Requiescat, pt. seven
Title: Requiescat
Pairing: Arthur/Eames
Words: ~6000
Rating: R
Warnings: References to noncon, child abuse.
Summary: The death of Neil McCormick was gradual, not sudden, and not permanent by any means. In the end, Arthur goes much more quickly.
Author's Note: OHGOD THIS CHAPTER'S FINALLY DONE, I HATE IT BUT IT'S DONE, I WASH MY HANDS OF IT. And lulz, I lied, there will have to be one more chapter D': Hopefully it will be completed in a much more timely fashion, because this one KICKED MY ASS. That's what I get for never making outlines. GUHH
Mysterious Skin crossover! Spoilers! etc!
part one, part two, part three, part four, part five, part six, part eight.
+++
Technically, Neil isn't in a coma. Technically, he's in a stupor. They know this because he sometimes responds to intense pain or very bright lights.
But it may as well be a coma.
Eames hovers around the city, unable to stay away for longer than a few days at a time, at first. He slips into the hospital when he's certain no one will catch him, steals and gleans information about Neil's condition from the staff, and leaves. And he sneaks in to actually see him, just once. He's unprepared for just how painful it will be to see Arthur looking so human.
Eventually he spends a week away from LA, and then two weeks, and then he stops going altogether because what it all boils down to is this: Neil isn't going to wake up. He can't get better from this.
So Eames leaves the country.
He sells his place in Mombasa and moves permanently into the flat he owns in London, the one only a handful of people know about. He stops taking jobs. He stops checking his phone. Stops everything, really. He can't sleep at night; even food seems dry and tasteless on his tongue. It is an all-consuming, all-encompassing grief. It suffocates him until he physically feels the weight on his lungs.
He revisits limbo every night when he's trying to sleep, and thinks of all the thousands of things he could have done differently. The only conclusion he can draw is that he should never have taken Neil down there in the first place. He could have told Neil he didn't have to do it; he could have listened to Cobb. He should have. He would have -- if he were less selfish.
He rages at himself and at Arthur, pointlessly. He gets spectacularly pissed out of his mind for two weeks. He shuts Arthur's phone, Arthur's totem and the PASIV Device away in a locked cupboard, and destroys the key. He starts to wish that Neil actually was brain dead, because at least that would carry some closure with it. Eames feels like he's going to spend the rest of his life forever looking, watching, waiting for a glimpse of slicked-back hair, a particularly sleek cut of suit, a hauntingly familiar, wry little smile.
Eventually, he starts painting. It's the first and only thing to bring him any relief, a hobby he hasn't indulged in for at least three years, but he sinks back into it quickly. He converts one of the rooms in his flat to a studio, and holes himself up there. Most of his paintings are precise, careful forgeries, but sometimes he paints an original, lets his emotions bleed through his paintbrush.
Before long, it's gotten so that he doesn't leave the flat for anything except groceries; and if his building sold food, he wouldn't leave at all. He knows he's a wreck -- he can see the dark shadows under his eyes when he looks in the mirror, he isn't shaving as much as he ought to, and his own neighbours seem wary of him on the rare occasions they glimpse him -- but he doesn't care.
Nobody spends this long in mourning for a person they only wanted to have sex with. Why did it take this for Eames to realize how incomplete he is without Arthur?
He calls Ariadne one day and isn't sure why, except that he needs to know something, and he doubts that Cobb will talk to him.
“Hey, did you hear about Arthur?” she asks him abruptly in a hushed, hesitant tone. “He's ... he's been in a coma for like four months.”
“It's called a stupor,” says Eames dully and mechanically. “He responds to some things. It's not total unconsciousness.”
Ariadne's quiet on the other end for a few seconds, and he realizes she's struggling for words.
“Eames, he stopped responding to stuff weeks ago.”
Eames hangs up, and throws his phone at the wall. It shatters. He feels marginally better; which is to say, not a lot.
+
Eames' neighbour across the hall is an older Eastern European lady. She's at his door one day, just a week or so after he talked to Ariadne. He peers at her through his sunglasses, still hungover from the night before. And a little from this morning.
“Your friend,” she tells him in a thick Polish accent. “He say answer your phone.”
Eames considers that. Evidently he's been tracked down. He's far less concerned about this than he would be normally.
“What friend?”
She shakes her head, already shuffling back into her own flat. “Answer your phone, that's all he say.”
When his muffled sense of curiosity eventually catches up with him, Eames checks his cell phone, since he still hasn't gotten around to replacing his landline. He doesn't have a lot of messages. There's a few concerned voicemails from Ariadne. He scrolls through his texts and finds that the most recent is from Cobb.
All it says is: I need you.
Later that evening, his phone buzzes the arrival of a new text: It's about Neil.
Eames has a few drinks, then dials Cobb's number.
“Can you come to Los Angeles?” Cobb asks, without preamble.
“I don't know. What do you need me for?”
“I wanted to try something. It would help Neil. How soon can you be here?”
“I'll think about it,” Eames says bluntly, and hangs up.
Next morning he's at the airport. Flying isn't something Eames necessarily enjoys, but one of the perks of having successfully performed inception on Robert Fischer means free flights, as long as it's on Saito's airline. At least it's a last-ditch effort to get himself out of the flat and back into the world of the living. Somehow, he manages to doze on the flight and most of the cab ride to Cobb's.
The extractor doesn't look unduly surprised to see Eames on his doorstep.
“Sorry,” Eames mumbles, once Cobb has let him in, not bothering to remove his sunglasses, “for not helping with the medical bills, or anything ...”
Cobb waves a hand. “That's not why I asked you to come. There's something I want to try.”
“Yes, you said. Just explain why you need me specifically.”
“Because,” says Cobb, dragging his fingers through his hair distractedly, “damnit, I just don't think Arthur would have given up on me. So I have to try and wake him up.”
“How?” says Eames.
“With the PASIV.”
“Not possible.”
“Nobody's ever tried it before, so we don't know that yet. He still has brain activity. I can at least try.”
“Forgive me if I don't hold my breath,” says Eames, dry, because -- he cannot get his hopes up. He refuses to let himself.
Cobb goes on: “The main catch is, once he's hooked up to the Somnacin, he'll probably be stuck in the deepest reaches of his subconscious.”
“Limbo,” says Eames dully. “You could spend an eternity trying to find him.”
“Which is why I need you,” says Cobb. “I might be able to find him, if you describe his limbo to me.”
“What about the memories he's got down there? What happened to this probably being the kindest thing for him?”
“That's the thing,” says Cobb, staring very steadily at Eames. “You know how good I am at what I do. Stealing secrets isn't so different from hiding them away. I can't bring Arthur back -- what Neil did was way too extensive there -- but if I can take away whatever he suppressed before we put him under--”
Eames gets it. “Oh, God,” he mutters, and shoves a hand under his sunglasses to rub at both eyes with his thumb and middle finger. “You mean we either have him back as Neil or not at all.”
“It's the best I can do.”
Eames just stands like that, fingers squeezing his eyes shut, until at last, he lowers his hand and accepts that he's desperate enough to reply, “Alright. Yeah. I'll help you. And then what?”
“If it works? I guess he stays here with me. It's better than being comatose.”
