Fic: A Promise In The Dark
Projection inception_bang
Title: A Promise In The Dark
Author: twisted_ream and cathenian
Artist: eamesie
Type: Horror Action AU, slash
Word count: 6340 (this part)
Rating: NC-17
Characters/Pairings: arthur/eames, ariadne, oc
Warnings: Kidnapping, oc death, graphic violence, sexual content, language
Summary: Arthur and Eames are blackmailed to perform a job with a mark that is in a coma and they wind up in a horrifying dream scape that is Silent Hill. While they encounter monsters, each more strange and worse than the last one, and try to survive to get through to the end, with worries of the mark dying before they reach the end, they will have to confront with their relationship between each other as well.
Eamesie's art post HERE
The dining hall was in all shades of gray. There was no light from the crooked windows on the side. The furniture looked like it hadn't been used in a decade and had been left to decay. Eames was standing in front of a dark brown dresser and nothing could be seen in the rusted mirror. He walked in the room a little to catch the feel of it, to know the energy in the room and enjoy the fine look of things.
"This is not that bad."
With a raise of a brow he looked at Arthur standing not far away from him to see what he was thinking in a place like that. It certainly wasn't that bad, Eames thought. He had been to many worse dreams.
Arthur pulled his gaze away from the water stained walls, turning to meet Eames’ gaze. He gave a slight shrug of his shoulder before turning to scan the room again in search of something recognizable from the dream level that their architect had created. So far he had found nothing and it caused his stomach to twist anxiously, because it wasn’t part of the plan.
“It could be worse, I agree. I just can’t,” Arthur started, carefully avoiding to look at Eames. They had just entered the dream and already it was a mess that they couldn’t afford. “I can’t wrestle control of the dream from the subject, this is what we’re going to have to work with.”
Eames pulled out his handgun just in case and walked to the entry of a hallway. He waited for Arthur to do the same and asked, "So, it's a locket we're looking for?"
It was a rhetorical question but he enjoyed listening to his colleague on whatever he had to say. He didn't pay attention to him anymore when he stepped in to the hallway and looked at each ends. They were out of light, and he couldn't see where the corridor ended.
"This guy has some pretty dark imagery in his mind." Eames stated, almost questioning although he had read everything he could about the mark, and he knew the mark was highly depressed after all. He was speaking out loud mostly to calm his nerves in the unknown dreamscape.
Arthur followed Eames’ lead and pulled out his Glock, quickly checking to make sure that it was loaded. He wasn’t going to take any chances, not when the dreamscape had been warped like that. He looked up when Eames spoke, eyes following him as he walked out into the hallway. He walked quietly behind Eames, eyes straining to adjust to the darkness. “Yeah, the mark is wearing the locket or he should at least in theory.”
Arthur started down the hallway, gently kicking at the ground to make sure that he didn’t trip over anything. He squinted slightly, trying to see something but it was too dark. “We need to find a light or something.”
They walked to the end and into a living room that was just as dark as the rest of the house. The forger tried to browse for any handy objects but the search was useless. There was an entry to the outside and Eames wondered if the mark was staying inside. He noticed the key hook on the wall and no key dangling from it.
"Would you like to take a walk?" He expressed his worried glance towards Arthur and then looked at the dimmed glass on the door that kept him from seeing outside.
Arthur lowered his gun to his side when he heard Eames’ question. He knew that they didn’t have any other option than to head outside. It was useless staying indoors when they couldn’t find anything to use. He rubbed at the bridge of his nose with his free hand and sighed lightly. He hated working without a plan, hated not knowing what was going to happen next.
“We don’t have any other choice do we?” He turned to walk over to the door that hopefully lead outside. His fingers traced the brass door handle, hesitating. “It can’t be any worse out there, can it?” Already they were holding on to the dreamscape with the tips of their fingers and for a job that they couldn’t turn down any less.
"Go on, then." Eames smirked slightly while teasingly pressuring him with his body weight, leaving Arthur no chance but to go the other way. The first thing Eames noticed was that the window wasn't dimmed. It was the outside that was so foggy they couldn't see much in front of them. He viewed the areas he could see and let out an exaggerated sigh. "This is great."
He rubbed his hair in confusion, trying to think of a solution for the problem, for once finding the surroundings a bit too odd for his liking. Arthur moved away from Eames, stepping out onto the sidewalk and glancing around. The situation was better than anything that he had been expecting, because fog was something that they could deal with. Arthur flicked the safety on his gun and frowned. He couldn’t see any projections and that was odd. There was nothing familiar about the place, it seemed like they were going to have to take a chance on it. He looked over his shoulder and held up his hands in either direction. “Left or right?”
Eames looked at the directions and he didn't have an answer. "Let's just go for a little while. We'll see." He picked a random direction to go by.
"Maybe there's a utility shop where we can take some flashlights. Or we can dream up some," Eames uttered with a nervous laugh, but he felt comforted that the man he was there with was trustworthy and pretty much everything a good partner had to offer.
“No destination, that could work,” Arthur conceded and started in the direction that Eames had picked. The sound of their footsteps echoed eerily in the streets, sending a chill down his spine that only increased with Eames’ nervous laugh.
“Well, we are in a town, so there should be some place to buy a lighter and if not, we can always ransack one of these houses. Go back to the good old days when being a criminal was breaking into people’s houses,” Arthur threw back lightly, keeping his voice light and calm. He was glad that Eames was the one in this mess with him, he couldn’t imagine doing this with anyone else, and it wasn’t a matter of competence.
"This place is giving me chills," Eames stated as he walked. He didn't ponder on it much though because their mark was unconscious, in a coma, so the unclear feel of things were explainable. He glanced up at the sky that was grey and unexceptional, and he hadn't had such an uncomfortable feeling for a long time. He looked at Arthur shortly before looking around again. "Oh, well there's an open garage."
Arthur came to a stop, following Eames’ gaze. There was an open garage, ominous in a way only a gaping hole of darkness could be. He raised his Glock before bumping his shoulder into Eames’ gently.
“It doesn’t hurt to give it a shot,” he shrugged before starting off towards the garage. He kept up the constant litany of ‘it’s only a dream, it’s only a dream’ going in his head.
By the time they reached the garage, Eames didn't see anything alarming. After viewing the garage in its entirety on what he could see, he went straight to the wall that had saw blades and hammers hanging off on it. He looked down at the table in front of it and found two flashlights, the other one a big box and the other a lightweight tube. Although it looked like they had been planted there just for them, Eames didn’t want to think about that.
"Hey. Which one?" He teasingly asked, showing Arthur both of the flashlights in each of his hand, already knowing they had to take the smaller one to carry the rest of their journey with.
Arthur scoured the contents of the garage, fingers gliding over the available surfaces. He sauntered over to stand in front of Eames and his find. He made a low, thoughtful sound, before plucking the lighter of the two flashlights from his hands and inspecting it.
“Any other time I would admit that bigger is better, but not right now,” he threw back with a grin. He glanced down at the flashlight in his hand, smile growing when it turned on with a satisfactory click.
