Fanfiction: Part of the Morning (2/2)
Title: Part of the Morning (2/2)
Writer: Sporadic_Writer
Status of work: Complete
Characters and/or pairings: Arthur/Eames, Mal/Cobb, Ariadne, Yusuf, Nash. Reference to Saito/Fischer.
Rating: R
Warnings, kinks & contents:[Spoiler (click to open)]Mentions of depression, suicide, drug misuse, self-harm, attempted murder.
Length: 16,711 words.
Author's note: I have read fanfiction in which a character other than Fischer was the subject of a dream, and I wondered how each character in turn would react to being haunted by a loved one. With those two things in mind, I wrote this story about Arthur and Eames. Naturally, this is AU, but the basic premise of active dreaming remains the same. On a more personal note, I'm really happy since this is the longest fanfiction that I've written thus far.
Summary: Eames died three months ago, but Arthur's still haunted by the guilt that he could have done something differently. His dreams range from the nightmarish to the bittersweet as he goes through the five stages of grief.
Part 1
Arthur forces his eyes open, and the blur of yellow and brown in front of him resolves into Dom, who hands him a bottle of water.
“I just slept for three hours in the lab,” Arthur says, bemused that he managed to fall asleep on Dom and Mal's couch after following them home for dinner.
Dom shrugs, not looking particularly concerned. “You were sleep-deprived to begin with, and you've been more active than normal in your dreams with all the training. Think of it as physical and mental fatigue.”
Arthur sits up before he asks a bit abruptly, “I've been under for a total of more than 9 hours, Dom. Why haven't I seen him?”
Dom doesn't say anything for a moment, but the look he gives Arthur makes him want to bristle in defense. “The dreams we have in the lab are artificially-stimulated, but they should act the same way as other dreams. Maybe you don't want to see him.”
Arthur wants to scream at Dom. Of course, he wants to see Eames. But a small petty part of him doesn't want to admit that the innocuous dreams have been soothing. He's been sleeping better, and he hates himself for it. Dom can probably sense Arthur's turmoil but has better sense than to instigate anything, so he changes the topic.
“Do you want to go over anything we just learned in the lab?” Dom asks, searching Arthur's face. “I'm glad that you're picking it up so quickly, but I worry that you won't be able to think when the time comes.”
“I have it down,” Arthur says quietly before forcing a smirk. “Anyway, who was it who got confused on the penrose steps? Oh, right, not me.”
Dom tosses a couch cushion at him. “Hey, you made it twist in the weirdest way that I've seen since Yusuf went under with some compound he mixed himself.”
Mal makes a tsk sound when she comes in with cups of espresso. “Why do you always bully him, Dom?”
“He does it all the time, Mal,” Arthur says earnestly. “You're the only one who can stop him!”
Dom and Mal cuddle up together on the other side of the couch, and Arthur tries not to let his own memories of after-dinner snuggling depress him.
Mal laughs softly as she rests her head against Dom's, and he strokes her hair with a dopey smile. “You bring out the best in me,” he whispers to her.
Fortunately, Arthur's cell beeps with an incoming text message, and he reads it cursorily before clearing his throat loudly and almost leaping off the furniture in his eagerness to leave the domestic scene behind. “I have to pick up Ariadne at the university. She said that her car finally gave out.”
Ariadne's waiting outside the main gate when Arthur pulls up. She looks like the quintessential college student with her books tucked under her arm, and her shoulder-length hair blowing around her face with the strong winds.
“I'm not convinced that your jeep's dead,” Arthur tells her, as he pulls out into traffic.
“You and Eames were the ones to tell me that I'd end up stranded and dead like one of those idiot tourists in horror movies,” Ariadne responds, settling into the passenger seat.
“Eames said that you'd be stranded and killed,” Arthur corrected. “I said that you'd better keep your insurance up to date for a tow truck from Triple A.”
They drive quietly for a bit, and when Ariadne apparently believes that Arthur won't have an immediate breakdown at further mentions of Eames, she ventures, “Eames had a pretty dark sense of humor sometimes.
“I mean, he was interesting; he was funny in a way I wouldn't expect,” she adds, so as not to offend.
“He was.” And for a moment, Arthur's smile is filled more with nostalgia than with pain.
“Did he ever put you into one of his books? I mean, Dom ended up as a sociopathic wife-killer; Mal was some creepy noir film madame; and lucky me, I got to be a Greek princess with bad taste in guys. I guess it's really true that authors get a lot of their material from the people and places around them.”
Arthur frowns a bit and tries to hide it. “I read almost all of his books, and I don't think I ever inspired any characters. Not really, anyway, I mean you can't count a grumpy magician as my avatar. I didn't recognize myself anyway, and I'm pretty sure Eames would have told me if he wrote about me.”
“He wrote about himself one time, right?”
Surprised, Arthur turns around to look at Ariadne before jerking his eyes back onto the road, which luckily turns out to be fairly deserted at this time of night.
“Yeah,” he clears his throat. “I mean, he planned to, but-but he didn't finish the manuscript before...forget it, I don't really want to talk about it.” He didn't want to think about it. At least, he didn't have to see it again. Throwing the computer out the second story window had taken care of that.
“Don't get mad, but I think Eames had a big depression problem.” Ariadne bites her lip and looks like she is about to add more, but then she shoots Arthur a wary look.
Arthur can't get angry though, not when he's been wondering if he didn't as good as put the noose around Eames's neck by not insisting that he talk to a psychiatrist. “He did,” Arthur admits. “I should have pushed him to get help.”
“But you won't let us push you to get help,” Ariadne counters, and Arthur looks at her fondly but exasperatedly.
“I don't really believe in psychiatrists.”
He brought up therapy a few times, when Eames's insomnia was particularly bad. The testy look that Eames would give him though, the suffocating tension that would grow as Eames gave him the cold shoulder for implying that he was somehow fucked in the head, no matter Arthur's protestations that he didn't mean it like that; well, it wasn't worth it. Or so Arthur thought at the time.
And on happier days, Arthur would risk asking, and Eames would kiss his cheek and tell him that artists were naturally a little strange; it was just their usual temperament since they got so much inspiration from their turmoil.
Arthur wanted so badly to believe that, and he did. Clearly, he was an idiot.
The taste of copper draws him out of his thoughts, and he glances at Ariadne to see her staring at him with a troubled look. Silently, she points at the corner of his mouth, and he wipes away the blood smeared on his lip from his sluggishly bleeding tongue.
He presses the cut thoughtfully against his front teeth. It doesn't hurt.
Habitual paranoia prompts Arthur to check around for policemen, and then he quickly jaywalks across the street to the nearby church with the beautiful glass windows of various saints. Being an atheist with no interest, Arthur has no idea of the church’s denomination, but he has the faint notion that it must be Roman Catholic.
He sits down carefully, hesitantly on a wooden pew, glancing around to find himself alone in the long empty moments between masses and various other services.
Arthur rests his hands on the pew in front of him while he appreciates the quiet stillness of the church. Eames admitted to being lapsed, but every so often he would drop by the church and sit in one of the pews after checking that services wouldn’t start for some time.
Sometimes he would drag Arthur along, and they would sit together in the pews, Arthur with a distinct discomfort and Eames with no apparent irony. Arthur would sit upright, arms by his sides, and avoid making eye contact with anyone while Eames would close his eyes and mouth a few words and press his hand to his forehead before finally readying himself to leave.
Sitting in their usual pew, Arthur wonders a bit perversely whether he’d be struck by lightning in the church if he prayed for his dead boyfriend to come back to him. He stifles the urge to giggle and bows his head down for a few minutes; he can be respectful on Eames’s behalf.
Arthur gives the stained glass mosaics one last appreciative glance before he leaves, content to never come back to yet another place that he and Eames once visited together. Outside, the wind blows steadily and kicks up the newly turned fall leaves along the sidewalk, where Arthur stands, feeling lost and depressed.
He feels in his jacket pocket and withdraws his cell phone. He hits the buttons one after the other until his voicemail asks him monotonously if he would like to listen to his new messages. Throat tight, he skips past the most recent messages until he hears it.
“’Lo, Arthur…hm…looks like we’re still playing telephone tag…Listen, could you ring me back as soon as you get this?”
The message stutters and stops, and Arthur listens to the next one.
“Arthur, I feel-well, I just want to talk to you right now. I’ve been-it’s hard to explain-ring me. Okay?”
There's a mostly inaudible bit near the end that Arthur hasn't been able to figure out. It sounds like, “I love you.” Arthur hopes it wasn't.
As soon as the message ends, Arthur mechanically dials the number he has burned into his memory, and he waits for the call to go through, and the phone on the other end rings and rings.
But no one picks up. As Arthur knew.
It hurts anyway.
He hits himself hard in the face, and he savors the slap of physical pain, but before he can do it again, someone grabs his arm.
Arthur blanches, mind whirling with equal measures of dread and hope.
“Look here, young fella, what are you doing to yourself?” The old man with the grave features releases Arthur to tug his parka closer about his body while eying Arthur’s skimpy outfit.
The mildly cool weather turns cold, and Arthur shivers, abruptly realizing that he is freezing in his thin shirt and linen trousers.
“You need to get yourself some help there,” the stranger advises before shaking his head with mild bemusement and going on his way.
As soon as he gets back to the hotel, Arthur rushes to the shower and heats the water up to near boiling. Still feeling on the verge of catching cold, he crawls into bed and just sinks into his blankets and pillows.
He just wants…he just needs to sleep. He feels the urge with sinking desperation, and he helps himself along with a few pills from the Ambien bottle he digs from his travel case. He adds a few pills from the B6 bottle for good measure and chugs everything down with a mineral water from the mini-fridge.
He feels exhausted: his eyes are gritty, a headache is making its way from his temples to the back of his skull, and his coordination is barely there. He trips three times on his path back from the kitchenette, and he almost considers dialing Dom and Mal in a panic, but soon he forgets his worries and sinks mindlessly onto the bed.
It’s been a long day-no, a long month. Work has been stressful, with the newest client consistently making one revision after another to the information request, and Arthur is absolutely sick of delving through various historical sources for information on the original baklava recipe that some old rich biddy is demanding.
And home is no sanctuary, not lately. Eames is rather moody, with the draft of his latest novel due to the editor in another week, and is unusually secretive about the main character’s personality and development. Arthur teased and pseudo-pleaded for information, but gave up graciously when Eames told him forbiddingly that writers need space. Granted, Eames’s expression looked much less indulgent than usual, but, well, writers, from what Arthur observes from Eames’s habits, are rather prone to artistic fits. If Eames wants to share at the end, then Arthur can wait and be surprised.
“Hey, Arthur! You up for happy hour? James says he’s buying. Come on, free drinks; how can you resist?”
“Sure,” Arthur says, briefly considering and dismissing the idea of checking in with Eames. He doesn’t need to be snapped at again today. Judging by Eames’s mood at breakfast, Arthur would be better off coming home with a buzz to soften the other man’s edges. Eames won’t miss him for a few hours. And he could bring home takeout. Hmm, maybe Malaysian cuisine from that restaurant near the bar.
