home until I can sleep on my back."
"What's that?" asks the officer. "Speak up, son, if you can't stand."
"My back's fine now," says Eames, "but I can't fucking leave because I can't fucking sleep, because I can't stop thinking about what a useless fucking cunt I've become, since I'm no good for anything other than murdering anymore, which I doubt they'll have much of a use for, back home."
"Sir," he adds, to the wall.
+
No punitive measures are taken because the psychiatric nurse attests to the officer's intrusion on what should have been a confidential, if ultimately unrewarding, therapy session. Eames tosses back the sedatives they bring to him that evening, and asks for another cup of water to drown the knot in his stomach.
"Have a good night's sleep," says the night duty nurse.
"Thanks," he says, "I'll try."
"I heard about the EMDR," says the nurse. "Won't hurt to give it another go tomorrow, yeah?"
He nods and lies back. The pillow is stiff beneath his head, unyielding as always, a customary start to his nine nightly hours of bleary-eyed agitation. The nurse is almost out the door when Eames raises himself back onto his elbows and says, "The PASIV therapy program. Do you think they'd let me back in?"
+
The landscape is gentler this time, and he finds himself already on his feet, walking through a field of wheat. It must be close to harvest, neatly combed rows of lush grain rustling in the breeze. Definitely a sight better than crashing in the desert. The sky is a flood of powder-blue, the sun bright and close in that peculiar autumnal way, a warmth that prickles only at the back of your neck, the bridge of your nose, toasting you golden along with the wheat.
A few stray dragonflies flit away as he passes, the air lazy as it can only be in peacetime, a generous quiet unmarred by the prospect of ever coming to an end. The bottomless trust of innocence, he thinks. This land never knew war.
But there's nothing so fragile as the balance of tranquility. So as long as there is land to march on, an ocean for battleships to plow across, no peace is impenetrable. It takes only a light dash of fighter planes across the sky, dark and sparse as pepper--
Engines drone in the distance, faint, nibbling away at the edge of his subconscious. No, I'm dreaming, he tells himself. Those are my planes, I can stop them. Hold it together.
Picture them turning away, swerving back the way they came. Navigators, bombardiers, there is nothing for you here, nothing of interest to the crosshairs in your bombsight. His fingernails bite into his palms as he concentrates. Only wheat as far as the eye can see, and what good does it do to blow up a wheat field? There's no more to unearth here than a trembling family of mice.
The sound fades away, a gradual ebb. He uncurls his hand tentatively, pricking up his ears to chase the planes retreating, shooing them away by listening for them. For a moment it seems like he's won, single-handed defender of the stillness.
Then out in the middle of the field, he spots a figure standing knee-deep in the swaying stalks. A slight man in civilian clothes, trailing his fingers through the kernels, strolling-- and watching him. No weapons, but still, wasn't he told that he would be dreaming alone? Who is it? Eames startles, losing his jittery grip on the fabric of his dream.
In an instant the planes come roaring back. And why shouldn't they, so as long as there are skies above? Eames has bombed a field like this before. An endless stretch of grain is just a splash of color from fifteen thousand meters up, a negligible casualty in the path of a target. They were aiming to block off a supply route, and it didn't matter a bit if the field caught fire. It was just burning grass. He had to shatter peace to keep it intact, and a scorched plot of land was the least of their concerns, the fire spreading wild through the dry fields like ink in water, feeding off the chaff, quick as lightning.
The crumbling, gnarled husk of a woman left smoking in the embers. Eames turns to run and the field explodes in heat.
+
The orderlies have to hold him down when he surfaces, the outstretched lashing of his hands and feet catching them as he thrashes and struggles for breath. After six weeks without sleep, he tires easily, and he calms enough to let the tension drain out of him as soon as he's checked himself for burns.
"Fire?" asks the doctor on duty.
"Yeah," says Eames. "Didn't you say these sessions would be private? There was someone in there with me."
"That's impossible," says the doctor. "You were the only one plugged into the PASIV, and we were monitoring your condition from topside."
"It was a man," says Eames, "young, dark hair, I think around average height."
