Fic - Reminders:Rockpools - Chapter III

[quoshara]

Dom, now

Dom woke up feeling rather overwarm and damp, mostly because, after stripping off Philippa's bed, he had discovered that James's was in much the same shape, and had finally given up and dragged both of them off to sleep in his bed. He was now wrapped in two pint-sized furnaces who drooled in their sleep.

"God... coffee..." Somehow, he managed to disentangle himself and stumble towards the kitchen where, thankfully, he had remembered to fill and set up the coffee maker the night before.

He sometimes missed the days when he could simply rely on other people to stop him killing himself, scalding himself, or just falling over in a sleepy heap.

Now there were two children and the coffee maker and him, and although he wanted neither Marie nor Miles around to witness his incompetence, he didn't want to have to shake himself awake every five seconds, either.

"Dominic, your mornings amuse me," Saito intoned from behind him, and Dom's hand jerked hard enough to send the jug (and water) skittering across the counter.

"Oh good," he said, looking for a cloth. "Really pleased."

"I am sorry if I startled you."

"I was just wondering how you got in here without my hearing you."

"Through the door."

It was, apparently, one of Saito's taunt-the-barely-awake-person mornings. "Of course. How else..."

"Allow me to take that." Saito took the carafe, got two mugs out of the cupboard and filled them. "Let me begin again. Good morning, Dominic."

"Go to hell, Saito," Dom said, and folded up into the nearest chair.

"But as you often say, my friend, this is hell, nor are we out of it."

"I do not say that," Dom protested vaguely. He thought it, true, but he never said it.

"Of course not," Saito agreed solemnly, and bent to prevent a suddenly-awake Philippa from doing terrible damage to his more essential parts as she skidded into the kitchen on socked feet. "Slippers, my child," he said in the tones of a public service announcement.

"James puked in my bed," Philippa responded.

Saito actually took a step back. Dom laughed into his arms, and closed his eyes.

"James is ill?"

Dom peered up at him. "James ate warm, two day old guacamole."

"Ah."

"I told him not to, but he never listens to me." Philippa told him, arms crossed and hip cocked in the stance of put-upon older sisters everywhere.

"James will learn with experience," Saito told her. "What would you like for breakfast?"

"Pancakes-!"

"-You don't need to cook, I'll be awake enough to do it in a minute," Dom interrupted.

"No you won't, daddy, you'll crack three eggs and then lean on Uncle Saito."

"Ah?" Saito managed.

"Philippa, darling, shut up," Dom moaned into his arms.

"Daddy does a zombie thing," Philippa explained to Saito, horribly loudly. "Like James only you can't pick him up. And Maman said that Eames-darling shuffled him best, but when she said it everyone got sad, so I stopped laughing at him."

Dom lifted his head up and glared at Saito.

"Don't even -"

"It would not occur to me," Saito said smoothly, and stirred sugar into Dom's coffee.

"Pip... why don't you go see if James is feeling any better and if he is, you can both watch TV for a bit before breakfast."

"And I will make pancakes," Saito told her.

"Yay!!" Philippa practically danced out of the room.

"You don't have-"

"I volunteered."

"I... thank you. Thanks."

Saito sat the cup of well-sugared coffee down on the table and went back to rummage through the kitchen.

"Saito?"

"Yes, my friend."

"You helped Eames with the house-thing, right?"

"I did."

"Why?"

Saito turned around, a bag of badly-pegged flour in one hand and a whisk in the other, and smiled.

"I shall tell you as I told him. Because I was dying, and he gave me a grenade."

"Kill me now," Dom said to the ceiling, and fell asleep on the table to the sound of sizzling oil, and thinking of how he had learned mind-resistance by teaching it to Arthur, how 'Mr. Charles' had come into being, how all his best defence-building had come from hating, and hating, and hating the very thing he had given most of his life up to.

The PASIV.

Arthur desperate, and Mal guilty, and Eames afraid, and he could only deal with one of those things, back then.

He had chosen Arthur.

They had spent days (in dream-time) sorting him out, and hours in real-time working on meditation and how to channel his natural dreams lucidly, to drive them away from the terror and back to more normal situations that he'd have control over. It was hard work for both of them, and they'd had more than their share of arguments and actual fist-fights over it, although the latter mostly took place in the dreamscape.

