Fic: Janus, Inception, Arthur/Eames, R - Part 2

[wayoffbase]

After it’s over, Charlotte takes off.

Eames has no idea how he makes it home, but he does. He even manages to make it inside, upstairs, through a shower, and into bed. There’s no one around. And then he sleeps, for over twelve hours. And then he sits through another six hours of ignored (obviously ignored) phone calls before giving up and going back to bed again.

He doesn’t see her before they go back to school. She takes off a week later, not far (just to the other side of the city) but far enough. He doesn’t try to see her, worried that it will only make things worse. And then she goes to France, with Rosie. She writes to him a few times, and he replies, but. Their letters trail off, during the year.

Eames goes back to Connor, despite the guilt churning in his stomach. And it must be palpable, the guilt and the confusion, and Eames knows Connor can see it, can tell something is up, but he doesn’t ask, and for that Eames is grateful. He doesn’t really want to talk about it. But then, it turns out, they don’t talk at all, and Eames knows Connor wants a proper relationship, and he’s never really been able to give him that, and probably never will be able to. And it hasn’t been a problem until now, they’ve made their way along just fine, but Eames isn’t surprised when he comes back to his room one day to find Connor waiting, saying we need to talk.

So they break up. Eames isn’t sad, really, or surprised. Connor deserves to be happy, and he’ll find that with someone else. The only thing Eames regrets, really, at this point, is that he can’t tell Charlotte about it.

He even tries writing to Rosie. And they’ve never been close, but he’s getting desperate. All she can tell him, though, is that you guys had sex and, I dunno, you were drunk and she regrets it? And Eames has never hated the English language more (what do you mean? She regretted being drunk or the sex or both), but Rosie won’t say anything else, and he guesses Charlotte told her not to. So he waits, in silence, for the summer to come around again. Maybe once they’re in the same city again they can talk properly.

It doesn’t happen, at least not right away. Charlotte goes to France again, first, with Rosie, and then to Manchester, of all places, to visit another school friend. She doesn’t come back until the beginning of August, and by that point Eames has had enough time, both at home and away from her, to move from confused to guilty, to seriously fucking angry. And it’s not like she’s even coming back for him, not really. His mother is getting married again, finally, after all the planning, and Charlotte is coming back to be a bridesmaid.

He doesn’t see her until the wedding day (which is in London, after all, but in a different church than the one his parents got married in). Well, he sees her, but they don’t talk. She comes to the rehearsal dinner, and then spends the whole night avoiding him (an impressive feat, considering they had to stand opposite each other, and then sit at the same table for hours on end). And then comes the wedding, and she tries the same tricks again (and she must be seriously distracted, to think she can play the same tricks twice), and Eames is so sick of this, and so he finally corners her, in the coat room of all places.

And then he yells at her, and she yells back, and then they have sex on a pile of coats.

Overall, Eames feels that went rather well.

And it does solve their problems, in the end, once they’ve recovered enough to talk rather than yell. And this probably isn’t a good idea, but at the moment, post coital on a pile of coats, Eames doesn’t really care. The sex is great, and it’s nice to know all those years of staring weren’t all in his mind. And, as he tells Charlotte, several times, he is a girl, sort of. In many ways that count (although not all of them, obviously). And she seems to be okay with that. Sexually, at least, it works out okay.

They go back to the club, again, in the meat packing district. They dance, and drink, and have fun, although this time, Charlotte goes as a girl. They don’t go back to the alley, instead using some of Charlotte’s generous allowance from her father to book hotel rooms. It’s a great summer, and this time, Eames is sure it’ll continue to be a great year.

And it is. It’s a wonderful year. They go back to separate schools, of course, but all it means is that Eames spends all his free time, all his holidays, back in London. Charlotte visits whenever she can, too, and everyone loves her (partially because she’s a girl). It isn’t ideal, but it suits them well enough. It’s a lot better than not talking at all. It also means that, when she visits, she brings him clothes, and no one thinks it strange (she’s a girl, of course she’d have suitcases full of clothes). She brings her suit, sometimes, because they’ve found that works for them.

Summer that year isn’t really that big of a change. They spend it much as they spent the year, only instead of being miles it’s mere minutes between them. And then they go back to school, their final year, and continue on in the same manner. And it’s still good, it’s still going well, when they graduate and head into another summer.

It’s going to be different, after this summer, but for the better. Both of them are headed for Oxford, and they’ll be together all the time. It’s going to be perfect. Everything is going just as it should.

Which is, of course, when everything picks to go completely wrong.