"Looks like butter wouldn't melt in his mouth?" asks the doctor. "Oh, don't worry about him, he's just a fail-safe mechanism. He's there to make sure you don't end up hurting yourself."
"He's built into the machine?" asks Eames.
"I've heard that," says the doctor. "He's either modeled on the shrink that helped invent PASIV therapy, or on one of the American soldiers that served as the military liaison for wartime implementation. Or so I've heard."
"You don't know," says Eames.
"Unfortunately, I don't have the security clearance," says the doctor. "What's certain is that he's always going to be there, so you might as well get used to him. You've still got four sessions left until progress assessment."
Eames is about to protest, but then he thinks of those careful dark eyes on his, quiet as the wheat fields, and he finds that he doesn't really mind.
+
"You can call me Arthur," he says. "I'm here to help you feel less alone."
"Arthur," repeats Eames. "Is that short for something? Is it an acronym?"
They're at the mazy heart of a garden walled in stone, huddled in a crouch around a rose in the ground like they need it to warm their hands. It's a pitiful thing, the lone red rose, spindly and yellowing, only barely upright.
"No," says Arthur. "Just my name."
He closes his thumb and forefinger around the stem of the rose, rolling it thoughtfully, a casual threat. Eames is seized by a sudden pang of dread. He reaches out, aimless, then draws back in an aborted gesture of remonstration, unwilling to slap Arthur's hand away.
"Maybe you shouldn't," says Eames, instead.
Arthur lets the rose go. He rests his chin in one hand, searching Eames's face for something. Eames is quickly daunted by the attentive interest in Arthur's gaze, his whole body listening, tilting toward Eames like a satellite dish.
"Here's something," says Arthur. "Try making the rose grow."
"By watering it?" asks Eames. "Is this even actually a rose? Don't they come in bushes? It's not going to work."
"Imagine it in full bloom," says Arthur. "Try it."
"I'm telling you," begins Eames.
"Try," says Arthur.
He does, but who asks for roses in wartime? Eames can't remember what it looks like for a rose to unfurl, the smooth nature-documentary magic of flowering. The petals shiver and turn liquid, dripping onto the ground, staining the earth. Each petal a spot of blood in the asphalt. The whole city leaking thin smoke, deserted, shrouding the sun. A swollen set of naked legs protrude from an alleyway, veins blue on plaster-grey skin. Soles studded thick with bits of gravel and glass. And then the air raid siren blares through the dust, a widow's wail, like there's anything left alive to bomb--
"I told you," yells Eames, "I told you it wouldn't work."
Arthur says something, but it's lost under the fevered shriek of a missile in flight.
+
The session directly after that one, Eames takes one look at where they are, and shakes his head in disbelief.
"It's not like a roof will keep anything out," he says.
They've ended up in a greenhouse, warm and humid as a jungle. Eames sucks in a breath to sigh, inhaling a lungful of mist, heavy with the wet smell of soil. The sprinklers fizz and sputter overhead. The rose, sickly as ever, looks like it's been stabbed into the ground.
"Maybe it'll help us feel more contained," says Arthur. "Safer."
He unbuttons the sleeves of his shirt to roll them up, and when he bends his head, Eames can see the hair curling faintly at the nape of his neck. Eames wonders if it would be damp to the touch, that soft inch of skin.
"I suppose," says Eames, "you want me to try growing the rose again."
"The trick is concentration," says Arthur. "You're a gardener, in this moment, and all you know how to do in the world is grow roses. This greenhouse is your entire universe. Don't think about anything else."
Surrounded in steam, Eames digs the heels of his hands into his eyes. He wants to grow the bloody rose. He wishes it would listen, that sad and hollow thing, no better than a weed. Its thorns only brittle bumps, too ill to let its petals out. Turn colors, damn you, he would shout at it, show your face, but he's afraid the pitch of his voice might shrivel it to dust.
He imagines it in full bloom. Strong and vibrant, roots drinking deep. Guarded so close with thorns that human hands can't go near enough for a hold, a passionate little beast with its claws out, pulsing green and full of life. But life-- what has he done with the life given him, with the hands that should have cradled things, coaxed things into blossoming? What is life ever good for other than bringing death, the lavish spill of someone's insides spread out over the pavement?