It had been gruelling, at times, but Dom couldn't regret any of it. It had removed the haunted expression from Arthur's face, and if that was replaced with a look that was much more calm and blank than any Arthur wore before volunteering for the Dreamshare project, it was only to be expected.

He had taken away Arthur's fear, and Mal had replaced it, unforgivably, with thoughts of love.

Unforgivably, because the subject she had chosen was still afraid himself.

Unforgivably, because she had been too wrapped up in her project to inform Dom of her ideas.

Unforgivably, because she had lulled two minds, not just one, into a sense of security, one with another.

And oh, how very very false it had all been.

Eames and Arthur, learning friendship.

Arthur learning that trust was not impossible, Eames that he was not always a traitor. Mal rejoicing in their becoming.

And Dom, who had never really seen anything but the failure of one man to understand another's love, assuming that no defence was necessary until it was all far, far too late.

It had all fallen apart. Eames one way. Arthur another. He and Mal left alone, if only for awhile. Arthur eventually coming back, because the baby was on the way, and Dom was terrified that he would be a horrible father. And Mal had begged Arthur to be Philippa's godfather and as usual, no matter what Arthur felt, he could refuse her nothing.

But it was never the same. Never could be, because three was not four and they all felt the loss more than anyone of them would admit.

"Your coffee has gone cold, Dominic."

"Wha... ?"

Saito laughed at him. Silently, and without even really smiling, but he was definitely laughing.

And maybe, Dom thought, maybe six is even better.

And he looked up at Saito with perfect blankness.

"So get me more," he said, completely deadpan.

Ariadne, our unexpected fledgling, our reminder of what we once were.

"More sleep?"

Arthur, my constant, my friend, my wall of Troy.

"Saito, if you can get me that, I'll love you forever."

Yusuf, our changeling, who never wanted to be or replace Mal.

"That is not an incentive, my friend."

Eames, who never left even when he ran.

"I'm hurt."

Saito. Living out worlds in faith that I would come for him.

"You will survive."

"I always do," Dom agreed lightly, and then - "Saito -"

"Wait a while," Saito said, and Dom caught his breath, because how could he know, how - "I must whisk."

Right. Right.

Dom got to his feet, and went to rouse James.

**

Arthur, then

It felt very odd to Arthur, having the house all to himself, almost as though he were trespassing, in spite of the welcome he had always received from both Mal and Dom. Somehow, lacking their presence, that warmth and love drained out of the place and it felt more like a tidy showpiece... a hotel... than it did a home. Arthur had tried reading and watching some television before taking his laptop out to the beach steps, the farthest place he could still get a good internet connection.

The sound of a motorcycle with something terrible happening to its exhaust, pulling up at the front of the house, did absolutely nothing to jolt him out of the slightly surreal state of detachment he was in, until his brain caught up with his ears and he thought -

Oh, fuck, motorcycle, what -

He thought it showed remarkable composure on his part that he grabbed Mal's shotgun and checked it was loaded before he came out of the front door.

It was not a feeling that Eames apparently shared, judging from his expression as he yanked his helmet off and stared at Arthur.

"Seriously, what the fuck is wrong with you?" he demanded.

"Did you steal that?" Arthur snapped back, and oh. Yeah. Maybe he shouldn't have said that out loud.

Eames's sigh might not have been audible, but it was certainly visible. His shoulders rose and fell in an exaggerated movement of air. "Yes," he said flatly. "Yes, Arthur, I left the house, nicked a bike, and came back here to stash it - no, obviously, what? How the fuck does your mind even work?"

Arthur gave a small huff, "Yeah, I suppose that even you have more sense than to steal a bike that sounds so close to its last legs."

The scowl on Eames's face had him wishing he hadn't said that. Why the fuck did I say that? Why not... 'Sorry, Eames, you startled me.' That would have been a more... suitable response.

"Thank you," Eames said dryly. "Thank you so much, also yeah, I do, and why are you carrying Mal's gun - oh." His face screwed up in what looked like something verging on apologetic. "Fuck, sorry. Didn't mean to scare seven bells out of you -"

"Do you even speak English?" Arthur demanded helplessly, giving up in the face of unwanted understanding, and broke the shotgun over his arm. "Yeah, okay, so it was a bit loud." It was as much of an explanation as he was prepared to give.