Charlotte is headed for France, again, as she nearly always is. She has a grandmother there, apparently, who, like all grandmother’s, wants to see her favourite granddaughter on a regular basis. She’s only supposed to be gone for a week.

And then, at the end of that week, Eames gets a phone call.

Apparently, France is so lovely this time of year that Charlotte has decided to stay. But she misses him, and she wants to talk to him (and there’s an ominous phrase if there ever was one), and so she says she’ll send tickets, and he can come visit her in Paris.

And Eames hates Paris. A lot. He’s never really been able to let go of that distaste he developed for it, all those years ago when his father left him to go there. He hasn’t been back since, and he doesn’t really want to. And Charlotte knows this, so she must have a good reason for inviting him. Besides, it’s silly. Paris is a lovely city, and Eames is being irrational. Although he can’t quite help but think that something is still wrong.

So he goes to Paris. And he’s right, of course. It is lovely. Crowded, because it’s tourist season, but still. Lovely.

Charlotte’s grandmother is lovely too. Her home is beautiful, and she is nothing less than perfectly welcoming. She even lets them sleep in the same room (and in fact it’s Charlotte who hesitates at this, waiting a moment, flinching a little, before agreeing). But other than that, everything is fine.

Eames is set to stay for three weeks. After that, Charlotte will stay on for a week longer, and then they’ll meet up in London, where they will, presumably, continue on as they had been, as they always have in previous summers. And then, they’ll go to Oxford in the autumn, and they’ll have all the freedom to be together they’ve never had before.

This is the plan Eames has in his head.

This is not what ends up happening.

It takes Eames a week and a half to realise this. Before that point he’d been worried, but ultimately too happy about seeing Charlotte to mind. But then, ten days into his visit, Eames meets Sophie.

Sophie is a friend of Charlotte’s from when they were young. She lives next door to her grandmother, and they’ve played together every summer since Charlotte began visiting. Eames wonders why he’s never heard about her before.

It doesn’t take him long to figure it out. In fact, it happens about the same time that Charlotte tells him she isn’t going to Oxford, that she’s going to study ballet in Paris, become a dancer. And then, when he goes for a walk, just to process, to figure out how this will work, fit in with their original plans, he comes back (as he was inevitably wont to do) and sees them, Charlotte and Sophie, together in the garden.

And it’s not - they’re not really doing anything, not really. But they’re sitting, pressed together on a garden bench, hands entwined. Charlotte is resting her head on Sophie’s shoulder, and Sophie’s arms are wrapped around her. It’s perfectly innocent, not necessarily sexual at all. But Eames knows that look on Charlotte’s face and, although he doesn’t know Sophie, can’t read her as well as his best friend, he can guess what her expression means. There might not be something going on, not yet, but there will be.

Eames doesn’t leave, doesn’t run back to London. He stays, for the next week and a half, just as he was supposed to. He and Charlotte talk about it, and they agree to part ways. She is his friend, and Eames just wants her to be happy. Wants her to have everything she’s ever wanted (wants that to be him). They say they’ll stay in contact, stay friends, but Eames isn’t sure that they will. They certainly won’t be as close as they were before.

The night before he leaves, Eames has the strangest dream.

Eames has never been one for dreams before, not really. Most of his creativity (in dance, in his recently discovered love for art - and that’s one thing Eames does love about Paris, is the art) takes place in the waking world, and he knows it’s odd, that he should be so creative and yet not dream (or not remember them, at least, because he’s pretty sure he doesn’t have a personality disorder), but that’s how it’s always been. He has dreams that he does remember, but not often. Usually after times of stress or high amounts of activity.

This dream, though, is different.

He’s in a hotel room. It isn’t one he’s seen before - it’s nice, though, a sort of amalgamation of hotel rooms he remembers and features he’s never seen. There are some features of his home in London, his old school, Charlotte’s bedroom. And he knows this is a dream. It feels perfectly real, but just the same, he knows it isn’t.

There are several clues, of course, but the major one is this; when he is awake, he isn’t biologically female. In this dream, he is.

And he’s had dreams before, where he’s been someone else - it’s common enough. But in this dream, when he goes over to the mirror that has appeared on the wall, he can see that he isn’t just any woman. He’s Sophie. Tiny and freckled and blonde, with great curves. He hasn’t the foggiest clue what she looks like under her clothes (and he is nude, mostly, in this dream, except for a pair of knickers and a bra Eames recognises, not as Sophie’s but as Charlotte’s), but he’s surprised to realise that he’s observed her enough to know that when she laughs, she always uses her left hand to cover her mouth. When her fringe falls in her face, she always tosses her head to get rid of it. Her left shoulder is higher than her right, and her right leg slightly shorter than her left, just enough to be noticeable. And he knows this is right, that he’s got her exactly right. But clinically so, in the way he, as Eames, sees her. As a rival, with exaggerated flaws.

