Short Sad Lives Left [x-over]
Title: Short Sad Lives Left
Fandom: Inception x Portal
Pairing: Arthur/Eames
Words: ~3700
Rating: PG-13
Summary: Arthur is sacrificed. To science. A Portal AU.
Warnings: Mental illness, SPOILERS for Portal, a definite tweaking of Portal and Portal 2 canon.
Author's Note: This is certainly the strangest thing I have written. But. Here it is, and you will get a lot more out of it if you're familiar with the game (especially the Lab Rat comic, which this fic follows loosely), and if you aren't, by God go play it! Now!!
Since then-'tis centuries-and yet
Feels shorter than the Day
I first surmised the Cube had stepped
Toward Eternity.
There's a soft whoosh of air behind Eames, reminding him of the old Pneumatic Diversity Vents that had been used to deliver objects across the facility before everyone had been-killed. It's a rush of air. His fingertips hover over the daub on the wall.
“Look behind you,” says the Cube.
He looks and there crouches-him, it's him, gun clutched in his hands, before the movable panel in the wall. Eames stiffens and then relaxes, seemingly in the same motion. Not that kind of gun. It's just been a long time since he's seen it, up close.
“You're here,” he says, rather stupidly.
No test subject has ever found its way through the secret wall panels into Eames' territory. The man cocks his head with birdlike interest, eyes dark and fierce and calm.
“He's spent years in cryo,” the Cube chips in, helpful as ever. “'Use it or lose it' extends to the voice, too, you know. Test subjects never talk. Good thing, or the screaming would drive you even crazier.”
“Shush,” says Eames, alarmed, turning.
“He can't hear me, remember?”
The young man has watched this exchange with the same quiet interest, almost making it hard to believe that he couldn't hear the Cube's voice, crystal-clear in Eames' mind.
Eames scrubs a hand through the accumulation of stubble on his jaw, not sure what ceremony is called for here. It's been so long since he's spoken to another human. It's only been the Cube and Her for company.
“You're Arthur,” he says finally. The man nods, not surprised by this information. “And, um, I know you don't know who I am-”
Arthur shakes his head. He shuffles forward, still crouching, and reaches past Eames to tap the wall. He smells clean and like fresh air, which Eames knows is a lie, because there is no fresh air to be had beyond the wall; but he's caught for a moment between the equally strong impulses to pull away and to lean closer.
He looks at what Arthur is pointing at. “Oh. You've seen my ...” Pictures. Poems. The depraved scribblings of a mad, lonely man, messages and warnings written in vain to test subjects who won't understand them.
Arthur nods.
“I'm Eames.”
Arthur nods again, then seems to notice the Cube sitting there innocuously for the first time. His expression sharpens, and he reaches a hand out to touch it.
“It's not your one,” Eames says quickly. “I know. Mine ... my first one, too ...”
He chokes off; Arthur looks pointedly at the poem, and Eames nods this time. He clears his throat and lies, “This one's better.”
“Cheers, mate,” says the Cube.
+
Arthur is very tired. He rests. Eames wrings his hands, not sure what to do with him. He'd never counted on actually encountering Arthur. This subject is truly grittier than he's given credit for. Eames thinks it would be a very great mercy to bash his head in with the Cube right now. Now that he's met Arthur, and is emotionally invested.
She comes back online eventually, when it becomes apparent that the test is taking too long to complete.
“Where are you?”
She sounds as harmless and innocent as a turret. Eames has seen so many test subjects fall victim to the turrets, more than anything else in the facility. Arthur's clearly taken a few hits, if the bloodstains on his jumpsuit are anything to go by.
His eyes are open a slit. Her voice has woken him.
They sit still together. Eames sweats, knowing her monitors are examining the test chamber, and thinks, She knows, she knows.
She speaks. Her voice is robotic and stilted, belying the intelligence behind her words. “The Enrichment Centre would like to remind you that testing is a solitary process that must be completed alone, in the interests of science. Any human personnel encountered during the testing process is a figment of your imagination.” A beat. “The Enrichment Centre would also like you to know that humans you may or may not encounter are definitely cannibals.”