"I found a shop," Eames said then. He looked like an optimistic cat that hadn't quite figured out why it got yelled at for bringing in still-living mice, but was prepared to keep trying in case this time it worked. "It's - yeah, it's this shop, and it's - you should come and see it."

"A shop..." All Arthur could do was frown at him with incomprehension. "A motorcycle shop? That's where you got the bike?"

"Um, sort of, yeah," Eames said. "I did get it there, but it's not a - look, you need to see this, okay? It's perfect."

Arthur looked at the clock. In another two, or possibly three, hours Dom and Mal would be back and Mal would either be gushing over their parfait wedding clothes or moaning that nothing could be found in such a provincial area and how they must plan a jaunt to Paris for something more suitable.

Either way, it was not something that Arthur was certain he wanted to experience, and he certainly hadn't failed to notice that Eames's own disappearances tended to end a mysteriously precise hour and a half after Dom and Mal returned from their latest expedition. "Okay, yeah... just let me..." He gestured at the shotgun.

"Right." Eames grinned at him, sudden and sharp. "You might want to think about carrying. Less worry."

Arthur, about to ask irritably oh, like you do? realised that the answer would be yes, and stopped himself. "Not in the house," he said instead, and turned his back on Eames's eye-roll.

Out of the house, though, he thought as he put the gun away, out of the house, that - that was only sensible.

It wasn't as though he'd exactly forgotten where he kept things.

He came back a few minutes later, adjusting the collar of his jacket, his revolver a comforting weight at the small of his back. It wasn't his favourite way to carry, but it was certainly less obtrusive in public, and since he no longer had the concealing sameness of wearing his uniform, he took such things into consideration.

When he had gone out in uniform, that had been all that people had seen, but in civvies... he had to be more cautious.

"Where to?" He raised an eyebrow at Eames.

"Hopefully a car," Eames said, looking embarrassed. "I think this thing needs work."

"I think it needs scrapping," Arthur said in some relief, "and yes, car, absolutely car, God." He didn't want to consider how automatically he'd assumed the bike was the only option. That way madness definitely lay.

"You have one, yeah? Don't all Yanks?" Eames grinned at him crookedly, teasing.

"Yes, we all have a car... we all eat apple pie and wave Old Glory with one hand and eat a hot dog with the other." Arthur rolled his eyes, "As it so happens I do have a car... but I'm not allowed to drive it at the moment."

"Hm-nn," was Eames's response. "Why not?"

Arthur sagged a bit, "Because I'm supposed to be taking those..."

He pointed at five bottles full of tablets that were sitting on the kitchen countertop - an anti-hallucinogenic, an anti-depressant, a sedative, sleeping pills, and something that Eames obviously didn't recognise, judging by the way he turned the little orange bottle round and round in his hand as though it would give up its secrets if he just stared at it hard enough. "Only... I'm kind of not."

"Right," Eames said thoughtfully, "because that? I might just have noticed. Come to think of it, you needing them I might just have noticed. Okay." He shrugged. "S'pose I'm driving, then."

Arthur blinked at him. "Don't you want -"

"No," Eames said curtly. "No. I don't. I don't want to know. You don't need to explain one single fucking thing to me. You don't need them, you're not taking them, your papers say you are taking them and so you don't drive. Works for me. Are we going?"

"Huh..." Arthur just silently held out the keys to his car. "Yeah..."

Eames snagged them out of his hand and headed for the door.

Wait. What? Had he really just given Eames the keys to his car?

"You do have a license to drive in the U.S. Wait. Don't you?" He hurried after Eames.

"Yes," Eames said, straight-faced. "I have a license to drive. And here I am. In the U.S."

"Oh God," Arthur said. He wondered if he should bring the shotgun anyway.

**

All in all though, their trip to the shop was without incident. Eames was a surprisingly competent driver, their only mishaps being his repeatedly asking Arthur if he was 'sure' they were on the proper side of the road. By the time they arrived at the shop, Arthur was laughing good-naturedly about the running joke and ready to see whatever it was that Eames wished to show him.

Which was, apparently, a very small shop that went a very long way back and had a surprisingly low ceiling. Why Arthur had thought it would be something that made sense was beyond him, but it seemed that despite the terrible bike Eames had somehow made his way back to the house on with a broken arm and no sense of American road safety, he had still assumed this was something amazing that Arthur did, actually, have to see, potential near-death-experiences and all.