“Hey, another pitcher, guys?” James calls out later in mid-conference with the waiter.
“Sure, sure,” Most of the guys cheer energetically while munching down on nachos and wings.
“No, I’m good. I need to head home anyway,” Arthur demurs, feeling a little warm around the collar. The others call him a killjoy but wave him off good-naturedly.
Huh, his tolerance is gone. That, or maybe it's the lack of sleep from working late the past few nights. Feeling a little more than buzzed, Arthur grabs a taxi back to the company and walks to the train station.
Head nodding up and down, he finally drifts into a light doze, encouraged by the near-silent run of the train on its tracks.
“Huh! Wha-where? Oh, hell,” Arthur jerks around, rubbing the sleep from his eyes, before checking that the containers of sambal udang and laksa are still with him. Then, feeling foolish that he was worried about the safety of takeout, he checks for his wallet and cell phone, which was beeping insistently. Arthur has no idea what station he is approaching, but he can tell by the late hour, that he must have gone more than several stops past the one he wants.
Sighing deeply in aggravation but immensely grateful that tomorrow is Saturday, Arthur taps a few buttons on his phone to find three voicemails from Eames. Bracing himself for an unhappy reception, Arthur calls Eames back, but his phone insists that it's out of distance.
Arthur gets out of his seat, feeling too antsy to stay still, and at that moment, the train shudders to a sudden stop, and he wheels his arms in the air before falling flat against a warm body.
“Hey, Arthur.”
“Whoa,” Arthur blurts out, surprised at the change in his memory. “You-Yusuf?”
“Yeah,” the man confirms. He runs a shaking hand over his curly dark hair before looking Arthur intently in the eyes. It takes Arthur a long minute to realize that Yusuf is looking at him with a mixture of strong dislike and contempt.
“Why are you in my dream?” Arthur demands, more than a little angry that Yusuf is in his way.
Yusuf actually scowls at him, and Arthur takes a step back before he consciously registers being intimidated. Normally the new generation hippy type, Yusuf’s face doesn’t suit a scowl, and the alien presence is more unnerving still.
“I was really happy for Eames when he told me he found someone,” Yusuf says slowly, “But I always wondered what he saw in you. He was such a happy-go-lucky guy, and he really knew how to live. Then he met you, and that spark just died out.”
Yusuf shakes his head in apparent disbelief. “Meeting you just destroyed him. He tried so hard to please you. He started cutting back on everything. He didn’t come out with us anymore, and he started having…trouble.”
The back of Arthur’s neck goes red hot, and the flush climbs up his pale cheeks. “You’re making me sound like a control freak. I didn’t like going out to dives, but I didn’t stop Eames from doing it. And we went out pretty often to other places.”
Yusuf seems to ignore Arthur’s protest and continues on, nodding to himself. “Yeah, he started having trouble, and you didn’t even notice.”
“I noticed!” Arthur screams. “But I didn’t know what to do. What the hell do you do when you love him, but he gets worse and worse-and you’re walking on eggshells-and everything you do just seems to hurt him!”
When Yusuf just looks at him with dismissive skepticism, Arthur swings at him in frustration and ends up hitting the wall beside the door. Falling through a wall is a disconcerting feeling, but Arthur welcomes the enveloping sensation with relief until the slow drop increases to a plummet.
Landing on the coffee table hurts like hell. Arthur picks himself off, wincing at the shards of glass that embedded into the soft flesh of his forearms. He’s surrounded by the same pile of books that he packed up and dumped at the library. Torn between shouting in anger and crying in hysteria, Arthur grabs up one of the books, hand tight on the spine.
The cover stops him short.
The Minotaur’s Wife
Rubbing at his aching back, Arthur stands up with a frustrated sigh and finds himself nose to nose with Ariadne.
“Holy-!” he backpedals a bit in alarm.
Then, he resigns himself. He just saw Yusuf; he’s bound to see the others in the sick depths of his subconscious. He looks Ariadne up and down and notes the gauzy dress, bangles on her bare arms, and the jewels twisted into her hair in the vague shape of a diadem.
“Great symbolism, I guess. So, are you going to lead me somewhere?” he asks. “Only thing is that I’m not in the mood for killing any minotaurs.”
Ariadne nails him with a particularly dark look, and Arthur backs away, tired smirk falling away.
“Or not. That’s fine. I can wander around my own sick mind by myself.”
“You can't live your life in peace if you don't find the center of the maze,” Ariadne tells him with a somber air reminiscent of ancient royalty. “I led Theseus in his path to find the Minotaur, and I will lead you to find Eames.”
“He’s not a monster I have to slay,” Arthur tells her heatedly, even as he admits that he does need to confront his homicidal projection and other underlying issues.
He closes his eyes in resignation. “What do I need to do?” he asks bleakly.
She holds her hand out to him, palm up, and immediately, his gun is right there. He takes it, and he looks back at her.
“I don’t feel right about shooting Ariadne, even in a dream, on purpose,” he tells her.
Finally, her serious expression breaks out into a smile. “You don’t have to. I can follow you.”
“Oh.” Feeling rather dense, Arthur takes a deep breath and pulls the trigger.
They’re out in the streets, and the sunlight is almost blinding.
Blinking to adjust, Arthur takes a look around and recognizes his surroundings as the downtown area just several blocks from their house.
Ariadne starts walking rapidly up the streets, hands in her windbreaker, leaving him behind, and Arthur has to jog to catch up. His breath comes out in a white fog as he talks. “You know, if I thought about this happening, I would have expected Dom or Mal. I mean, I’m not saying you can’t be sympathetic, but you’re single right now, and most of your relationships lately have been flings.”
Ariadne stops in her tracks and eyes Arthur narrowly, and the bleak look reminds Arthur that he's not talking to his friend. “I loved him,” the princess of Crete says simply, not specifying the hero Theseus or Meranus, the complex minotaur Eames had dreamed up. “I know what it's like to lose your other half.”
She turns away then and continues to stride up the street, her back fully straight and chin tilted at a proud, if bittersweet, angle. For a moment, Arthur could see the real Ariadne holding back tears after a painful breakup, even as she stubbornly insisted that she didn't care in the first place.
“I didn't think-I'm sorry,” Arthur says, at a loss for any other words.
Ariadne smiles wryly without looking round. “I'm sorry too.”
They walk in silence for some time until they come to the end of the road, and everything ahead is shrouded in the heavy fog that has been growing around them during their walk.
“Here is where I leave you.” Ariadne places her scarf around his neck and steps away, quickly melting into the mist.
“Wait, where do I go then?” Arthur shouts at her back. At her fading gesture towards his left, he sees a dirty alleyway open up, and he hesitates for a long while before striding down to meet what will come.
It looks like any other alleyway, bags of trash heaped against overflowing dumpsters, sticky gum and other substances matting the ground. It’s not too narrow, for an alley, but Arthur feels that it’s still getting hard to breathe.
He passes by a homeless woman or man covered in a tattered raincoat sitting with their hands over a smoldering fire in a small can. A rat or two scurries over his shoes, and he resists the urge to shake them off. It’s just a dream.
It’s just a dream. It’s just a dream, Arthur repeats when he sees him with another human denizen of the alley.
He’s leaning against the wall, legs in worn black leather pants, chest encased in a tight gray t-shirt with cut-off sleeves and more holes than cloth.
Arthur has never seen Eames dressed like that before.
He’s about to call out when something stops him, and he stands several meters away and watches as the man with his lover’s face whispers something into his companion’s ear, and they walk off together, with too little space between their bodies.
Heart twisting, Arthur feels perversely like a man stalking his cheating spouse, as he runs after them, and he ends up slamming into Eames, who catches him around the shoulder before he falls back.
“Careful there, darling.” The voice is low, amused, and sultry; the eyes are cool chips of glass; and Arthur sees no recognition in them.
“Eames…”
Suspicion hits the man’s face, and he releases Arthur abruptly, hurriedly. “Where did you get that name?”
“I-that’s-it’s your name,” Arthur tells him blankly. His fear at encountering the projection fades a little into bemusement.
“That’s what you think,” Eames responds shortly before turning around and leaving without a single moment more of attention to Arthur.
“Wait.” Arthur picks up his pace until he’s striding alongside Eames, and he’s tempted to just reach out and grab him and stop him in his tracks. But he’s rattled by Eames' treating him like a complete stranger. None of his other projections refused to acknowledge him. If anything, each one was vocally insistent on his failure as a partner.
Busy with his whirling thoughts, Arthur is at first numb to the pain of being slammed into the brick wall, even as the breath whooshes out of his lungs. That’s familiar, he thinks fuzzily.
“Do you know what I’ve just done?” Eames speaks softly into his ear, lips almost touching the skin, and Arthur tries not to shiver-any reaction seems bad. “I just took a man into the corner, kissed him right on the lips, and then stuck a knife in his gut.”
The blood freezes in Arthur's veins. Eames never struck him as a violent man before, and he's dimly ashamed for being afraid of his lover, but who knows better than he what a twisted projection is capable of?
Arthur feels idiotically relieved when his reply comes out cool and steady despite the weakness in his knees. “I look forward to the kiss.”
“They all do, love. They all do.” Eames shoves him carelessly away with a brutal laugh, and when Arthur hits the floor, he feels more than just the pain in his scraped up elbows and back.
Reminding Arthur of a cat with too easy prey, Eames seems to grow bored and ignore his existence, strolling into the distance, hands in his back pockets.
Arthur picks himself up and then sits back down. He wants to give up. Rationally, he knows that no projection of Eames could ever forgive Arthur on the real man's behalf, and he is courting disaster by staying so long in a dream. With dread, Arthur is realizing that he doesn't know what would happen with the mix of drugs he took. What if he actually overdosed himself?
But much as Arthur wants to punish himself for being an idiot, his survival instincts start to shriek that he should find shelter for the night. The gloomy day has gotten darker, and the streetlights, the ones that aren't busted, flicker on.
Arthur trudges down the street until he finds an oddly familiar motel. It takes some time for him to search his memory, but he finally recognizes it from someplace in New Jersey. The car had broken down, and they'd been forced to stay overnight at the closest motel, which had ended up being some ramshackle, sleazy place. They'd giggled and made fun together under the covers of the bed and then talked a bit too seriously about sleeping in shifts.
But beggars can't be choosers, so Arthur goes through the registration with a bored looking guy who looks plucked from any of the Amtrak stations that Arthur has frequented. Nash, as his name tag proclaims him, hands Arthur a key that has rather questionable stains on the wooden tag.
He's struggling with his door and swearing at the sticky lock when he backs into someone. Eyes wide, he jumps away and feels like an idiot when he finds himself face to face with another familiar person.
“You'll want to be careful there,” the woman whispered throatily. Arthur stares. She tilts her head and laughs sensually for a long moment.
A hot flush climbs up the back of his neck, and Arthur jerks his head away. He never thought he'd feel embarrassed around Mal, but her dress has roughly one yard's worth of surface area, and he sees skin now that he never did in real life.