And, as if that thought triggers it, her appearance begins to change. He is still Sophie, but there is something subtly different about her now. Her features are slightly blurred, softened. She’s lit up, just a little. Her features are the same, and yet at the same time they are better, her hair brighter, her eyes bluer. And he realises that this is how Charlotte would see her (and he, of course, can’t know that, can’t get inside Charlotte’s mind, but he knows how he would want Charlotte to see him, how he wants to look in her eyes, and this is it).

And then, he wonders. He knows how Charlotte would want to see him, but what would she want to see?

He thinks of everything she’s ever liked. She likes blonde hair, he knows that. Longer hair, too, with a slight wave, so she could grab at it, get her fingers tangled in it (as she’d told him one night, when they were drunk, and Eames had never wanted anything more than to be able to grow his hair long, to please her). She likes dyeing her hair, so Eames makes himself bleach blonde (it’d give them something to talk about). He thinks of the posters on her walls, of the girls and guys she’s admitted to liking, of the clothes she’s bought him, over the years. Hints she’s dropped, and he’s surprised he remembers all this, in the end. He alters every aspect of himself, until there’s nothing left - no Eames, no Jamie. Some Sophie. And he’s crying, by the end of it, but it looks good on this face, this tall, willowy blonde with delicate features. Eames is sure Charlotte would like it. And then he thinks, why couldn’t I just eat some ice cream, watch some girly movies, what the hell is this? And that thought isn’t his, not really, but it is something this blonde would think.

He decides to call her Emily. And there is something of him in her, in the end. She is part of him, anyway. She’s everything he wants to be at this moment (although not forever). She’s what he would have to be, he thinks, bitterly and stupidly, if Charlotte were to want him at all.

And then, out of curiosity, he changes into Charlotte. And he only glances at her, briefly, for no more than a second, and all the mirrors (and he’s collected quite a few, can see himself from every angle) shatter, and he wakes up, gasping, shaking in their shared room. Charlotte is nowhere to be seen.

Eames goes back to London without ever seeing her again. And he keeps tabs on her, and they talk once in a while, but it’s never the same. He watches her success in the dance world, goes to see some of her performances.

And, instead of going to Oxford, Eames joins the army.

He knows exactly why, although he doesn’t care to examine his motives too closely. But if he can’t be one thing, he decides, it’s time to completely reinvent himself, change completely, be something new. So he joins the army.

Much to his surprise, he absolutely loves it. He’d love it more if his instructors could take a joke, of course, but other than that it’s surprisingly perfect. Besides, giving up Oxford couldn’t have been a more perfect way to give his father a coronary. But it’s the best thing he could have done, the best way to reinvent himself. He gets fitter than he’s ever been in his life, he makes friends, he feels like every advert for the army experience ever.

And when he’s asked to try out for the SAS, despite his lack of Air Force background and thus slimmer chances of getting in, he does. And he goes through the training, the interrogation, everything. He excels. Out of four hundred, Eames is one of twenty nine who make it through every stage.

And then, when he comes out of interrogation, there is a beautiful woman waiting for him.

“James Eames,” she says, and she’s French, of course she is, and knowing Eames luck she’s Parisian, and she’s going to ruin his life, “how do you feel about dreams?”



*

The beautiful French woman’s name is Mallorie Miles. She is a scientist, a chemist, and a researcher at The University of Notre Dame. She works with her father, a Professor Miles, and Dominic Cobb, an architecture PhD student. They are, as fantastic and impossible as it sounds, researching dreams. And, well, that doesn’t sound too out of the ordinary, just like ordinary psychology, but the involvement of an architect, a Professor of Architecture, and a chemist (and no psychologists) does. But what they are doing, more specifically, is researching shared dreaming, lucid dreaming, the ability to enter someone else’s dreams, and what they can do there. Their focus is perhaps more on this technology’s use in medicine, for the recovery of lost memories, and potentially in the court system for evidence. And, apparently some combination of his test scores, psych profile, and some sort of quality intrinsic to him means they want him to join them. In Paris. Fucking Paris.