The Cube giggles. Eames clenches his hands. She knows he's here. She always knows, even though she can't see him, tucked away in his hidey-holes.
He locks eyes with Arthur, who doesn't appear the slightest bit troubled. He's familiar with the lying nature of GLaDOS, then. Not that she isn't a bad liar, to begin with.
The test chamber beyond the wall panel Arthur came in through falls silent. They wait ten, twenty minutes more, in case. Half an hour. Even the Cube is silent. She doesn't speak again.
+
“Are you hungry?” Eames asks, abashed at not having thought of it till now, when Arthur wakes up from another nap. “I have, um ...”
He crawls away and rummages through his bag. He finds Spam. Poor Arthur. Cryo was probably better than this.
He holds it out uncertainly. Arthur takes it with a small quirk of a smile. Their fingers brush and Eames jerks his hand back, startled.
“You can't kill him now,” the Cube says diplomatically, while Arthur eats. “You risked everything to make sure his file was selected for the testing process. He's the only one who can shut her down, you said so!”
I know, Eames wants to say, but look at him. He is skinny and has soft-looking dark hair and brown eyes, and he is sitting before them, alive. He's only human.
“You're only human, and look what you accomplished,” the Cube says, making him jump before he remembers it's in his head and of course it knows what he's thinking. “You've survived for so long! You moved his file. You did, out in the open and everything. What if he fails, Eames? Who's going to shut her down and get you out of this place?”
Eames doesn't know. He's too cowardly, too concerned with saving his own skin, and so he's sat this fight out for years. But the Cube is right, sort of; nobody can traverse this place like Eames, scuttling in the walls like a cockroach, scrawling messages for the test subjects on the walls.
“Everyone's dead here,” he says to Arthur abruptly. “All the scientists. Nobody works here anymore.”
Arthur nods; he's guessed.
“Tell you a story.” Eames clears his throat, thinks back to that other life. “I used to work here.”
Arthur looks intrigued.
“Yeah. I was head of what we called the Experimental Dreamshare Unit. I know, it's hard to believe, but I used to be quite brilliant in my younger years. The technology was imperfect, though,” Eames admits quietly. “I tried so hard, but I could never make it work.”
Arthur's brow knits. A question. Eames isn't sure what he's asking, so he answers broadly.
“The technology made us able to muck around in each other's dreams together. You could bend physics and create mountains out of thin air, 'cause anything's possible in a dream, you know, and you could even change who you were, and that was what I liked best, but I got in too deep, and then I started being other people when I was awake ...”
Arthur puts a hand over his silently, barely startling him. The Cube doesn't speak. Eames clears his throat again.
“So that's that, I got pulled off the project because I was too crazy and the whole thing was eventually scrapped, all my life's work. And then she killed everyone, and I've been alone here for nine years, just living in the walls, me and the Cube ...”
Arthur slides the empty tin of Spam back toward Eames and tilts his head upwards, indicating the ceiling. It takes Eames a moment to figure out what he's asking.
“Oh, the voice? Who is she, you mean?”
Arthur nods, his gaze intent.
“Yeah, her,” and Eames almost laughs, then, but it comes out more like a pained cough. “Meet your God.”
+
“Come back.” Her voice crackles over the intercom in the corner, somehow gentle and coaxing. “This next test involves your Weighted Companion Cube. He isn't even angry that you incinerated him.”
Arthur looks at the intercom.
“She knows we're here,” says Eames quickly. “But she can't see us. She can only speak out of that thing.”
He tips the portal gun toward the movable panel in the wall, and Eames interprets this as, I'm going to keep testing.
“You can't,” Eames blurts out. “She'll-kill you. It's what she does to ... all of them.”
Arthur's eyes are hard and grim.
“I got you into this.” His first real human contact in years, and he can't seem to stop letting the words just spill out. “You weren't supposed to be used as a test subject, you were just supposed to be frozen indefinitely, but I found your file and it said you weren't suitable for testing because you're too-resourceful, and I saw you and-you were beautiful,” he chokes out.