Eames set the other light back on the table and looked back at the foggy street. He had a hunch on where they could start but nonetheless the dreamscape seemed to be a large vision in itself
"I think we should go back to the house, to search for clues. He could be anywhere here," Eames said, and gave a one last look at the blades on the wall before he returned to the doorway of the garage.
Arthur nodded, turning off the flashlight and sliding it into his gun holster. He watched Eames give one last look at the wall of blades, before he left, and Arthur quirked an eye brow before nicking one of the smaller ones. He quickly trotted after Eames, agreeing with going back to the house, back to the place that they had started in. He fell into step beside him, holding the blade out to his companion. “Better safe than sorry.”
Walking back to the house they left from, Eames could remember the exact house even in the fog and he looked around at the abandoned street. He felt sad about a lot of things, mostly the necessity of the job they were doing and the blackmail they were doing it for. Ariadne’s life was at stake.
Arthur trailed beside Eames, happy to let the other man lead the way so he could try and think of a plan; so far he had nothing though. Eames stopped in his thoughts when he saw a shadow further, in the middle of the street. He didn't think he'd seen it there before.
"Look," Eames walked towards it and the more the figure looked like a human. He wanted to make sure so he shouted, "Hey, you need some help?" It could've had been their mark, though Eames was suspicious about the keys. He'd probably taken the car, but then who was it standing there?
Arthur glanced up when he heard Eames speaking, but not to him. A projection? He started forward again, because if they were coming across a projection, they had a chance to extract from it. Maybe they were able to learn the location of the mark too, or maybe it even was the mark, but Arthur didn’t think that it would be that simple. He took the safety off on his gun and tightened his grip because projections were known to turn hostile. As they got closer, he watched the figure move, but it seemed wrong. Arthur sucked in a sharp breath when they were close enough to see that the figure was not normal.
“Shit,” he swore as he raised his gun.
Eames kept his cool as he approached the projection. His brows were frowned and his expression serious as he asked him again. "Are you okay?"
The projection was odd, he didn't seem to have a face, and he looked like he had burned himself. His arms seemed to be wrapped around his waist, which Eames thought of as nothing more than a projection escaped from a fire in a mental institution. He wasn't so sure he could negotiate with the projection with that information. He removed the safety on his gun too to make sure, and he was proven right as the projection arched back with black fumes spraying out of his chest.
Arthur watched the projection in shock, seeing it arch back again with a purring breath and then release a stream of black fumes. The fiery pit of its lungs stood out, flaring brilliantly in the dim light of the fog infested street. Eames yelled and backed off, wiping his face into his jacket that had smeared as well.
"What the hell?! Ow, it's freakin' burning my skin!"
"Eames!" Arthur gasped when the fumes hit Eames and he yelled. He focused on the withered black creature, unsure where to hit it because it was definitely not human. Then the creature was rearing back and he didn't have a choice but to shoot. He shot twice but it only caused the creature to stumble backwards.
"Are you okay?"
"Yea, I'm fine." Eames sighed loud and frustrated while taking his jacket off, just throwing it to the side. "Just my jacket is old news."
He then watched the projection fall over and wriggle on the ground. Eames marched to it to give two final shots to the head. He looked at the corpse first in disgust, then with curiosity. He crouched down and just looked at it for a while.
"What the hell is it? How could someone dream up shit like this?" He stood back up and looked at Arthur.
Arthur padded over to Eames’ side, looking down at the corpse. He didn’t know what to think of it.
“Someone who’s mentally disturbed. This is why we don’t take jobs like this, the mark’s nightmares run rampant,” Arthur shook his head, because they hadn’t been given a choice to say no to the job. He turned away from the creature and looked at Eames. He had been lucky; if he had been standing any closer to the creature when it had spewed its gas at him, the toxic could’ve been lethal.
“We should head back to the building because this isn’t going to stop with one projection.” Arthur walked around the corpse, shuddering a little at the creature their mark had created.
"You're right," Eames agreed and they swiftly headed back to the house. The rest of the street looked quiet enough to not think anyone or anything was there anymore. Eames broke in to the house and there, greeting them, was something he couldn't see with a hit on his head. It wasn't as painful as Eames had used to have at work but his world was swirling around. Eames was smart enough to duck down and yell for Arthur behind him. "Show the fuckin' light!"
Arthur drew the flashlight the instant Eames hollered, fingers finding the switch to turn it on. He swore when he saw the pale creature, malformed and twisted. He slammed the flashlight on top of his gun and let off three shots, guiding the creature back into the room and giving Eames and him room to move. The creature fell back and Arthur let off one final shot into the creature for good measure.
He spared a glance at Eames before skating the light across the room and then down the hall. He could hear the distant sound of shuffling. "Are you okay?" He found himself asking again and he knew that it wouldn't be the last time.
Eames was up and walking fast as the injury wasn't anything to rest over for. "I am bloody tired of these things beating up on me!" He held his head as a headache was taking over him.
"There's nothing here." Eames browsed at the living room, disappointed. He entered the hallway and looked at how many rooms they had to search through. He tried for the door on the opposite but it was locked. He shoved his whole weight on it, being sure that a door like that would certainly break under that pressure, but it didn't so much as crack. "Fuck."
Arthur shook his head and treaded down the hall. He tried one of the doors, giving up as soon as he realized that it was locked. He didn't think he had any better luck than Eames. "Well, if most of these are locked, it cuts down on where we can look." It seemed like a small upside, but it was an upside none the less. He checked the next door and felt it give a snick.
"Now what's behind door number one?" He muttered, and pushed the first door open.
"A bathroom?" Eames was nosy and looking at the room from close up behind Arthur at the doorway. He followed the wide trail of blood with his eyes and walked further to pray it wasn't the mark. They just needed the pendant so he wasn't so sure they needed him at best condition. They needed him to stay alive, even just barely, so that they could leave the dream safely.
Eames raised his gun ready to pull aside the shower curtain and sighed in relief for no projection but with a frown of the bad smell that was coming up from the bathtub. It was a pool of blood with a corpse on it, definitely a human.
"This is sick. I'm more than willing to get this job done so it's out of the way then," Eames stated, smirking at his colleague to ease the tension the dream had, though there was nothing cheerful about the situation.
“Yeah,” Arthur nodded, not even bothering to step into the bathroom. The smell alone was enough to let him know that he really didn’t want to see what the blood trail led to. He quirked his lip up, glad for Eames’ attempt at lightening the mood.
“I will never question the dreams you create after we finish this job. Never again, I swear,” Arthur chuckled as he moved back into the hall and went to check another door. Yet again locked. There was a reason that some doors were locked and some weren’t.
“Fucked up bathroom, check. Now what else does he want us to find?” Arthur hummed to himself quietly.
Eames, still not wanting to leave the bathroom, looked up into the mirror cabinet if there happened to be any pills, even though he wouldn't take any. He had taken some once or twice in someone else's dream and the consequences were never worth it.
"Hey, hey!" Eames yelled, happy, it was shining across his face. He had found something. Well, anything really was reliable for clues.
"There's a napkin with an address on it. It says a phone number and Jack's Inn," he said, and walked to Arthur quickly to show him the paper. "I've had enough of the air outside but I don't think we have a choice. I think we should check up on all the other available rooms before leaving again."