He says yes, for some odd reason. Although it isn’t odd, really, in the end. He might run in to Charlotte, might hate Paris again, something might go wrong. But it’s dreams, and dreams are fascinating, and he has this idea, in his head. Something he remembers from two years ago, from the last time he was in Paris. Something about dreams that he wants to try.

So he goes to Paris. He isn’t the only one. Out of the twenty nine successful SAS candidates, he and one other, a female air force pilot called Elizabeth Hart, go with Mallorie Miles to Paris. They’re also accompanied by a contingent of people from the upper echelons of the SAS, presumably to keep an eye on them both (especially Eames, apparently - his superior officer takes him aside before they leave, tells him “You might be right for this job, might’ve done perfectly well on the tests, but there’s something not quite right about you, Eames. I’ll be keeping an eye on you”). And Eames isn’t an idiot, he wouldn’t have got this far (in life, to Oxford, in the SAS) if he was, and he can see why the army would want to be involved in this project. What he can’t see is why the Miles family would let them, why they would have contacted the army (or, he supposes, the government). He knows what they’ll want to do with this research, can see its application both to the SAS and to the wider army. The interrogation he went through would be improved a hundred times by the ability to invade people’s dreams, and what better way to train soldiers for the army than in dreams, where they can stay for as long as they need (or until they have to eat, until their physical body starts making demands on them), go anywhere in the world, try things that aren’t possible in the waking world amongst the confines of gravity and physics and reality. He can see that this might be used in the court system, eventually, but it probably won’t reach the medical arena for years yet. It’ll stay within the army, top secret. They won’t have much control over their research, not now that the secret services (from Britain, France, most of the UN, and this is going to be a jurisdictional nightmare) are involved.

He shouldn’t have underestimated Mallorie Miles (or Mal, as she insists he call her), as it turns out.

While it is true that the government, the United Nations, several armies, secret services, and other numerous initialled organizations are involved, largely due to Notre Dame’s need for government funding, Mallorie has found equally as many ways to avoid these groups.

She gives them what they need, is perfectly helpful. She gives them exactly what they need.
And then she uses her considerable charm and French beauty to con the military out of one of their three PASIVs, takes it back to her apartment in Paris, and does as she pleases.

This is where they make all their major discoveries, out from under the eye of the military, the strict discipline and solemn and constant realization that, whatever they do, it’s going to be used for purposes that it never should, that they never intended it for. And Eames’ loyalty is to the military (or at least it should be), but he doesn’t agree with what they are doing - he probably never will. So he goes with Mal, when she leaves, and him and Dom and her sit in her living room, and hook up to the PASIV, and explore.

This is how they discover the levels, dreams within dreams. This is how they figure out how to get information out of people, how to look for clues, how to ask the projections for help. This is how they figure out how to hide things, too, how safes and guards and locked doors can both protect and point to information. How they can militarize (and its Eames who comes up with this term, hilariously and ironically) their subconscious.

This is not when they discover limbo. That comes later, much later, and Eames is not involved. They won’t go any deeper than two levels, because despite Dom’s pleading, Mal’s wide-eyed enthusiasm, Eames won’t let them. He’ll shoot them out of the dream if he has to (and he’s an excellent shot). And he does, a few times. And they are angry, always, but in the end they always move on, to something new and exciting. Eames is terrified to think of what will happen to them when he isn’t around anymore, when the military get bored of research and move back to a military base.

This is where Eames tries out his idea for the first time.

He’s been thinking about it, on and off, since the first time anyone mentioned lucid dreaming to him. And he knows it could be useful, that the military could use it, would use it in so many ways, but he doesn’t want to show them. Doesn’t want to have to fill out one of those reports, the ones that document every stage of their discoveries. Besides, he doesn’t even know if it will work, if he can actually be anyone else, or, if he can, if he can become anyone other than women. Other than Sophie, than Charlotte. And he doesn’t want to become them, not in dreams, not anymore. He doesn’t know what would happen, and he doesn’t want to find out.

But Mal and Dom, they won’t judge him. They try everything, can try anything, and if it fails they’ll understand, and if it works, if he can show them, he knows they’ll understand (he hopes) too.

