Fic: Chaos Out Of Shape: Part VIII

[speak_me_fair]

viii {bring chaos out of shape}

Dom's entrance into Cobol's lair was both more difficult and easier than he would have imagined. More difficult because the place had become madness, people were running this way and that, flipping switches, opening panels, and seeming oddly confused by the way that nothing seemed to work as expected. It was easy to slip inside, to get past everyone because they were all too distracted to do much about one more thing that seemed a bit... off.

All the little nuances, the odd shadows and wisps of air that his passing under the cloak-mod might have caused were so small compared to what everyone was fluttering about, that they didn't even register.

He listened in on conversations, but no one seemed to know exactly what was going on. Either this was all totally unexpected or no one he passed had high enough clearance to know the cause. Dom suspected it was probably a bit of both.

He just couldn't understand why there were suddenly so many problems. Mal was wired in with his mods, there was no way that any of them could have malfunctioned or even corrupted - however many times Dom had tried to at least defuse Arthur's mod, and failed, he had at least learned from it exactly what shouldn't happen and how to avoid anything of the sort happening again, and he had made sure that nothing he produced could ever go the same way.

So it was impossible that any system could be down, if it were all running through Mal.

And it was, he knew it was, they all knew it was, it was why he was there -

He shuddered, under the masking cloak of his mod, and hurried forward, trying to keep his mind blank.

Because thinking about what he needed to do, had to do, would freeze him in his tracks, make him physically unable to take another step.

Down two more corridors, then a left and down a set of stairs, watch for the guard, slip past and use the code (Saito-acquired), and in through the door. Disable the sensor (but it was already down), slip past another guard, make a left through the double doors, then a right through the gate (another code would have been necessary, but somehow he just pulled it open), then two more sets of stairs, down, ever down.

It was almost frightening, how simple it was. Were they not protecting their prize? How could they allow this, allow him in so easily?

The last door, access-open like the others, and the whir of machines beyond it.

The machine that was his wife, beyond it.

And the sound of voices, but not in conversation, in something more and less all at once; recitation without urgency, emotion without emphasis.

For one terrible moment, Dom thought - I am listening to the dead speak.

And then he knew that, in a way, he was.

Because he was listening to Mal and Eames.

Mal who should be dead, and Eames who believed he deserved to be.

"Their hair is fair, bleached by the sun, their skin tanned with summer. They've been down at the beach with me every day and they swim like fish. Well, porpoises, when it's James-boy, more water-spewage. But they're happy... and Dom will keep them that way. Strong and bright and all the good things, sweetheart. You... you did them proud when you were with them... and it will be even better to let them go, let them continue away from all of this. You know it will."

Eames was talking about Philippa and James, surely. Was he trying to distract Mal or convince her?

"Yes," Mal said, voice rusty and flat. "Yes. Keep talking."

Dom froze, his hand on the door.

"Saito's a good man. He'll take care of all of them, he's a City-master like the ones you said existed years ago, the ones we argued about that summer - no, I know you don't remember, but we did, I said no way in any hell and you kept telling me yes, and everyone wanted us to shut up...

"I miss arguing with you. Everyone else can miss loving you, but me, I'll miss being annoyed by you. Philippa does that too, gets a cause in her head - mind you, it's usually how it's not her bedtime or sweets are a decent meal - but she gets them, and she'll argue the sun down. Only child I've ever met you really can't afford to try and explain anything to, because you'll lose. And James - he's into everything before you can even get the word stop out, not that your dad doesn't try. He's missing the fear gene, that boy, Dom'll go grey and then bald before the year's out, but I suppose it'll save him time when the teens hit..."

"They are beautiful and everyone will love them?" This was Mal's voice, stilted and somehow mechanical, but still her. The sound of it took his breath away.

"They are," Eames answered like a response in a litany.

"And... Dominic? Will this Saito care for him as well?" The words, even with the flat dullness of disuse and non-emotion, were chopped and somehow jealous-sounding.

"Yeah. He will. Saito would care even for me, Mal, if he had to. He's a truly good man."

"Good. I should be sorry. At least I know that I should be. Knowledge is everything. Why then was it not enough?"

"I dunno," Eames sounded hopeless. "No clue, Mal. It's not bloody fair that it wasn't. But it wasn't, and now -"

"And now. But on my terms."

"On your terms," Eames agreed. "I promised. I won't let you down, you or Dom, I won't let go until it's time."

"Yes."

Dom pushed open the door, dropping the cloak as he did so.

Mal's eyes met his in an instant. Lords and stars, but she was glorious, still, even like this, even strapped down and plugged into more cables than any living being could be expected to accommodate. And even like this, he still loved her with a burning ache that he knew he'd never be free of.

"Dominic."