Mal comes closer, purposefully invading his personal space, and wraps a cold hand around his chin, tapered fingers sharp with manicured nails that dig in. “You're quite the handsome young man. I could find work for you.” It's not a suggestion.
Arthur stammers for a shamefully long time before he gets the insinuation, and by that time, Mal's other hand is briskly feeling up the goods. Horror and pure fear give him the adrenaline to kick open the door and slam it shut against the repellent projection.
Arthur swallows down bile as he considers his next step. His fucked up idea of Eames wasn't the only threat around. He sits down on the sagging mattress and wonders what he can do next.
With the windows and door shut, the motel room is muggy and not a bit smelly. He reaches up to undo his collar and touches Ariadne's scarf. A vague hope comes to him then that he could maybe conjure up more benevolent projections of his friends. An Ariadne helped him. A Mal could help him too. He just doesn't know how he can go about it.
He pulls his coat off and lays it on the stained bed covers with a grimace before lying down and shutting his eyes tightly.
“Come on, come on,” he mutters furiously to himself. “I need you-any one of you. Mal? Dom? Ariadne?”
He sighs at what an idiot he is for the pathetic make-believe and rolls around frustratedly on the bed, raising small clouds of dust. He coughs until his throat is irritated, and he hacks out several breaths until his lungs are aching for respite, and tears are welling up.
Flipping onto his back, he opens his eyes and yells at the gigantic eyeball floating so closely in his face.
“Arthur,” Dom says, not at all happy. “I think you punctured an eardrum. Stop yelling, okay? You sound like James when he was still teething.”
“You scared the crap out of me, Dom,” Arthur wheezes. He takes a good look at his friend, and then his heart makes a scared thump.
Dom has blood-shot eyes, unshaven cheeks, and a faint smile that unnerves Arthur even as he tries unsuccessfully to figure out why. It's not like real Dom looks any fresher when he has a tough time being a dad. But then, real Dom doesn't go around with a noticeably long, thick, newly healed scar across his chin.
“I scare the crap out of a lot of people,” Dom answers amiably, not sounding at all like a wife-killing freak.
“I need your help, Dom,” Arthur decides to say, discarding all the other responses because they might get him answers he doesn't want.
Dom shakes his head slowly, still with that creepy smile on his face. “No, you don't. Here, I'll help you get what you need.”
In retrospect, Arthur should never have lived past age eighteen, being unable to read and avert other people's intentions. Dom's hand pushes right into his chest, and Arthur can feel the numb-painful pulse of his heart against Dom's fingers as they grip onto something near his collarbone and pull relentlessly against the resistance.
The slorp of the something disengaging from his body sends chills down Arthur's spine, and he intently wishes that he's in shock when he sees the body fall on its hands and knees.
The other Arthur, also clad in a dark blue button-down and straight jeans, shoves himself up before curling his body into a ball that crashes into and through the window.
“Shit, Dom,” Arthur yells. “I don't need a copy! What the hell was that for?”
Dom starts disappearing just like Ariadne did, the mist enveloping him like a blanket. “You'll need him, Arthur. See you topside.”
After the past few traumatic events, Arthur desperately wants to close his eyes and fall deeper into sleep, but a brave little voice calls him a coward, and he wrenches himself up from the bed. If Dom said that he needs his copy, then he'll go find it.
Feeling uneasy at how long evening is lasting in his dream, Arthur sprints up and down the streets, even the little alleys, looking for a glimpse of another slim dark-haired figure.
Arthur tries to put himself in the copy's shoes. If he suddenly found himself in a strange motel room, where would he go? Probably to get a drink. Seedy looking town like this doesn't look like it would be short on bars, but Arthur finds a strip mall first. The liquor store's dangling red-lettered sign catches his attention, and he figures it's as good a place to check as any.
The dirty linoleum squeaks under his feet, and the lights flicker and buzz like in any other two-bit generic liquor store. He's about to assume that he's alone when he gets grabbed around the neck and lifted. The other man doesn't seem very built, but Arthur can't seem to break the bone-crushing grip, which tightens immediately and relentlessly.
Once again faced with near-asphyxiation, Arthur fights against his panicked impulses to flail and gathers his wits enough to jerk his right shoulder back and nail his attacker in the face. Arthur doesn't hear the crunch of cartilage breaking, but the hold loosens, and Arthur spins around with both fists up, despite his aching arm.
He freezes.
He wouldn't have thought he had it in him to be a killer. But he must be wrong since here was his doppelganger with a murderous gleam in his eyes.
Arthur could kill for a shot of Novocaine to his throat right now, but he settles for gently massaging the cords of his throat and shooting an ugly glare at his evil twin. “What the hell is wrong with you?” he grits out.
“Everything,” Other Arthur smiles faintly with this simple answer, and he walks unnervingly close but keeps out of arms-length. He rubs his face more roughly than Arthur would if he had a bloody nose, and then he ducks smoothly down to the floor and comes up with a Glock.
Arthur cuts out and runs. He pounds down the street and considers his options.
It just figures that his evil subconscious would give his twin a gun. Arthur would take the time to dream up a gun, but so far it seems that his skills are pretty rusty. Unfortunately, Dom's training focused more on defense than offense, and he bet Dom would never have expected this scenario.
Arthur hides behind a creaky stairwell and winds it up into a penrose staircase. Other Arthur wouldn't be able to reach him there.
Arthur takes that thought right back when he hears the unbelievable creak of an elevator moving up its rigging. He whirls around to see actual elevator doors appear and slide open in the middle concrete pillar of his penrose stairs.
Tense for action, Arthur drops his mouth open unbecomingly when a man steps out nonchalantly and walks past him to the small balcony. “Eames?”
Eames tilts his head back and breathes in deeply for several long moments. Eyes peacefully closed, he half- turns towards Arthur. “I don't go by that name.”
“Then what?” Arthur shoots back exasperatedly before remembering that his lover would hardly beat him for sarcastic remarks, but who knew with this stranger?
“You won't have any reason to call me,” Eames says matter-of-factly before pushing off the balcony and heading back towards the elevator. As the doors begin to close, he says to Arthur, carelessly, “Beautiful balcony.”
Arthur stares in pain and outright frustration before he forces himself to snap out of his funk and find a way to defend himself. He sits against his stairs and begins to think. Dream time being unpredictable, it takes him from one minute to six hours to figure something out.
The plan, as far as he's gotten, is not a genius one. He hopes that he hasn't accidentally killed himself overdosing and will soon wake up once the sleeping pills wear off. In the meantime, he needs to avoid getting killed in the dream. He'd prefer to stay hidden on his penrose stairs, but if Eames-Other Eames-could find his way there, so could Other Arthur.
“You don't want to die too many times in dreams,” Dom warned him after one particularly grueling session of training.
“Why?” Arthur asked, feeling like a dumbass even as he let the question slip.
“Because dying is traumatic. One too many times, and who knows what could happen to your mind? Think about what happens to an egg that gets shaken too many times.”
“Jeezus, Dom.”
“Just remember that, Arthur.”
For a while, Arthur just sits on the floor, enjoying the sunrise he can view perfectly from his balcony, and he tries not to wonder what'll happen to him. He thinks about Eames, remembers the smiling face, the gentle lips, the soothing hands, and he thinks and thinks until he knows he better stop.
Arthur finally steps down onto the dirty pavement at ground level and scans his surroundings warily. He checks the street corners and alley entrances as he slowly makes his way through the town, creating a mental map of each potential hiding spot, especially any that would be good for an ambush.
The gun shop is dingy, dimly lit, and devoid of any smiling workers willing to offer customer service, so Arthur, with a slight immature thrill, starts breaking glass cases with the freedom of not having to worry about fingerprints and jail. He ends his stealing spree with a nice assortment of knives, nylon webs, GPS bugs, boxes of ammo, and two Colt .45 automatic pistols.
He checks the chamber for bullets before stashing a box of ammo into his left jeans pocket, and then he's as ready as he'll ever be. He makes his way around town, carefully setting traps along the way and discreetly dispensing tools in boltholes where he may need them if his confrontation with the doppelganger turns sour. Eventually, he concludes at the seedy motel, and he heads to his room.
He has the vague idea that his doppelganger might be somehow attracted to his motel room, like one of those strange spiritual ties, like how ghosts were somehow stuck to the place where they died, if psychics could be believed.
“Hello, my sweet.” Warm soft arms curl around his shoulders, and moist breath blows against his ear with the words. He jumps up and away and falls hard against the water-stained motel walls. The woman smirks at his alarm, but her smugness disappears when he gets up and pulls a gun from his side.
“I'm not interested,” Arthur tells her tersely, pistol pointed directly at her heart. He doesn't want to shoot Mal's projection, but he's taking no chances either. He'll already have a hard time looking the real Mal in the face after this; he doesn't want anything extra freaky to happen.
She pouts girlishly at him and crosses her arms in front of her chest, deliberately emphasizing the curves of her lush figure. Arthur keeps his eyes on her face and wills himself not to blush.
“Move, please,” Arthur orders as nicely as possible since the projection is still blocking his motel room door.
Mal looks overly delighted. “Oh,” she coos. “He knows how to say 'please.' Maybe we can teach you some other pretty words?”
“I'm not going to say it again,” Arthur warns, and he lets his finger tighten on the trigger until her eyes flicker to the gun and then back to his face.
Apparently convinced that he really would shoot her, Mal makes a disgruntled moue filled with hostility, and the sullenness sharpens her features to an unflattering degree.
“Thanks,” Arthur offers flatly before walking past her, the edge of his sleeve just barely brushing against her warm side. He doesn't let his skin crawl.
“Oh,” Mal breathes out, turning to face him, mesh dress brushing across his shoulder instead of his chest as he moves with her. She tilts her head and looks at him coyly, the previous look of cold anger now gone from her face. “You're Arthur, aren't you?”
“Yes,” Arthur admits warily. He doesn't bother to ask the obvious question.
“Oh, I had nearly forgotten.” Mal taps her ruby red lips with a long nail, and she lets loose a soft giggle filled with chagrin. “I have a message for you from a secret admirer.” The purr she puts on the last two words is complemented by a disquieting wink.
“Oh, really?” Arthur asks warily. “Who's that?”
Mal shrugs sinuously, and a dress strap nearly falls from her bare shoulder. “A very handsome young man. Rough around the edges, but a good boy, I'm sure.”
Arthur's heart leaps, but he keeps control of himself. “Why does he want to meet up? I got the impression that he didn't want to see me.”
Mal gives him a pityingly look and laughs at his stony features. “Oh, come now, haven't you heard that the lad doth protest too much? Although I'm not sure which is the lad here...”
Getting rather tired of the disturbing innuendos, Arthur interrupts, “Did he say where or when?”
“Mm, I think he said something about the pier,” Mal offers brightly. “ASAP.”
The docks are filled with the shrieking cries and bustling wings of seagulls, which Arthur only hates a little less than pigeons. Both fall under the flying rodent category for him. He walks in circles on top of the warped wooden planks, and he narrowly misses planting a foot into a puddle and sliding right into the ocean. He's beginning to wonder if Mal lied to him in a fit of malicious pique when he hears the measured footsteps coming from behind him. He has only time to think that they sound a little off because he's yanked off his feet and dangling in the air.