So they go under, after a bad day, a day of being shot and killed and torn apart. They’ve shared all their discoveries with the military, they have to, and they’ve been involved with the simulations, monitoring them and creating new things, developing their ideas. They’ve watched their ideas twisted into something awful. And Eames can’t say anything, or he won’t, because they have been watching him closely, just like they said they would. And he’s supposed to be in support of this, supposed to follow orders. He’s in the military, SAS. It’s what he does. And Mal, at least, has learned that there’s no point in protesting, and although she has her own private rebellions, her passive aggressive resistance campaign, she can’t do anything else. Sometimes that’s enough. But mostly it isn’t. And Dom, Dom will try to reason with them, give them intellectual arguments, try to present things in such a way that they can’t be used for military purposes, that their only sensible use is as whatever Dom or Mal or Miles or sometimes even Eames has originally suggested they be used for. And Miles tries this tack, sometimes, but he’s more realistic than the three of them, a lot older and less idealistic. Although Eames knows he isn’t completely passive, and that whatever he decides to do to get these men out of his university will work, eventually, even if it takes time. And that patience seems to carry him through, because he never joins them at the end of the day in Mal’s apartment. If he has coping mechanisms, they are not the same, and no one has any idea about what they are.

But for Eames, at least, and for Mal (Dom, Eames suspects, is there because Mal is, because he would follow her wherever she went, and she would do the same for him, and although he does try to defend their ideas, he is fascinated enough by the ideas they are exploring, in the end, for his love of discovery to overcome his fear and his need for an escape) going under at the end of the day, revelling in pure creation, pure exploration, is what they have to do. When they are in the dreamscape, they can do anything. Eames’ love of art gives him endless inspiration, and Mal’s upbringing in Paris means she has plenty to bring to the table also. It is in these dreams that Eames first forges anything, the classic Birth of Venus by Botticelli (in the same dream where he will forge a real woman, lucidly, for the first time). The birth of a woman seems an oddly appropriate subject for this dream, for what he really wants to become within them, and the mythical topic seems perfect for this environment, mythological and make-believe in its own right. It’s a painting he knows well, has loved for a long time, and it seems like nothing to imitate the brush-strokes, pull the painting out of thin air piece by piece, just as if he were creating it in real time, in the real world. And, he thinks, that could be another application - lucid dreaming as a learning tool. The amount of time you have in a dream is exponentially greater than what you have in the outside world, and so the amount to be learned, in such a short time, could be phenomenal. And he makes a note of this, to remember it once he wakes up, but for now, the forgery of the painting is complete, and he needs to move on to what he really wants to show Dom and Mal, before he loses his nerve.

Both of them are distracted, busy inspecting their environs, the confines of the dream. Mal has been waiting anxiously to see what he’s making on his canvas, alternating between hovering over Dom and hovering behind Eames. He’s been foiling her, though - every time she looks at the canvas, it becomes blurred. It probably helps that Mal hates Botticelli, and thus is not very familiar with the painting, or at least not enough to be able to pick out every detail before Eames is done with it. But he’s finished now, and they can look if they choose, but he’d rather show them something else.

Sure enough, Mal looks over, always aware of those around her (Dom most of all, and her father, but Eames now, too, to a certain extent. And she’s better in dreams, too, able to sense people from anywhere, no matter what they are doing), and sees that he’s completed whatever he was working on. So she comes over to look, curious as always. And he’s partially hidden behind the canvas, and the nature of dreams means he can create a mirror in his painting, which he suspects will help him out. It did last time, in that dream in Paris the last time. But he doesn’t want to destroy this painting, so he creates a mirror in front of the painting. It hovers in the air, originally, but he knows that anything too odd will draw the attention of the projections, and Mal’s (for that’s whose dream they are in) projections are just like her, clever and subtle and vicious if they don’t like something, and they won’t like a floating mirror, especially not one like this, a hideous mix of genres and decades. So he gives it a stand, at least, and adjusts it so it at least is plain, anonymous about its identity - it’ll be less of a distraction that way, easier for him to focus on the complexities of forging an entire person. And then he watches himself, in the mirror, and feels around for that slip, that shift that he felt, even in an ordinary dream. He feels it to a lesser extent in pulling paintings out of nowhere, that initial moment where he first catches the essence of the thing, and that final moment where he realises he’s got it, he’s achieved what he set out to do. But it’s going to be different, becoming someone else, forging (and he supposes that’s what it is, really, it’s forging, just like the painting) another person. And he hasn’t got a lot of time, just the time it’ll take Mal to cross the room, and so he searches around for someone he knows well, but not Charlotte, not Sophie, not someone he have an awful emotional response to. It’ll be easier to get it right if he knows them, though. And so, as Mal approaches, he shifts, adjusts not only his appearance but his mind set, his movements, everything about him.

When Mal rounds the painting, coming at him from the other side, she screams.