This is Eames, he reminded himself. What were you thinking?

What he had been thinking was more along the lines of thank God he didn't ask about the pills even though I offered to explain, mixed with a healthy remainder of guilt over the way he had managed to not tell Eames he had sorted out everyone's cover stories, but righteous indignation over what looked like a giant waste of time was a lot more comfortable.

"You brought me to see the only Hobbit hole in California?" Arthur's voice was deceptively light. Was this any better than listening to hours of Mal's fashion talk? Well, usually that didn't bother him, he had a love of well-designed clothing himself, but wedding clothes were an entirely different matter.

"It's not a Hobbit hole... it's a treasure trove," Eames swept open the door as if he were inviting Arthur into every fantasy he'd ever had.

He was right, Arthur had to admit after five minutes in the shop. The place was filled with... everything. Wedgewood and Lennox struggled for shelf space with more fanciful pieces done by local artists. There were beautiful brocade chairs, jars full of broken jewellery like the remains of Ali Baba's treasures, Gund teddy bears and clockwork banks and... well, probably everything anyone would ever want, crammed into twelve thousand square feet.

"How are we ever going to choose?" Arthur asked after Eames waved off the proprietor of the shop. "There's too much."

"But you can't see properly unless you're overwhelmed," was all Eames said, disappearing among shelves of bric-a-brac.

"You're insane and annoying and I hate you more than Mal's mom," was all Arthur had left in him for a reply.

"Hmmmm..." was all that Eames replied, fishing a piece of stemware out from amongst its brethren. It was tall and green, but the light shining through it gave it an iridescent look, rather like dragonfly wings. "How do you feel about carnival glass?"

"Very very shiny?" Arthur asked, squinting against the colourful dazzle that Eames was sending straight into his eyes. "And by shiny I mean ow, stop."

"You're no fun," Eames said, and Arthur was incredibly glad he couldn't see the full strength of the pout that was almost certainly being turned on him.

"We just need to choose something... nice."

He said nice, but what he meant was perfect, because as good as Mal and Dom had been to him, they deserved nothing less. He didn't know if his Army disability pay would stretch into the perfect range, but he was damn sure going to give it his best shot. "Something that reflects the personality of the giver and the receiver-"

Eames turned to him with a bemused expression on his face.

"-and yes, I may have allowed Mal to rook me into reading one too many bridal magazines." Arthur rolled his eyes and sighed. "What do you suggest?"

Eames blinked at him. "Something less bridal and more sane?"

"Right, so carnival glass is definitely out."

"Well, what do they like?" Eames sounding lost and desperate would normally have been pleasing. At this point in time it was just unhelpful. "I mean, so far as I know, Dom likes stealing things and Mal likes shooting things and fucking with our chemical makeup. And sorry, but I can't fucking think of a good wedding present that incorporates that!"

"Mal likes... well..." Arthur considered for a moment. "Things that are elegant and simple but that are not commonplace. So no Lennox, or anything that just anyone would have. And Dom? Well, I'd mostly have to say that he likes... whatever makes Mal happy. "

God, he'd just turned one of his best friends into Donna-fucking-Reed, which wasn't close to the truth at all.

"Dom likes proof," Eames said, and shrugged.

"So does Mal, you know, chemist -"

They stared at each other.

The hovering shopkeeper dived for cover as everything got turned over at a speed that would have threatened Taz.

"Here. This." Eames held out his hand. Centred neatly in the middle of his palm, Arthur saw a small metal top. It was never meant for children, at least not in the current day and age, it was too small and somehow deadly looking.

"That's... no, I'm not sure what that is, it's... yeah. What? And also, why?"

"It's a spinning top, Arthur," Eames said, managing to sound tired and look happy all at once. It was a dichotomy Arthur didn't feel like separating.

"Yes. Yes, lovely. And?"

"Proof." Eames said. "Arthur, look, it's proof." He cleared a little space on one of the tables, and tried to set it spinning.

He wasn't very successful, his manoeuvrability still hampered by his broken arm.

"Here, let me." Arthur picked up the top and set it spinning in the middle of a Limoges saucer.

"There. See?" Eames nodded as if he weren't speaking the equivalent of ancient Sumerian.

"See what?"

"Proof," Eames said, and blew on the little metal top.

It stuttered and fell, hitting the table with a small click.