“Isn't this a bit clichéd?” Arthur gasps out as dryly as he can while he's calling himself an idiot and trying to breathe through the nauseating vertigo. He grasps at the nylon strands twisting up and around one another in a loosely woven net, and he can feel that he doesn't have a chance of tearing them apart with his bare hands.
“It works,” Other Arthur smiles gamely, watching with creepy good humor as Arthur struggles for the one knife he stuck into his belt instead of the duffle bag, currently lying uselessly on the floor. Arthur feels around for a long aching moment before dropping his arms and cursing Evil Mal. It could have been any one of those times she invaded his personal space.
“Missing something?” Other Arthur asks mildly, kneeling on the pier, hands rifling expertly through the duffle bag for a few minutes before kicking it casually off the end of the pier. He strolls out of Arthur's line of sight for a moment and then returns with a machete, swinging it to and fro with an easy grip on its handle.
Frozen like a deer before the hunter's scope, Arthur stares at the gleam of sharp metal, and his heart seems to stop for a beat before continuing on to thump loudly in his ears, as panic floods his body. He's going to get murdered! By himself! Arthur struggles against his net wrapping, as Other Arthur steps closer and closer, not at all concerned that his prey might get free.
“Help,” Arthur tries to squeeze through his panic-tightened throat, but he can barely get it out, and the words come out in a pathetic whisper. He thrashes harder, just setting himself swinging in the confining net, but he doesn't care. He just wants it to stop, he just wants to wake up, he wants to wake up! “Please!”
“Hm, what have we here?” The musing voice cuts through Arthur's panic-fogged mind, and he strains his neck to look behind Other Arthur, where a shadowy figure steps into the lighted area of the pier.
Other Arthur stops in his tracks, a frown wrinkling his forehead and marring the previous calm amusement that graced his face. He swings up the machete and holds the head with his other hand and seems to study it. He speaks lackadaisically, “Three's a crowd, you know. Hint, hint. So, go away.”
Eames's brow shoots up as he continues his approach. “You don't appreciate having an intrigued audience?”
“Babe, I don't need support, and I don't need a peanut gallery during a really intimate vivisection. Now, get going,” Other Arthur says shortly, clearly losing patience with the interruption.
“How curious. Identical twins? Or is that wonderful face one of triplets?” Eames persists, head craning around Other Arthur to look at Arthur in all his stupid glory, mouth open in relief and fingers still clutched around the openings of the net.
Other Arthur gives Eames a long measured look before lifting up his machete and taking an abrupt swing, which ends up missing its target, as Eames twists smoothly on his left foot, taking his body out of reach.
Eames tsks, shaking his head in mock dismay. “'Fraid you'll have to try again, darling. That was quite a miss.” He brings a wooden bat out of nowhere and takes his own swing at Other Arthur in punctuation of his mockery.
Watching in blank shock, Arthur starts to feel hysteria building up. First, Eames commits suicide by shooting himself in the head because Arthur failed him, and now Eames is going to goad a madman with Arthur's face into chopping him up like sashimi, and then Arthur really would be responsible for his death.
He can't let that happen.
Determinedly, Arthur keeps one eye on the fight while he uses up his acrobatic ability to flail around again, this time carefully and with deliberation, as he sweeps his gaze across the dock, hoping for something that he can use as a makeshift blade to get out of his prison.
The dock is empty of anything useful, Other Arthur being smart enough to prevent any sense of resourcefulness on Arthur's part. It doesn't pay after all, to underestimate one's prey. But Other Arthur is as human as any other, and prone to taking a given environment as it comes. Looking back to the rickety ramp that provided access to the pier, Arthur notices a rather rusty section on the metal railing; it looks to be on the flimsy side, and he hopes to hell that he can break it off with a yank or two.
Arthur keeps one eye on the fight, which remains balanced, as Eames keeps Other Arthur and his machete at bay with judicious swings, the air whistling sharply as he just barely misses the other man.
Arthur gauges his distance from the rusty railing, and he thanks his genes for his long limbs as he stretches his arm out from the netting as far as it can go, and his fingers just barely brush against the metal. Not close enough. Gathering the tops of his net into a bunch, Arthur holds it tight to provide leverage as he attempts to rock back and forth midair.
It doesn't work. It shouldn't. But then it does. Arthur wonders if it has as much to do with being in a dream as it does with his desperation to stop his doppelganger from killing Eames. He finally pushes himself close enough to wrap his hand around pitted metal and wrench the corner piece off the rest.
Arthur casts a glance warily over his shoulder, but Other Arthur is still preoccupied with Eames, whose comments are not audible but evidently quite provocative, judging by Other Arthur's chilly expression, which promises prompt evisceration.
The metal bites into the meat of his right hand, but Arthur ignores the pain as he grips it tightly and uses the sharper end to saw away at a nylon corner. He works the metal roughly and quickly, discomfort building in his shoulder as he strains his arm in the limited space. When the netting finally starts giving way, Arthur increases his efforts further until he's panting for breath from the exertion. And finally, he falls from confinement to the wooden planks of the dock. His palm is on fire and covered in a sheen of blood, but he wipes his hand on his jeans before readjusting his grip on his weapon.
Eames can clearly see him coming from the periphery, but the man doesn't let on to Other Arthur, whose earlier dispassion degrades into an animalistic snarl that disappears into open-mouthed shock after Arthur clobbers him with the metal bar.
Incredulity mixes with whole-hearted relief as he watches the familiar body stumbling back and hitting the dock with a sickening, echoing crack on impact. He stares at the body before him and waits until he's certain that Other Arthur won't be a bother for quite some time. He throws the metal bar down with disgust before remembering that he's not alone, and maybe he should have stayed armed.
“Arthur.” The voice is soft and worried, and he spins around to see a hesitant hand hovering above his shoulder as the owner makes uncertain eye contact.
“You look a mess,” Eames says, looking at the pressure lines where the nylon netting cut into Arthur's face. The projection tries to shove a hand into his leather pants, but finds no pocket, and after making a brief face, Eames is wearing relaxed jeans; he digs through his left pocket and brings out a large white handkerchief, which he hands diffidently to Arthur.
The handkerchief smells unsurprisingly of Eames's cologne, and Arthur tries not to make it too obvious that he's breathing a bit more deeply than before, as he wipes the sweat from his hot forehead and cheeks.
“You're different,” Arthur observes intelligently, and Eames smiles painfully at him before taking the handkerchief and dabbing at the oozing cut that Arthur got at some point without knowing.
“I told you not to read my manuscript,” Eames says, folding up the handkerchief and stowing it back in his pocket. His other hand stays on Arthur's cheekbone. “And now you've gotten nightmares.”
“Asshole, I think it's more to do with your suicide,” Arthur tells him bitterly, and now, after all the fear and exhaustion and pain of the past few days (hours? minutes?), Arthur has Eames in front of him, and the main thing he wants to do is punch the other man in the fucking teeth. His hands begin to shake, and wetness stings his tired eyes, and it's all he can do to be standing right now.
The wan smile fades from Eames's lips. “I know, Arthur, and I'm sorry, darling. It was beyond foolish of me, and it's not the sort of mistake I can fix in retrospect, is it? And now you're here, dreaming, and trying to get some comfort from sorry old me.”
Arthur shoves the heels of his palms into his eyes, and he presses until he sees hazy sparks exploding in the darkness behind his eyes. “Am I going to have to deal with this shit again every time I fall asleep? Creepy Mal, Homicidal Me...You?”
“Not if you find closure,” Eames says softly. He looks to where Other Arthur is still sprawled near them on the ground. “I expect you've gotten the worst of it out just now, and I'd gladly take a punch for the real Eames if you think it would help.”
Losing control, Arthur drops his hands from his face and lunges at Eames. He grabs the other man around the shoulders and begins to shake him furiously until the tears finally blind him, and he falls forward into a warm shoulder. He screams wretchedly and incoherently for hours, and Eames continues to hold him close and stroke his back, giving him a kiss now and then on the forehead, on the cheeks, shushing him gently as he tries weakly to turn away.
Finally, Arthur stops, feeling worn to the bone, and they stand there together in the quiet, and Eames begins to sway them from side to side. He brushes stray strands out of Arthur's face, and he murmurs, “Do you remember Mal and Dom's anniversary party? They had everything: the Five Star Michelin restaurant, the kitschy cupid favors, the something or other Grammy award winning band?”
Arthur can't stop himself from snorting, as they continue the impromptu waltz. “You were way too pleased to find out that they were making dancing mandatory.”
“Well, it's not quite the same in our own living room or in a stuffy bar,” Eames says reasonably. “It was very romantic, especially with the dim lights, and I didn't much mind your tromping on my toes.”
Arthur opens his mouth to let out a retort, but he slumps back against Eames's oddly solid shoulder and huffs out a miserable breath. “What are we doing, Richard?” he asks hopelessly. “You're dead. Damn it, you're dead!”
“I know,” Eames whispers. “I know, Arthur.” He doesn't seem to have much else to say, and Arthur tries to be satisfied with that, but still, his chest feels as hollow as on the first day he woke up in the hotel room, staring at the unfamiliar ceiling and remembering why he was there.
Eames hums a broken song into Arthur's hair and smoothes a fond hand over his cheek; it feels oddly final, and Arthur stiffens and tries to pull away, but Eames won't let go. Grip tightening around Arthur's waist, Eames slowly whirls them closer and closer to the end of the pier.
Eyes wide, Arthur stares into those oblique eyes just as Eames lovingly releases him into the air, and the ocean waters rush towards him, enveloping him completely in its wet embrace.
“Come back to see me, Arthur,” the projection whispers wistfully, “But only to visit, hm?”
Arthur opens his mouth and ends up choking on the myriad tiny bubbles that burble out from his lips as he tries to plead, question, demand.
He wakes up.
Coda:
The snick of his key opening the front door echoes loudly through the empty house, and Arthur sneezes on imaginary dust. He swipes at his eyes before toeing off his shoes and throwing his coat onto the couch before heading for what he wants.
The smooth glaze of the urn's body feels comfortingly cool against his hands as he holds it tight against him before he pulls the door shut behind him.
Driving to the ocean takes several hours, but it goes by in a blur of barely changing scenery and a nearly monotonous hum of passably good country music.
Arthur finds a relatively private spot under a small overhang before he wades into the cold water, chilled by the dreary overcast of the hidden sun in the sky.
He gives the urn a wet kiss, or two, or three, before upending the contents into the slightly frothy water before him. The ashes swirl around him for a few seconds before seemingly disappearing into the depths with each gentle lap of the waves.
Arthur cups the water in his hands-the salt is briny on his lips-and thinks he can almost feel an embrace.
That night Arthur shuts his eyes and goes to sleep, and there, Eames is waiting for him.
A/N: Hmm, I'm still a sucker for a relatively happy ending. I had intended to write something darker and unhappier after my previous fluffy, romantic depiction of Arthur/Eames in another story. Oh, well.