Arthur looked over his shoulder and laughed. “This is like being in a fucked up version of a cartoon I used to watch as a kid. Collect all the clues and you’ll catch the villain, in this case our mark.” He grimaced slightly because after making that connection he didn’t think that he would be able to look at Scooby Doo the same again.
“Yeah, if we leave now, we may miss something important,” he inspected the napkin, before grinning up at Eames. “We’re getting somewhere.”
Eames knocked on the door Arthur was standing in front of and laughed. "Okay, it's not funny, but I admit, it's a little uncomfortable here."
He wouldn't admit that he felt close to hugging the other man purely out of the loneliness he was feeling at the moment, and the emptiness the dark dreamscape provided them, and maybe a little for the respect he had for the man especially to keep his cool under the circumstances. Eames had had some experiences in dream worlds but it was by far the worst he had ever been in.
“A little uncomfortable?” Arthur asked but didn’t expect an answer. It was like they were walking on glass, only a few steps away before it all completely fell apart. He leaned into Eames for a moment before pulling back and turning to face the door, the brief contact enough for the moment.
"I just wish there wasn't an entire pack of those things lined up for us behind this door."
“Thanks for the encouragement. This is crazy, that is what it is.” Arthur took a deep breath and pulled open the door, gun and flashlight raised, expecting the worst.
The room was a bedroom, dark and dusty. It was clear of creatures and Eames let out a breath he was holding. He didn't want to move anywhere this time, not having to deal with another head trauma or a blood spattered corpse.
"We're leaving this shithole after this," he muttered, and leaned his back against the doorway to rest and calm his breath. He heard a rustle from the living room, getting louder and louder, and Eames turned his head to see if anyone was coming. A figure approached in the hallway and Eames took a few steps towards it.
"Hi there."
Raising his gun, he shot at the similar looking thing, as the one on the street, until all of his bullets were out. They weren't so bad after all, good shots to the chest, so he didn't mind dreaming up a bullet clip to load his handgun with.
Arthur leaned back against the door, not moving when he heard the movement, and then watched at Eames after he had shot the burned, twisted projection. He cringed before pushing off of the door and stepping into the room, already looking for more clues.
“And then I’m going to take down the bastard who thought it would be a good idea to blackmail us into this shithole in the first place,” Arthur stated, as he dug through one of the drawers. Finding nothing that could be of use, he moved to the next, where he found a brochure. “Then I’m going to have a stiff drink and go on vacation.”
He picked up the brochure and inspected it, reading ‘Silent Hill’ across the top. He waved it over his shoulder and continued to search the desk for anything else. “Have you heard of this place before?”
"No, I haven't," Eames shook his head after laughing at Arthur's plans while discovering the walls that were decayed and rotting from the upper edges. "It could be this place. It's silent. Excluding the things that surround us. It's on a hill. Well, actually not. We can't be sure. Perhaps it's where all of these arguments and mayhem started."
Eames turned to look at Arthur bending over on various things and he smiled again, laughing at himself before turning back. He didn't want to go and disturb him although it felt like Eames could always get the best performance out of him, so instead he wondered what they could find in Jack's Inn.
"You done, love?"
Arthur snorted lightly in amusement as Eames rambled on about why the place could be Silent Hill, contradicting all of his own points in the process. He straightened, dropping the brochure on the desk and sliding the drawer closed when he didn’t find anything else. He sauntered over to Eames’ side and raised an eyebrow at the pet name.
“Yeah, I’m done. There doesn’t seem to be anything in this room that we can use, unless you want to read over a handful of notes about fishing,” Arthur shrugged as he came to a stop. “We should head over to Jack’s Inn then, shouldn’t we? It seems like our only lead.”
With confirmation on Eames' part, they reached outside without a fight with any beings.
"We could've used the brochure though. Because I have no idea where Jack's Inn is," Eames spoke and felt oddly casual about the situation, especially being in the fog again where he had felt uncomfortable. He was getting to terms with that they needed to finish the job before getting out of there, and it was the only thing they could do.
"But I'm sure there are plenty of maps out to share. This looks like a complex place," Eames said, then didn't realize that he was spelling out the letters of 'complex' out loud.
Arthur walked beside Eames, listening to him talk. It broke the eerie silence of the street and listening to him was soothing. He smiled when Eames started to spell but didn’t say anything because he didn’t want to ruin the moment. He watched the streets carefully, watching for any sign of movement and any clues as to where they were heading. He looked ahead, frowning slightly.
“I think that puts the idea of ‘the edge of the world’ in a new light,” Arthur muttered as they came up on a place where the road just seemed to drop off into nothingness.
Eames stayed off the cliff but was highly intrigued by the nature of the dream. He smirked at Arthur's comment and tried to have another glance at the bottomless pit. "Interesting."
He looked around and wondered how they were ever going to finish the task on time. The thought of the mark having a fit without them even taking another step had him worried. "Let's take this route. Carroll Street?"
He walked on it for a time while continuously having new questions to try and figure out.
"Why would he dream up an entire town?"
Arthur kicked a rock off into the pit, cocking his head to the side as he watched it disappear into the fog. Where they a symbol for something, did they mean something? He wondered for a moment, because he had never seen cliffs like that in a dreamscape before.
“Yeah, might as well,” Arthur nodded and turned to go down the other street, memorizing the path they had taken. “Why not? Some people have too much to hide within a single building, so making a town is easier. It’s easier to hide in and who knows, this may even be a real place... minus the creatures.”
Eames looked at him in amusement while walking. "The creatures might as well exist. That’s the clever part. They are the humans of the town. Don't you think?"
“Maybe, who knows but our mark really?” Arthur found himself agreeing.
A chill went down Eames’ spine for the thought of that, and even more so when a figure approached them from the side. It looked more natural except for the two legs in place of its head.
"Whoah!" Eames took a few steps back just to look at the being that waved its, upper feet he guessed, up in the air as it stepped forward.
"Um, Arthur?" He questioned in amazement. He had never seen such imagination although it reminded him of a statue he had once seen. Eames didn't hesitate to shoot it when it reached closer, spending four bullets on it before it writhed and died.
Arthur aimed his gun when the new, grotesque creature came at them but Eames seemed ready to take care of it. Arthur really didn’t know what to make of the creatures but he knew that there had to be something to them.
“I’ve never seen anything like this, I don’t even know what to think of it,” he admitted as he crouched down beside the fallen creature.
“At least they’re easy to kill if you shoot them a couple of times,” Arthur mussed as he straightened and checked his own gun out of habit.
“A couple of times,” Eames laughed, for he was never sure if any of the creatures they had met had actually died as they still writhed after they had shot them.
Eames saw a bigger building on the left, capital letters informing ‘Brookhaven Hospital’. "Oh. We could find some town guides there. I'll go, okay? You stay put for any creatures in sight."
He held his hand out to take the flash light and smiled with a confident leer knowing that with it whatever did he say Arthur would usually agree on. Arthur opened his mouth, ready to shoot Eames' idea down, but closed it after a second thought. He sighed, knowing better than to argue.
"Be careful then," he muttered as he turned back to face the street.