"Hello, Mal." He could not stop looking at her, drinking her in, wires and bloodless skin and visible veins, the crackles of fading tech illuminating the skin he had loved to touch, the glaring beauty of the surrounds that proclaimed her mod-ports to be his.

She was looking at him with equal greed, equal longing, but there was no love in it, no yearning, no loss. She saw him as something already possessed, and now returned to her.

He was surprised by how little that thought disturbed him.

"I'll leave you to it then, shall I?" Eames was already headed toward the door, his face bland but determined.

"And go where." Mal's voice was still inflectionless, she still kept looking at Dom and not at Eames, but it was as much a question as it had ever been in the days when her voice swooped up and down through emotion at dizzying speeds. "You have a one-way patch."

"Yeah. Well." Eames shrugged. He couldn't meet Dom's eyes.

"You used the time-port." Dom's voice sounded as blank as Mal's, reflecting none of the stunned horror that he felt. "Fuck, Eames, you know -"

"Yes, thank you, Dom, is now really the time -"

"This is time," Mal said. "There is only time. We move through it. You know this. Psion."

"And I can't go back, yeah, got it, brilliant, I feel so much better -"

"But you know where to go forward to." Mal, still the visionary, though her eyes glowed now with something far worse than imaginings. "One way. Only one way, now. Forward."

Eames's hand went up to the patched time-jack - Yusuf's work, Dom realised, and a lot of things made sudden, horrible sense. "Forward."

Mal moved her head fractionally. "Bring up the Mandell's course. You can put that much more of me in, without risk. You know this."

"Mal. No, it's. No."

"You promised someone else, frère, before either of us." Did her voice soften at that, or was it Dom's hope? "A leap of faith, Eames."

Dom expected protest, anger, something approximating an explanation, and got none. Eames stood in silence, and Mal turned her terrible, glowing gaze to meet his at last, holding him fixed as though he were wearing a holo, and she had suppressed the waves to keep his image still, though it was Dom she now spoke to.

Could she only speak or look? Was she so disconnected that it had become a choice? Visual or audio only, what had been done to her -

oh, stars, oh lights, oh lords, my Mal...

"Dominic. Wire me in."

"Don't you think we've had enough of that?" Dom asked.

"Wire me in. Dominic. Lock me on."

Eames sighed. "Not much sense in it, Mal. You know that a projected course is different from an actual course. Don't fancy spending my last moments breathing vacuum."

The old Mal would have shrugged with impatience, argued, grown angry, beaten down all resistance with emphatic gestures and words and blazing conviction. Mal now, beyond humanity, never even looked away from Dom. "I am not the one who made promises," she said.

But you did, you made them to me, you made them in front of officials and friends and sealed in the sigils for our eternity, Dom thought.

And then -

But so did I.

He stepped forward and found the mod that Mal would need without even having to look, never taking his eyes from hers. He knew her body better than his own, it was his gifts to her that had caused her destruction.

He trusted himself, trusted his abilities, and now, at the last extremity of life and motion, he knew that still, still and always, he trusted her.

"In five," he said grimly.

Four.

Three.

Eames suddenly looked up, shaking his head, "No, Dom, I need to stay here un -"

One.

The connection was made, information feeding directly into Eames's jack.

"- til we know for sure that -"

The echo of Eames's words hung in the air as his timejack activated and he disappeared with a burst of data feed and electronic impulses.

Dom wished him well, wished him all the joy that life had never given him before, wished him the joy that he, Dom, had lost.

Wished him the chance to find Arthur again.

"He will not thank you for that, I think." Mal's voice was almost amused sounding.

He missed her laughter. He missed a hundred things about her every day.

"The day Eames thanks me for anything -" Dom started, and stopped, abruptly, because there had been a day when Eames had thanked him.

Had said Please, Dom. We need this. I need this, and later, grief marking its way down his spine, had said, thank you.

"Ah." Mal saw too much, as she always had. They were part of a whole, even now. "Yes. But he did."

"Yeah." Dom took her hand in his. Her fingers lay in his palm, cold and inert, as unfeeling as the rest of her had become. "He told you why I'm here, didn't he?"

"Of course." Mal's fingers twitched once, barely. They were still icy to the touch. "But it will not be you, Dominic."

"It has to be, Mal. There is no one else. And this... this is my fault, so my responsibility."

"I have never been a wilting violet." Now there was at least some inflection to her voice. "I never allowed you to make my changes. I asked for them. Any fault was my own for not heeding the warning signs."

"I should have tried harder."

She laughed then, painfully, both to herself and to him, no joy in the sound at all.

"Loved me more. Is that what you think."

"Yes. No." Dom had no idea. "Less, maybe. Maybe I should have loved you less."