“He'll run away,” says Eames tonelessly. “To LA. He'll go right back to selling himself. You know that, don't you?”
“He needs help, there's no denying that,” says Cobb, “but -- Christ, Eames. I can't just leave him in the hospital and wait for him to become a vegetable. I have to do something, whatever the consequences. Maybe it's not what Arthur would want, but do you think he'd want us to leave him like this?”
“I already said I'd help you,” Eames grumbles, stalking deeper into the house. “No need to twist the knife.”
+
Eames has never been much of an architect in quite the same league as Cobb -- people hold much more intricacies to him than buildings. He doesn't feel much like dreaming right now, anyway. So he finds a pen and a pad of legal paper and he starts sketching. Cobb watches over one shoulder while the playground begins to take form.
“You might find him here,” Eames says. “If not, take this path here--”
He sketches out the landmarks, hand flying over the page, occasionally whisking down to the bottom of the page to etch out a rough map.
“It's hot down here. It might start to rain cereal -- you know, breakfast cereal. But if he gets upset it'll turn to water.”
The blue house takes form. Eames studies the penstrokes as he works, not wanting to look up at Cobb's face for this.
“You'll find this house easily, it's on the path and it's the only blue one. It ... belonged to the man who sexually abused him when he was eight. But the inside of it looks like this--”
His hand skates over the page as he sketches the apartment, its one bed and the door at the end.
“--and this is the place where he was raped when he was a teenager.”
The tip of his pen stills, but he keeps staring fixedly at the paper when he goes on.
“Arthur blocked out all of it, everything. It was the memory of the childhood abuse that broke him. Neil had just suppressed the memory of the rape, though. He doesn't even think what happened in his childhood was abuse. You can leave the outside of the house alone, but if you want Neil back the way he was, then the inside has to be taken apart. Especially the bathroom. That's where it happened.”
Cobb tears the sheet of paper off and studies it intently. He takes at least a minute, even though Eames is fully aware that he only needs a few seconds to memorize it. When he eventually speaks, his tone is steady.
“What I don't understand is what made Arthur venture into limbo in the first place. With that compound, an accidental death would have just woken him up in the last dream. He'd have had to attach himself to a PASIV knowingly.” He looks directly down at Eames. “Is there something you're not telling me?”
Eames honestly doesn't know how he forgot -- that Neil told him why; of course he did. And it hurts so bad, the pain is fresh all over again, and he wants to break down and let it all spill out like vomit: It was me, it was my fault, I was in fucking love with him and I pushed him too hard, too often, and I confused him too much and Cobb, I think he might have loved me, too.
He just says, “I think he might have started to work out the fallacies of himself.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yeah,” says Eames.
He gets so drunk that night that Cobb calls him a taxi and books him a hotel room just to get him out of the house and away from the kids, and sitting in the empty single room that night, Eames has never been so conscious of just how very, very alone in the world he is.
+
Cobb makes plans. Eames sits across the kitchen table from him and drinks beer and watches. He can tell it annoys them both to be here, working this same job that they screwed up so spectacularly the first time, Cobb trying to fix Eames' stupid mistakes; and it's unusual, because they've always gotten along not great, but amiably, before. But it's necessary, because Cobb needs him for the knowledge he has of Neil. All these details are necessary if Cobb is supposed to navigate Neil's limbo and then tamper just enough to bring him back.
Eames helps him, not because he wants Neil back, but because turning into a vegetable is about the most pedestrian death he can possibly imagine for Arthur, the man who deals in danger for a living, and that's just too fucking sad for Eames to be able to handle. It seems like betrayal, but in a backwards way that wrenches his heart and makes him reach for another drink whenever he thinks about it too hard, he guesses he owes it to Arthur to wake Neil up. He just wishes there were some way for the two sets of memories to coexist without cancelling each other out.
“You didn't drink this much before,” Cobb observes.
They're sitting around his office at the university together. Eames has tagged along to sit in on a couple lectures. He's got nothing better to do. They're boring lectures, but he's still sober, so he's not sure what Cobb's point is. His blank expression says as much.
Cobb sighs and looks at him. It's one of the few times he has all week.
“Are you doing okay?”
“'M just fine,” Eames grumbles, slouching resentfully in his seat, since Cobb is the last person who deserves to be playing psychiatrist with someone else.
“You don't seem fine. You're not talking very much. You spend every spare minute with a drink in your hand. I know you might blame yourself for what happened, but after almost five months now--”
“I just miss him,” says Eames, more to make Cobb shut up than anything. “And I'm not handling it very well, that's all.”
Cobb just frowns and says, “I miss him, too.”
“Just seems like we could at least try to salvage Arthur.”
“We tried that already. He can't handle having Neil's memories.”
“Just thought I'd mention it,” Eames mutters, slouching lower.
Cobb studies him more intently.
“Eames. Did something happen between you and Arthur?”
Eames' resentful glare snaps straight back up to Cobb's face. “Like what? Sex? You remember who we're talking about, don't you?”
“I just don't understand the timing. Him deciding to go into limbo to confront his memories. Why now?”
“So, what?” Eames snaps, hackling. “What are you suggesting? I forced myself on him and made him revert to Neil?”
“Of course not,” says Cobb sharply, surprised. “All I asked was if there was something between you.”
“I don't know.” Eames slumps back into his chair. “There might have been. Too bloody late now, isn't it?”
“I'm sorry,” Cobb says, after a pause.
“Yeah? So am I.”
They're in Cobb's home office the day before they've agreed to go to the hospital, and Cobb has to take a call. Eames is slouched in a chair with a glass of bourbon when Phillipa appears in the doorway.
“Are you here to help Uncle Arthur get better?” she asks, hovering shyly by the door.
He peers across at her quizzically. “Get better?”
“Daddy says he's sick,” says Phillipa. Her voice lowers. “That's what he said about Mommy. Before she died. Is Uncle Arthur going to come back from the hospital?”
The pity Eames feels for her is unexpected. He's spent such a long time feeling sorry for himself that he's almost forgotten how to feel sorry for anyone else.
“I'm sorry, sweetpea,” he says. “I might be able to help bring him back, but I can't help him get better.”
He can tell she doesn't understand. But she doesn't ask questions, which probably comes of having Cobb for a father; and for which, at the moment, he's profoundly grateful.
+
Eames goes with Cobb to the hospital to help him sneak the PASIV in and to keep a look-out. As it turns out, there's not exactly a lot of security surrounding long-term coma patients.
“I guess we're lucky none of Arthur's enemies have gotten wind of this yet,” Cobb mutters, opening up the PASIV on the floor.
“Let's just go over the ground rules once more,” says Eames.
Cobb is going under alone, since Eames has no desire to return to limbo; but also since he doesn't know how much of Neil's limbo was a reaction to his presence there, given that he was an object of Neil's sexual attraction -- an unpleasant thought in itself. Cobb will spend exactly twelve hours in limbo and then will shoot himself out, because any longer than that, Cobb explains, and one starts to get confused down there. If he doesn't find Neil, they'll give themselves two more days, and no longer than that. Three days total, because Neil will start lucid dreaming as soon as they hook him up to the Somnacin, and they don't want to overwhelm him or abandon him in a nightmare for any extended time. Three attempts over three days, and then they stop tampering for good and let him rest in peace.