“Keep it relevant, mate,” says the Cube.
“So I'm sorry,” Eames concludes. “I'm sorry because I got you into this. I just wanted ...”
He doesn't know what he wanted. To escape. To kill GLaDOS. At what cost? Now that Arthur is sitting here with them-alive-he finds he doesn't want him to go.
“You could stay with us,” Eames says quickly. “I could show you how to get through the facility and past the turrets. There's food, not very good food, but it's food, and water ...”
“She'll rip this place apart to get the portal gun back,” says the Cube. “Then put it back together so she can keep on testing.”
“So we give her the portal gun and let her test,” Eames says to it desperately. Then, to Arthur: “I could keep you-safe.”
Arthur is smiling again, a small, crooked smile. He shakes his head, just a little. Doesn't want safe.
Eames sags back against the wall. “Please,” he chokes out, because now he has real company, and he has a friend, and he doesn't want that to go away. The Cube talks less when Arthur is here. Arthur makes him less crazy.
Arthur shakes his head again. He hefts the portal gun, a clear message: I have to.
And that's when Eames realizes that Arthur has understood all along, that he was set up for failure, and he will keep going anyway until he's earned his freedom. This is why Arthur was never supposed to be a test subject. He's too strong. He's stronger than Eames, who would barter for his freedom if he could. Arthur fights.
He gets it now, why Arthur has to keep testing: because Arthur woke up in a box and a disembodied voice told him to run through this maze like a rat, and nobody tells Arthur what to do. He's only going along with this so that he can find whoever's in charge and deliver a big fuck you to them-to her. Arthur: one of the best the army had to offer, too good to be tested, too ferocious, too tenacious, too everything. He picked this fight as much as Eames picked him.
“I know that you're there.” Her voice again. “If you return to the test chamber now, consequences will be ... minimal. I won't even make a note on your file.”
Arthur leans back and starts to push on the panel.
“Wait,” Eames whispers, grabbing onto his wrist. He isn't ready to be alone again.
Instead of waiting, Arthur leans over and presses his lips against Eames'. Eames' hand around his wrist trembles and he makes a sound like a whimper.
Pulling back, Arthur smiles again, that dangerous little smile, and he husks in a scratching, barely-audible voice, “Thanks.”
Then he's gone, pushing through the panel back into the gleaming test chamber fraught with all its perils, and Eames is all alone again with his Cube, which, for once, has nothing to say.
+
When Arthur does it, there's a far-off explosion. The whole facility gives a shudder and goes very quiet.
“Do you think that's it?” Eames asks, hushed. He's working on the mural he's been at ever since he first laid eyes on Arthur, suspended in sleep. Now that he knows Arthur's face better, it seems imperfect, and that won't do. “Did he do it?”
“Let's hope so,” says the Cube, grim.
It takes Eames a long time to at last leave the safety of the abandoned halls and catwalks and creep onto the floor in plain view of the monitors. Nothing happens. No ringing voice mocks and abuses him, no androids appear to dispatch him.
“She's dead, then,” says the Cube matter-of-factly, strapped to Eames' back.
“We can go up,” Eames breathes, almost unable to believe it. “She can't stop us anymore!”
He thinks he remembers the way out. He sprints through the facility, clambering up staircases, not trusting the elevator chutes. He definitely knows the way, now.
“We're almost out,” he tells the Cube, scarcely able to believe that all the doors aren't sealing shut in his face, trapping him like a mouse. “It's just a little further up-” And then he stops.
“What?” says the Cube.
“Where's Arthur?”
“Who knows? Probably on the surface already. That's where I'd be. Well, not me. I've lived down here my whole life and don't find it so bad, personally. But you're always going on about this sunshine thing, so-”
“What if he's still in here? Hurt?” His mind races over the possibilities. He might have been caught in the explosion. She could have destroyed him mutually, at the same instant. She could have sent an android to finish him before she died. She could have laid any number of plans.
Arthur could still be down here. Hurt. Dying. Dead.
Eames turns and hurtles straight back down the stairs.