He can understand her reaction. Because he thinks he’s done a good job. His hair is longer, darker, curly. His eyes are dark, too. He’s tall and slender and curvy and female. He looks like a twenty something beautiful French woman. He looks like Mal. Perfectly put together and flawless.



But he waits for her to notice. He is Mal, but he knows, he can see that there’s not something quite right about her, at least not in his eyes. This is Mal, but not his Mal. Not Mal’s Mal, either. This is Dom’s Mal. Beautiful and put together and gorgeous all the time. Slightly too perfect. And she’s starting to notice now, looking at him with her head tilted to the side, curious as she always is, a little confused. He tilts his head, mirroring her, and she can see it more, now, how slightly odd this version of her is. And then she reaches out, and touches his/her face, and Dom choses that moment to reach them, circle around the painting. And then he stops, sucks in a breath. And the two of them turn to face him, almost identical expressions on their faces (because he can guess exactly how Mal’s face would look, now, amused and still a little confused). And Dom just stares at them both, silent.

It is, as always, Mal who speaks first. “Explain, please,” she says, her voice accented as always, stronger now that she is a little lost.

“It’s not about forging you, about forging a person,” he tells her, “it’s about how you see a person, or what you want to see.” And then he says to Dom “This is how you see Mal. It is not how she sees herself.”

They are both fascinated. They ask him every question they can think of, every question he’s ever had. He can’t answer them all, can’t even answer most of them. He shows them a few other people, Dom and Miles and some of the army personnel. Some of them are better than others - Dom, in particular (or the way first Mal, and then Miles, see him, which is an eye opening experience for both of them, hilariously so), Miles slightly less so. He doesn’t know his fellow army colleagues as well, but he can do a fair impression of Elizabeth Hart. He mostly falls back on how he sees them, or how Mal or Dom see them. His one attempt at anything else ends in spectacular failure, and he spends a terrifying minute stuck between too people, unable to focus on anything or become anything else until, with a sudden snap, he finds his way back to himself.

And he should have known (and he did know, in the end) that they would react this way, Mal’s scientific background and natural curiosity, and Dom’s continual desire to push the boundaries of this new world of theirs would allow them to be open minded (and they are open minded, anyway, literally, having been inside each other’s heads) and accept anything he has to show them, even something as admittedly odd as becoming a woman in a dream. And he’s going to have to show the SAS, the military, the government, and so on, of course. They’ll leap all over this discovery. The possibilities are nearly endless. But there’s more to it for him, obviously, and he won’t be showing anyone else that part, because it’s private and they wouldn’t understand. He only hopes it won’t show through when he gives a demonstration, that he’s a good enough liar that he can fabricate an origin story for this discovery, can avoid telling them the real story. But he knows Dom and Mal, now, he trusts them, they trust him (Mal more than Dom, instinctively), and so he feels he can tell them the real story, and show them the other part to this. Show them Emily.

He hasn’t even tried to become her again, not even when he’s been apparently alone in a dream world. He knows the dreamer will remember, or the subject will, and he doesn’t want that. He hasn’t even been her in a natural dream, which he still has, although with even less frequency than he did before. But he could forge her again, easily.

However, when he raises the subject, tells Mal and Dom he has something more to show them, he finds it rather more difficult than he had expected. He can see how she looked, and feel her in his mind, but he can’t quite grab the shift.

And it’s frustrating, and Mal and Dom look confused, and maybe a little worried, when nothing happens. But if the military has taught him anything, it’s how to wait, how to be patient. So he reaches out, searches around for the feeling. If it isn’t going to come with Emily (which is possible, she was part of a different time, and he felt differently, far more angry, far more discontent, than he does now), he’ll have to find it somewhere else. And he’s found that feeling is important to a forgery - the spirit of it, rather than the actuality. So he thinks about what he wants to achieve, how he feels about that, tries to recapture the feelings he used to have, back when he was happy, ensconced in heels and dresses and Charlotte’s bedroom.

He feels the shift that time, feels his features slip and slide just slightly, just shift the tiniest bit. And he doesn’t change much, leaves his essential features alone except for a slight softening, an increase to the curve of his jaw. He recalls all those days spent in front of the mirror, carefully shading in his eyes, lining his lips, highlighting his cheekbones. He remembers this one billboard he saw, an advert for Gucci, and pulls that woman’s hair, long and wavy and honey blonde, into the dream. He keeps his height, but creates curves, probably more extreme than a real woman would have, but this is what feels right, what he’s inspired to do. He keeps the shirt and jeans (grey t-shirt, blue jeans - civilian clothes only, once he leaves the University, once he’s outside the watch of the SAS) he was wearing before, but adjusts them to fit his frame. In a fit of whimsy, he adds a pair of black heels (classic Prada pumps) he’s seen Mal wear before, a pair of black wire framed glasses, sweeps his hair up into a bun. And then he looks in the mirror.