Cobb has added a short-acting sedative to his own compound so that as soon as he's under, he can drop into limbo by killing himself. Eames hooks Neil up to the PASIV, without looking at his face, and sets the timer for five minutes. Cobb goes under.
Eames waits.
After a couple minutes, he can't help but steal glances at Neil's face. He'll be dreaming by now, wandering his limbo. Maybe suffering. But Neil's features are blank. He's still deeply unconscious. He looks almost like a stranger.
When five minutes have passed, Cobb is blinking awake.
“You're alright, then,” Eames observes, packing up the PASIV. He doesn't point out that Neil is obviously still comatose beside them, because of course he never had his hopes up in the first place.
“I couldn't find him,” says Cobb unnecessarily, groggy from the sedative. Eames drives them both back to the house and neither of them talk.
The second day goes just as well. Cobb sedates himself and goes under and Eames keeps watch, pointlessly, since no one else is even around. This time he allows himself to actually watch Neil, and then, after a minute, to even touch him. He gently fingers the floppy strands of dark hair that fall around Neil's face. Traces his lips lightly and tries to remember that wry, cocky smirk of Neil's, since he'll have to get used to seeing that in place of Arthur's sardonic little smile.
If he stays. And that's something he's been trying very hard not to think about, drowning the question in liquor whenever it rises in the back of his mind. If he leaves, Neil is going to go back to hooking. If he stays -- he doesn't know yet. He can't picture it.
Anyway, it's all moot unless Neil wakes up, and he doesn't today, either. Cobb wakes alone and simply shakes his head. If possible, the drive home today is even more silent.
Eames spends the drive thinking. Cobb can't even find any of the landmarks Eames described for him. Wherever Neil is, he's hidden himself away well, and if Cobb's run is as fruitless tomorrow, they're giving up. They agreed on it. Three attempts and no more; it's not fair on Neil's subconscious. And Eames is almost certain that Cobb will turn up nothing tomorrow.
That night he returns to a previous thought: that he shouldn't make the run himself because Neil's sexual attraction to him caused a reaction in limbo. But he wonders: what if Cobb can't find him because it isn't Cobb by whom Neil wants to be found? What if he'll only let a specific person in? What if he only wants a specific person?
He doesn't tell Cobb until they're driving to the hospital the next day, and then Cobb just considers it for a minute.
“Listen,” says Eames, “you're exhausted. You've barely slept. You hate limbo.”
“I keep finding the remains of my limbo,” Cobb mutters, focusing on the road. “Mine and Mal's. And I'm afraid of finding her down there. That's where I left her. My projection.”
Eames' only encounter with Cobb's projection of Mal had been after she'd already been shot dead, but Arthur's told him enough. “I thought there were no projections in limbo.”
“Depends how strong your subconscious is.”
Eames barely stops himself from jerking in his seat. Something else had been there in limbo with Neil.
Now he wants to go down. He wants to go there and destroy whatever's been stalking Neil's mind for all these years, because he can't do it in reality and that drives him mental.
“I know if I go down there I can find him. I'll do what you were going to do. Change his memories. It's our best shot.”
He knows Cobb doesn't want to say yes, because Eames is the one who fucked this up in the first place. But he knows that Cobb truly hates limbo, and has about as much faith that he'll be the one to find Neil as Eames does, because he stops arguing and doesn't say anything when they get to Neil's bedside and Eames starts to swab his own wrist.
“Back in five, then,” he says, trying to be nonchalant, while he settles in his seat.
“Good luck,” says Cobb wearily, and he hits the trigger button.
+
As soon as Eames has shot himself out of the initial dream, he knows he's found success.
He's standing outside the park. Neil's park.
It's still hot here, but it's a natural, summer heat now. There's no wind. The crackle of energy that once hummed in the air is gone.
He starts walking toward the playground. This is where he met both Arthur and Neil before. Surely some form of him will be waiting for Eames?
But it's empty. All of limbo around him is empty.
He starts walking. He follows the path Neil took before, but it takes him nowhere. No matter which path he chooses, he goes nowhere. It all loops right back to the park, one endless, impossible Mobius strip that one could get trapped on forever.
He stops at the swings when he's exhausted, dropping into one with a clink of chains, and checks his watch. Three hours have passed, if his watch is still working normally down here. It feels like it's been longer.
“You won't find him.”
Eames nearly jumps out of his skin.
It's the first thing he's heard since landing here. And it's a painfully familiar voice.
He swivels his head around. Even in a plain blouse and long pants, Mal is radiant.
For a second Eames reaches for his gun, thinking that Cobb's shade has somehow followed him here. But then he remembers that Cobb isn't attached to the PASIV and can't possibly have introduced anything to this dream. The only other person who's hooked up with him is--
Neil. This is Neil's projection.
“Mal,” says Eames, for lack of a better greeting, lowering his hand slowly.
“Eames.”
“I'm looking for him.”
“You can say his name.” She saunters forward, stopping several yards away. “Provided you know what that is.”
“Whatever he's going by down here,” says Eames. “Neil or Arthur. I need to find him.”
He's still sitting on the swing. She starts to circle him, slowly, catlike in her grace, the way she was when she was alive.
“You said you would follow him to hell and back.”
“I'm here, aren't I?” Eames says, with a forced chuckle. “This is about as close to hell as it gets.”
“You promised you wouldn't leave him.”
“I didn't.”
“That's a lie,” says Mal, her eyes bright. “You've lost weight since the last time you were here. You've been away. And you've been unwell.”
“I came back,” says Eames, silently cursing Arthur's brain for being as attentive as it is. “I came back for him, Mal.”
“Which him did you come for?” she asks. “Your Arthur? It can't be Neil that you want.”
“I just want him. Whoever he is.”
“I know what he wants,” Mal purrs behind him, silky. Her fingers close lightly over Eames' shoulders. “I know his deepest desire. I know what Neil has always wanted.”
“What?”
“To be loved, of course.” She leans down so that her breath tickles the back of his neck. “He could work alone. He is brilliant. Why do you think he followed Dom so devotedly, even into crime? Why do you think he went with you? Arthur may not think in terms of love, but even he needs to be needed. It's an itch he has been trying all his life to scratch.”
“Listen, Mal, it's been lovely catching up,” says Eames, wishing he could just get up, “but if you could just point me in the right direction--”
“He thought you could give that to him,” says Mal. Her accented voice is mellifluous, musical and honey-sweet. “He thought you might want him. But not anymore. He wanted you, you know.”
“Yeah. He mentioned.”
“All that desire he couldn't handle. It was all kept locked up, right here.” She points past him at the ground of limbo. “Until he couldn't take it, and it just spilled over ...”
“I didn't know. If I had--”
“Everybody leaves in the end. The men who loved him. You and Dom and even me.”
“I still want him, alright?” says Eames. “Just take me to him, Mal. You know where he is, don't you?”
“Of course I do,” she says, withdrawing slightly. “I've been taking care of him. That's what you promised to do each time he broke down and wept, but you never could.”
He realizes belatedly that she's walking away. He gets up and follows her helplessly, across the playground.
“I made him another promise. I'd take him to visit his mother. He needs to wake up if I'm going to do that.”