Eames walked to the doorway and sneered at the door being unlocked. He went straight to the reception desk to find some brochures of the hospital but they weren't of any help. He traced the room with the flashlight and saw a framed map of the supposed town. Hitting the light to the corner of the map, he read Silent Hill and hummed smugly. "I guess that will work."
He walked over to it, dropped it down and retrieved the map that he started to neatly fold. Only then he heard a screeching noise coming from the hallway.
Outside, Arthur listened for the tell tale signs that something was coming, picking up the sound of something shuffling and a faraway howl. He tightened his grip on his gun, waiting patiently for Eames' return. It wasn't long before he heard a growl and he spun around to face a mangled, gory mess that resembled a dog. He swore as it leapt and shot it, causing it to fall midjump. He shot it again for good measure and hoped they finished the job soon.
Eames pointed the flashlight to the direction of the noise, seeing a figure stretch out its limbs. As he walked closer, aiming his gun at it, he was startled to find it almost identical to a nurse. It had no face but a pipe it was holding tight in its grip. Eames was so engaged in the reason why it was there that he didn't notice it wobbling forward and swinging its steel pipe to his head.
"Bloody hell!"
Eames quickly recovered, adrenaline making him angry. He shot the being fast onto the tiled floor before he noticed another, a different nurse make its way to him. He had another bullet case show up when two other nurses dragged their pipes along to reach him.
After he spent the last of his ammo taking two nurses down, Eames decided not to dream up anything in the dream anymore since it seemed to only encourage the beasts. He grabbed one of the nurses’ abandoned steel pipes to smash the last ones -at that moment- to the ground, maybe being too personal to be reasonable. Wiping his bloody face to his sleeve, Eames swore even though he felt lucky. The map was safe in his grasp, a little blood spattered, and he made a run for it back outside.
Arthur checked the clip in his gun, keeping a close eye on the streets. Knowing that the creatures were easily taken down gave him a sense of relief because even if they were twisted creatures of their marks imagination, they didn’t have much power. He had the urge to create some kind of a plan but that was something he had to ignore. The dream world, it seemed, was designed to lead people to a specific end and it didn’t matter how they tried to go around it.
Arthur slid the clip back into his gun and turned his attention back to the hospital, waiting for the doors to open. He didn’t know how long he could wait there before he had to go in and make sure that Eames was okay. He was saved that fate when the doors opened and his partner was there, blood spattered, but Eames didn’t look worse for wear. Arthur sauntered over to him, eyebrows drawn down in question.
“I like the new look, are you going for just murdered a family of four or that rack of lamb didn’t stand a chance against my butcher knife?” Arthur asked lightly as he raised a hand and wiped some of the smudged blood off of his face. “How did you manage?”
"I'm going for the hot faceless nurse tried to smash my head off," Eames casually stated, though Arthur's touch made him forget about the incident.
"You have any fetishes I need to know about?" He smirked while wiping the drying blood off his face. He was sure the amount and anger of the creatures had increased and he wanted to spend no time on finding it out.
“Yes, I have a blood, guts and a killer kink that you just set off excellently,” Arthur responded with the slightest inflection of sarcasm.
"They're getting stronger. I wanna get this done. Let's keep moving, yeah?" Eames didn't bother to listen to an answer when two figures were screeching far behind them.
Arthur dropped his hand from Eames’ face and nodded at his question. He turned his attention to the creatures down the street, listening to their distinctive noise.
“What way do we have to head to?” He asked, wondering if Eames had already checked the map.
Eames’ smile faded a bit as he listened to Arthur. The feelings he had were coming alive at the strangest moment. "Oh yeah, this way."
He pointed towards the direction where they had been heading without the map. "You wanna check it out?"
Starting to walk the road, Eames handed over the map and continued. "It should be a turn to the right after this one if I remember correctly. There should be a park across from it so we'll know."
He looked around constantly, making sure that they were safe, but he also kept looking at Arthur; trying to block out the thoughts from his head. He then laughed when he saw a weak neon sign of a poorly dressed lady on their left.
"Heaven's Night. I wonder if there are any creatures dancing around in there."
Arthur took the map with a small hum of noise. He traced over it quickly, taking in all the roads and labeled buildings. Putting all of his focus on the map, he trusted Eames to keep a look out. He dreamed up a pen and circled Jack's Inn, before crossing out the end of the road on Rendell Street. He chewed on the end of the pen as he memorized the layout of the Southern side of Silent Hill. He looked up when Eames spoke and blinked up at the neon sign. Arthur folded the map up, grabbed the pen from his teeth and clipped it to the paper.
"Now that is a mental image that is going to haunt me," Arthur chuckled as he put the map into the back pocket of his pants. He glanced over at Eames before looking back at the street.
After turning right at Pete's Bowl-O-Rama, having dodged three creatures until then, Eames decided to speak up.
"Recently," he looked at his friend's way - he considered Arthur a friend, he would count his life on his hands - and built up the courage to take it if Arthur rejected him. "I've had these odd feelings."
Eames looked again and felt more comfortable to hold that information inside. He looked away. "Never mind."
Walking fast, they were soon finding Jack's Inn. "There we are."
Arthur frowned as Eames started to say something before he cut himself off. He slowed down, wondering what he had been going to say. He pursed his lips but didn't say anything until they were in front of the Inn. He wasn't one to drop an issue. He grabbed Eames' arm, stopping him from heading into the Inn. He had an odd sense that he should’ve had been focusing on what they would find in the building, but it wasn't his main concern.
"Eames, you can't tell me to 'never mind' when whatever you have to say seems important. What is it?"
"It's no big matter. It doesn't concern you," Eames confirmed with a confident look to assure him it wasn't of importance before batting his hand away and resting his hand on the door knob. He sighed inside as he wanted to tell him but the environment was the least thrilling to do so. He lifted their flashlight to a good level before opening the door to see in case there was no light and browsing on anything that was there.
“Right, okay,” Arthur gave a soft sigh, dropping his hands to his weapon and putting his attention on the door. If it was important, he hoped Eames would tell him later. He pushed the thoughts away because they were a distraction that he couldn’t afford. He waited a moment before sliding past Eames and stepping into the Inn, his weapon drawn. The room looked clear but he knew that looks could be deceiving. Eames followed him, tightening his grip on the steel pipe.
The lobby was fairly lit and Eames spent his time admiring the eerie feel of the place before he walked into the dining hall. The mark surely knew how to fill a dream.
There was a loud shriek that startled Eames and made him immediately try to cover his ears. Arthur gave a hiss as the noise tore through the building, an ungodly screech that sent a chill down his spine.
Eames didn't hide his fear this time but shouted at Arthur to come with him. He usually got things done alone but he didn't want to face whatever was in there on his own.
Arthur’s grip tightened on his weapon and he shot off after Eames. It seemed like the only sensible option to go after whatever was set against them in the dream world if they wanted to finish the job. It was easier to head straight into the dark depths of the Inn knowing that it was all a dream, but it didn't quell the slight burn of fear in Arthur’s mind: there was something about the place.
The back of the hall was dark and most likely the source of the noise came from there. Eames didn't want to point the light towards it but soon did, and big, rusted mechanical legs clanked against the linoleum floor as it sprinted towards them.