"Wait," says Eames, as the ground rumbles underneath them, "shit, what is going on--"
At first he thinks the rose is growing, which isn't technically wrong; but in the blink of an eye its stem is already as thick as his leg, and then too wide the next instant to even wrap his arms around. He gapes. Arthur snatches at his wrist and yanks him upright, and they go sprinting out toward the exit of the greenhouse, the rose swelling at their heels with a deafening din, thorns like jousting lances.
The flat grassland air outside hits them, cool as peppermint. They don't look back until they hear the roof shatter behind them, and then the shrill glass scream of the walls bursting apart. The rose seems to be slowing down, only nudging a few shards and warped metal beams along the ground before it shudders to a still.
Eames tips his head back. The rose is the size of a baobab tree, its feet littered with debris, having smashed the entire greenhouse to bits. He has to shade his eyes to even make out the outline of the petals towering above them, nearly blotting out the sky. Each leaf is like tarpaulin rippling in the wind. It's grotesque and terrifying, completely unnatural.
"What a massive failure," he says, "excuse the pun."
"Why do you say that?" asks Arthur. "You did make it grow."
It's hard to explain exactly why he ended up with this disaster, why he considers it such a disaster. It's because the rose isn't the exuberant overachievement of an imagination running out of control, or the wanderings of a forgetful mind. Arthur must have thought it would help him to nurture something, to watch the potential of life at work, but Eames is too broken down to remember anything of the sort. Even life, in its own way, he thinks, is only an agent for destruction.
"If we lived on a smaller planet," says Eames, "the roots would have drilled straight through to the other side. Crushed everything in reach, and we'd be drifting aimlessly out into space right about now. So of course it's a massive failure. It's just not easy to recognize it as one because this planet happens to be larger than that."
"Well," says Arthur, "so what?"
"So what?" repeats Eames. "So I can't do it, that's what. This is all I can think of, Arthur. This is all that's in me anymore. Beautiful little thing like a flower, and all I can see in it is a gargantuan monster waiting to pulverize the Earth."
He steps over the iron and glass, putting his palm to the smooth waxy trunk of the rose. He thinks he can feel the rush of water under his fingertips, sucking the world dry, and he shivers.
"Then let it," says Arthur. "We'll drift out into space, if that's the worst it can do. The grass, this huge fucking rose, us, the pieces of our crumbled home planet-- all of it, we'll drift."
"And go where," asks Eames, baffled.
"You can always live somewhere else, so as long as you're still standing," says Arthur. "And you are, aren't you?"
He places a hand over Eames's heart, like he's checking for the answer.
"You're alive," says Arthur, "aren't you?"
God, it burns. That touch. A long tongue of flame licks its way up the trunk of the rose, the sweet singe of sap coming to a sudden boil. It laps at his fingers, and Eames jerks back, angry welts beginning to bubble up on his skin.
"Shit," he mutters, "oh, shit."
There's probably some way for him to stop it, maybe a rain-heavy cloud splitting open above their heads, but in his panic Eames can do nothing but stare up at the climbing fire, already too high for him to reach. It spreads and leaps in bounds, eating through the petals, setting them ablaze like a torch aimed at the sky.
"It's all right," Arthur says, before a leaf swallows the two of them, a smothering sheet of flame. "Next time we'll--"
+
The nausea is still there, but he doesn't feel so thoroughly churned with it, and he wonders if he's just too tired to care anymore. But he's been too tired to care all this while, it can't be that.
"Going to let the orderlies off easy, this time?" asks a nurse, withdrawing the IV line from him.
Eames accepts the sedatives they offer him that night. He washes them down and lies back, mind so busy he hardly notices the lumpy discomfort of the pillow under his head. We'll drift, he thinks, and it's all right. Arthur's hand on his chest, hot enough to burn the dream clean through.
He closes his eyes when they turn out the lights, and it's only in the morning when the trolley squeaks into the room that he realizes, the sound woke him. He slept.
+
"Last time, if you'll recall," says Eames, "was an accident."
"Last time was last time," says Arthur. "Will you try it?"