“His mother,” says Mal, distastefully. “The mother who was never home, who never knew or questioned what he did. He doesn't need her. He has me.”
“He needs to wake up.”
“Why? So you can hurt him and leave him again? He's better off down here -- where I can protect him.”
A thought strikes Eames, painful and brilliant and oh, Arthur--
“Mal,” he says, stopping. “He doesn't need protecting.”
“Yes.” She stops, too, turns to face him and nods firmly. “He needs me.”
“Why?” says Eames. “Because his memories are that terrible? Or because he thinks he needs protecting from himself?”
There's a dark flash of anger in Mal's eyes. “He is happier here, with me, than he is up there with you.”
“That's why he can't wake up?” Eames demands. “Not because he can't handle his own memories -- because it's too hard for him to be around me?”
“You hurt him.”
Eames laughs. It creates a sharp pain in his chest.
“Give him back to me, Mal,” he says, because suddenly, it's like there was never really a choice at all. “Give him back, and I swear I'll never leave him, no matter who he is or what he's done or what's been done to him. Let me take care of him like I promised I would.” His heart is beating fast because he knows that to convince Mal is to convince Arthur. “You don't need to protect him from himself. No matter how terrible his memories are. He can handle them, because I'll help him.”
Mal looks mistrustful and sad, but her gaze slides past Eames and he spins around to see a small, scrawny little boy with a mop of dark hair, sitting on a swing, staring sullenly down at the sand.
“Maybe a kiss from his true love will wake him,” Mal says behind him. The edge of irony in her voice is biting, but Eames manages not to wince.
“I'll take care of him,” he repeats, and God, he's really saying this, isn't he.
“No matter what he remembers?”
Eames thinks of that first night, fucking Neil, how fucking good it was, and he thinks of Arthur and feels positively sick, but he nods, frantically.
“Even if he remembers nothing,” says Mal, and that is just as painful, but Eames keeps nodding. He can't identify her expression now. It's a little like -- longing.
She brushes past him and walks back to the playground. The boy peers at her through his eyelashes when she kneels down in front of him. Eames can't hear what she's saying. After a moment, the boy looks over at him and slides to his feet. Mal looks over her shoulder at him.
Eames walks over. He feels awkward when he stoops down, faced with this tiny version of the most dangerous point man in the world. Neil is small and shy, pressing himself against Mal's side.
“Hey,” Eames says. He swallows thickly. “Do you know me?”
Slowly, Neil starts to lean away from Mal and takes a step toward Eames. He looks wary, like a feral kitten.
Then he stumbles forward and all but collapses into Eames' arms, little fingers digging tight into Eames' shirt.
“You came back,” he breathes, in a voice that's nearly a squeak. “You came back.”
Eames just holds him, tight, and he's so impossibly small and fragile in Eames' arms, and he wants to freeze this moment, just hold Neil like this and shield him from everything, let him grow up and make it all happen differently.
And he could. But that's not what he wants. He wants Neil to experience all of it, fresh again in his memories, everything from the past two decades, and it's so cruel, what he's doing -- so why does it feel like it's the right thing to do?
Because Cobb was wrong -- they can't just come in here and tamper, fool around with Neil's memories. Arthur already did that, and look at how it bit him in the ass. And Eames was wrong, too; he can't just destroy Neil again in the hopes that only Arthur will remain. If Eames screws around with his subconscious, he'll probably just go another ten years perpetually feeling like something is wrong before breaking down again. Suppression is a band-aid: the wound will still be here, festering, reeking of infection, until Neil confronts it.
So he has to do it this way, all or nothing. Even though it's cruel. Even though he may never get Arthur back again. It has to be this way.
He holds Neil fast for another few seconds, because he wants to remember him like this, innocent; like he can take away all of Neil's hurts just by holding him. He almost wishes it could stay this way.
“If you're sure,” Mal says, looking at him sadly.
“Yeah,” says Eames hoarsely, without letting go of Neil. Neil nestles into him more snugly with a small, needy sound. “I'm sure.”
She takes his gun and levels it with his head.
“Keep your promises, then,” she says, and shoots him.
+
Eames is shaking when he wakes up in the other dream. It doesn't take very long for the timer to run out, and then he's in the hospital, thumbing his totem compulsively, his tongue dry and sticky and his head buzzing from the sedative. Cobb isn't paying any attention to him at all. He has eyes only for Neil, who after five months is finally starting to stir in his bed.
+
It takes Neil several days to wake up, in increments. He's more and more responsive each day. Eames visits him in the hospital every day, and for the first time in five months starts to feel a little hopeful about life.
There's just one problem now: Neil won't talk. He won't make eye contact. He spends most of his waking minutes lying on his back and staring blankly at the ceiling.
So they don't know what he knows or remembers. If he's Neil with Arthur's memories, or Arthur with Neil's memories, or maybe neither. Eames doesn't care.
Cobb takes him home, and has the graciousness not to comment when Eames is spending every minute at the house, hovering, even though all Neil mainly does is sleep; and even when he's awake, he just stays in bed. Eames will sit with him, talk to him. Sometimes when he enters the room Neil's eyes are red, like he's just been crying or is on the verge of tears, and Eames never quite knows what to say to him. Should he apologize, for pulling Neil out of his safe place where Mal guarded him from his memories and dragging him back to reality? Cobb is better with him, his paternal nature taking over, but Eames tries, and he stays, even though it's hard, and that's the important thing. Isn't it?
Sometimes Neil drifts around the house, wearing only grey sweatpants and socks and a plain t-shirt, silent. The kids don't understand what's wrong with their Uncle Arthur, and Eames feels like he should be apologizing to them, too. They're alone in the house the first time Neil actually responds to him, when Eames finds him leaning against the doorframe of the bathroom, both hands wrapped loosely around the doorjamb like he's hugging it to himself. He's staring at the shower.
“Can I help?” Eames asks softly.
Neil closes his eyes and shakes his head jerkily. There are tears in his eyes when he opens them.
His hair is still unkempt and messy. If Arthur were in there at all, he would at least comb it. Eames doesn't think about that. He promised he would stay. That has to mean something.
The days drag by at an excruciating crawl. Eames shows up each morning, faithfully. He waits, determinedly, for Neil to get better. Eames knows he will, knows it.
And he's right. Because one day, Neil speaks.
“Look,” he says, apropos of nothing. He's lying on his bed, hands folded on his stomach, staring at the ceiling with bloodshot eyes.
His voice is soft and husky from lack of use. “You can't stay.”
Eames is taken aback. “What?”
“Go.” Neil's voice cracks. “Please.”
Eames doesn't get it. “Go where?”
A tear slips from the corner of Neil's eye down the side of his face as he whispers shakily, “Away from me.”
“But I promised I'd stay ...” Hurt, Eames can't help reaching over to brush away the tear with his thumb. Neil shuts his eyes and shudders into his touch.
Then he retches and twists over, curling up into a ball, and turning it into a series of coughs.
“Please,” he says weakly.
Now Eames gets it. There is no way for him to win here. There's no way he can ever have Arthur in any form. Not as long as Eames' touch and presence make him physically sick.
“I'll go,” he says quietly, getting up.