This girl is him, just as Emily was. But she is him as he is now, not as he was then. She looks just like him, just how he would have, perhaps, had he been born female.

And Mal looks at him differently, then, and he feels uncomfortable for a moment, as she watches him. And then she smiles, and her face changes, and she looks as though she understands, without him having to say a word. But Mal has always been perceptive, in that way and every way, both in the real world and this world.

Dom takes a little longer. He can obviously grasp that this is some sort of female version of Eames, and the sexual part of him is obviously enjoying Eames’s brand new curves. But it isn’t until he goes to speak, and Mal stops him, explains quietly what she understands to be the situation (and, as always, she is correct) that he fully seems to grasp everything. And then he looks a little uncomfortable, briefly, until Mal whispers something fiercely in French (which Eames does not understand, but he can grasp the general tone) and he relaxes. He still stares, a little, though.

Which is fine, actually. This body is beautiful, and Eames feels comfortable in it, has adjusted instantly to the new weight distribution, the bones in different places, the weight of his hair on his head. He likes the glasses, too, although he doesn’t think he’ll wear them all the time. This is him, as surely as his body in the waking world was him, and it’s a relief to be able to actualise all those years of wearing dresses and heels, of stuffing his gifted lingerie. This is better than anything, because in here, he can be whatever he wants to be, can be what he is, more to the point.

He doesn’t even realise how perfectly he fits into this body until hours later, when he realises, without even having to concentrate (as he often has to, with forgeries) he’s managed to hold this form, to move within it. And he guesses part of that is that he didn’t change much, but it’s also that this is his actual body, really. And Mal and Dom seem to see that, in the end, because they adjust to him like this quite quickly, they don’t even blink after mere minutes.

And then, when they go back up, he doesn’t realise, doesn’t notice entirely for at least quarter of an hour, when he goes to brush away hair that just isn’t there, adjust glasses that he no longer has. And Dom and Mal don’t notice, either, although they do double takes sometimes, turning to him and obviously expecting a female body where they are finding none. But he can tell the difference, now - they might be looking for someone biologically female, but they certainly aren’t looking for and not finding a lady. Which is almost irritating, in many ways. It’s nice to be seen as he is by those he loves (something he hasn’t experience in years, now), but apparently Dom’s ideas on how to treat a lady come from probably a combination of dating Mal, who is inordinately fond of chivalric traditions, and the fact that he apparently grew up in the nineteenth century. In the end, it takes something as utterly trivial and inane as the three of them falling asleep on the living room floor, happy and a little drunk, and waking up slumped together, the proximity making Eames’ biological sex very clear. And then, when they head back in to the University, and Eames, dressed in SAS uniform, goes to document his discovery, the way he moves in this environment, this uniform, seems to snap Dom out of it, and he does his best to return to normal.

And then they have to go under, and Eames has to give a practical demonstration of his new discovery. And he’s already made up some bullshit origin story for it, something about dreaming about being somebody else being a common experience, and so it stood to reason that in a lucid dream, one should be able to become someone else, and it’s no trouble to go on lying, to forge some inane forgeries, to be Dom, some of the military personnel, Miles. He shows them their perceptions of these people, never his own, although he of course tells them about this aspect (he puts in it to his report). And they all seem suitably impressed, ask a lot of the same questions Mal and Dom asked, watch him as he moves around, speaks, performs the roles. They get a few of the other researchers to try out some of the forgeries, but none of them seem to have quite the same grasp on the practice as he does. There is one girl, though, a psychology major and member of the French military, who is quite skilled, which stands to reason, in the end. But none of them are as good as Eames.

They spend hours under, hours in both the real and dream world, that day. Eames shows them every aspect of forging in the dream, both in terms of people and of specific objects. And this is something more people can do, but again, not very many of them can hold the level of detail required, especially not in a large dream, and they mostly end in collapse. But Mal can do this, is good at this part of forgery in a way she is not at forging people. Dom is not so talented. And it is this that leaves Dom at the University late into the night while Mal and Eames return to Mal’s apartment, and go under again.