"Not being loved by you would have done nothing to save me." There was no blame in her voice. It would have been easier if there had been. "It is what kept me alive for as long as I was."

Not am. Mal was dead. They both knew it.

It still hurt to hear.

"I don't want to live without having you to love," Dom said at last.

"But you have done. You will do. You were always the part of us that had endurance."

How could she say it so simply?

"Dominic. You are here to bring down Cobol. You could only have done this if I were connected entirely."

Grief choked him, silenced him. He nodded, once. If he spoke, he thought he would taste blood.

"Disconnect me from your Mandell," Mal said, and her voice rang with harmonics, electronic song. "And plug me back in to everything else."

"Mal -"

"And then get out."

"But what -"

"Get out," she repeated. "Live and teach our children what it is to truly love."

And for that moment, that single instance in time, she was Mal again - wife, mother, lover, daughter - all that he had ever wanted and all that he would never have again. He found that he could not refuse her even this, a death she chose, rather than one forced on her.

He kissed her, one last time, knowing there would be no response; the last embrace he should always have been able to bestow upon her body. That she lay in a coffin of wires rather than of wood made no difference.

"I couldn't have loved you more," he said against her lips. "I'm so glad I never loved you less."

Her lips parted, whether in automatic breathing-reflex or response he could not be sure, and did not wait to discover, as he yanked out the terrible little suppressor-mod he could feel in her wrist, and switched off the tracer with his other hand.

Her eyes blazed with eternity, and he smiled down at her.

"Goodbye, Mal."

Goodbye, my dear love. Good night.

"Saito -" Mal whispered, and closed her eyes -

And the world came apart.

**

They were victorious, or so Yusuf was gleefully claiming, loudly and repeatedly. Well, at least their part of the plan had worked out, now it was all up to Dom... and Eames.

Eames...

The name was like a metal spike being driven into his brain... or possibly his heart... or maybe both. They had come so far, made it through so much prejudice and misunderstanding and just downright fuckish shit, and to have it just end...

He would have liked to feel that it would, at least, give him some sympathy towards Dom and his even more incredibly messed up life, but really, it only made him want to scream, or go on a twelve-day drunk, or rip someone's heart out with his bare hands... or cry. Cry until there were no more tears, cry until the universe was made salt and then crumbled.

Damn it, Eames, you've made me poetic.

"Yusuf, I am seriously fine and seriously going to smack you if you don't stop fussing," Ariadne said from what seemed like an enormous distance.

"I am fussing about my wonderful, wonderful design, thank you very bloody much, and I will fuss as much as I like."

"Hey, it's mine now. Get your terms right."

Arthur sighed at the bickering. He had honestly thought they would have at least moved past this by now.

But -

"Ours," Yusuf said then, his voice private and tender. "Ours, Ari."

He should have expected that, he'd seen all the signs. He didn't begrudge them finding each other, but their timing, the showing of it, was something he just couldn't handle right then.

Oh, Eames.

That wink Eames always gave him right after he'd wound him up, just for the hell of it. The way he'd always know just what to say to let Arthur know that, yes, he was serious, no matter how outlandish his suggestion might seem. His hair that never seemed to do exactly what he wanted without doing much to it; that no-one else saw anyway so he never cared about. His feet. His damn feet with their long toes and their warmth, that he could tuck his always-cold ones in between.

All the things he and he alone could touch.

All the things that were gone.

All the things that were lost.

You promised to wake up with me...

"If you're going to bill and coo and be all sappy, would you very much mind doing it somewhere the fuck else?" he snapped, shoving past them.

"Um, like where?" Ariadne asked. "I mean, stepping outside for a minute is kind of off the list, idiot."

"Where," Yusuf asked the air, "is the love for my genius? For the glory that is me? I can bill and coo as much as I please, thank you, I have earned the right to exude sap." He paused. "Hm. Perhaps I should not have said that last part."

"Really," Ariadne murmured, but she was laughing.

"Someplace your genius isn't," Arthur snarled back. "And I'm not touching the rest of that question."

"You just did," Yusuf pointed out.

Arthur was going to hit him.

Hard.

And possibly punch Ariadne as well if she didn't stop smirking at him.

How could they be joking and flirting when Eames might be dead, or hurt, or worse. People might say he had no imagination, but right now he could only wish that were true.

He wished he couldn't even think, let alone imagine; he wished that he wasn't thinking about how it would be now even if Dom succeeded, that he wasn't thinking about what he had said back on the dead planetoid that had once been the closest thing to a home the Psions had ever known -

"Fuck fate! Or, if you believe in it so strongly, just accept that fate had something else in mind for you that didn't include being here to fucking die... Fuck, Eames, accept that you were meant to be there for me..."