Neil just heaves a shuddering sigh that might be a sob. Those are the last words they exchange.
next part
Pairing: Arthur/Eames
Words: ~6000
Rating: R
Warnings: References to noncon, child abuse.
Summary: The death of Neil McCormick was gradual, not sudden, and not permanent by any means. In the end, Arthur goes much more quickly.
Author's Note: OHGOD THIS CHAPTER'S FINALLY DONE, I HATE IT BUT IT'S DONE, I WASH MY HANDS OF IT. And lulz, I lied, there will have to be one more chapter D': Hopefully it will be completed in a much more timely fashion, because this one KICKED MY ASS. That's what I get for never making outlines. GUHH
Mysterious Skin crossover! Spoilers! etc!
part one, part two, part three, part four, part five, part six, part eight.
+++
Technically, Neil isn't in a coma. Technically, he's in a stupor. They know this because he sometimes responds to intense pain or very bright lights.
But it may as well be a coma.
Eames hovers around the city, unable to stay away for longer than a few days at a time, at first. He slips into the hospital when he's certain no one will catch him, steals and gleans information about Neil's condition from the staff, and leaves. And he sneaks in to actually see him, just once. He's unprepared for just how painful it will be to see Arthur looking so human.
Eventually he spends a week away from LA, and then two weeks, and then he stops going altogether because what it all boils down to is this: Neil isn't going to wake up. He can't get better from this.
So Eames leaves the country.
He sells his place in Mombasa and moves permanently into the flat he owns in London, the one only a handful of people know about. He stops taking jobs. He stops checking his phone. Stops everything, really. He can't sleep at night; even food seems dry and tasteless on his tongue. It is an all-consuming, all-encompassing grief. It suffocates him until he physically feels the weight on his lungs.
He revisits limbo every night when he's trying to sleep, and thinks of all the thousands of things he could have done differently. The only conclusion he can draw is that he should never have taken Neil down there in the first place. He could have told Neil he didn't have to do it; he could have listened to Cobb. He should have. He would have -- if he were less selfish.
He rages at himself and at Arthur, pointlessly. He gets spectacularly pissed out of his mind for two weeks. He shuts Arthur's phone, Arthur's totem and the PASIV Device away in a locked cupboard, and destroys the key. He starts to wish that Neil actually was brain dead, because at least that would carry some closure with it. Eames feels like he's going to spend the rest of his life forever looking, watching, waiting for a glimpse of slicked-back hair, a particularly sleek cut of suit, a hauntingly familiar, wry little smile.
Eventually, he starts painting. It's the first and only thing to bring him any relief, a hobby he hasn't indulged in for at least three years, but he sinks back into it quickly. He converts one of the rooms in his flat to a studio, and holes himself up there. Most of his paintings are precise, careful forgeries, but sometimes he paints an original, lets his emotions bleed through his paintbrush.
Before long, it's gotten so that he doesn't leave the flat for anything except groceries; and if his building sold food, he wouldn't leave at all. He knows he's a wreck -- he can see the dark shadows under his eyes when he looks in the mirror, he isn't shaving as much as he ought to, and his own neighbours seem wary of him on the rare occasions they glimpse him -- but he doesn't care.
Nobody spends this long in mourning for a person they only wanted to have sex with. Why did it take this for Eames to realize how incomplete he is without Arthur?
He calls Ariadne one day and isn't sure why, except that he needs to know something, and he doubts that Cobb will talk to him.
“Hey, did you hear about Arthur?” she asks him abruptly in a hushed, hesitant tone. “He's ... he's been in a coma for like four months.”
“It's called a stupor,” says Eames dully and mechanically. “He responds to some things. It's not total unconsciousness.”
Ariadne's quiet on the other end for a few seconds, and he realizes she's struggling for words.
“Eames, he stopped responding to stuff weeks ago.”
Eames hangs up, and throws his phone at the wall. It shatters. He feels marginally better; which is to say, not a lot.
+
Eames' neighbour across the hall is an older Eastern European lady. She's at his door one day, just a week or so after he talked to Ariadne. He peers at her through his sunglasses, still hungover from the night before. And a little from this morning.
“Your friend,” she tells him in a thick Polish accent. “He say answer your phone.”
Eames considers that. Evidently he's been tracked down. He's far less concerned about this than he would be normally.
“What friend?”
She shakes her head, already shuffling back into her own flat. “Answer your phone, that's all he say.”
When his muffled sense of curiosity eventually catches up with him, Eames checks his cell phone, since he still hasn't gotten around to replacing his landline. He doesn't have a lot of messages. There's a few concerned voicemails from Ariadne. He scrolls through his texts and finds that the most recent is from Cobb.
All it says is: I need you.
Later that evening, his phone buzzes the arrival of a new text: It's about Neil.
Eames has a few drinks, then dials Cobb's number.
“Can you come to Los Angeles?” Cobb asks, without preamble.
“I don't know. What do you need me for?”
“I wanted to try something. It would help Neil. How soon can you be here?”
“I'll think about it,” Eames says bluntly, and hangs up.
Next morning he's at the airport. Flying isn't something Eames necessarily enjoys, but one of the perks of having successfully performed inception on Robert Fischer means free flights, as long as it's on Saito's airline. At least it's a last-ditch effort to get himself out of the flat and back into the world of the living. Somehow, he manages to doze on the flight and most of the cab ride to Cobb's.
The extractor doesn't look unduly surprised to see Eames on his doorstep.
“Sorry,” Eames mumbles, once Cobb has let him in, not bothering to remove his sunglasses, “for not helping with the medical bills, or anything ...”
Cobb waves a hand. “That's not why I asked you to come. There's something I want to try.”
“Yes, you said. Just explain why you need me specifically.”
“Because,” says Cobb, dragging his fingers through his hair distractedly, “damnit, I just don't think Arthur would have given up on me. So I have to try and wake him up.”
“How?” says Eames.
“With the PASIV.”
“Not possible.”
“Nobody's ever tried it before, so we don't know that yet. He still has brain activity. I can at least try.”
“Forgive me if I don't hold my breath,” says Eames, dry, because -- he cannot get his hopes up. He refuses to let himself.
Cobb goes on: “The main catch is, once he's hooked up to the Somnacin, he'll probably be stuck in the deepest reaches of his subconscious.”
“Limbo,” says Eames dully. “You could spend an eternity trying to find him.”
“Which is why I need you,” says Cobb. “I might be able to find him, if you describe his limbo to me.”
“What about the memories he's got down there? What happened to this probably being the kindest thing for him?”
“That's the thing,” says Cobb, staring very steadily at Eames. “You know how good I am at what I do. Stealing secrets isn't so different from hiding them away. I can't bring Arthur back -- what Neil did was way too extensive there -- but if I can take away whatever he suppressed before we put him under--”
Eames gets it. “Oh, God,” he mutters, and shoves a hand under his sunglasses to rub at both eyes with his thumb and middle finger. “You mean we either have him back as Neil or not at all.”
“It's the best I can do.”
Eames just stands like that, fingers squeezing his eyes shut, until at last, he lowers his hand and accepts that he's desperate enough to reply, “Alright. Yeah. I'll help you. And then what?”
“If it works? I guess he stays here with me. It's better than being comatose.”