Eames looks out over the sea of grain around them. A wind ghosts across the wheat field and the waves crest golden, lit with the autumn sun. A fat grasshopper chirrups somewhere among the stalks.
"I've done it before," says Eames. "This field, not just the rose, I've set it on fire before-- in dreams, out of dreams. I hated every moment of it. How could you not regret burning down something like this?"
"I'm glad that you hated it," says Arthur. "That's good."
Hesitantly, Eames reaches for a head of wheat. When his finger brushes across its tip, it fizzes into sparks like a dynamite fuse, like a firecracker, a long narrow line of flame hissing down toward their feet. He has half a mind to grab the stalk and smother it with his palms, but Arthur touches his elbow and roots him to the ground. He clenches his eyes shut.
He can tell exactly when the field catches fire, a blazing huff of air from down below, like the molten core of the Earth has opened up into a sigh. The heat shoots through his skin until he can't tell if he's burning from the inside or out, his ears singing, too hot to breathe. There's a burst of sound, muffled through the fire and his own blood, the terse chain explosion of landmines popping all over the field, geysers of shrapnel and dirt. The screaming might be his own; it might not. He hopes to god it's him. Smoke prickles through his nose and the corners of his eyes start to sting, the tear tracks on his cheeks drying stiff in the blast of heat.
"It won't stop," he's gasping, "I can't make it stop."
When Arthur speaks into his ear, his voice is turned down low, quiet enough to hear beneath the roar of the fire.
"Eames, it's okay," he says. "Let it burn."
"But I," says Eames, "I never meant to burn it, I never meant any of it, but it's all I know how to do-- I'd stop it if only I knew what to do, tell me what to do, please, I'll do it--"
"Just let it burn," says Arthur. "It's already over."
"What do you mean it's over, it's not over," says Eames, because the heat is scorching him. He would look, but he's too afraid.
"It's been over for months now," says Arthur. "No matter how many times you dream of this, there was only ever one field, Eames. No matter how many times you live it, the field can only burn down once. The fire's out. Don't you want to look?"
Arthur's hand is still curled around his elbow, cool as a daub of river mud. Eames starts when he feels it there, all at once, and the touch spreads through his limbs, quenching him.
He opens his eyes. A breeze stirs his hair-- he expects the ashes to cloud up their feet, but there's nothing there but soil. A little dried-out and dusty, but not the embers he was expecting, nor the acrid cling of smoke.
The sky is clear and the air tastes like water in his throat.
"Still," he says, "it's so flat now, isn't it. I liked it much better before."
"I know," says Arthur. "Everyone did. But it's not your fault. It's a few months overdue, but would you mind if we took a moment to mourn? Because there's nothing wrong with that."
Eames nods and blinks quickly, holding his breath in dread, but the world stays the same even when he stops looking. There's a flutter of movement on the far side of the field, a magpie pecking at something in the earth. Arthur raises his head.
"What happens now?" asks Eames.
"Well, you're still standing," says Arthur. "I suppose, when one finds oneself on one's feet, it's not a bad idea to use them to walk. Shall we?"
The magpie watches them with amber-bead eyes, and hops away when it decides they've come too close. Wings outstretched, its feathers are bluer than Eames ever thought anything alive could be. Nothing happens.
+
"Jesus Christ," says the nurse when he drifts awake. "Are you alright?"
"There's something very funny about your question," says Eames. "As far as I can tell, this is the first time that I've actually been alright when I woke up."
The nurse makes a thorough note of all his vitals, looking unconvinced. Eames pulls a face at the cold taste of the saline flush, but keeps himself still until the nurse draws his tubing out, which earns him another wary look.
"The timer on the PASIV ran out," says the nurse. "You stayed in the whole time. That's never happened before."
"Good news, though, isn't it?" asks Eames.
"Sure, but you had us worried," says the nurse. "Obviously this is something you don't need to answer, but-- what were you doing in there?"
"Walking," says Eames. "I was walking."
"For an hour?" asks the nurse.
"I enjoyed it very much," he says. The world was at peace, even in a field without wheat, and there was gold flecked through Arthur's eyes when he turned to look at Eames.