You were meant to be there for me.

It hurt. It hurt more than anything he'd ever known, and this, this was why he'd never let anyone close, because he'd known, he should have known that it would end up as a loss even his walls could not stand up against.

Knowing that loving Eames had not been enough to make him believe he deserved to be alive was the final blow to the foundations of what arrogance he had left to him, and Arthur damned the Psions and the City-Corps and Saito and war to the depths of the hell he was currently inhabiting.

Always thought arrogance was attractive...

Eames would find him repulsive now, if that were really true. He had none left to him. No arrogance, no confidence, no way through. Just a pleading kind of hope that he was wrong, that Eames was wrong, that Yusuf had been wrong about the patch.

Anything.

Come back to me...

"We're sorry, Arthur..." Ariadne said softly.

"I'm not sorry."

Ariadne elbowed Yusuf in the ribs. "We didn't think. Or really I didn't think, Yusuf never does."

"Hey!"

"Yeah... it's okay," Arthur said, but it really wasn't. It might never be again.

He went back over to the control panel, and looked out at what would only ever be empty space to him, a blackness that he knew to every other eye was filled with the light and power of Ariadne's illusions.

He wished he could see them.

"- we know for sure that you've plotted the -! Well. Fuck me. It worked."

On the other hand, he could have done without the hallucinations.

"Arthur?"

No. As much as he wanted it to be, it wasn't Eames. If he turned around to look all he'd see was the empty space where Eames should be... and wasn't. He might have to move to someplace he'd never lived before, because otherwise he knew, he'd be in for a lot more of them. Anything that reminded him of Eames would bring this back... this feeling that he was there, when he wasn't.

"Arthur. Look at me, darling."

"No," Arthur said, idiotically sure of himself. "I've got all the space I want, right out there."

"Your logic is cracked. Right down the fucking middle. Because if you still can't see holos, or sense illusions, then there is no way I can be talking to you unless I'm here."

"I could be making it up."

"Flattering, and yet I'll have to go with no. Look at me, you stupid bastard. Hey. Proof positive, either way. Yeah?"

He was afraid to turn around. Afraid and he hadn’t been afraid since the first battle that the City Corps had flung him into, half-prepared and woefully young. But this? This was terrifying.

"Please, Arthur."

But how could he resist that voice, real or imagined?

He turned and saw feet, clad in the vilely-coloured, disreputable boots Eames had picked up off the Freebooters, the patched flak-pants that Eames refused to get rid of because they were apparently his 'lucky trousers', dear stars above, and that Arthur had wanted to burn for years, a familiar hook-belt and then a firmly muscled stomach, bare, names and places and incomprehensible symbols all scrawled over it like some kind of demented sketch pad. No shirt, of course, because he'd needed it off to activate the jack, and Arthur didn't know if the man even owned a shirt with buttons, so of course he couldn't have put one on afterwards.

His bulk jacket had been left behind on Seisui. Arthur remembered that. It was on the end of the bed.

It was still on the end of the bed, oh lords, and he'd forgotten that until now, and that was real, that was -

"Eames?"

"Well, yeah. Yusuf, one word and I will fucking shoot you, so don't." Eames crouched down in front of him. "Hello. Want to explain why you've decided to have a psychotic break? It's not convenient, Arthur, really. Save it for later. Hey, you can do a time-share with Dom."

And not even his mind could have come up with that sort of uncomforting response.

"Eames."

"Yeah... like I said."

"I am so going to kill you." But contrary to his words all he could do was drink the man in, fling himself against that kindergarten scrawl of a chest until they both toppled over on the deck, lips locked together as if they could only gain breath each from the other.

"But what a way to go," Eames said at last, and laughed, mad and right in Arthur's ear and utterly infuriating and alive, alive, alive thrummed Arthur's pulse, almost drowning out all other sounds.

"I knew it would be terrible when they finally worked it out," Yusuf said dismally. "I simply did not realise the levels of horror. My poor eyes."

"Fuck off, Yusuf," came the reply from three different directions. Arthur was pretty sure two of them were from him, considering how utterly scattered he felt. He hung on, not caring how pathetic he must look, hung on and hung on and didn't close his eyes in case this vanished.

"You're here." Arthur was angry at himself for repeating the obvious, but somehow he was too amazed to stop. He had to thank goodness for Eames then, because another kiss kept him from saying anything more stupid.

"I hate to interrupt but... Mal? Dom? What's going on?"

Arthur thought it was sad that he was going to have to shoot Ariadne, but there was simply no other choice, because her questions caused Eames to stop kissing him.

"She... listened to reason. She'll get Dom out and then shut it all down for good."