“He'll run away,” says Eames tonelessly. “To LA. He'll go right back to selling himself. You know that, don't you?”
“He needs help, there's no denying that,” says Cobb, “but -- Christ, Eames. I can't just leave him in the hospital and wait for him to become a vegetable. I have to do something, whatever the consequences. Maybe it's not what Arthur would want, but do you think he'd want us to leave him like this?”
“I already said I'd help you,” Eames grumbles, stalking deeper into the house. “No need to twist the knife.”
+
Eames has never been much of an architect in quite the same league as Cobb -- people hold much more intricacies to him than buildings. He doesn't feel much like dreaming right now, anyway. So he finds a pen and a pad of legal paper and he starts sketching. Cobb watches over one shoulder while the playground begins to take form.
“You might find him here,” Eames says. “If not, take this path here--”
He sketches out the landmarks, hand flying over the page, occasionally whisking down to the bottom of the page to etch out a rough map.
“It's hot down here. It might start to rain cereal -- you know, breakfast cereal. But if he gets upset it'll turn to water.”
The blue house takes form. Eames studies the penstrokes as he works, not wanting to look up at Cobb's face for this.
“You'll find this house easily, it's on the path and it's the only blue one. It ... belonged to the man who sexually abused him when he was eight. But the inside of it looks like this--”
His hand skates over the page as he sketches the apartment, its one bed and the door at the end.
“--and this is the place where he was raped when he was a teenager.”
The tip of his pen stills, but he keeps staring fixedly at the paper when he goes on.
“Arthur blocked out all of it, everything. It was the memory of the childhood abuse that broke him. Neil had just suppressed the memory of the rape, though. He doesn't even think what happened in his childhood was abuse. You can leave the outside of the house alone, but if you want Neil back the way he was, then the inside has to be taken apart. Especially the bathroom. That's where it happened.”
Cobb tears the sheet of paper off and studies it intently. He takes at least a minute, even though Eames is fully aware that he only needs a few seconds to memorize it. When he eventually speaks, his tone is steady.
“What I don't understand is what made Arthur venture into limbo in the first place. With that compound, an accidental death would have just woken him up in the last dream. He'd have had to attach himself to a PASIV knowingly.” He looks directly down at Eames. “Is there something you're not telling me?”
Eames honestly doesn't know how he forgot -- that Neil told him why; of course he did. And it hurts so bad, the pain is fresh all over again, and he wants to break down and let it all spill out like vomit: It was me, it was my fault, I was in fucking love with him and I pushed him too hard, too often, and I confused him too much and Cobb, I think he might have loved me, too.
He just says, “I think he might have started to work out the fallacies of himself.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yeah,” says Eames.
He gets so drunk that night that Cobb calls him a taxi and books him a hotel room just to get him out of the house and away from the kids, and sitting in the empty single room that night, Eames has never been so conscious of just how very, very alone in the world he is.
+
Cobb makes plans. Eames sits across the kitchen table from him and drinks beer and watches. He can tell it annoys them both to be here, working this same job that they screwed up so spectacularly the first time, Cobb trying to fix Eames' stupid mistakes; and it's unusual, because they've always gotten along not great, but amiably, before. But it's necessary, because Cobb needs him for the knowledge he has of Neil. All these details are necessary if Cobb is supposed to navigate Neil's limbo and then tamper just enough to bring him back.
Eames helps him, not because he wants Neil back, but because turning into a vegetable is about the most pedestrian death he can possibly imagine for Arthur, the man who deals in danger for a living, and that's just too fucking sad for Eames to be able to handle. It seems like betrayal, but in a backwards way that wrenches his heart and makes him reach for another drink whenever he thinks about it too hard, he guesses he owes it to Arthur to wake Neil up. He just wishes there were some way for the two sets of memories to coexist without cancelling each other out.
“You didn't drink this much before,” Cobb observes.
They're sitting around his office at the university together. Eames has tagged along to sit in on a couple lectures. He's got nothing better to do. They're boring lectures, but he's still sober, so he's not sure what Cobb's point is. His blank expression says as much.
Cobb sighs and looks at him. It's one of the few times he has all week.
“Are you doing okay?”
“'M just fine,” Eames grumbles, slouching resentfully in his seat, since Cobb is the last person who deserves to be playing psychiatrist with someone else.
“You don't seem fine. You're not talking very much. You spend every spare minute with a drink in your hand. I know you might blame yourself for what happened, but after almost five months now--”
“I just miss him,” says Eames, more to make Cobb shut up than anything. “And I'm not handling it very well, that's all.”
Cobb just frowns and says, “I miss him, too.”
“Just seems like we could at least try to salvage Arthur.”
“We tried that already. He can't handle having Neil's memories.”
“Just thought I'd mention it,” Eames mutters, slouching lower.
Cobb studies him more intently.
“Eames. Did something happen between you and Arthur?”
Eames' resentful glare snaps straight back up to Cobb's face. “Like what? Sex? You remember who we're talking about, don't you?”
“I just don't understand the timing. Him deciding to go into limbo to confront his memories. Why now?”
“So, what?” Eames snaps, hackling. “What are you suggesting? I forced myself on him and made him revert to Neil?”
“Of course not,” says Cobb sharply, surprised. “All I asked was if there was something between you.”
“I don't know.” Eames slumps back into his chair. “There might have been. Too bloody late now, isn't it?”
“I'm sorry,” Cobb says, after a pause.
“Yeah? So am I.”
They're in Cobb's home office the day before they've agreed to go to the hospital, and Cobb has to take a call. Eames is slouched in a chair with a glass of bourbon when Phillipa appears in the doorway.
“Are you here to help Uncle Arthur get better?” she asks, hovering shyly by the door.
He peers across at her quizzically. “Get better?”
“Daddy says he's sick,” says Phillipa. Her voice lowers. “That's what he said about Mommy. Before she died. Is Uncle Arthur going to come back from the hospital?”
The pity Eames feels for her is unexpected. He's spent such a long time feeling sorry for himself that he's almost forgotten how to feel sorry for anyone else.
“I'm sorry, sweetpea,” he says. “I might be able to help bring him back, but I can't help him get better.”
He can tell she doesn't understand. But she doesn't ask questions, which probably comes of having Cobb for a father; and for which, at the moment, he's profoundly grateful.
+
Eames goes with Cobb to the hospital to help him sneak the PASIV in and to keep a look-out. As it turns out, there's not exactly a lot of security surrounding long-term coma patients.
“I guess we're lucky none of Arthur's enemies have gotten wind of this yet,” Cobb mutters, opening up the PASIV on the floor.
“Let's just go over the ground rules once more,” says Eames.
Cobb is going under alone, since Eames has no desire to return to limbo; but also since he doesn't know how much of Neil's limbo was a reaction to his presence there, given that he was an object of Neil's sexual attraction -- an unpleasant thought in itself. Cobb will spend exactly twelve hours in limbo and then will shoot himself out, because any longer than that, Cobb explains, and one starts to get confused down there. If he doesn't find Neil, they'll give themselves two more days, and no longer than that. Three days total, because Neil will start lucid dreaming as soon as they hook him up to the Somnacin, and they don't want to overwhelm him or abandon him in a nightmare for any extended time. Three attempts over three days, and then they stop tampering for good and let him rest in peace.