"Only," Eames said, "when it's real."

"Only-?" Arthur knew he was missing something important and it was making him angry.

See, look, proof, the man had told him. The top spins and the top falls over... somehow that meant something.

"When it's not real it... keeps spinning?"

"Exactly," Eames agreed.

Arthur felt lost. Eames waved his good arm about rather wildly, endangering a low-hanging crystal chandelier.

"Arthur, listen, yeah? Mal says, all the time, doesn't she. If we could find something to take into the dream. If we could -"

"Something that only happens in one place - that was my idea!"

"So it's a perfect gift." Eames was almost smiling, but he looked as though he were ready to snatch up the little top and make a run for it. "If it's your idea."

Arthur rolled his eyes, "So if the top keeps spinning... that would mean the dream is continuing, because impossibilities are endless in the dream state."

Impossibilities, not possibilities.

"Everything's possible in the dream state, darling," Eames said sadly. "Except what you know isn't going to happen."

"Right, impossibilities," Arthur said, quelling the urge to hit him.

"Right," Eames said, and turned away. "Anyway, you can get that for Mal and I'll get something... nice."

"But... you found it." Arthur looked down at the top. It looked almost forlorn there on the gold trimmed plate. Its inertia spun down with a breath of air. "I couldn't take your... idea."

"But it's yours, isn't it, you said so, it's your idea?" Eames asked lightly, and went back to turning the shelves upside down.

Arthur stared at the little metal top.

If there were something that does not change in reality, or only changes in reality, something one could rely upon - that would of course work.

His idea, or Mal's?

He spun the top.

And Eames, from behind him, blew on it once more.

And it fell.

"Um... thanks..." Arthur said, but it felt uncomfortable, as if bestowing this personal a gift as a wedding present were wrong somehow. "Don't you think it should come from both of us though?"

As much as he liked the top and felt it was the perfect gift for Mal, a part of him still called for something more traditional.

Eames laughed. "I'm not sure whether Mal or Dom would hate that more," he said. "No. Your idea, your gift. Me? I'm going for something gorgeous, brilliant, and completely useless."

"You're buying them a genius supermodel?" Arthur quipped, picking up the top at last and looking at it more closely.

"Didn't they all get married?" Eames asked absently.

"Huh?"

"What?"

"The supermodels -"

"Well I bet you could still -"

"Mal would kill me."

"Not if you hired two," Arthur said dryly. "One for each."

He'd never seen anyone choke on their own breath before.

Still, choking aside, they managed to finish up their scavenging a short time later. In addition to the top, Arthur purchased a small Lalique crystal box to hold it. Beauty and functionality - Arthur felt quite satisfied.

He was almost afraid to ask what Eames wound up with.

Eames refused to tell him until the morning of the wedding, and when he did, it was just before Mal opened it, Mal beautiful as ever in a ratty old robe that was soaking up her newest hair-tint around its collar (because for some reason the lightened streaks at the front need to be some half-a shade darker, or redder, or bright pink, or something Arthur had stopped listening to because he really didn't care) and then Eames was so blatant in not paying attention that Arthur knew.

"Dom, look!"

And the music box played, tinny and faraway, and the tiny figures danced in the centre of a succession of gilded mirrors of foil and glass; endless projections, infinite possibilities, an unending world made for two crafted simulacrums.

Non, je ne regrette rien...

**

Dom, then

At first they had planned to take a trip - Hawaii, the Virgin Islands, or some other typical honeymoon spot - but then Mal pointed out that they already lived by the ocean so none of those places were any better than home. Eames had, of course, suggested Cornwall. Still on the ocean, but far different from most resort towns. Then Arthur, just as insistently, had put forth Italy as warm, idyllic and beautiful. Eames had countered with Rio de Janeiro. Then Arthur suggested Berlin.

"Berlin?" Eames scoffed. "They're honeymooning, not going on leave, Arthur."

Then Arthur scowled and Mal fussed and in the end they did the only thing possible.

They stayed right where they were.

"It doesn't matter if we go or if we stay, darling," she had said. "We had the perfect wedding and now we can just get on with having the perfect life. And our life is here."

Dom was never going to see the world the way Mal did, but it didn't mean he couldn't agree with her vision. If she thought that what they had - their weird, ramshackle, far-too-many-people infested house, with a shotgun hole in the ceiling, a military refugee in the spare room, and a con-man in what had used to be a second study - was perfect, then who was he to deny her?