TWO - THREE
Title: A Promise In The Dark
Author: twisted_ream and cathenian
Artist: eamesie
Type: Horror Action AU, slash
Word count: 6340 (this part)
Rating: NC-17
Characters/Pairings: arthur/eames, ariadne, oc
Warnings: Kidnapping, oc death, graphic violence, sexual content, language
Summary: Arthur and Eames are blackmailed to perform a job with a mark that is in a coma and they wind up in a horrifying dream scape that is Silent Hill. While they encounter monsters, each more strange and worse than the last one, and try to survive to get through to the end, with worries of the mark dying before they reach the end, they will have to confront with their relationship between each other as well.
Eamesie's art post HERE
The dining hall was in all shades of gray. There was no light from the crooked windows on the side. The furniture looked like it hadn't been used in a decade and had been left to decay. Eames was standing in front of a dark brown dresser and nothing could be seen in the rusted mirror. He walked in the room a little to catch the feel of it, to know the energy in the room and enjoy the fine look of things.
"This is not that bad."
With a raise of a brow he looked at Arthur standing not far away from him to see what he was thinking in a place like that. It certainly wasn't that bad, Eames thought. He had been to many worse dreams.
Arthur pulled his gaze away from the water stained walls, turning to meet Eames’ gaze. He gave a slight shrug of his shoulder before turning to scan the room again in search of something recognizable from the dream level that their architect had created. So far he had found nothing and it caused his stomach to twist anxiously, because it wasn’t part of the plan.
“It could be worse, I agree. I just can’t,” Arthur started, carefully avoiding to look at Eames. They had just entered the dream and already it was a mess that they couldn’t afford. “I can’t wrestle control of the dream from the subject, this is what we’re going to have to work with.”
Eames pulled out his handgun just in case and walked to the entry of a hallway. He waited for Arthur to do the same and asked, "So, it's a locket we're looking for?"
It was a rhetorical question but he enjoyed listening to his colleague on whatever he had to say. He didn't pay attention to him anymore when he stepped in to the hallway and looked at each ends. They were out of light, and he couldn't see where the corridor ended.
"This guy has some pretty dark imagery in his mind." Eames stated, almost questioning although he had read everything he could about the mark, and he knew the mark was highly depressed after all. He was speaking out loud mostly to calm his nerves in the unknown dreamscape.
Arthur followed Eames’ lead and pulled out his Glock, quickly checking to make sure that it was loaded. He wasn’t going to take any chances, not when the dreamscape had been warped like that. He looked up when Eames spoke, eyes following him as he walked out into the hallway. He walked quietly behind Eames, eyes straining to adjust to the darkness. “Yeah, the mark is wearing the locket or he should at least in theory.”
Arthur started down the hallway, gently kicking at the ground to make sure that he didn’t trip over anything. He squinted slightly, trying to see something but it was too dark. “We need to find a light or something.”
They walked to the end and into a living room that was just as dark as the rest of the house. The forger tried to browse for any handy objects but the search was useless. There was an entry to the outside and Eames wondered if the mark was staying inside. He noticed the key hook on the wall and no key dangling from it.
"Would you like to take a walk?" He expressed his worried glance towards Arthur and then looked at the dimmed glass on the door that kept him from seeing outside.
Arthur lowered his gun to his side when he heard Eames’ question. He knew that they didn’t have any other option than to head outside. It was useless staying indoors when they couldn’t find anything to use. He rubbed at the bridge of his nose with his free hand and sighed lightly. He hated working without a plan, hated not knowing what was going to happen next.
“We don’t have any other choice do we?” He turned to walk over to the door that hopefully lead outside. His fingers traced the brass door handle, hesitating. “It can’t be any worse out there, can it?” Already they were holding on to the dreamscape with the tips of their fingers and for a job that they couldn’t turn down any less.
"Go on, then." Eames smirked slightly while teasingly pressuring him with his body weight, leaving Arthur no chance but to go the other way. The first thing Eames noticed was that the window wasn't dimmed. It was the outside that was so foggy they couldn't see much in front of them. He viewed the areas he could see and let out an exaggerated sigh. "This is great."
He rubbed his hair in confusion, trying to think of a solution for the problem, for once finding the surroundings a bit too odd for his liking. Arthur moved away from Eames, stepping out onto the sidewalk and glancing around. The situation was better than anything that he had been expecting, because fog was something that they could deal with. Arthur flicked the safety on his gun and frowned. He couldn’t see any projections and that was odd. There was nothing familiar about the place, it seemed like they were going to have to take a chance on it. He looked over his shoulder and held up his hands in either direction. “Left or right?”
Eames looked at the directions and he didn't have an answer. "Let's just go for a little while. We'll see." He picked a random direction to go by.
"Maybe there's a utility shop where we can take some flashlights. Or we can dream up some," Eames uttered with a nervous laugh, but he felt comforted that the man he was there with was trustworthy and pretty much everything a good partner had to offer.
“No destination, that could work,” Arthur conceded and started in the direction that Eames had picked. The sound of their footsteps echoed eerily in the streets, sending a chill down his spine that only increased with Eames’ nervous laugh.
“Well, we are in a town, so there should be some place to buy a lighter and if not, we can always ransack one of these houses. Go back to the good old days when being a criminal was breaking into people’s houses,” Arthur threw back lightly, keeping his voice light and calm. He was glad that Eames was the one in this mess with him, he couldn’t imagine doing this with anyone else, and it wasn’t a matter of competence.
"This place is giving me chills," Eames stated as he walked. He didn't ponder on it much though because their mark was unconscious, in a coma, so the unclear feel of things were explainable. He glanced up at the sky that was grey and unexceptional, and he hadn't had such an uncomfortable feeling for a long time. He looked at Arthur shortly before looking around again. "Oh, well there's an open garage."
Arthur came to a stop, following Eames’ gaze. There was an open garage, ominous in a way only a gaping hole of darkness could be. He raised his Glock before bumping his shoulder into Eames’ gently.
“It doesn’t hurt to give it a shot,” he shrugged before starting off towards the garage. He kept up the constant litany of ‘it’s only a dream, it’s only a dream’ going in his head.
By the time they reached the garage, Eames didn't see anything alarming. After viewing the garage in its entirety on what he could see, he went straight to the wall that had saw blades and hammers hanging off on it. He looked down at the table in front of it and found two flashlights, the other one a big box and the other a lightweight tube. Although it looked like they had been planted there just for them, Eames didn’t want to think about that.
"Hey. Which one?" He teasingly asked, showing Arthur both of the flashlights in each of his hand, already knowing they had to take the smaller one to carry the rest of their journey with.
Arthur scoured the contents of the garage, fingers gliding over the available surfaces. He sauntered over to stand in front of Eames and his find. He made a low, thoughtful sound, before plucking the lighter of the two flashlights from his hands and inspecting it.
“Any other time I would admit that bigger is better, but not right now,” he threw back with a grin. He glanced down at the flashlight in his hand, smile growing when it turned on with a satisfactory click.
Eames set the other light back on the table and looked back at the foggy street. He had a hunch on where they could start but nonetheless the dreamscape seemed to be a large vision in itself
"I think we should go back to the house, to search for clues. He could be anywhere here," Eames said, and gave a one last look at the blades on the wall before he returned to the doorway of the garage.