Cobb has added a short-acting sedative to his own compound so that as soon as he's under, he can drop into limbo by killing himself. Eames hooks Neil up to the PASIV, without looking at his face, and sets the timer for five minutes. Cobb goes under.
Eames waits.
After a couple minutes, he can't help but steal glances at Neil's face. He'll be dreaming by now, wandering his limbo. Maybe suffering. But Neil's features are blank. He's still deeply unconscious. He looks almost like a stranger.
When five minutes have passed, Cobb is blinking awake.
“You're alright, then,” Eames observes, packing up the PASIV. He doesn't point out that Neil is obviously still comatose beside them, because of course he never had his hopes up in the first place.
“I couldn't find him,” says Cobb unnecessarily, groggy from the sedative. Eames drives them both back to the house and neither of them talk.
The second day goes just as well. Cobb sedates himself and goes under and Eames keeps watch, pointlessly, since no one else is even around. This time he allows himself to actually watch Neil, and then, after a minute, to even touch him. He gently fingers the floppy strands of dark hair that fall around Neil's face. Traces his lips lightly and tries to remember that wry, cocky smirk of Neil's, since he'll have to get used to seeing that in place of Arthur's sardonic little smile.
If he stays. And that's something he's been trying very hard not to think about, drowning the question in liquor whenever it rises in the back of his mind. If he leaves, Neil is going to go back to hooking. If he stays -- he doesn't know yet. He can't picture it.
Anyway, it's all moot unless Neil wakes up, and he doesn't today, either. Cobb wakes alone and simply shakes his head. If possible, the drive home today is even more silent.
Eames spends the drive thinking. Cobb can't even find any of the landmarks Eames described for him. Wherever Neil is, he's hidden himself away well, and if Cobb's run is as fruitless tomorrow, they're giving up. They agreed on it. Three attempts and no more; it's not fair on Neil's subconscious. And Eames is almost certain that Cobb will turn up nothing tomorrow.
That night he returns to a previous thought: that he shouldn't make the run himself because Neil's sexual attraction to him caused a reaction in limbo. But he wonders: what if Cobb can't find him because it isn't Cobb by whom Neil wants to be found? What if he'll only let a specific person in? What if he only wants a specific person?
He doesn't tell Cobb until they're driving to the hospital the next day, and then Cobb just considers it for a minute.
“Listen,” says Eames, “you're exhausted. You've barely slept. You hate limbo.”
“I keep finding the remains of my limbo,” Cobb mutters, focusing on the road. “Mine and Mal's. And I'm afraid of finding her down there. That's where I left her. My projection.”
Eames' only encounter with Cobb's projection of Mal had been after she'd already been shot dead, but Arthur's told him enough. “I thought there were no projections in limbo.”
“Depends how strong your subconscious is.”
Eames barely stops himself from jerking in his seat. Something else had been there in limbo with Neil.
Now he wants to go down. He wants to go there and destroy whatever's been stalking Neil's mind for all these years, because he can't do it in reality and that drives him mental.
“I know if I go down there I can find him. I'll do what you were going to do. Change his memories. It's our best shot.”
He knows Cobb doesn't want to say yes, because Eames is the one who fucked this up in the first place. But he knows that Cobb truly hates limbo, and has about as much faith that he'll be the one to find Neil as Eames does, because he stops arguing and doesn't say anything when they get to Neil's bedside and Eames starts to swab his own wrist.
“Back in five, then,” he says, trying to be nonchalant, while he settles in his seat.
“Good luck,” says Cobb wearily, and he hits the trigger button.
+
As soon as Eames has shot himself out of the initial dream, he knows he's found success.
He's standing outside the park. Neil's park.
It's still hot here, but it's a natural, summer heat now. There's no wind. The crackle of energy that once hummed in the air is gone.
He starts walking toward the playground. This is where he met both Arthur and Neil before. Surely some form of him will be waiting for Eames?
But it's empty. All of limbo around him is empty.
He starts walking. He follows the path Neil took before, but it takes him nowhere. No matter which path he chooses, he goes nowhere. It all loops right back to the park, one endless, impossible Mobius strip that one could get trapped on forever.
He stops at the swings when he's exhausted, dropping into one with a clink of chains, and checks his watch. Three hours have passed, if his watch is still working normally down here. It feels like it's been longer.
“You won't find him.”
Eames nearly jumps out of his skin.
It's the first thing he's heard since landing here. And it's a painfully familiar voice.
He swivels his head around. Even in a plain blouse and long pants, Mal is radiant.
For a second Eames reaches for his gun, thinking that Cobb's shade has somehow followed him here. But then he remembers that Cobb isn't attached to the PASIV and can't possibly have introduced anything to this dream. The only other person who's hooked up with him is--
Neil. This is Neil's projection.
“Mal,” says Eames, for lack of a better greeting, lowering his hand slowly.
“Eames.”
“I'm looking for him.”
“You can say his name.” She saunters forward, stopping several yards away. “Provided you know what that is.”
“Whatever he's going by down here,” says Eames. “Neil or Arthur. I need to find him.”
He's still sitting on the swing. She starts to circle him, slowly, catlike in her grace, the way she was when she was alive.
“You said you would follow him to hell and back.”
“I'm here, aren't I?” Eames says, with a forced chuckle. “This is about as close to hell as it gets.”
“You promised you wouldn't leave him.”
“I didn't.”
“That's a lie,” says Mal, her eyes bright. “You've lost weight since the last time you were here. You've been away. And you've been unwell.”
“I came back,” says Eames, silently cursing Arthur's brain for being as attentive as it is. “I came back for him, Mal.”
“Which him did you come for?” she asks. “Your Arthur? It can't be Neil that you want.”
“I just want him. Whoever he is.”
“I know what he wants,” Mal purrs behind him, silky. Her fingers close lightly over Eames' shoulders. “I know his deepest desire. I know what Neil has always wanted.”
“What?”
“To be loved, of course.” She leans down so that her breath tickles the back of his neck. “He could work alone. He is brilliant. Why do you think he followed Dom so devotedly, even into crime? Why do you think he went with you? Arthur may not think in terms of love, but even he needs to be needed. It's an itch he has been trying all his life to scratch.”
“Listen, Mal, it's been lovely catching up,” says Eames, wishing he could just get up, “but if you could just point me in the right direction--”
“He thought you could give that to him,” says Mal. Her accented voice is mellifluous, musical and honey-sweet. “He thought you might want him. But not anymore. He wanted you, you know.”
“Yeah. He mentioned.”
“All that desire he couldn't handle. It was all kept locked up, right here.” She points past him at the ground of limbo. “Until he couldn't take it, and it just spilled over ...”
“I didn't know. If I had--”
“Everybody leaves in the end. The men who loved him. You and Dom and even me.”
“I still want him, alright?” says Eames. “Just take me to him, Mal. You know where he is, don't you?”
“Of course I do,” she says, withdrawing slightly. “I've been taking care of him. That's what you promised to do each time he broke down and wept, but you never could.”
He realizes belatedly that she's walking away. He gets up and follows her helplessly, across the playground.
“I made him another promise. I'd take him to visit his mother. He needs to wake up if I'm going to do that.”