He got on with designing mazes, with erasing and rebuilding Arthur's dream security from scratch, with learning that the important thing with Eames was not to trust him, but to be trusted, with feeding Mal's inspiration as well as her love for him.

It was a strange life, to be sure, and not one that he himself would ever have thought of as perfect before he had it, but now that it was his - well.

Perfect didn't seem so far from the truth, most days.

There were so many strange, small joys, in and out of dreamsharing. Discovering that Mal had an unerring aim with throwing knives (that had not especially pleased Arthur, unfortunate recipient of one zipping past his ear one evening to kill a persistent cricket, but it had thrilled everyone else). The fact that unlike everything else, forging could be based on memories and living images. Arthur devising a rose-maze that got everyone hopelessly lost, and proving that a lack of imagination could be an astounding asset. Dom's projections turning out to have a bent for assassination (something no-one except Mal enjoyed, but her delight made it worthwhile - for him).

"Not so much perfection as delight," Mal said one night, stretching out in bed.

"Delight?" Dom asked. "I'm not sure I see it... aside from this."

He leaned down, kissing the breast that was closest to him. "This is always delightful."

"Thank you, darling," Mal giggled. "But I actually meant everything else. We have friends and amusements and interesting work. What could be more delightful?"

"This." Another kiss.

"But of course," Mal said, and pulled him closer.

You're my perfection. You're my delight.

He told her that again and again, that night and on many nights to come, and he never stopped meaning it.

Later, he was always glad that it never occurred to him not to say it aloud, that in no lifetime, not the one they lived out, growing old in their love as they had always intended; nor the one ripped from him by that same coast of limbo, that held no secrets to be read in its rockpools, but only the horizon between madness and sanity - in no lifetime, real or created, did he ever stop telling her with his voice and his mind and his body, that she was all he could possibly dream of.

**

Arthur, then

This was, Arthur well knew, what came from being far too good at what he did. Arthur had always been taught that anything worth doing was worth doing well, but somehow he didn't think that this was what his father had meant. He knew how to temporarily disable a man in at least sixty-five ways without causing him any permanent damage. Why he hadn't used one of them the night that Dom brought Eames home, he still didn't know.

He should have. He wished he had.

And more than that, he was sorry that Eames would now have to pay for that mistake.

"What did the doctor say about Eames's hand, Arthur?" Dom had asked when he and Eames had returned from Eames's appointment.

Arthur couldn't bring himself to answer, just waved him off with some comment and went straight out the back door and down to the beach.

It would have helped if Eames had been annoyed by the news of tendon damage. It would have helped incredibly if he'd shouted. Or punched Arthur in the face. Or walked out, which would have got Dom to punch him in the face.

Something that was remotely approaching blame, anyway.

But he'd done none of those things, just shrugged it off as something else to work around, and started looking through the paperwork on rehab he'd been given, and Arthur felt worse than any well-aimed blow could have managed.

Although they never talked about it directly, Arthur knew that Eames was a thief, a forger, and that manual dexterity was a huge percentage of what made this livelihood viable. How could he take this news so calmly? That would be like telling Arthur that they'd have to chop off all but two of his fingers or remove part of his brain. How can Eames act like it was no big deal? More importantly, how could he not blame Arthur for doing this to him?

Distance and the sound of the ocean waves drowned out any conversation from the house, for which Arthur was very grateful. Maybe if he stayed down here long enough, they'd forget about him altogether until he figured out, somehow, a way to make this up to Eames.

Or maybe he'd just stay here until the salt spray calcified his skin and he wound up looking like part of the cliffs... because he was pretty sure that both objectives would take about the same amount of time.

"You are a complete idiot," Mal said from behind him, and maybe he was going to get hit after all. Or possibly shot and left to drift out to sea, it was fairly even odds with Mal and her idea of a suitable response.

"I know," was all he could come up with.

"You are a complete idiot because you think this is all your fault. It is not. It is also Dom's fault for not using his phone. It is my fault for overreacting and triggering you into violence. It is Eames's fault for being who he is and letting Dom charm him. The difference is, we know that, and you, it would seem, do not. And therefore you are not only an idiot, but a very arrogant idiot."