Arthur nodded, turning off the flashlight and sliding it into his gun holster. He watched Eames give one last look at the wall of blades, before he left, and Arthur quirked an eye brow before nicking one of the smaller ones. He quickly trotted after Eames, agreeing with going back to the house, back to the place that they had started in. He fell into step beside him, holding the blade out to his companion. “Better safe than sorry.”
Walking back to the house they left from, Eames could remember the exact house even in the fog and he looked around at the abandoned street. He felt sad about a lot of things, mostly the necessity of the job they were doing and the blackmail they were doing it for. Ariadne’s life was at stake.
Arthur trailed beside Eames, happy to let the other man lead the way so he could try and think of a plan; so far he had nothing though. Eames stopped in his thoughts when he saw a shadow further, in the middle of the street. He didn't think he'd seen it there before.
"Look," Eames walked towards it and the more the figure looked like a human. He wanted to make sure so he shouted, "Hey, you need some help?" It could've had been their mark, though Eames was suspicious about the keys. He'd probably taken the car, but then who was it standing there?
Arthur glanced up when he heard Eames speaking, but not to him. A projection? He started forward again, because if they were coming across a projection, they had a chance to extract from it. Maybe they were able to learn the location of the mark too, or maybe it even was the mark, but Arthur didn’t think that it would be that simple. He took the safety off on his gun and tightened his grip because projections were known to turn hostile. As they got closer, he watched the figure move, but it seemed wrong. Arthur sucked in a sharp breath when they were close enough to see that the figure was not normal.
“Shit,” he swore as he raised his gun.
Eames kept his cool as he approached the projection. His brows were frowned and his expression serious as he asked him again. "Are you okay?"
The projection was odd, he didn't seem to have a face, and he looked like he had burned himself. His arms seemed to be wrapped around his waist, which Eames thought of as nothing more than a projection escaped from a fire in a mental institution. He wasn't so sure he could negotiate with the projection with that information. He removed the safety on his gun too to make sure, and he was proven right as the projection arched back with black fumes spraying out of his chest.
Arthur watched the projection in shock, seeing it arch back again with a purring breath and then release a stream of black fumes. The fiery pit of its lungs stood out, flaring brilliantly in the dim light of the fog infested street. Eames yelled and backed off, wiping his face into his jacket that had smeared as well.
"What the hell?! Ow, it's freakin' burning my skin!"
"Eames!" Arthur gasped when the fumes hit Eames and he yelled. He focused on the withered black creature, unsure where to hit it because it was definitely not human. Then the creature was rearing back and he didn't have a choice but to shoot. He shot twice but it only caused the creature to stumble backwards.
"Are you okay?"
"Yea, I'm fine." Eames sighed loud and frustrated while taking his jacket off, just throwing it to the side. "Just my jacket is old news."
He then watched the projection fall over and wriggle on the ground. Eames marched to it to give two final shots to the head. He looked at the corpse first in disgust, then with curiosity. He crouched down and just looked at it for a while.
"What the hell is it? How could someone dream up shit like this?" He stood back up and looked at Arthur.
Arthur padded over to Eames’ side, looking down at the corpse. He didn’t know what to think of it.
“Someone who’s mentally disturbed. This is why we don’t take jobs like this, the mark’s nightmares run rampant,” Arthur shook his head, because they hadn’t been given a choice to say no to the job. He turned away from the creature and looked at Eames. He had been lucky; if he had been standing any closer to the creature when it had spewed its gas at him, the toxic could’ve been lethal.
“We should head back to the building because this isn’t going to stop with one projection.” Arthur walked around the corpse, shuddering a little at the creature their mark had created.
"You're right," Eames agreed and they swiftly headed back to the house. The rest of the street looked quiet enough to not think anyone or anything was there anymore. Eames broke in to the house and there, greeting them, was something he couldn't see with a hit on his head. It wasn't as painful as Eames had used to have at work but his world was swirling around. Eames was smart enough to duck down and yell for Arthur behind him. "Show the fuckin' light!"
Arthur drew the flashlight the instant Eames hollered, fingers finding the switch to turn it on. He swore when he saw the pale creature, malformed and twisted. He slammed the flashlight on top of his gun and let off three shots, guiding the creature back into the room and giving Eames and him room to move. The creature fell back and Arthur let off one final shot into the creature for good measure.
He spared a glance at Eames before skating the light across the room and then down the hall. He could hear the distant sound of shuffling. "Are you okay?" He found himself asking again and he knew that it wouldn't be the last time.
Eames was up and walking fast as the injury wasn't anything to rest over for. "I am bloody tired of these things beating up on me!" He held his head as a headache was taking over him.
"There's nothing here." Eames browsed at the living room, disappointed. He entered the hallway and looked at how many rooms they had to search through. He tried for the door on the opposite but it was locked. He shoved his whole weight on it, being sure that a door like that would certainly break under that pressure, but it didn't so much as crack. "Fuck."
Arthur shook his head and treaded down the hall. He tried one of the doors, giving up as soon as he realized that it was locked. He didn't think he had any better luck than Eames. "Well, if most of these are locked, it cuts down on where we can look." It seemed like a small upside, but it was an upside none the less. He checked the next door and felt it give a snick.
"Now what's behind door number one?" He muttered, and pushed the first door open.
"A bathroom?" Eames was nosy and looking at the room from close up behind Arthur at the doorway. He followed the wide trail of blood with his eyes and walked further to pray it wasn't the mark. They just needed the pendant so he wasn't so sure they needed him at best condition. They needed him to stay alive, even just barely, so that they could leave the dream safely.
Eames raised his gun ready to pull aside the shower curtain and sighed in relief for no projection but with a frown of the bad smell that was coming up from the bathtub. It was a pool of blood with a corpse on it, definitely a human.
"This is sick. I'm more than willing to get this job done so it's out of the way then," Eames stated, smirking at his colleague to ease the tension the dream had, though there was nothing cheerful about the situation.
“Yeah,” Arthur nodded, not even bothering to step into the bathroom. The smell alone was enough to let him know that he really didn’t want to see what the blood trail led to. He quirked his lip up, glad for Eames’ attempt at lightening the mood.
“I will never question the dreams you create after we finish this job. Never again, I swear,” Arthur chuckled as he moved back into the hall and went to check another door. Yet again locked. There was a reason that some doors were locked and some weren’t.
“Fucked up bathroom, check. Now what else does he want us to find?” Arthur hummed to himself quietly.
Eames, still not wanting to leave the bathroom, looked up into the mirror cabinet if there happened to be any pills, even though he wouldn't take any. He had taken some once or twice in someone else's dream and the consequences were never worth it.
"Hey, hey!" Eames yelled, happy, it was shining across his face. He had found something. Well, anything really was reliable for clues.
"There's a napkin with an address on it. It says a phone number and Jack's Inn," he said, and walked to Arthur quickly to show him the paper. "I've had enough of the air outside but I don't think we have a choice. I think we should check up on all the other available rooms before leaving again."