Arthur drew back, and pushed himself away from Eames and off to the side, sitting on the metal floor of the craft in an eerie parody of their positions when they had arrived at the space-station, so long ago - except this time Eames wasn't dozing against him, he was very much awake and almost vibrating with spent adrenaline, and he was making less sense than usual. "What - Mal -"

"Mal's dead," Eames said, and shivered, and he wasn't okay at all, not even remotely, even if he had come back, even if he had achieved the impossible. Arthur hissed air between his teeth, and tried not to think about all that the bleak little statement contained, letting Eames grip his wrist, ignoring the pain, because he felt that same need; to feel blood moving, to feel warmth, continuance, proof of life. "She - wants to be dead on her own terms, that's all."

"Can you trust that? Are you sure?" Ariadne again.

"Yeah," Eames mumbled. He sounded almost as bad as he had before they went to the dead planetoid. "Definite. M'sure. Can I not. Just. I don't. Not yet." He took a deep breath, and looked up. "Sorry, Ari," he said more clearly. "I can't."

"Eames, did Dom get there, did - you have to give us something, we can't just take this on faith," Ariadne persisted.

"She got me back here," Eames said, stark and hard. "On faith. So yeah. You can."

Arthur gave Eames a searching look, letting him know that this might be the end of the conversation that was being had with Ariadne, but he was going to ask later, and then nodded his head, letting it go - for now, and for everyone's sake. "Yeah... all right. So now we just wait? For... for Dom?"

"And let Saito know, I s'pose."

"Are we sure Saito does not already know?" Yusuf asked with a faint glimmer of humour.

"No," said Eames very dryly. If it hadn't been for the relentless pressure of his fingers, Arthur might have thought he was completely back in the game. "But I'm sure he's got a list of what he'll do to us if we don't tell him anyway."

"I'll tell him," Ariadne said, and then, helplessly, "What do I tell him?"

"Mission accomplished." Arthur said with a shrug of his shoulder. "Tell him, 'Mission accomplished.'"

"Attention, Mandell..." A voice came over their subspace comm. "Are you getting all this? The reports? Mandell?"

"Just now checking, Commander," Ariadne toggled the switch, bringing up split-screens from the different news agencies. It was apparent which were independent and which Cobol controlled... almost hilariously apparent.

"Oh, my." Yusuf looked amused. "We're either terrorists, freedom-fighters, or a systems malfunction. How to choose. How to choose."

"I want to be a terrorist," Ariadne said, apropos of nothing particular. "I mean, if we have to choose. Malfunctions are boring, and freedom-fighter? Just not me. Too... soap-boxy."

"You are a fucking terrorist," Eames grumbled. "Definition: terrifying."

"What's the one that blows things up? Arthur can be that."

"Um, they all do?" Eames was starting to laugh, which was a hell of a lot better than whatever he'd been on the verge of before, but he didn't show any signs of wanting to get up. Arthur was pretty much fine with that.

"So I'm a malfunctioning freedom-fighter -"

"Which would in fact make you a terrorist, yes," Yusuf chipped in.

"Awesome, we're all terrorists," Ariadne said happily.

"Is this going to be like the pirates? You know, the ones that weren't?"

"Mandell, your comms are open..."

"Oops?" Arthur could not keep the dry tone out of his voice. "Commander, if anyone in this fleet still had illusions about our sanity, don't you think it best that we correct them?"

There was a stuttering bark of laughter over the comm, "Acknowledged, Mandell. Carry on."

"I have no doubts whatsoever as to your sanity," said Saito's voice. "Your sense of the appropriate, however, is entirely and communally non-existent."

"Awww, you're too kind," Ariadne said happily. "Hey, Saito, what gives with Dom?"

"He..." There was a pause which, for once, was not Saito waiting for effect. "He has not yet returned to the craft."

"Shit," said Eames. "I knew I shouldn't have - I should get back and -"

"You touch that time-jack and I will remove your hand," said Arthur, and meant it. Eames blinked at him.

"Er. Right."

"Besides," Arthur continued, signalling for Ari to cut the feed to the fleet. Crazy they might be but the rest of this was 'family' business. "... everything is shutting down, going off-line. Right, Saito? If something had happened with Dom... that wouldn't be happening, right?"

"That doesn't mean she let him go." Ariadne interrupted. "She might decide that they were destined to be together... alive or dead."

"No," Eames said, and there was something in his voice that made even Ariadne shut up. "She's past that kind of emotion."

"We cannot be sure," Saito's disembodied voice began carefully, and then there was complete and total audio silence.

"Saito?"

Nothing.

"Saito!" Yusuf shouted pointlessly at the comm. "Damn it -"

"Oh, I think we can," Arthur said, getting to his feet. "She's disconnected the whole planet."