Writer: Sporadic_Writer
Status of work: Complete
Characters and/or pairings: Arthur/Eames, Mal/Cobb, Ariadne, Yusuf, Nash. Reference to Saito/Fischer.
Rating: R
Warnings, kinks & contents:[Spoiler (click to open)]Mentions of depression, suicide, drug misuse, self-harm, attempted murder.
Length: 16,711 words.
Author's note: I have read fanfiction in which a character other than Fischer was the subject of a dream, and I wondered how each character in turn would react to being haunted by a loved one. With those two things in mind, I wrote this story about Arthur and Eames. Naturally, this is AU, but the basic premise of active dreaming remains the same. On a more personal note, I'm really happy since this is the longest fanfiction that I've written thus far.
Summary: Eames died three months ago, but Arthur's still haunted by the guilt that he could have done something differently. His dreams range from the nightmarish to the bittersweet as he goes through the five stages of grief.
Part 1
Arthur forces his eyes open, and the blur of yellow and brown in front of him resolves into Dom, who hands him a bottle of water.
“I just slept for three hours in the lab,” Arthur says, bemused that he managed to fall asleep on Dom and Mal's couch after following them home for dinner.
Dom shrugs, not looking particularly concerned. “You were sleep-deprived to begin with, and you've been more active than normal in your dreams with all the training. Think of it as physical and mental fatigue.”
Arthur sits up before he asks a bit abruptly, “I've been under for a total of more than 9 hours, Dom. Why haven't I seen him?”
Dom doesn't say anything for a moment, but the look he gives Arthur makes him want to bristle in defense. “The dreams we have in the lab are artificially-stimulated, but they should act the same way as other dreams. Maybe you don't want to see him.”
Arthur wants to scream at Dom. Of course, he wants to see Eames. But a small petty part of him doesn't want to admit that the innocuous dreams have been soothing. He's been sleeping better, and he hates himself for it. Dom can probably sense Arthur's turmoil but has better sense than to instigate anything, so he changes the topic.
“Do you want to go over anything we just learned in the lab?” Dom asks, searching Arthur's face. “I'm glad that you're picking it up so quickly, but I worry that you won't be able to think when the time comes.”
“I have it down,” Arthur says quietly before forcing a smirk. “Anyway, who was it who got confused on the penrose steps? Oh, right, not me.”
Dom tosses a couch cushion at him. “Hey, you made it twist in the weirdest way that I've seen since Yusuf went under with some compound he mixed himself.”
Mal makes a tsk sound when she comes in with cups of espresso. “Why do you always bully him, Dom?”
“He does it all the time, Mal,” Arthur says earnestly. “You're the only one who can stop him!”
Dom and Mal cuddle up together on the other side of the couch, and Arthur tries not to let his own memories of after-dinner snuggling depress him.
Mal laughs softly as she rests her head against Dom's, and he strokes her hair with a dopey smile. “You bring out the best in me,” he whispers to her.
Fortunately, Arthur's cell beeps with an incoming text message, and he reads it cursorily before clearing his throat loudly and almost leaping off the furniture in his eagerness to leave the domestic scene behind. “I have to pick up Ariadne at the university. She said that her car finally gave out.”
Ariadne's waiting outside the main gate when Arthur pulls up. She looks like the quintessential college student with her books tucked under her arm, and her shoulder-length hair blowing around her face with the strong winds.
“I'm not convinced that your jeep's dead,” Arthur tells her, as he pulls out into traffic.
“You and Eames were the ones to tell me that I'd end up stranded and dead like one of those idiot tourists in horror movies,” Ariadne responds, settling into the passenger seat.
“Eames said that you'd be stranded and killed,” Arthur corrected. “I said that you'd better keep your insurance up to date for a tow truck from Triple A.”
They drive quietly for a bit, and when Ariadne apparently believes that Arthur won't have an immediate breakdown at further mentions of Eames, she ventures, “Eames had a pretty dark sense of humor sometimes.
“I mean, he was interesting; he was funny in a way I wouldn't expect,” she adds, so as not to offend.
“He was.” And for a moment, Arthur's smile is filled more with nostalgia than with pain.
“Did he ever put you into one of his books? I mean, Dom ended up as a sociopathic wife-killer; Mal was some creepy noir film madame; and lucky me, I got to be a Greek princess with bad taste in guys. I guess it's really true that authors get a lot of their material from the people and places around them.”
Arthur frowns a bit and tries to hide it. “I read almost all of his books, and I don't think I ever inspired any characters. Not really, anyway, I mean you can't count a grumpy magician as my avatar. I didn't recognize myself anyway, and I'm pretty sure Eames would have told me if he wrote about me.”
“He wrote about himself one time, right?”
Surprised, Arthur turns around to look at Ariadne before jerking his eyes back onto the road, which luckily turns out to be fairly deserted at this time of night.
“Yeah,” he clears his throat. “I mean, he planned to, but-but he didn't finish the manuscript before...forget it, I don't really want to talk about it.” He didn't want to think about it. At least, he didn't have to see it again. Throwing the computer out the second story window had taken care of that.
“Don't get mad, but I think Eames had a big depression problem.” Ariadne bites her lip and looks like she is about to add more, but then she shoots Arthur a wary look.
Arthur can't get angry though, not when he's been wondering if he didn't as good as put the noose around Eames's neck by not insisting that he talk to a psychiatrist. “He did,” Arthur admits. “I should have pushed him to get help.”
“But you won't let us push you to get help,” Ariadne counters, and Arthur looks at her fondly but exasperatedly.
“I don't really believe in psychiatrists.”
He brought up therapy a few times, when Eames's insomnia was particularly bad. The testy look that Eames would give him though, the suffocating tension that would grow as Eames gave him the cold shoulder for implying that he was somehow fucked in the head, no matter Arthur's protestations that he didn't mean it like that; well, it wasn't worth it. Or so Arthur thought at the time.
And on happier days, Arthur would risk asking, and Eames would kiss his cheek and tell him that artists were naturally a little strange; it was just their usual temperament since they got so much inspiration from their turmoil.
Arthur wanted so badly to believe that, and he did. Clearly, he was an idiot.
The taste of copper draws him out of his thoughts, and he glances at Ariadne to see her staring at him with a troubled look. Silently, she points at the corner of his mouth, and he wipes away the blood smeared on his lip from his sluggishly bleeding tongue.
He presses the cut thoughtfully against his front teeth. It doesn't hurt.
Habitual paranoia prompts Arthur to check around for policemen, and then he quickly jaywalks across the street to the nearby church with the beautiful glass windows of various saints. Being an atheist with no interest, Arthur has no idea of the church’s denomination, but he has the faint notion that it must be Roman Catholic.
He sits down carefully, hesitantly on a wooden pew, glancing around to find himself alone in the long empty moments between masses and various other services.
Arthur rests his hands on the pew in front of him while he appreciates the quiet stillness of the church. Eames admitted to being lapsed, but every so often he would drop by the church and sit in one of the pews after checking that services wouldn’t start for some time.
Sometimes he would drag Arthur along, and they would sit together in the pews, Arthur with a distinct discomfort and Eames with no apparent irony. Arthur would sit upright, arms by his sides, and avoid making eye contact with anyone while Eames would close his eyes and mouth a few words and press his hand to his forehead before finally readying himself to leave.
Sitting in their usual pew, Arthur wonders a bit perversely whether he’d be struck by lightning in the church if he prayed for his dead boyfriend to come back to him. He stifles the urge to giggle and bows his head down for a few minutes; he can be respectful on Eames’s behalf.
Arthur gives the stained glass mosaics one last appreciative glance before he leaves, content to never come back to yet another place that he and Eames once visited together. Outside, the wind blows steadily and kicks up the newly turned fall leaves along the sidewalk, where Arthur stands, feeling lost and depressed.
He feels in his jacket pocket and withdraws his cell phone. He hits the buttons one after the other until his voicemail asks him monotonously if he would like to listen to his new messages. Throat tight, he skips past the most recent messages until he hears it.
“’Lo, Arthur…hm…looks like we’re still playing telephone tag…Listen, could you ring me back as soon as you get this?”
The message stutters and stops, and Arthur listens to the next one.
“Arthur, I feel-well, I just want to talk to you right now. I’ve been-it’s hard to explain-ring me. Okay?”
There's a mostly inaudible bit near the end that Arthur hasn't been able to figure out. It sounds like, “I love you.” Arthur hopes it wasn't.
As soon as the message ends, Arthur mechanically dials the number he has burned into his memory, and he waits for the call to go through, and the phone on the other end rings and rings.
But no one picks up. As Arthur knew.
It hurts anyway.
He hits himself hard in the face, and he savors the slap of physical pain, but before he can do it again, someone grabs his arm.
Arthur blanches, mind whirling with equal measures of dread and hope.
“Look here, young fella, what are you doing to yourself?” The old man with the grave features releases Arthur to tug his parka closer about his body while eying Arthur’s skimpy outfit.
The mildly cool weather turns cold, and Arthur shivers, abruptly realizing that he is freezing in his thin shirt and linen trousers.
“You need to get yourself some help there,” the stranger advises before shaking his head with mild bemusement and going on his way.
As soon as he gets back to the hotel, Arthur rushes to the shower and heats the water up to near boiling. Still feeling on the verge of catching cold, he crawls into bed and just sinks into his blankets and pillows.
He just wants…he just needs to sleep. He feels the urge with sinking desperation, and he helps himself along with a few pills from the Ambien bottle he digs from his travel case. He adds a few pills from the B6 bottle for good measure and chugs everything down with a mineral water from the mini-fridge.
He feels exhausted: his eyes are gritty, a headache is making its way from his temples to the back of his skull, and his coordination is barely there. He trips three times on his path back from the kitchenette, and he almost considers dialing Dom and Mal in a panic, but soon he forgets his worries and sinks mindlessly onto the bed.
It’s been a long day-no, a long month. Work has been stressful, with the newest client consistently making one revision after another to the information request, and Arthur is absolutely sick of delving through various historical sources for information on the original baklava recipe that some old rich biddy is demanding.
And home is no sanctuary, not lately. Eames is rather moody, with the draft of his latest novel due to the editor in another week, and is unusually secretive about the main character’s personality and development. Arthur teased and pseudo-pleaded for information, but gave up graciously when Eames told him forbiddingly that writers need space. Granted, Eames’s expression looked much less indulgent than usual, but, well, writers, from what Arthur observes from Eames’s habits, are rather prone to artistic fits. If Eames wants to share at the end, then Arthur can wait and be surprised.
“Hey, Arthur! You up for happy hour? James says he’s buying. Come on, free drinks; how can you resist?”
“Sure,” Arthur says, briefly considering and dismissing the idea of checking in with Eames. He doesn’t need to be snapped at again today. Judging by Eames’s mood at breakfast, Arthur would be better off coming home with a buzz to soften the other man’s edges. Eames won’t miss him for a few hours. And he could bring home takeout. Hmm, maybe Malaysian cuisine from that restaurant near the bar.