+
"The nurse told me--" begins Eames, then stops himself. "Be careful. The fuel tank caught on fire, last time."
"Last time, of course," says Arthur, "was last time."
He spreads his arms for balance, places one foot in front of the other, and continues walking along the long metal body of Eames's downed fighter. Eames shades his eyes with a hand and watches him, shifting his own feet in the sand.
"It's my final session," says Eames.
"Is this your aircraft?" asks Arthur. "Did they shoot you down?"
"Yeah," says Eames. "But I wasn't here long, three hours or so. Then a squadron on patrol found me and carried me out-- in real life, I mean. In the dream, the fuel tank caught on fire."
Arthur steps onto the tail of the plane and skids down the incline, hands thrust into his trouser pockets. It's a boyish gesture, not quite as impenetrably professional as Eames is used to seeing, and he wonders if there's more where that came from.
"I don't think I want it to be my final session," says Eames.
They circle the plane like claims investigators, inspecting each injury. Eames isn't exactly sure what Arthur is looking for, so he trails after him, talking at him.
"I could steal the PASIV case and run," says Eames. "I could be addicted to dream therapy. It's plausible. It could be just like morphine addiction, as far as anyone knows. I probably sound like I'm joking, but I think I mean more than half of it, really."
Arthur doesn't answer.
"And you," adds Eames, a bit miserably. "I wouldn't be able to see you anymore."
"When one finds oneself on one's feet," says Arthur, "it's also possible to use them to climb into the cockpit of one's fighter plane. You're still standing, aren't you? What do you think?"
"What, start flying again?" asks Eames. "Go back into the field?"
"No, I remember you don't want that," says Arthur. "But this time, you can leave the desert on your own. Fixing something down here is as easy as thinking about it-- you're done with this war, Eames. There's no need to cook in the sand while you wait for the patrol."
"I did always love these things," says Eames, and pretends to pet the scalding surface of his plane. The heat radiates off of it in shimmering waves, and he lets his hand hover without making contact, but he doesn't feel threatened by it. Like it couldn't possibly hurt him, like it's only the warm rise and fall of a cat curled up on the rug.
He fixes his plane like growing it anew. The wreck comes to life, shivering for a moment before it lists upright, creaking from its joints. Grains cascade in rivulets out of its crevices. The snapped wing twists itself back into alignment, leveling straight out from the side of the plane, and metal winds back over the gashes torn into its fuselage, sealing up the holes.
Its sides quake and tremor, his whirring giant, pawing at the sand like an excited horse. The engine begins to hum. It rises to rest its wheels gently on top of the sand, and the afterburners sputter experimental sparks, the fighter clearing its throat, stretching its legs for takeoff. The spiderweb cracks veining the cockpit canopy smooth out into glass.
"Sight for sore eyes," says Eames.
"Wouldn't you like to take it up?" asks Arthur. "You walk when you've got feet, and you fly when you've got a plane. Right?"
"I suppose so," says Eames, "but what about--"
"If you get in," says Arthur, "I'll tell you a secret."
Reluctantly, inexorably, Eames climbs into his seat, because there's no other way it can go. He wonders what would happen if he really did steal the PASIV, how long it would take them to catch up with him, what would happen when they did. Would he be court-martialed?
But more than that, uncertain as he is of the more detailed aspects of therapy technology, he has a sinking feeling that Arthur would somehow know, if Eames stole a PASIV. And worse yet, he would disapprove. The first illicit session he plugged into would probably end up being his last.
He leaves himself unstrapped, the canopy tipped open, his safety gear untouched. Arthur is only barely within reach where he's standing next to the cockpit, the bridge of his nose flushed pink in the heat.
Eames steadies his breath and asks, "What's the secret?"
"Ah, the secret," says Arthur. "It's very important, so don't forget it, please."
He smiles, a small tug of his lips as brilliant as the glitter of the sand around him.
+
Life is in the little things, is what Arthur tells Eames. Always.