"And possibly Dom, I'm not cheered up -" Ariadne started, and Eames stood up beside Arthur and said quickly -

"No, she hasn't, she's taking everything down, we're the only thing disconnected from her -"

"What?"

"Yeah... that was the last thing I heard her say to Dom - to reconnect everything but the Mandell."

Arthur wondered if her controls were really that refined. To exclude one very small ship's markers in the vastness of space, when surrounded by an entire fleet of larger vessels... how much discretionary control must she have at her fingertips? Cobol must have been far more truly insane than they'd ever given them credit for.

"Ari, get holo-shields up, now," Yusuf said out of nowhere. "If everything is about to go down, a lot of things are going to become very very bright, and if someone doesn't block the waves -"

"We can't comm. anyone to warn them, damn," Ariadne said. "I'll have to drop the fleet-illusion -"

"That's fine, I don't think it matters any more -"

"Terrifying, both of you, I swear," Eames said, and then -"Oh fuck. Holo-shields."

Ariadne slammed her hand down into the controls, just a half-second too late. Bright and brilliant flares of light scattered across their screen, casting rainbows on their faces.

"Lords. What was that?" Ariadne asked.

"Mal," was Eames's simplistic reply.

"Mandell? Hello? Hello? Fuck. Hello? Arthur, is the comm. back on?" Dom's voice crackled into life to the accompaniment of Saito's very un-avatar-like laughter.

"Doubt that the stars are fire," Yusuf murmured, as though to himself. "But never doubt I love. You were right, Eames. Faith."

Ariadne pressed the control back to open. "Hey, Dom," she said.

"Ari -? Good. Good. Are you all okay there?" Dom's face appeared on their screen. He sounded nervous rather than sorrowing. It probably hasn't all sunk in yet, Arthur thought. "Is... Is Eames with you?"

So that was it. Had everyone but he known about Eames's one-way ticket?

"I'm here, Dom. Safe as houses."

"She did it, Eames." Dom said simply. "She did it... and she's gone."

"I know. I'm sorry."

"No," Dom said, and Arthur had been wrong in his assessment, he had been terribly wrong, because this was not a lack of acceptance, this was Dom finally at peace; grieving and at peace. "No." He smiled. "I could tell her goodbye."

**

Stepping off the Mandell when they arrived back at Seisui felt very much like returning home…and nothing at all like it. How someone could feel exhilarated and yet so detached at the same time was something that Eames had often felt after a battle, but had never understood.

This time it was an especially disjointed feeling. He'd been nervous and focused when he arrived inside Cobol, then horrified and saddened to see what their beloved Mal had become - but determined to do what he had to do, to convince her to let him. And she had, and too soon after that, the dizzying change too sudden for complete sanity or comprehension, there had been the triumph and the joy of actually surviving, of returning to Arthur, of actually being alive, all of them being alive…

Now there was nothing. Well, not exactly nothing. There was a feeling of accomplishment, he supposed and somewhere, a deep down feeling that he barely recognized as contentment.

He wondered if he would have even recognized it at all if it hadn't been for the long months they'd spent on Seisui beforehand. It wasn't something he'd experienced in his life.

"Hey." A soft voice interrupted his introspection. "Where did you go?"

Too many answers to that, and most of them he wasn't entirely sure of. All the responses that came to mind - when do you mean, where do you mean, are we talking time or distance, do you mean now, do you mean then? - would sound flippant and uncaring, even if he meant them.

Even if he wanted to ask, wanted to know.

When and where would never be questions anyone could ask of him, not and expect an entirely sane answer. Even with Cobol gone, even with Yusuf's patch removed from his time-jack, there were cracks and fissures in the boundaries of his life, where most people expected and found unyielding certainty.

"Not sure," he said at last. It was honest, at least, even if, like all honesty, it was only one layer of the many truths that surrounded his words. "Here. The Mandell. The Gates." It wasn't humour that made him laugh. "Mal had universes in her mind."

There was silence at that, but not an uncomfortable one, considering what silence could be like, and especially with Arthur, who knew all too well how to use it for a weapon. "It's not surprising. She always wanted to see more and know more. "

"She should have done it in person." Eames gave a half smile. "It's far more satisfying."

There was a pause. "On her own?" Arthur sounded uncertain.

"Dom's not a traveller."

Too much they weren't saying. It felt heavy as rain in the air - but Arthur laughed, sudden and surprising.

"He hasn't done too badly, considering. No, I know what you meant. He's not. I don't think he'll leave here again, or at least not for long. He's like the man in that story, the old one."

Eames turned his head enough for a long, incredulous stare. "Er," he said helpfully.

"Shut up. The stories, like with Ari's legend. The man who wanted to go home, who did all those things on his way there..."