“Hey, another pitcher, guys?” James calls out later in mid-conference with the waiter.
“Sure, sure,” Most of the guys cheer energetically while munching down on nachos and wings.
“No, I’m good. I need to head home anyway,” Arthur demurs, feeling a little warm around the collar. The others call him a killjoy but wave him off good-naturedly.
Huh, his tolerance is gone. That, or maybe it's the lack of sleep from working late the past few nights. Feeling a little more than buzzed, Arthur grabs a taxi back to the company and walks to the train station.
Head nodding up and down, he finally drifts into a light doze, encouraged by the near-silent run of the train on its tracks.
“Huh! Wha-where? Oh, hell,” Arthur jerks around, rubbing the sleep from his eyes, before checking that the containers of sambal udang and laksa are still with him. Then, feeling foolish that he was worried about the safety of takeout, he checks for his wallet and cell phone, which was beeping insistently. Arthur has no idea what station he is approaching, but he can tell by the late hour, that he must have gone more than several stops past the one he wants.
Sighing deeply in aggravation but immensely grateful that tomorrow is Saturday, Arthur taps a few buttons on his phone to find three voicemails from Eames. Bracing himself for an unhappy reception, Arthur calls Eames back, but his phone insists that it's out of distance.
Arthur gets out of his seat, feeling too antsy to stay still, and at that moment, the train shudders to a sudden stop, and he wheels his arms in the air before falling flat against a warm body.
“Hey, Arthur.”
“Whoa,” Arthur blurts out, surprised at the change in his memory. “You-Yusuf?”
“Yeah,” the man confirms. He runs a shaking hand over his curly dark hair before looking Arthur intently in the eyes. It takes Arthur a long minute to realize that Yusuf is looking at him with a mixture of strong dislike and contempt.
“Why are you in my dream?” Arthur demands, more than a little angry that Yusuf is in his way.
Yusuf actually scowls at him, and Arthur takes a step back before he consciously registers being intimidated. Normally the new generation hippy type, Yusuf’s face doesn’t suit a scowl, and the alien presence is more unnerving still.
“I was really happy for Eames when he told me he found someone,” Yusuf says slowly, “But I always wondered what he saw in you. He was such a happy-go-lucky guy, and he really knew how to live. Then he met you, and that spark just died out.”
Yusuf shakes his head in apparent disbelief. “Meeting you just destroyed him. He tried so hard to please you. He started cutting back on everything. He didn’t come out with us anymore, and he started having…trouble.”
The back of Arthur’s neck goes red hot, and the flush climbs up his pale cheeks. “You’re making me sound like a control freak. I didn’t like going out to dives, but I didn’t stop Eames from doing it. And we went out pretty often to other places.”
Yusuf seems to ignore Arthur’s protest and continues on, nodding to himself. “Yeah, he started having trouble, and you didn’t even notice.”
“I noticed!” Arthur screams. “But I didn’t know what to do. What the hell do you do when you love him, but he gets worse and worse-and you’re walking on eggshells-and everything you do just seems to hurt him!”
When Yusuf just looks at him with dismissive skepticism, Arthur swings at him in frustration and ends up hitting the wall beside the door. Falling through a wall is a disconcerting feeling, but Arthur welcomes the enveloping sensation with relief until the slow drop increases to a plummet.
Landing on the coffee table hurts like hell. Arthur picks himself off, wincing at the shards of glass that embedded into the soft flesh of his forearms. He’s surrounded by the same pile of books that he packed up and dumped at the library. Torn between shouting in anger and crying in hysteria, Arthur grabs up one of the books, hand tight on the spine.
The cover stops him short.
The Minotaur’s Wife
Rubbing at his aching back, Arthur stands up with a frustrated sigh and finds himself nose to nose with Ariadne.
“Holy-!” he backpedals a bit in alarm.
Then, he resigns himself. He just saw Yusuf; he’s bound to see the others in the sick depths of his subconscious. He looks Ariadne up and down and notes the gauzy dress, bangles on her bare arms, and the jewels twisted into her hair in the vague shape of a diadem.
“Great symbolism, I guess. So, are you going to lead me somewhere?” he asks. “Only thing is that I’m not in the mood for killing any minotaurs.”
Ariadne nails him with a particularly dark look, and Arthur backs away, tired smirk falling away.
“Or not. That’s fine. I can wander around my own sick mind by myself.”
“You can't live your life in peace if you don't find the center of the maze,” Ariadne tells him with a somber air reminiscent of ancient royalty. “I led Theseus in his path to find the Minotaur, and I will lead you to find Eames.”
“He’s not a monster I have to slay,” Arthur tells her heatedly, even as he admits that he does need to confront his homicidal projection and other underlying issues.
He closes his eyes in resignation. “What do I need to do?” he asks bleakly.
She holds her hand out to him, palm up, and immediately, his gun is right there. He takes it, and he looks back at her.
“I don’t feel right about shooting Ariadne, even in a dream, on purpose,” he tells her.
Finally, her serious expression breaks out into a smile. “You don’t have to. I can follow you.”
“Oh.” Feeling rather dense, Arthur takes a deep breath and pulls the trigger.
They’re out in the streets, and the sunlight is almost blinding.
Blinking to adjust, Arthur takes a look around and recognizes his surroundings as the downtown area just several blocks from their house.
Ariadne starts walking rapidly up the streets, hands in her windbreaker, leaving him behind, and Arthur has to jog to catch up. His breath comes out in a white fog as he talks. “You know, if I thought about this happening, I would have expected Dom or Mal. I mean, I’m not saying you can’t be sympathetic, but you’re single right now, and most of your relationships lately have been flings.”
Ariadne stops in her tracks and eyes Arthur narrowly, and the bleak look reminds Arthur that he's not talking to his friend. “I loved him,” the princess of Crete says simply, not specifying the hero Theseus or Meranus, the complex minotaur Eames had dreamed up. “I know what it's like to lose your other half.”
She turns away then and continues to stride up the street, her back fully straight and chin tilted at a proud, if bittersweet, angle. For a moment, Arthur could see the real Ariadne holding back tears after a painful breakup, even as she stubbornly insisted that she didn't care in the first place.
“I didn't think-I'm sorry,” Arthur says, at a loss for any other words.
Ariadne smiles wryly without looking round. “I'm sorry too.”
They walk in silence for some time until they come to the end of the road, and everything ahead is shrouded in the heavy fog that has been growing around them during their walk.
“Here is where I leave you.” Ariadne places her scarf around his neck and steps away, quickly melting into the mist.
“Wait, where do I go then?” Arthur shouts at her back. At her fading gesture towards his left, he sees a dirty alleyway open up, and he hesitates for a long while before striding down to meet what will come.
It looks like any other alleyway, bags of trash heaped against overflowing dumpsters, sticky gum and other substances matting the ground. It’s not too narrow, for an alley, but Arthur feels that it’s still getting hard to breathe.
He passes by a homeless woman or man covered in a tattered raincoat sitting with their hands over a smoldering fire in a small can. A rat or two scurries over his shoes, and he resists the urge to shake them off. It’s just a dream.
It’s just a dream. It’s just a dream, Arthur repeats when he sees him with another human denizen of the alley.
He’s leaning against the wall, legs in worn black leather pants, chest encased in a tight gray t-shirt with cut-off sleeves and more holes than cloth.
Arthur has never seen Eames dressed like that before.
He’s about to call out when something stops him, and he stands several meters away and watches as the man with his lover’s face whispers something into his companion’s ear, and they walk off together, with too little space between their bodies.
Heart twisting, Arthur feels perversely like a man stalking his cheating spouse, as he runs after them, and he ends up slamming into Eames, who catches him around the shoulder before he falls back.
“Careful there, darling.” The voice is low, amused, and sultry; the eyes are cool chips of glass; and Arthur sees no recognition in them.
“Eames…”
Suspicion hits the man’s face, and he releases Arthur abruptly, hurriedly. “Where did you get that name?”
“I-that’s-it’s your name,” Arthur tells him blankly. His fear at encountering the projection fades a little into bemusement.
“That’s what you think,” Eames responds shortly before turning around and leaving without a single moment more of attention to Arthur.
“Wait.” Arthur picks up his pace until he’s striding alongside Eames, and he’s tempted to just reach out and grab him and stop him in his tracks. But he’s rattled by Eames' treating him like a complete stranger. None of his other projections refused to acknowledge him. If anything, each one was vocally insistent on his failure as a partner.
Busy with his whirling thoughts, Arthur is at first numb to the pain of being slammed into the brick wall, even as the breath whooshes out of his lungs. That’s familiar, he thinks fuzzily.
“Do you know what I’ve just done?” Eames speaks softly into his ear, lips almost touching the skin, and Arthur tries not to shiver-any reaction seems bad. “I just took a man into the corner, kissed him right on the lips, and then stuck a knife in his gut.”
The blood freezes in Arthur's veins. Eames never struck him as a violent man before, and he's dimly ashamed for being afraid of his lover, but who knows better than he what a twisted projection is capable of?
Arthur feels idiotically relieved when his reply comes out cool and steady despite the weakness in his knees. “I look forward to the kiss.”
“They all do, love. They all do.” Eames shoves him carelessly away with a brutal laugh, and when Arthur hits the floor, he feels more than just the pain in his scraped up elbows and back.
Reminding Arthur of a cat with too easy prey, Eames seems to grow bored and ignore his existence, strolling into the distance, hands in his back pockets.
Arthur picks himself up and then sits back down. He wants to give up. Rationally, he knows that no projection of Eames could ever forgive Arthur on the real man's behalf, and he is courting disaster by staying so long in a dream. With dread, Arthur is realizing that he doesn't know what would happen with the mix of drugs he took. What if he actually overdosed himself?
But much as Arthur wants to punish himself for being an idiot, his survival instincts start to shriek that he should find shelter for the night. The gloomy day has gotten darker, and the streetlights, the ones that aren't busted, flicker on.
Arthur trudges down the street until he finds an oddly familiar motel. It takes some time for him to search his memory, but he finally recognizes it from someplace in New Jersey. The car had broken down, and they'd been forced to stay overnight at the closest motel, which had ended up being some ramshackle, sleazy place. They'd giggled and made fun together under the covers of the bed and then talked a bit too seriously about sleeping in shifts.
But beggars can't be choosers, so Arthur goes through the registration with a bored looking guy who looks plucked from any of the Amtrak stations that Arthur has frequented. Nash, as his name tag proclaims him, hands Arthur a key that has rather questionable stains on the wooden tag.
He's struggling with his door and swearing at the sticky lock when he backs into someone. Eyes wide, he jumps away and feels like an idiot when he finds himself face to face with another familiar person.
“You'll want to be careful there,” the woman whispered throatily. Arthur stares. She tilts her head and laughs sensually for a long moment.
A hot flush climbs up the back of his neck, and Arthur jerks his head away. He never thought he'd feel embarrassed around Mal, but her dress has roughly one yard's worth of surface area, and he sees skin now that he never did in real life.