“Are you crazy?” the Cube howls. “Of course you are! I forgot who I was talking to! Silly me!”
“Hush,” says Eames, impatiently.
“You just want him to kiss you again!”
He turns left down a corridor and hopes this is still the right way to the nearest control room. He goes through an open test chamber and punches in the keycode to access the control. The door slides open and Eames goes inside.
“Computer,” he says, and the screen flickers to life. “Locate test subject one-nine-one-six Arthur.”
“Locating test subject one-nine-one-six,” the computer chimes back. “Arthur,” it says, and there he is on the monitor.
“No,” Eames breathes. They've put him in long-term relaxation. He stares at the screen for a minute, studying Arthur's prone form in the bed within the Relaxation Vault. His face is beautiful in sleep.
Eames wheels around and bolts out of the room.
“Where are you going?” the Cube demands.
“To the Core Centre,” says Eames stubbornly. “That's where cryo-control is.”
“You can't get to the Core Centre, idiot! Turrets block the way!”
Eames doesn't care. He keeps going, clattering down flights of stairs and over catwalks. The Cube falls silent, perhaps knowing it's useless to argue.
And he's nearly there, he's nearly reached the Core Centre when he skids past a corner and-
“Activated.”
He barely registers the sweet, childlike voice of a turret before he hears the ensuing rtt-tt-tt-tt-tt of gunfire. He flings himself behind a bulletproof panel erected in the middle of the room, heart pounding. There's two of them there. The gunfire stops.
“Are you still there?” one asks in a singsong tone, after a minute's silence.
“Shit,” says the Cube succinctly.
“What now?” Eames pants. He can't even think straight; he's never been able to think straight. Not without the Cube telling him what to do.
“Run for it.”
“They're blocking the door.”
“Can you come over here?” a turret queries hopefully.
“I mean back the other way,” the Cube says. “Get out of here.”
“Arthur's still down here,” says Eames. That's the only thought he needs to motivate him. Before the Cube can argue, he lunges out from behind the panel and starts running for the door.
“There you are,” one of the turrets says sweetly.
They open fire. Some of the bullets glance off the Cube. It yelps when it's clipped.
“Run! Run!” it shouts.
Eames jumps the rail and then he's at the door, hears the hiss of compressed air as it slides open. Feels the distinct pain as a stray bullet passes right through his side, under his ribs.
Then he's through and the door slides shut. He stops, panting, clutching at his side. His hand comes away slick with blood.
“We're in the Core Centre,” says the Cube, its voice a little fainter.
Numbly, Eames stares at his hand. All that blood on his shirt; can that really all be from him? He shakes his head to clear it and makes his unsteady way past the shelves of dusty, unused cores, over to the cryo-control panel, where he sets both bag and Cube down on the floor.
“Something's wrong,” he says, examining the panel, flicking through each chamber. “That explosion, it ... it knocked the main grid offline ... life support's been compromised ...”
He starts sucking in shaky breaths, not aware that his eyes are watering until his vision blurs. “What does that mean, compromised?” he grits out.
The Cube doesn't answer.
Eames punches buttons, uselessly. Fuck. Fuck. He already knows it's pointless. “I can't ... I can't override it. I know what I have to do, I can hook up his cryo unit to the reserve grid and reset the fuses, but I'd have to patch straight into the computer, and I don't have ... I don't ...”
His heart leaps. The cores.
He reaches the nearest shelf as quickly as he can, lifting one up. Its ocular aperture is closed. Eames pries it open. There's no light. The aperture slides closed when he lets it go. He checks a few others: they're all dead. Empty. There's no personality embedded in any of them.
He takes one back to the computer, anyway, a core he recognizes, one they tried to attach to GLaDOS to slow her down, obviously a failure. He tries to plug it in to the core receptacle, but nothing happens.
“Fuck,” he gasps.
“Why is this so important, anyway?” the Cube questions weakly.
“Because Arthur's supposed to live!”
“If you love Arthur so much, why don't you marry him?”