"Arthur, I'm impressed that you seem to have read something not relevant to your specific needs at some time in your life, but seriously, what?"

"There were pigs?" Arthur said, not sounding as if he was entirely sure. "I think. Maybe that was someone else."

"Pigs," Eames repeated blankly, and then - "Odysseus? You think Dom's like Odysseus? Arthur, he's -" Nothing like and everything like. Only you. Only you, who can't see illusion, would know that. "Yeah, I can see that," he finished up, instead of mocking.

All around them were the sounds of homecoming as men and women left the ships of the returning fleet and were greeted by those they had left behind. Mates were kissed, children hugged, friends greeted, all with the joyful sounds of returning warriors.

They had taken their friends, their little family, with them. No greetings on their return, Eames thought, but not sadly.

"Welcome home, gentlemen."

Or perhaps he was wrong.

"Thank you, Kazue." Arthur spoke for both of them.

Home.

Again, it was but it wasn't. Arthur's hand on his shoulder made it so.

"I think I meant welcome back," Kazue corrected herself. "You arrived home before now."

It was rare for her to say so much, the cautious, quiet words the equivalent of gushing ebullience from anyone else - Kazue, the reason for Seisui's creation, the living embodiment of the deep serenity which lay at the heart of Saito's power.

Water and flame and glass and the reflection of all living things, contained in a stillness that made time irrelevant.

Saito built his empires and his worlds, not for his own glory, but to reflect hers, and it was a humbling realisation, to know that just as Mal had destroyed a universe from love, so Saito built one.

"Thank you, love," Eames leaned in and gently kissed Kazue's cheek. She blushed very prettily and then moved on to welcome Ariadne and Yusuf.

"Flirt." Arthur teased, as they watched her move away.

"Only with you, darling," Eames answered, wrapping his arm around Arthur's shoulders and tugging him closer. "I think I've had about as much homecoming as I want. You?"

Arthur looked around him with ostentatious distaste, at Ariadne, kissing Kazue's cheek while her scarred left hand remained unconsciously tangled in Yusuf's right one, at Dom and Saito, carrying on some silent conversation that ended with a half-bow from Saito, while Dom shifted a half-sleeping James against his shoulder; at Yumi and Philippa, dancing through the pilots with the confidence of celebration to come.

At Miles, staring out past the crowd, out to the sea and beyond it, to the horizon and the stars that his daughter had owned, tears on his face even while he smiled.

"More than," he said fervently, and then - "Eames. I am a traveller."

And a weight Eames hadn't even known was resting on him lifted and dissolved, as though it had never been.

"Yeah," he said lightly. "But I know that."

It was why, after all, that Arthur was here and not in some ivory-clad tower spending his days planning sky-castles and bits of fluff for people who were just like him. People who observed and didn't do, who didn't travel, but expected the universe to be brought to them, brightly shining and open to their view.

"I know that," he said again.

He had always known it, he realised. He had known it from that first meeting in the terrible little bar, with its battered marble counters, known it even when he reached for a knife and thought only of death and survival in a time-jumbled, frantic moment of panic.

He had known it when Arthur swore at the hover-bike, on the dead planet that was all the Psions had left to them as a memorial, known it each and every time Arthur failed to see the holos; when he ignored Maf's laser gun on the space-station, understood why he could not kill Lukho; when he supported Dom's madness and sanity with equal determination.

When he sat in the Mandell's piloting chair and refused to look at what might be an illusion, because hope was the worst deception of them all.

"Travel with me," Eames said softly, pulling Arthur even closer, "and where ever we are will be home."

No more promises to come back. No need to make them.

"Yes," Arthur replied, "always."

They left the landing field and returned to their room in Saito's house, their hands never leaving the other.

They had time.

Time the enemy, time the thief.

Time the victor, and the universe ran with it and before it - as would they.

**

They undressed each other quickly, but with no sense of urgency, not any more. It was want that drove them, not time, and skin hunger and heat. It drove them toward the bed and settled them in with long languid touches and soft tender kisses, all of it building.

"Touch me… yes there…"

"Love when you - God, yes…"

A jumble of words, never voiced completely, cut off by kisses and shocks of lust, and all the feelings Eames had missed back on the tarmac of the landing field came crawling back under his skin, insistently led by Arthur's touch.

Desperation and despair had been left behind in Cobol's ashes and Mal's blazing validation of faith, a world where it could have been so different, could have been hell, could have been a void and a grey-dust memory, and was nothing of the kind.

It was real and sharp and almost too much life, crawling under and over his nerves like the knives and ink and ash, and better and more than all of it.

Arthur was inside him now, under his skin, in his heart like no one had ever been. He covered him, like one of his temp mods, only rather than hiding him, Arthur brought him into the light, to sight, to brilliance and ecstasy.