Mal comes closer, purposefully invading his personal space, and wraps a cold hand around his chin, tapered fingers sharp with manicured nails that dig in. “You're quite the handsome young man. I could find work for you.” It's not a suggestion.
Arthur stammers for a shamefully long time before he gets the insinuation, and by that time, Mal's other hand is briskly feeling up the goods. Horror and pure fear give him the adrenaline to kick open the door and slam it shut against the repellent projection.
Arthur swallows down bile as he considers his next step. His fucked up idea of Eames wasn't the only threat around. He sits down on the sagging mattress and wonders what he can do next.
With the windows and door shut, the motel room is muggy and not a bit smelly. He reaches up to undo his collar and touches Ariadne's scarf. A vague hope comes to him then that he could maybe conjure up more benevolent projections of his friends. An Ariadne helped him. A Mal could help him too. He just doesn't know how he can go about it.
He pulls his coat off and lays it on the stained bed covers with a grimace before lying down and shutting his eyes tightly.
“Come on, come on,” he mutters furiously to himself. “I need you-any one of you. Mal? Dom? Ariadne?”
He sighs at what an idiot he is for the pathetic make-believe and rolls around frustratedly on the bed, raising small clouds of dust. He coughs until his throat is irritated, and he hacks out several breaths until his lungs are aching for respite, and tears are welling up.
Flipping onto his back, he opens his eyes and yells at the gigantic eyeball floating so closely in his face.
“Arthur,” Dom says, not at all happy. “I think you punctured an eardrum. Stop yelling, okay? You sound like James when he was still teething.”
“You scared the crap out of me, Dom,” Arthur wheezes. He takes a good look at his friend, and then his heart makes a scared thump.
Dom has blood-shot eyes, unshaven cheeks, and a faint smile that unnerves Arthur even as he tries unsuccessfully to figure out why. It's not like real Dom looks any fresher when he has a tough time being a dad. But then, real Dom doesn't go around with a noticeably long, thick, newly healed scar across his chin.
“I scare the crap out of a lot of people,” Dom answers amiably, not sounding at all like a wife-killing freak.
“I need your help, Dom,” Arthur decides to say, discarding all the other responses because they might get him answers he doesn't want.
Dom shakes his head slowly, still with that creepy smile on his face. “No, you don't. Here, I'll help you get what you need.”
In retrospect, Arthur should never have lived past age eighteen, being unable to read and avert other people's intentions. Dom's hand pushes right into his chest, and Arthur can feel the numb-painful pulse of his heart against Dom's fingers as they grip onto something near his collarbone and pull relentlessly against the resistance.
The slorp of the something disengaging from his body sends chills down Arthur's spine, and he intently wishes that he's in shock when he sees the body fall on its hands and knees.
The other Arthur, also clad in a dark blue button-down and straight jeans, shoves himself up before curling his body into a ball that crashes into and through the window.
“Shit, Dom,” Arthur yells. “I don't need a copy! What the hell was that for?”
Dom starts disappearing just like Ariadne did, the mist enveloping him like a blanket. “You'll need him, Arthur. See you topside.”
After the past few traumatic events, Arthur desperately wants to close his eyes and fall deeper into sleep, but a brave little voice calls him a coward, and he wrenches himself up from the bed. If Dom said that he needs his copy, then he'll go find it.
Feeling uneasy at how long evening is lasting in his dream, Arthur sprints up and down the streets, even the little alleys, looking for a glimpse of another slim dark-haired figure.
Arthur tries to put himself in the copy's shoes. If he suddenly found himself in a strange motel room, where would he go? Probably to get a drink. Seedy looking town like this doesn't look like it would be short on bars, but Arthur finds a strip mall first. The liquor store's dangling red-lettered sign catches his attention, and he figures it's as good a place to check as any.
The dirty linoleum squeaks under his feet, and the lights flicker and buzz like in any other two-bit generic liquor store. He's about to assume that he's alone when he gets grabbed around the neck and lifted. The other man doesn't seem very built, but Arthur can't seem to break the bone-crushing grip, which tightens immediately and relentlessly.
Once again faced with near-asphyxiation, Arthur fights against his panicked impulses to flail and gathers his wits enough to jerk his right shoulder back and nail his attacker in the face. Arthur doesn't hear the crunch of cartilage breaking, but the hold loosens, and Arthur spins around with both fists up, despite his aching arm.
He freezes.
He wouldn't have thought he had it in him to be a killer. But he must be wrong since here was his doppelganger with a murderous gleam in his eyes.
Arthur could kill for a shot of Novocaine to his throat right now, but he settles for gently massaging the cords of his throat and shooting an ugly glare at his evil twin. “What the hell is wrong with you?” he grits out.
“Everything,” Other Arthur smiles faintly with this simple answer, and he walks unnervingly close but keeps out of arms-length. He rubs his face more roughly than Arthur would if he had a bloody nose, and then he ducks smoothly down to the floor and comes up with a Glock.
Arthur cuts out and runs. He pounds down the street and considers his options.
It just figures that his evil subconscious would give his twin a gun. Arthur would take the time to dream up a gun, but so far it seems that his skills are pretty rusty. Unfortunately, Dom's training focused more on defense than offense, and he bet Dom would never have expected this scenario.
Arthur hides behind a creaky stairwell and winds it up into a penrose staircase. Other Arthur wouldn't be able to reach him there.
Arthur takes that thought right back when he hears the unbelievable creak of an elevator moving up its rigging. He whirls around to see actual elevator doors appear and slide open in the middle concrete pillar of his penrose stairs.
Tense for action, Arthur drops his mouth open unbecomingly when a man steps out nonchalantly and walks past him to the small balcony. “Eames?”
Eames tilts his head back and breathes in deeply for several long moments. Eyes peacefully closed, he half- turns towards Arthur. “I don't go by that name.”
“Then what?” Arthur shoots back exasperatedly before remembering that his lover would hardly beat him for sarcastic remarks, but who knew with this stranger?
“You won't have any reason to call me,” Eames says matter-of-factly before pushing off the balcony and heading back towards the elevator. As the doors begin to close, he says to Arthur, carelessly, “Beautiful balcony.”
Arthur stares in pain and outright frustration before he forces himself to snap out of his funk and find a way to defend himself. He sits against his stairs and begins to think. Dream time being unpredictable, it takes him from one minute to six hours to figure something out.
The plan, as far as he's gotten, is not a genius one. He hopes that he hasn't accidentally killed himself overdosing and will soon wake up once the sleeping pills wear off. In the meantime, he needs to avoid getting killed in the dream. He'd prefer to stay hidden on his penrose stairs, but if Eames-Other Eames-could find his way there, so could Other Arthur.
“You don't want to die too many times in dreams,” Dom warned him after one particularly grueling session of training.
“Why?” Arthur asked, feeling like a dumbass even as he let the question slip.
“Because dying is traumatic. One too many times, and who knows what could happen to your mind? Think about what happens to an egg that gets shaken too many times.”
“Jeezus, Dom.”
“Just remember that, Arthur.”
For a while, Arthur just sits on the floor, enjoying the sunrise he can view perfectly from his balcony, and he tries not to wonder what'll happen to him. He thinks about Eames, remembers the smiling face, the gentle lips, the soothing hands, and he thinks and thinks until he knows he better stop.
Arthur finally steps down onto the dirty pavement at ground level and scans his surroundings warily. He checks the street corners and alley entrances as he slowly makes his way through the town, creating a mental map of each potential hiding spot, especially any that would be good for an ambush.
The gun shop is dingy, dimly lit, and devoid of any smiling workers willing to offer customer service, so Arthur, with a slight immature thrill, starts breaking glass cases with the freedom of not having to worry about fingerprints and jail. He ends his stealing spree with a nice assortment of knives, nylon webs, GPS bugs, boxes of ammo, and two Colt .45 automatic pistols.
He checks the chamber for bullets before stashing a box of ammo into his left jeans pocket, and then he's as ready as he'll ever be. He makes his way around town, carefully setting traps along the way and discreetly dispensing tools in boltholes where he may need them if his confrontation with the doppelganger turns sour. Eventually, he concludes at the seedy motel, and he heads to his room.
He has the vague idea that his doppelganger might be somehow attracted to his motel room, like one of those strange spiritual ties, like how ghosts were somehow stuck to the place where they died, if psychics could be believed.
“Hello, my sweet.” Warm soft arms curl around his shoulders, and moist breath blows against his ear with the words. He jumps up and away and falls hard against the water-stained motel walls. The woman smirks at his alarm, but her smugness disappears when he gets up and pulls a gun from his side.
“I'm not interested,” Arthur tells her tersely, pistol pointed directly at her heart. He doesn't want to shoot Mal's projection, but he's taking no chances either. He'll already have a hard time looking the real Mal in the face after this; he doesn't want anything extra freaky to happen.
She pouts girlishly at him and crosses her arms in front of her chest, deliberately emphasizing the curves of her lush figure. Arthur keeps his eyes on her face and wills himself not to blush.
“Move, please,” Arthur orders as nicely as possible since the projection is still blocking his motel room door.
Mal looks overly delighted. “Oh,” she coos. “He knows how to say 'please.' Maybe we can teach you some other pretty words?”
“I'm not going to say it again,” Arthur warns, and he lets his finger tighten on the trigger until her eyes flicker to the gun and then back to his face.
Apparently convinced that he really would shoot her, Mal makes a disgruntled moue filled with hostility, and the sullenness sharpens her features to an unflattering degree.
“Thanks,” Arthur offers flatly before walking past her, the edge of his sleeve just barely brushing against her warm side. He doesn't let his skin crawl.
“Oh,” Mal breathes out, turning to face him, mesh dress brushing across his shoulder instead of his chest as he moves with her. She tilts her head and looks at him coyly, the previous look of cold anger now gone from her face. “You're Arthur, aren't you?”
“Yes,” Arthur admits warily. He doesn't bother to ask the obvious question.
“Oh, I had nearly forgotten.” Mal taps her ruby red lips with a long nail, and she lets loose a soft giggle filled with chagrin. “I have a message for you from a secret admirer.” The purr she puts on the last two words is complemented by a disquieting wink.
“Oh, really?” Arthur asks warily. “Who's that?”
Mal shrugs sinuously, and a dress strap nearly falls from her bare shoulder. “A very handsome young man. Rough around the edges, but a good boy, I'm sure.”
Arthur's heart leaps, but he keeps control of himself. “Why does he want to meet up? I got the impression that he didn't want to see me.”
Mal gives him a pityingly look and laughs at his stony features. “Oh, come now, haven't you heard that the lad doth protest too much? Although I'm not sure which is the lad here...”
Getting rather tired of the disturbing innuendos, Arthur interrupts, “Did he say where or when?”
“Mm, I think he said something about the pier,” Mal offers brightly. “ASAP.”
The docks are filled with the shrieking cries and bustling wings of seagulls, which Arthur only hates a little less than pigeons. Both fall under the flying rodent category for him. He walks in circles on top of the warped wooden planks, and he narrowly misses planting a foot into a puddle and sliding right into the ocean. He's beginning to wonder if Mal lied to him in a fit of malicious pique when he hears the measured footsteps coming from behind him. He has only time to think that they sound a little off because he's yanked off his feet and dangling in the air.