Eames clenches a hand on the control panel. The Cube almost sounds like-they've definitely been down here too long.
“Look,” the Cube says, “even if you got life support back online. He's been placed in cryo-suspension indefinitely. There's no wake-up date. He'd be as good as dead anyway.”
Eames slumps against the panel. He doesn't know what to do.
“He'd be around long after you were gone,” says the Cube. “You'd have to live forever.”
“I'm not-”
“Tell the computer to pull up file 'Eames'.”
He's not aware the Cube said it aloud via him until the computer blinks to life and shows his file on the screen.
“Aperture personnel: Eames. Born to John and Elisabeth Wheatley. Head of the Aperture Science Experimental Dreamshare Unit. Diagnosed with multiple personalities following-”
“Stop!” Eames shouts, and the computer does, though his file doesn't disappear. He doesn't need this, he doesn't need to be reminded that it's his fault his whole team went crazy and died, that the only reason he didn't was that he went loopy enough that they pulled him out of the project before the chemicals could rot his brain. At least the voices are gone now, most of them, almost all of them ...
“Eames,” the Cube says, its voice uncharacteristically gentle. “You're dying.”
He blinks away tears and stares down at his hand, clasped over the wound, blood dribbling thickly through his fingers.
“What do I do?” he asks.
“The core.”
You'd have to live forever.
Now Eames gets it.
He picks up the core. It seems to have gotten heavier in the past few minutes.
“Will it work?”
“I don't know,” says the Cube. “I have no idea how core transfer works. Your body will be suspended indefinitely. You might remember everything or nothing. Or it could be corrupted, could give you a whole different personality. And you won't hear me anymore-”
“I know.”
“But if you want to save Arthur so bad-”
“Yeah,” Eames whispers.
He makes his way to the Core Transfer Receptacle by propping himself up against the wall as he goes. He plugs the empty core in and starts toggling the controls. He's not even thinking anymore, he's so exhausted; his only thought is, Now I can watch over him forever.
“Be careful,” the Cube urges.
“I will be.” Eames flicks a switch.
“We don't even know how this works.”
“I know enough.”
“Welcome to the Aperture Science Mind-Core Personality Transfer,” the machine says enthusiastically. “Transfer will begin in-one-minute. Side effects of mind-to-core transfer may include but are certainly not limited to itching, burning sensation, tinnitus, loss of vision, and aggressive braindeath. On behalf of Aperture Laboratories, thank you for donating yourself to science! You are free to disregard our gratitude if you are not a compliant participant, but have been volunteered against your will. Subject, you may now enter the Personality Transfer Chamber.”
The chamber door slides open. Eames has to grip the side and pull himself in, because his legs will barely support him. For Arthur, he just keeps thinking, numbly, for Arthur, for Arthur. He'll have access to the computer, he'll hook Arthur's cryo chamber to the reserve grid, he'll save him, and watch over him for all of time. They'll always be together.
“Goodbye,” the Cube says softly. Eames starts to speak, but the chamber doors gently whoosh shut, sealing him in, and he's cut off from everything.
“Mind-to-core transfer will take place in five-four-three-two-one. Transfer initiated.”
The machine whirs and grinds to life.
Eames is gone before the transfer bar has even reached 50%.
+
After a long time, the computer intones, “Transfer complete,” cheerfully, to an empty room and a solitary old Companion Cube.
“On behalf of Aperture Science, thank you for helping us help you help us all.”
Fandom: Inception x Portal
Pairing: Arthur/Eames
Words: ~3700
Rating: PG-13
Summary: Arthur is sacrificed. To science. A Portal AU.
Warnings: Mental illness, SPOILERS for Portal, a definite tweaking of Portal and Portal 2 canon.
Author's Note: This is certainly the strangest thing I have written. But. Here it is, and you will get a lot more out of it if you're familiar with the game (especially the Lab Rat comic, which this fic follows loosely), and if you aren't, by God go play it! Now!!
Since then-'tis centuries-and yet
Feels shorter than the Day
I first surmised the Cube had stepped
Toward Eternity.