"Yes… please…Now!"

He loved this, lusted after it even when he had it, the sound and feel of his own body, of Arthur's body, the jolting suddenness of completion, the wonder and surprise at his own response, the black dazzle of nothing that followed, and the slow drift back to silence and awareness, strangest of waking dreams.

"Unfair," he said nonsensically, and Arthur laughed.

"Yeah, I never claimed fair."

"Hitting you takes energy. Don't got it."

The sun was setting, painting the room in colours that belonged behind closed eyelids, so far from the twin cold suns that it was more than another world, but another life entirely.

Suddenly there was a rather loud pounding on the door frame, interrupting their peace. Yusuf, of course.

"If you two are quite finished in there, kindly get your trousers on and come out. I emphasise the trousers as a requirement."

Arthur dropped his head down on Eames's shoulder, "Shooting him would be bad, right?"

"Shooting him would be bloody fantastic," Eames corrected him, "but vengeance would be Ari's, and after today's display? No thanks."

"Trousers!" Yusuf yelled.

"Fuck off!" Eames yelled back.

"Quite right, wash first," Yusuf continued at top volume and with undented cheerfulness.

"I am going to shoot him," Arthur said, equally loudly.

"No you are not, you are going to do as I say." Underneath the happy rudeness, Yusuf sounded oddly serious. "Wash, dress, out here, please."

"Bugger," Eames sighed.

"Again?" Arthur chuckled and shifted his hips.

"I'm waiting," Yusuf singsonged through the door.

"He's not going to go away, is he?" Eames groaned.

"No, I'm not!"

"Five minutes?" Eames wasn't above begging.

"And I will be right. Here." Yusuf responded. "Listening for the sound of something that is not sex."

"How do you know what -" Arthur started, and Eames slammed a hand over his mouth. "Mrph?"

"You want him to answer that?"

Arthur considered for a moment, then shook his head rather violently.

"Five minutes," Eames repeated. Yusuf started to bang out the rhythm to something terrible on the door.

They managed it in four and a half, if only to get the noise to stop.

"What the fuck is so important, Yusuf?"

Yusuf led them out onto the terrace of Saito's house, "Well, it's not that it's important to me. Not exactly. But it's important to them."

The terrace and lawns were full of people, soldiers, families, children, groups of them gathered and separating and regathering like the waves on the nearby beach.

"What's going on?"

"A celebration," said Yusuf.

"Yeah, we were trying to avoid that, mate, in case you hadn't noticed -"

"Shut up," Yusuf said, oddly gentle. He put his hand on Eames's shoulder, waiting for and riding out the instinctive flinch away. "Shut up and look."

"What at?" Arthur asked, irritable with badly-hidden curiosity.

"The sky," said Yusuf, tilting his head back to suit action to his words. He was smiling.

And the first firework, red-gold and sputtering smoke, trailed across their vision.

The flinch was even more pronounced as the first bang of the rocket's explosion rent the air. "Damn."

"They want this, my friend. For you, for them, for new beginnings," Yusuf spoke quickly. "This is not a celebration of defeat or victory, but for birth."

"And because you're a smug bastard who can't resist one-upping history," Eames pointed out.

"Because I am a smug bastard who did so in person," Yusuf said. He looked away from the sky, and his hand was warm and unmoving. "And so are you. All of us. We changed what the world means, you know. And we will change it further."

"And remember what we're changing it from." Arthur was on the verge of laughter and sarcasm both, an oddly heady mixture when it could be heard in his usually cool voice. "Yusuf, you're -"

"Brilliant, I know," Yusuf agreed with a nod. "I love to be recognised at my true worth."

And with that, Yusuf was off, swaggering across the lawn towards a grinning Ariadne in a way that made both Eames and Arthur laugh, before turning their heads back to the sky.

"It's... really beautiful." Arthur sounded almost grudging about the fact.

"Yeah." Could this be his life now? Their life? Light and the open spaces of Saito's vision, rather than shadow and camouflage? It had been so long since he had been able to rely on anything but the intricacies of subterfuge, of hidden and half-truths, and he wasn't sure if he could manage it. Considering what that life, the life-in-death of a Psion, had almost cost him - "Arthur?"

He didn't have to speak further, "It's alright, Eames. It will be alright."

Will be. It was not, yet. What he had done was not yet forgiven - could not be forgiven, not without time. But he had known that, even thinking he would not be around to work for that forgiveness, he had known that - and time, time was something they had.

It would be alright, in the end.

Something in the tone of that familiar voice made him believe, as it always had and would make him believe. In spite of the past, that was something he thought he was ready for.

More than ready for.

Four more rockets exploded at once, lighting the night sky and the future.

**




EPILOGUE