They don’t go straight back, of course. Sleeping as a profession has many dangerous side effects, not including a screwed up sleep schedule. The danger of muscle atrophy (or even just general unfitness) from lying prone eighty per cent of the time, and the even higher danger of not realising how much danger you are in, on account of moving about in the dreamscape, is extremely high. Most of them have got into the habit of walking to and from the University, but Eames, both out of concern and out of a need to be fitter than usual on account of being military, has joined a local gym. Mal goes with him, most nights. They fight, often. Mal is fierce, and she often wins, despite his superior bulk. Or they run together. It’s some of the most fun Eames has had in ages.

After the gym, they eat. And this is another danger of staying under too long - they might eat in the dreams, might forget to eat in reality, might not eat for a very long time. And they aren’t getting any real nutrition in the dream. So when they can, they eat well. What they’re doing is certainly not the healthiest choice.

And then they go back to Mal’s apartment, take up their usual positions on the living room floor - Mal, propped against the sofa and Eames, probably because she finds it infinitely amusing, leaning back against an Eames chair. They go through the usual procedure, and then they go under.

This is Mal’s dream. This works for both of them, because Mal loves creating places (she should have been an architect, but she has no talent for drawing in the real world), and Eames needs to focus if he wants to forge anyone. And he knows this is why she wanted to come alone, was glad Dom wanted to stay behind, would have made some excuse even if Dom had wanted to come with them (and he would have acquiesced, as always). She wants to know more about this girl, about the side of him she’s never seen before. Curiosity. Eames knows there’s very little point in repeating the adage - besides, it would be hypocritical of him. Curiosity and willingness to explore is a large part of how he got here in the first place.

Mal has built them the shopping district near the University, the expensive one that Eames has always wanted to frequent, but never had the chance (or the money). She’s very good with detail, has advanced enough in the world of building dreams that she can hold such detail. Although, as always, her dream blurs at little at the edges, only just noticeable out of the corner of your eye (and only if you know what to look for). Eames knows that if he headed for those blurred edges, he’d walk and walk and eventually come out at the other end of the shopping district, looped around infinitely. And it wouldn’t seem strange, because he is asleep. Nothing looks out of the ordinary, he just can’t leave. And he feels that’s appropriate, even for an outdoor shopping district. Mal has managed to capture the essence of a shopping centre and its architecture (no windows, the particular quality of light, no clocks) that makes people stay for hours, lose track of time. The two states of mind are quite similar, dreamlike, and the movement of time in a dream is quite the same - it passes before you know it.

Not that it matters, for now. They can get as lost as they like, and when the Somnacin runs out, they’ll just wake up.

Mal seems to want to look at what appears, at first glance, to be a Prada store. But first she turns to look at him (because from what he can tell, Mal has made the unique alteration of populating the area with only female clothing stores), obviously waiting for him to change back into his female form.

As much to his surprise as hers, he already has. The slip is so natural, already, that he’d just adjusted to the dream environment, and, in part, to what Mal, as the dreamer, was looking for. Also, what he’d been looking for, been wanting. Now that he’s got a taste of what he can have in the dream world, he wants to experience it as much as he can. And that’s dangerous, he knows, wanting something he can only have in dreams, but he knows himself well enough to know that he’ll regain a balance eventually. He’ll still want this, still enjoy it, still go under regularly, but he isn’t unhappy enough with his lot in the real world (because that’s still him, in the end) to want to stay here, like this, forever. He likes reality. He isn’t so certain about Mal, or about Dom, for different reasons, but there’s nothing to worry about as yet. He suspects they worry, especially Mal, about losing their grasp on reality, which is why they rarely dream together on their own.

But for now, Mal does not appear concerned, at least not with issues of reality. She does seem to be concerned with the store front, which is displaying a rather lovely range of evening gowns, what looks to be all the latest fashions - which is something Mal would know about, and Eames wishes he had more time to learn about. So he goes to join her in front of the Prada store, and then they go inside.

They spend hours shopping, trying on endless amounts of high fashion clothes, exploring every store Mal has dreamed up. They have coffee at a tiny café that Eames swears is nowhere near the University, and which Mal tells him is in fact in Nice. And then Mal creates the University, and they head towards it, loaded down with bags, because they want to see how the rest of Mal’s world reacts. They cross the same bridge they cross every day, and they stop, for a moment, at the edge, staring down at the water. They know they’re nearing the ending of their dreaming time, and so they take a seat, waiting out the last few minutes until the sedative wears off. It’s been one of the more wonderful dream experiences they’ve ever shared.

They wake up to the phone ringing.

Next