“His mother,” says Mal, distastefully. “The mother who was never home, who never knew or questioned what he did. He doesn't need her. He has me.”
“He needs to wake up.”
“Why? So you can hurt him and leave him again? He's better off down here -- where I can protect him.”
A thought strikes Eames, painful and brilliant and oh, Arthur--
“Mal,” he says, stopping. “He doesn't need protecting.”
“Yes.” She stops, too, turns to face him and nods firmly. “He needs me.”
“Why?” says Eames. “Because his memories are that terrible? Or because he thinks he needs protecting from himself?”
There's a dark flash of anger in Mal's eyes. “He is happier here, with me, than he is up there with you.”
“That's why he can't wake up?” Eames demands. “Not because he can't handle his own memories -- because it's too hard for him to be around me?”
“You hurt him.”
Eames laughs. It creates a sharp pain in his chest.
“Give him back to me, Mal,” he says, because suddenly, it's like there was never really a choice at all. “Give him back, and I swear I'll never leave him, no matter who he is or what he's done or what's been done to him. Let me take care of him like I promised I would.” His heart is beating fast because he knows that to convince Mal is to convince Arthur. “You don't need to protect him from himself. No matter how terrible his memories are. He can handle them, because I'll help him.”
Mal looks mistrustful and sad, but her gaze slides past Eames and he spins around to see a small, scrawny little boy with a mop of dark hair, sitting on a swing, staring sullenly down at the sand.
“Maybe a kiss from his true love will wake him,” Mal says behind him. The edge of irony in her voice is biting, but Eames manages not to wince.
“I'll take care of him,” he repeats, and God, he's really saying this, isn't he.
“No matter what he remembers?”
Eames thinks of that first night, fucking Neil, how fucking good it was, and he thinks of Arthur and feels positively sick, but he nods, frantically.
“Even if he remembers nothing,” says Mal, and that is just as painful, but Eames keeps nodding. He can't identify her expression now. It's a little like -- longing.
She brushes past him and walks back to the playground. The boy peers at her through his eyelashes when she kneels down in front of him. Eames can't hear what she's saying. After a moment, the boy looks over at him and slides to his feet. Mal looks over her shoulder at him.
Eames walks over. He feels awkward when he stoops down, faced with this tiny version of the most dangerous point man in the world. Neil is small and shy, pressing himself against Mal's side.
“Hey,” Eames says. He swallows thickly. “Do you know me?”
Slowly, Neil starts to lean away from Mal and takes a step toward Eames. He looks wary, like a feral kitten.
Then he stumbles forward and all but collapses into Eames' arms, little fingers digging tight into Eames' shirt.
“You came back,” he breathes, in a voice that's nearly a squeak. “You came back.”
Eames just holds him, tight, and he's so impossibly small and fragile in Eames' arms, and he wants to freeze this moment, just hold Neil like this and shield him from everything, let him grow up and make it all happen differently.
And he could. But that's not what he wants. He wants Neil to experience all of it, fresh again in his memories, everything from the past two decades, and it's so cruel, what he's doing -- so why does it feel like it's the right thing to do?
Because Cobb was wrong -- they can't just come in here and tamper, fool around with Neil's memories. Arthur already did that, and look at how it bit him in the ass. And Eames was wrong, too; he can't just destroy Neil again in the hopes that only Arthur will remain. If Eames screws around with his subconscious, he'll probably just go another ten years perpetually feeling like something is wrong before breaking down again. Suppression is a band-aid: the wound will still be here, festering, reeking of infection, until Neil confronts it.
So he has to do it this way, all or nothing. Even though it's cruel. Even though he may never get Arthur back again. It has to be this way.
He holds Neil fast for another few seconds, because he wants to remember him like this, innocent; like he can take away all of Neil's hurts just by holding him. He almost wishes it could stay this way.
“If you're sure,” Mal says, looking at him sadly.
“Yeah,” says Eames hoarsely, without letting go of Neil. Neil nestles into him more snugly with a small, needy sound. “I'm sure.”
She takes his gun and levels it with his head.
“Keep your promises, then,” she says, and shoots him.
+
Eames is shaking when he wakes up in the other dream. It doesn't take very long for the timer to run out, and then he's in the hospital, thumbing his totem compulsively, his tongue dry and sticky and his head buzzing from the sedative. Cobb isn't paying any attention to him at all. He has eyes only for Neil, who after five months is finally starting to stir in his bed.
+
It takes Neil several days to wake up, in increments. He's more and more responsive each day. Eames visits him in the hospital every day, and for the first time in five months starts to feel a little hopeful about life.
There's just one problem now: Neil won't talk. He won't make eye contact. He spends most of his waking minutes lying on his back and staring blankly at the ceiling.
So they don't know what he knows or remembers. If he's Neil with Arthur's memories, or Arthur with Neil's memories, or maybe neither. Eames doesn't care.
Cobb takes him home, and has the graciousness not to comment when Eames is spending every minute at the house, hovering, even though all Neil mainly does is sleep; and even when he's awake, he just stays in bed. Eames will sit with him, talk to him. Sometimes when he enters the room Neil's eyes are red, like he's just been crying or is on the verge of tears, and Eames never quite knows what to say to him. Should he apologize, for pulling Neil out of his safe place where Mal guarded him from his memories and dragging him back to reality? Cobb is better with him, his paternal nature taking over, but Eames tries, and he stays, even though it's hard, and that's the important thing. Isn't it?
Sometimes Neil drifts around the house, wearing only grey sweatpants and socks and a plain t-shirt, silent. The kids don't understand what's wrong with their Uncle Arthur, and Eames feels like he should be apologizing to them, too. They're alone in the house the first time Neil actually responds to him, when Eames finds him leaning against the doorframe of the bathroom, both hands wrapped loosely around the doorjamb like he's hugging it to himself. He's staring at the shower.
“Can I help?” Eames asks softly.
Neil closes his eyes and shakes his head jerkily. There are tears in his eyes when he opens them.
His hair is still unkempt and messy. If Arthur were in there at all, he would at least comb it. Eames doesn't think about that. He promised he would stay. That has to mean something.
The days drag by at an excruciating crawl. Eames shows up each morning, faithfully. He waits, determinedly, for Neil to get better. Eames knows he will, knows it.
And he's right. Because one day, Neil speaks.
“Look,” he says, apropos of nothing. He's lying on his bed, hands folded on his stomach, staring at the ceiling with bloodshot eyes.
His voice is soft and husky from lack of use. “You can't stay.”
Eames is taken aback. “What?”
“Go.” Neil's voice cracks. “Please.”
Eames doesn't get it. “Go where?”
A tear slips from the corner of Neil's eye down the side of his face as he whispers shakily, “Away from me.”
“But I promised I'd stay ...” Hurt, Eames can't help reaching over to brush away the tear with his thumb. Neil shuts his eyes and shudders into his touch.
Then he retches and twists over, curling up into a ball, and turning it into a series of coughs.
“Please,” he says weakly.
Now Eames gets it. There is no way for him to win here. There's no way he can ever have Arthur in any form. Not as long as Eames' touch and presence make him physically sick.
“I'll go,” he says quietly, getting up.
Neil just heaves a shuddering sigh that might be a sob. Those are the last words they exchange.
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