"And that's the problem with searching for any deeper meaning to life," says Arthur. "Because that's the secret-- there isn't any deeper meaning to it, at least not where everyone seems to be looking. When everyone seems to be so dissatisfied with what they can see, like they could find something truly beautiful if they could just learn to stare beyond the surface of things. Searching for some mythical well in the middle of the desert, or some message written in the faraway stars."
"Per ardua ad astra, I guess," says Eames. "Not just in service, either. We've always been told to fly high."
"Like life wouldn't be worth living with your feet on the ground," says Arthur. "They'll tell you to fly when you're content to walk, and then to touch the stars when you're happy to skim the clouds. Love the desert for its sand and the night for its darkness, Eames. That's what I think the secret is. Everything they teach you to trample underfoot as you grasp at something out of reach-- that's where life is, right beneath your feet, if only you have the peace of mind to look."
He gives the body of the plane a smart double knock. The engines are off and the control panels are still wiped blank, but it begins to roll slowly along the sand, smooth as it would down a runway. It's no faster than a strolling pace, Arthur walking alongside like taking it out for fresh air, but Eames fumbles with his straps, unsure of whether he might be able to put it off for a little while longer.
"So you see how it would only disappoint you to steal the PASIV," says Arthur. "Maybe, in the middle of the night in your darkened kitchen, you could think of me when you hear the kettle whistling at your back. Or you might find me in the sunshine burst of bright lemon on your tongue, or in the smell of gasoline in your garage like you're back in the hangars again. I'd like that, if you happen to think of me then. If you saw me in everything beneath your feet, in all the jumbled and motley corners of your life, instead of caging me inside a briefcase and a few drops of Somnacin."
Eames feels a gentle pressure like the plane is going to pick up speed, and he realizes, Arthur is about to let him go. And Arthur is right, he knows -- both of them should be letting go -- but he leans out of the cockpit to offer some parting words of his own, desperate for something to come to him, each precious moment spent wrestling for the right turn of phrase, and he sees the look on Arthur's face.
The back of Arthur's neck is hot when Eames wraps his hand around it, pulling him in for a dry-lipped kiss.
"You looked like you needed it," says Eames, against his cheek, by way of an explanation.
"Did I?" asks Arthur, and his smile is apologetic as the plane catches the wind like a sailboat and the canopy locks closed, wheels lifting, like a kite floating up into the sky, gliding into noiseless flight.
From up above, the rolling sand dunes are like vast golden oceans, and Arthur is a speck of dark color lost in the endless stretch of desert. Eames touches his heart where it beats, because he's still standing. He's still alive. His chest feels like one giant bruise, tender in his ribcage, so he decides to take a moment to mourn.
He flies, but not too high. Nowhere close to the stars.
Mais je ne veux pas cinq cents millions de fontaines: warning, the following unnecessary wall of text is not at all relevant to the content of the fic and it's probably a waste of your time. If I've blathered on at you before about how I don't think a story is ever over before a happy ending, then you probably already understand how I feel about the ending to this story...! Truth is, there were a couple short sections after this point, dealing with who exactly Arthur is and what exactly Eames does after he finds out. But that coda would have been about how the messy, human mistakes and regrets of life are more valuable than a transcendental acceptance of ~the workings of the universe~, which on the one hand might be more in line with my current personal beliefs, but on the other hand, stories probably shouldn't be platforms for people to expound upon their own views at the expense of the story itself. And the coda was totally fucking with the pacing and doing this weird multifocal thing where there was ANOTHER VOLTA after the initial volta, which, it's not a fucking wrestling match, it shouldn't have that many flips. D: So basically tl;dr but what I mean is, I think I would have found an "Eames looks for Arthur even though THEY CAN NEVER BE TOGETHER, SOB" ending more satisfying than the current "Eames learns to not look for Arthur" ending, and maybe some iterations of Eames are more likely to choose the former course of action, but I thought I would try out this transcendental closing anyway! You never know with these things, maybe years from now I'll prefer the transcendental approach to life after all, and marvel at how immature I was to think that wanting something badly enough was a happier alternative to coming to terms with the things you can't have. Or maybe I won't, I mean-- you never know with these things. Thank you so much for reading and for putting up with this incomprehensible rambling. ;____; what the fuck is any of this shit