Arthur looked over his shoulder and laughed. “This is like being in a fucked up version of a cartoon I used to watch as a kid. Collect all the clues and you’ll catch the villain, in this case our mark.” He grimaced slightly because after making that connection he didn’t think that he would be able to look at Scooby Doo the same again.
“Yeah, if we leave now, we may miss something important,” he inspected the napkin, before grinning up at Eames. “We’re getting somewhere.”
Eames knocked on the door Arthur was standing in front of and laughed. "Okay, it's not funny, but I admit, it's a little uncomfortable here."
He wouldn't admit that he felt close to hugging the other man purely out of the loneliness he was feeling at the moment, and the emptiness the dark dreamscape provided them, and maybe a little for the respect he had for the man especially to keep his cool under the circumstances. Eames had had some experiences in dream worlds but it was by far the worst he had ever been in.
“A little uncomfortable?” Arthur asked but didn’t expect an answer. It was like they were walking on glass, only a few steps away before it all completely fell apart. He leaned into Eames for a moment before pulling back and turning to face the door, the brief contact enough for the moment.
"I just wish there wasn't an entire pack of those things lined up for us behind this door."
“Thanks for the encouragement. This is crazy, that is what it is.” Arthur took a deep breath and pulled open the door, gun and flashlight raised, expecting the worst.
The room was a bedroom, dark and dusty. It was clear of creatures and Eames let out a breath he was holding. He didn't want to move anywhere this time, not having to deal with another head trauma or a blood spattered corpse.
"We're leaving this shithole after this," he muttered, and leaned his back against the doorway to rest and calm his breath. He heard a rustle from the living room, getting louder and louder, and Eames turned his head to see if anyone was coming. A figure approached in the hallway and Eames took a few steps towards it.
"Hi there."
Raising his gun, he shot at the similar looking thing, as the one on the street, until all of his bullets were out. They weren't so bad after all, good shots to the chest, so he didn't mind dreaming up a bullet clip to load his handgun with.
Arthur leaned back against the door, not moving when he heard the movement, and then watched at Eames after he had shot the burned, twisted projection. He cringed before pushing off of the door and stepping into the room, already looking for more clues.
“And then I’m going to take down the bastard who thought it would be a good idea to blackmail us into this shithole in the first place,” Arthur stated, as he dug through one of the drawers. Finding nothing that could be of use, he moved to the next, where he found a brochure. “Then I’m going to have a stiff drink and go on vacation.”
He picked up the brochure and inspected it, reading ‘Silent Hill’ across the top. He waved it over his shoulder and continued to search the desk for anything else. “Have you heard of this place before?”
"No, I haven't," Eames shook his head after laughing at Arthur's plans while discovering the walls that were decayed and rotting from the upper edges. "It could be this place. It's silent. Excluding the things that surround us. It's on a hill. Well, actually not. We can't be sure. Perhaps it's where all of these arguments and mayhem started."
Eames turned to look at Arthur bending over on various things and he smiled again, laughing at himself before turning back. He didn't want to go and disturb him although it felt like Eames could always get the best performance out of him, so instead he wondered what they could find in Jack's Inn.
"You done, love?"
Arthur snorted lightly in amusement as Eames rambled on about why the place could be Silent Hill, contradicting all of his own points in the process. He straightened, dropping the brochure on the desk and sliding the drawer closed when he didn’t find anything else. He sauntered over to Eames’ side and raised an eyebrow at the pet name.
“Yeah, I’m done. There doesn’t seem to be anything in this room that we can use, unless you want to read over a handful of notes about fishing,” Arthur shrugged as he came to a stop. “We should head over to Jack’s Inn then, shouldn’t we? It seems like our only lead.”
With confirmation on Eames' part, they reached outside without a fight with any beings.
"We could've used the brochure though. Because I have no idea where Jack's Inn is," Eames spoke and felt oddly casual about the situation, especially being in the fog again where he had felt uncomfortable. He was getting to terms with that they needed to finish the job before getting out of there, and it was the only thing they could do.
"But I'm sure there are plenty of maps out to share. This looks like a complex place," Eames said, then didn't realize that he was spelling out the letters of 'complex' out loud.
Arthur walked beside Eames, listening to him talk. It broke the eerie silence of the street and listening to him was soothing. He smiled when Eames started to spell but didn’t say anything because he didn’t want to ruin the moment. He watched the streets carefully, watching for any sign of movement and any clues as to where they were heading. He looked ahead, frowning slightly.
“I think that puts the idea of ‘the edge of the world’ in a new light,” Arthur muttered as they came up on a place where the road just seemed to drop off into nothingness.
Eames stayed off the cliff but was highly intrigued by the nature of the dream. He smirked at Arthur's comment and tried to have another glance at the bottomless pit. "Interesting."
He looked around and wondered how they were ever going to finish the task on time. The thought of the mark having a fit without them even taking another step had him worried. "Let's take this route. Carroll Street?"
He walked on it for a time while continuously having new questions to try and figure out.
"Why would he dream up an entire town?"
Arthur kicked a rock off into the pit, cocking his head to the side as he watched it disappear into the fog. Where they a symbol for something, did they mean something? He wondered for a moment, because he had never seen cliffs like that in a dreamscape before.
“Yeah, might as well,” Arthur nodded and turned to go down the other street, memorizing the path they had taken. “Why not? Some people have too much to hide within a single building, so making a town is easier. It’s easier to hide in and who knows, this may even be a real place... minus the creatures.”
Eames looked at him in amusement while walking. "The creatures might as well exist. That’s the clever part. They are the humans of the town. Don't you think?"
“Maybe, who knows but our mark really?” Arthur found himself agreeing.
A chill went down Eames’ spine for the thought of that, and even more so when a figure approached them from the side. It looked more natural except for the two legs in place of its head.
"Whoah!" Eames took a few steps back just to look at the being that waved its, upper feet he guessed, up in the air as it stepped forward.
"Um, Arthur?" He questioned in amazement. He had never seen such imagination although it reminded him of a statue he had once seen. Eames didn't hesitate to shoot it when it reached closer, spending four bullets on it before it writhed and died.
Arthur aimed his gun when the new, grotesque creature came at them but Eames seemed ready to take care of it. Arthur really didn’t know what to make of the creatures but he knew that there had to be something to them.
“I’ve never seen anything like this, I don’t even know what to think of it,” he admitted as he crouched down beside the fallen creature.
“At least they’re easy to kill if you shoot them a couple of times,” Arthur mussed as he straightened and checked his own gun out of habit.
“A couple of times,” Eames laughed, for he was never sure if any of the creatures they had met had actually died as they still writhed after they had shot them.
Eames saw a bigger building on the left, capital letters informing ‘Brookhaven Hospital’. "Oh. We could find some town guides there. I'll go, okay? You stay put for any creatures in sight."
He held his hand out to take the flash light and smiled with a confident leer knowing that with it whatever did he say Arthur would usually agree on. Arthur opened his mouth, ready to shoot Eames' idea down, but closed it after a second thought. He sighed, knowing better than to argue.
"Be careful then," he muttered as he turned back to face the street.