"You can play word games all day, Mal, but the actual result will still be the same. I'm the one who broke Eames's arm and damaged his nerves. I'm the one who chose what tactic to employ, how much force to use, and I knew, reasonably what damage it could cause." Arthur glanced back at her. "Now tell me how that is not my fault?"

"It would be your fault if he had been what you had thought him, and you had pulled back," Mal shrugged, elegantly dismissive. "And then you would be dead and so would I, and I think I would blame you a great deal, were that the case."

"But -" Arthur started, and then remembered something else that had happened that night, remembered Eames saying to him 'What if's a losing game, so don't play it.'

From the time Dom and Eames had got out of the car, there could have been no good outcome. There were a thousand what ifs, and no good outcome, and perhaps this was the best of them all, because no-one was dead and they still had the PASIV.

Mal waited, eyebrows raised.

"Communal screw-up," Arthur accepted.

"Yes," Mal said serenely.

"Still sucks," Arthur sighed.

"Magnificently," Mal agreed, taking his hand and drawing him back toward the house.

When they arrived, they could hear Dom in the kitchen, opening and closing drawers and cabinets. Eames was on the living room couch, his papers spread across the coffee table as he studied them, occasionally lifting his right hand and turning it this way and that.

"Why are the spoons in the freezer?" Dom asked helplessly of no-one in particular, and Eames snorted.

"Because you put them there, Dom, despite being asked not to about six times."

"Okay, why did I put the spoons in the freezer?"

"Good question, and I'd love to know the answer," Eames said peacefully, and Dom snarled in frustration.

Mal laughed silently, hand over her mouth. Arthur thought she had a pretty good idea what Dom had been thinking, or if he had been thinking at all, but she obviously wasn't in any mood to share.

Eames looked up at their return, "Ah, Arthur, how was the beach this afternoon? I would have thought it a bit chilly for sun bathing but you Yanks get odd ideas in your head."

"At least we have sun here," Arthur gave a small smile. Apparently they were just going to play this off like nothing. Okay... he could do that. He waved a hand at the instruction sheets. "Do you need help with any of that?"

"Rather good question," Eames said, picking up one sheet and peering at it. "Supposedly 'manipulating small intricate items will help build stamina and flexibility', but since Dom refuses to allow me to take apart his television, he's in the kitchen looking for something for me to use."

"And he's looking in the freezer?"

"Apparently."

"But why -" Arthur, unwisely, met Eames's equally bewildered look with his own confusion, and started to laugh. "Okay, you know that he's side-tracked by now, don't you?"

"I do indeed," Eames said solemnly. "And considering what he's come up with so far, I'm glad of it."

"Darling Dom, you cannot do anything with a cheesegrater," Mal said in a kind of squeak, and Eames choked on a snort of laughter.

"Oh Christ, let's get out of here," he wheezed.

"Yes, please..." Arthur grabbed his keys and headed for the door. "Where to?"

Eames snatched the keys out of Arthur's hand, "Pub? Uh... bar, I mean."

"Works for me."

It didn't really, not quite, because he was still caught up in the losing game of what ifs, and he thought he would be for some time - but there were other things that were more immediate, there was Dom and cheesegraters and Mal laughing and reasons to escape and ways of accomplishing just that.

And maybe, if he kept dealing with what was rather than what might have been or should be, the sense of failure would recede, stop hurting, close over from its rawness and merge into the pattern of his life.

He couldn't change what had been done.

But if nothing else, he could accept he couldn't undo it.

**

Dom, then

Dom woke out of a sound sleep to the sound of the world caving in. Or possibly it was just the front door.

*boom*

"Shhhhh..."

*thud*

"You need to turn that upside-right."

*scrape... scrape... clack... scrape*

"I think it's broken. What now?"

*bing-bong... bing-bong... bing-bong*

"Dom... the children are home."

"I'm going to sell them to a circus," Dom said blearily.

"They might have too much fun." Mal sounded far too awake. "And what has the circus ever done to you?"

"It would travel. A long way away. To somewhere I'm not." Dom pulled the covers over his head, distantly registering that whatever was going 'bing-bong' was showing absolutely no signs of stopping. "Oh my God, what are they doing?"

"I think they have broken something." Mal was outright giggling.

"Yeah, my patience," Dom agreed.

The ringing of the doorbell was now accompanied by knocking and possibly kicking... then a crash... then silence.