“Isn't this a bit clichéd?” Arthur gasps out as dryly as he can while he's calling himself an idiot and trying to breathe through the nauseating vertigo. He grasps at the nylon strands twisting up and around one another in a loosely woven net, and he can feel that he doesn't have a chance of tearing them apart with his bare hands.
“It works,” Other Arthur smiles gamely, watching with creepy good humor as Arthur struggles for the one knife he stuck into his belt instead of the duffle bag, currently lying uselessly on the floor. Arthur feels around for a long aching moment before dropping his arms and cursing Evil Mal. It could have been any one of those times she invaded his personal space.
“Missing something?” Other Arthur asks mildly, kneeling on the pier, hands rifling expertly through the duffle bag for a few minutes before kicking it casually off the end of the pier. He strolls out of Arthur's line of sight for a moment and then returns with a machete, swinging it to and fro with an easy grip on its handle.
Frozen like a deer before the hunter's scope, Arthur stares at the gleam of sharp metal, and his heart seems to stop for a beat before continuing on to thump loudly in his ears, as panic floods his body. He's going to get murdered! By himself! Arthur struggles against his net wrapping, as Other Arthur steps closer and closer, not at all concerned that his prey might get free.
“Help,” Arthur tries to squeeze through his panic-tightened throat, but he can barely get it out, and the words come out in a pathetic whisper. He thrashes harder, just setting himself swinging in the confining net, but he doesn't care. He just wants it to stop, he just wants to wake up, he wants to wake up! “Please!”
“Hm, what have we here?” The musing voice cuts through Arthur's panic-fogged mind, and he strains his neck to look behind Other Arthur, where a shadowy figure steps into the lighted area of the pier.
Other Arthur stops in his tracks, a frown wrinkling his forehead and marring the previous calm amusement that graced his face. He swings up the machete and holds the head with his other hand and seems to study it. He speaks lackadaisically, “Three's a crowd, you know. Hint, hint. So, go away.”
Eames's brow shoots up as he continues his approach. “You don't appreciate having an intrigued audience?”
“Babe, I don't need support, and I don't need a peanut gallery during a really intimate vivisection. Now, get going,” Other Arthur says shortly, clearly losing patience with the interruption.
“How curious. Identical twins? Or is that wonderful face one of triplets?” Eames persists, head craning around Other Arthur to look at Arthur in all his stupid glory, mouth open in relief and fingers still clutched around the openings of the net.
Other Arthur gives Eames a long measured look before lifting up his machete and taking an abrupt swing, which ends up missing its target, as Eames twists smoothly on his left foot, taking his body out of reach.
Eames tsks, shaking his head in mock dismay. “'Fraid you'll have to try again, darling. That was quite a miss.” He brings a wooden bat out of nowhere and takes his own swing at Other Arthur in punctuation of his mockery.
Watching in blank shock, Arthur starts to feel hysteria building up. First, Eames commits suicide by shooting himself in the head because Arthur failed him, and now Eames is going to goad a madman with Arthur's face into chopping him up like sashimi, and then Arthur really would be responsible for his death.
He can't let that happen.
Determinedly, Arthur keeps one eye on the fight while he uses up his acrobatic ability to flail around again, this time carefully and with deliberation, as he sweeps his gaze across the dock, hoping for something that he can use as a makeshift blade to get out of his prison.
The dock is empty of anything useful, Other Arthur being smart enough to prevent any sense of resourcefulness on Arthur's part. It doesn't pay after all, to underestimate one's prey. But Other Arthur is as human as any other, and prone to taking a given environment as it comes. Looking back to the rickety ramp that provided access to the pier, Arthur notices a rather rusty section on the metal railing; it looks to be on the flimsy side, and he hopes to hell that he can break it off with a yank or two.
Arthur keeps one eye on the fight, which remains balanced, as Eames keeps Other Arthur and his machete at bay with judicious swings, the air whistling sharply as he just barely misses the other man.
Arthur gauges his distance from the rusty railing, and he thanks his genes for his long limbs as he stretches his arm out from the netting as far as it can go, and his fingers just barely brush against the metal. Not close enough. Gathering the tops of his net into a bunch, Arthur holds it tight to provide leverage as he attempts to rock back and forth midair.
It doesn't work. It shouldn't. But then it does. Arthur wonders if it has as much to do with being in a dream as it does with his desperation to stop his doppelganger from killing Eames. He finally pushes himself close enough to wrap his hand around pitted metal and wrench the corner piece off the rest.
Arthur casts a glance warily over his shoulder, but Other Arthur is still preoccupied with Eames, whose comments are not audible but evidently quite provocative, judging by Other Arthur's chilly expression, which promises prompt evisceration.
The metal bites into the meat of his right hand, but Arthur ignores the pain as he grips it tightly and uses the sharper end to saw away at a nylon corner. He works the metal roughly and quickly, discomfort building in his shoulder as he strains his arm in the limited space. When the netting finally starts giving way, Arthur increases his efforts further until he's panting for breath from the exertion. And finally, he falls from confinement to the wooden planks of the dock. His palm is on fire and covered in a sheen of blood, but he wipes his hand on his jeans before readjusting his grip on his weapon.
Eames can clearly see him coming from the periphery, but the man doesn't let on to Other Arthur, whose earlier dispassion degrades into an animalistic snarl that disappears into open-mouthed shock after Arthur clobbers him with the metal bar.
Incredulity mixes with whole-hearted relief as he watches the familiar body stumbling back and hitting the dock with a sickening, echoing crack on impact. He stares at the body before him and waits until he's certain that Other Arthur won't be a bother for quite some time. He throws the metal bar down with disgust before remembering that he's not alone, and maybe he should have stayed armed.
“Arthur.” The voice is soft and worried, and he spins around to see a hesitant hand hovering above his shoulder as the owner makes uncertain eye contact.
“You look a mess,” Eames says, looking at the pressure lines where the nylon netting cut into Arthur's face. The projection tries to shove a hand into his leather pants, but finds no pocket, and after making a brief face, Eames is wearing relaxed jeans; he digs through his left pocket and brings out a large white handkerchief, which he hands diffidently to Arthur.
The handkerchief smells unsurprisingly of Eames's cologne, and Arthur tries not to make it too obvious that he's breathing a bit more deeply than before, as he wipes the sweat from his hot forehead and cheeks.
“You're different,” Arthur observes intelligently, and Eames smiles painfully at him before taking the handkerchief and dabbing at the oozing cut that Arthur got at some point without knowing.
“I told you not to read my manuscript,” Eames says, folding up the handkerchief and stowing it back in his pocket. His other hand stays on Arthur's cheekbone. “And now you've gotten nightmares.”
“Asshole, I think it's more to do with your suicide,” Arthur tells him bitterly, and now, after all the fear and exhaustion and pain of the past few days (hours? minutes?), Arthur has Eames in front of him, and the main thing he wants to do is punch the other man in the fucking teeth. His hands begin to shake, and wetness stings his tired eyes, and it's all he can do to be standing right now.
The wan smile fades from Eames's lips. “I know, Arthur, and I'm sorry, darling. It was beyond foolish of me, and it's not the sort of mistake I can fix in retrospect, is it? And now you're here, dreaming, and trying to get some comfort from sorry old me.”
Arthur shoves the heels of his palms into his eyes, and he presses until he sees hazy sparks exploding in the darkness behind his eyes. “Am I going to have to deal with this shit again every time I fall asleep? Creepy Mal, Homicidal Me...You?”
“Not if you find closure,” Eames says softly. He looks to where Other Arthur is still sprawled near them on the ground. “I expect you've gotten the worst of it out just now, and I'd gladly take a punch for the real Eames if you think it would help.”
Losing control, Arthur drops his hands from his face and lunges at Eames. He grabs the other man around the shoulders and begins to shake him furiously until the tears finally blind him, and he falls forward into a warm shoulder. He screams wretchedly and incoherently for hours, and Eames continues to hold him close and stroke his back, giving him a kiss now and then on the forehead, on the cheeks, shushing him gently as he tries weakly to turn away.
Finally, Arthur stops, feeling worn to the bone, and they stand there together in the quiet, and Eames begins to sway them from side to side. He brushes stray strands out of Arthur's face, and he murmurs, “Do you remember Mal and Dom's anniversary party? They had everything: the Five Star Michelin restaurant, the kitschy cupid favors, the something or other Grammy award winning band?”
Arthur can't stop himself from snorting, as they continue the impromptu waltz. “You were way too pleased to find out that they were making dancing mandatory.”
“Well, it's not quite the same in our own living room or in a stuffy bar,” Eames says reasonably. “It was very romantic, especially with the dim lights, and I didn't much mind your tromping on my toes.”
Arthur opens his mouth to let out a retort, but he slumps back against Eames's oddly solid shoulder and huffs out a miserable breath. “What are we doing, Richard?” he asks hopelessly. “You're dead. Damn it, you're dead!”
“I know,” Eames whispers. “I know, Arthur.” He doesn't seem to have much else to say, and Arthur tries to be satisfied with that, but still, his chest feels as hollow as on the first day he woke up in the hotel room, staring at the unfamiliar ceiling and remembering why he was there.
Eames hums a broken song into Arthur's hair and smoothes a fond hand over his cheek; it feels oddly final, and Arthur stiffens and tries to pull away, but Eames won't let go. Grip tightening around Arthur's waist, Eames slowly whirls them closer and closer to the end of the pier.
Eyes wide, Arthur stares into those oblique eyes just as Eames lovingly releases him into the air, and the ocean waters rush towards him, enveloping him completely in its wet embrace.
“Come back to see me, Arthur,” the projection whispers wistfully, “But only to visit, hm?”
Arthur opens his mouth and ends up choking on the myriad tiny bubbles that burble out from his lips as he tries to plead, question, demand.
He wakes up.
Coda:
The snick of his key opening the front door echoes loudly through the empty house, and Arthur sneezes on imaginary dust. He swipes at his eyes before toeing off his shoes and throwing his coat onto the couch before heading for what he wants.
The smooth glaze of the urn's body feels comfortingly cool against his hands as he holds it tight against him before he pulls the door shut behind him.
Driving to the ocean takes several hours, but it goes by in a blur of barely changing scenery and a nearly monotonous hum of passably good country music.
Arthur finds a relatively private spot under a small overhang before he wades into the cold water, chilled by the dreary overcast of the hidden sun in the sky.
He gives the urn a wet kiss, or two, or three, before upending the contents into the slightly frothy water before him. The ashes swirl around him for a few seconds before seemingly disappearing into the depths with each gentle lap of the waves.
Arthur cups the water in his hands-the salt is briny on his lips-and thinks he can almost feel an embrace.
That night Arthur shuts his eyes and goes to sleep, and there, Eames is waiting for him.
A/N: Hmm, I'm still a sucker for a relatively happy ending. I had intended to write something darker and unhappier after my previous fluffy, romantic depiction of Arthur/Eames in another story. Oh, well.