Eames walked to the doorway and sneered at the door being unlocked. He went straight to the reception desk to find some brochures of the hospital but they weren't of any help. He traced the room with the flashlight and saw a framed map of the supposed town. Hitting the light to the corner of the map, he read Silent Hill and hummed smugly. "I guess that will work."
He walked over to it, dropped it down and retrieved the map that he started to neatly fold. Only then he heard a screeching noise coming from the hallway.
Outside, Arthur listened for the tell tale signs that something was coming, picking up the sound of something shuffling and a faraway howl. He tightened his grip on his gun, waiting patiently for Eames' return. It wasn't long before he heard a growl and he spun around to face a mangled, gory mess that resembled a dog. He swore as it leapt and shot it, causing it to fall midjump. He shot it again for good measure and hoped they finished the job soon.
Eames pointed the flashlight to the direction of the noise, seeing a figure stretch out its limbs. As he walked closer, aiming his gun at it, he was startled to find it almost identical to a nurse. It had no face but a pipe it was holding tight in its grip. Eames was so engaged in the reason why it was there that he didn't notice it wobbling forward and swinging its steel pipe to his head.
"Bloody hell!"
Eames quickly recovered, adrenaline making him angry. He shot the being fast onto the tiled floor before he noticed another, a different nurse make its way to him. He had another bullet case show up when two other nurses dragged their pipes along to reach him.
After he spent the last of his ammo taking two nurses down, Eames decided not to dream up anything in the dream anymore since it seemed to only encourage the beasts. He grabbed one of the nurses’ abandoned steel pipes to smash the last ones -at that moment- to the ground, maybe being too personal to be reasonable. Wiping his bloody face to his sleeve, Eames swore even though he felt lucky. The map was safe in his grasp, a little blood spattered, and he made a run for it back outside.
Arthur checked the clip in his gun, keeping a close eye on the streets. Knowing that the creatures were easily taken down gave him a sense of relief because even if they were twisted creatures of their marks imagination, they didn’t have much power. He had the urge to create some kind of a plan but that was something he had to ignore. The dream world, it seemed, was designed to lead people to a specific end and it didn’t matter how they tried to go around it.
Arthur slid the clip back into his gun and turned his attention back to the hospital, waiting for the doors to open. He didn’t know how long he could wait there before he had to go in and make sure that Eames was okay. He was saved that fate when the doors opened and his partner was there, blood spattered, but Eames didn’t look worse for wear. Arthur sauntered over to him, eyebrows drawn down in question.
“I like the new look, are you going for just murdered a family of four or that rack of lamb didn’t stand a chance against my butcher knife?” Arthur asked lightly as he raised a hand and wiped some of the smudged blood off of his face. “How did you manage?”
"I'm going for the hot faceless nurse tried to smash my head off," Eames casually stated, though Arthur's touch made him forget about the incident.
"You have any fetishes I need to know about?" He smirked while wiping the drying blood off his face. He was sure the amount and anger of the creatures had increased and he wanted to spend no time on finding it out.
“Yes, I have a blood, guts and a killer kink that you just set off excellently,” Arthur responded with the slightest inflection of sarcasm.
"They're getting stronger. I wanna get this done. Let's keep moving, yeah?" Eames didn't bother to listen to an answer when two figures were screeching far behind them.
Arthur dropped his hand from Eames’ face and nodded at his question. He turned his attention to the creatures down the street, listening to their distinctive noise.
“What way do we have to head to?” He asked, wondering if Eames had already checked the map.
Eames’ smile faded a bit as he listened to Arthur. The feelings he had were coming alive at the strangest moment. "Oh yeah, this way."
He pointed towards the direction where they had been heading without the map. "You wanna check it out?"
Starting to walk the road, Eames handed over the map and continued. "It should be a turn to the right after this one if I remember correctly. There should be a park across from it so we'll know."
He looked around constantly, making sure that they were safe, but he also kept looking at Arthur; trying to block out the thoughts from his head. He then laughed when he saw a weak neon sign of a poorly dressed lady on their left.
"Heaven's Night. I wonder if there are any creatures dancing around in there."
Arthur took the map with a small hum of noise. He traced over it quickly, taking in all the roads and labeled buildings. Putting all of his focus on the map, he trusted Eames to keep a look out. He dreamed up a pen and circled Jack's Inn, before crossing out the end of the road on Rendell Street. He chewed on the end of the pen as he memorized the layout of the Southern side of Silent Hill. He looked up when Eames spoke and blinked up at the neon sign. Arthur folded the map up, grabbed the pen from his teeth and clipped it to the paper.
"Now that is a mental image that is going to haunt me," Arthur chuckled as he put the map into the back pocket of his pants. He glanced over at Eames before looking back at the street.
After turning right at Pete's Bowl-O-Rama, having dodged three creatures until then, Eames decided to speak up.
"Recently," he looked at his friend's way - he considered Arthur a friend, he would count his life on his hands - and built up the courage to take it if Arthur rejected him. "I've had these odd feelings."
Eames looked again and felt more comfortable to hold that information inside. He looked away. "Never mind."
Walking fast, they were soon finding Jack's Inn. "There we are."
Arthur frowned as Eames started to say something before he cut himself off. He slowed down, wondering what he had been going to say. He pursed his lips but didn't say anything until they were in front of the Inn. He wasn't one to drop an issue. He grabbed Eames' arm, stopping him from heading into the Inn. He had an odd sense that he should’ve had been focusing on what they would find in the building, but it wasn't his main concern.
"Eames, you can't tell me to 'never mind' when whatever you have to say seems important. What is it?"
"It's no big matter. It doesn't concern you," Eames confirmed with a confident look to assure him it wasn't of importance before batting his hand away and resting his hand on the door knob. He sighed inside as he wanted to tell him but the environment was the least thrilling to do so. He lifted their flashlight to a good level before opening the door to see in case there was no light and browsing on anything that was there.
“Right, okay,” Arthur gave a soft sigh, dropping his hands to his weapon and putting his attention on the door. If it was important, he hoped Eames would tell him later. He pushed the thoughts away because they were a distraction that he couldn’t afford. He waited a moment before sliding past Eames and stepping into the Inn, his weapon drawn. The room looked clear but he knew that looks could be deceiving. Eames followed him, tightening his grip on the steel pipe.
The lobby was fairly lit and Eames spent his time admiring the eerie feel of the place before he walked into the dining hall. The mark surely knew how to fill a dream.
There was a loud shriek that startled Eames and made him immediately try to cover his ears. Arthur gave a hiss as the noise tore through the building, an ungodly screech that sent a chill down his spine.
Eames didn't hide his fear this time but shouted at Arthur to come with him. He usually got things done alone but he didn't want to face whatever was in there on his own.
Arthur’s grip tightened on his weapon and he shot off after Eames. It seemed like the only sensible option to go after whatever was set against them in the dream world if they wanted to finish the job. It was easier to head straight into the dark depths of the Inn knowing that it was all a dream, but it didn't quell the slight burn of fear in Arthur’s mind: there was something about the place.
The back of the hall was dark and most likely the source of the noise came from there. Eames didn't want to point the light towards it but soon did, and big, rusted mechanical legs clanked against the linoleum floor as it sprinted towards them.
TWO - THREE