"Mal is so going to kill you. She loves that... thing..."

"Then she shouldn't have left it so close to the door."

"GOD!" Dom yelled at the ceiling, in a most impious mood. He jumped up, tugged on his robe and stomped toward the front door.

"Tell them they are fixing it, whatever it is," Mal said, curling back up under the coverlet. "But not tonight, please."

In some world that Dom didn't have to live in, that probably sounded perfectly reasonable. In a world where Mal was showing every signs of going back to sleep, and someone had started singing very loudly on his front lawn, not so much.

"Jeremiah Jones, a ladies' man was he,
Every pretty girl he loved to spoooooooon.
Still he found a wife along beside the sea,
Went to Margate for the honeymoooooooon.
But when he strolled along the promenade..."

"I thought promenade was that stuff you can put in your hair?"

"No, darling, that's pomade."

"Oh."

"But when he strolled along the promenade
with his little wife just newly wed -"

"Eames! Is there a reason you are trying to wake all my neighbours with that caterwauling?" Dom groaned as he opened the door.

"I thought it was nice."

"Thank you, Arthur."

"Oh God," Dom groaned again. "Just - get inside. And stop singing. Forever."

"But it's fun," Eames said, peering into his face with all the earnestness of the completely trashed. "Don't you like fun?"

"No," Dom lied. "Hate it. Can you both, please, please, for the love of God, just go to bed?"

Arthur started to laugh. Eames looked speculative.

"Never mind," Dom sighed. He wondered if he could get away with what would doubtless be a fair degree of alcoholic amnesia the next day, and send them both to their rooms. Separately, oh God, separately. "Wait," he said then, a horrible thought occurring to him. "Wait, how did you get back here? Eames, for fuck's safe tell me you didn't drive -"

"I did not drive," Eames said, solemnly and obligingly, and ruined Dom's moment of blissful relief by explaining, "Arthur drove."

Arthur beamed at Eames, "I did. And kept it right down the middle the whole way."

Dom fervently hoped that this meant he kept the car in the middle of the correct lane and not the road's dividing line down the middle of the car. Either way, he decided, they were home now, the car looked to be in one piece, and he'd let it drop until the morning as long as the police did not show up on his doorstep.

He managed to herd them into the living room with very little trouble, but when he returned from closing the door, he found Eames splayed out on the couch with Arthur using his hip for a pillow.

"Oh, come on now. You don't want to sleep there. You'll both be very unhappy in the morning."

Eames idly ran one hand through Arthur's hair, making it stand up in odd spikes, "Come on, darling, Dom's right. Off to bed."

"Comf'erble." Arthur snickered against Eames's trousers, rubbing his face on the nap like a cat. A very large drunken cat.

Eames shot Dom a surprisingly sober and mildly panicked look, and Dom sighed for what felt like the millionth time that night.

"Arthur, for your own sake, I suggest you forget about tonight as quickly as possible," he said, and geared himself up to deal with the task of getting Arthur off the floor and down the hallway to his room.

It was amazing how drunk people gained three times their body weight when they were both most of the way to being asleep, and feeling unco-operative about moving at all.

Grumbling the whole way, Arthur got to his feet and draped himself limply, over Dom. "Jus' like morning," he said, and began to giggle and sing, "G'd mornin', g'd mornin', we talk'd the whole night through..."

"Arthur. Shhh..."

"Oh... Mal's sleepin... Shhhhhhhhhhhhhh," Arthur breathed horrible, I-have-sampled-everything-on the-top-shelf fumes into Dom's face. "Quiet."

"That'd be nice," Dom agreed, trying not to laugh himself at how surreal this whole thing was. Eames had closed his eyes and was apparently quite happy to spend the night on the couch, and Dom was not doing this twice in one night, so he would just have to deal with any aches and pains himself.

He got Arthur into his room, and closed the door firmly on him, ignoring the muddled surprise on his face - and the series of ensuing bangs that suggested several things were being knocked over, from behind the closed door.

"Nicely done," Eames said quietly behind him, and Dom just about managed not to scream.

"For fuck's sake," he gasped instead. "I thought you were passed out!"

"I'm not as think as you drunk I am," Eames said, snickered, and ambled off to (thank God) his own room.

Dom closed his mouth, took several deep breaths, decided he didn't want to know, and went back to bed.

**

chapter iv