There's a soft whoosh of air behind Eames, reminding him of the old Pneumatic Diversity Vents that had been used to deliver objects across the facility before everyone had been-killed. It's a rush of air. His fingertips hover over the daub on the wall.
“Look behind you,” says the Cube.
He looks and there crouches-him, it's him, gun clutched in his hands, before the movable panel in the wall. Eames stiffens and then relaxes, seemingly in the same motion. Not that kind of gun. It's just been a long time since he's seen it, up close.
“You're here,” he says, rather stupidly.
No test subject has ever found its way through the secret wall panels into Eames' territory. The man cocks his head with birdlike interest, eyes dark and fierce and calm.
“He's spent years in cryo,” the Cube chips in, helpful as ever. “'Use it or lose it' extends to the voice, too, you know. Test subjects never talk. Good thing, or the screaming would drive you even crazier.”
“Shush,” says Eames, alarmed, turning.
“He can't hear me, remember?”
The young man has watched this exchange with the same quiet interest, almost making it hard to believe that he couldn't hear the Cube's voice, crystal-clear in Eames' mind.
Eames scrubs a hand through the accumulation of stubble on his jaw, not sure what ceremony is called for here. It's been so long since he's spoken to another human. It's only been the Cube and Her for company.
“You're Arthur,” he says finally. The man nods, not surprised by this information. “And, um, I know you don't know who I am-”
Arthur shakes his head. He shuffles forward, still crouching, and reaches past Eames to tap the wall. He smells clean and like fresh air, which Eames knows is a lie, because there is no fresh air to be had beyond the wall; but he's caught for a moment between the equally strong impulses to pull away and to lean closer.
He looks at what Arthur is pointing at. “Oh. You've seen my ...” Pictures. Poems. The depraved scribblings of a mad, lonely man, messages and warnings written in vain to test subjects who won't understand them.
Arthur nods.
“I'm Eames.”
Arthur nods again, then seems to notice the Cube sitting there innocuously for the first time. His expression sharpens, and he reaches a hand out to touch it.
“It's not your one,” Eames says quickly. “I know. Mine ... my first one, too ...”
He chokes off; Arthur looks pointedly at the poem, and Eames nods this time. He clears his throat and lies, “This one's better.”
“Cheers, mate,” says the Cube.
+
Arthur is very tired. He rests. Eames wrings his hands, not sure what to do with him. He'd never counted on actually encountering Arthur. This subject is truly grittier than he's given credit for. Eames thinks it would be a very great mercy to bash his head in with the Cube right now. Now that he's met Arthur, and is emotionally invested.
She comes back online eventually, when it becomes apparent that the test is taking too long to complete.
“Where are you?”
She sounds as harmless and innocent as a turret. Eames has seen so many test subjects fall victim to the turrets, more than anything else in the facility. Arthur's clearly taken a few hits, if the bloodstains on his jumpsuit are anything to go by.
His eyes are open a slit. Her voice has woken him.
They sit still together. Eames sweats, knowing her monitors are examining the test chamber, and thinks, She knows, she knows.
She speaks. Her voice is robotic and stilted, belying the intelligence behind her words. “The Enrichment Centre would like to remind you that testing is a solitary process that must be completed alone, in the interests of science. Any human personnel encountered during the testing process is a figment of your imagination.” A beat. “The Enrichment Centre would also like you to know that humans you may or may not encounter are definitely cannibals.”
The Cube giggles. Eames clenches his hands. She knows he's here. She always knows, even though she can't see him, tucked away in his hidey-holes.
He locks eyes with Arthur, who doesn't appear the slightest bit troubled. He's familiar with the lying nature of GLaDOS, then. Not that she isn't a bad liar, to begin with.
The test chamber beyond the wall panel Arthur came in through falls silent. They wait ten, twenty minutes more, in case. Half an hour. Even the Cube is silent. She doesn't speak again.
+
“Are you hungry?” Eames asks, abashed at not having thought of it till now, when Arthur wakes up from another nap. “I have, um ...”
He crawls away and rummages through his bag. He finds Spam. Poor Arthur. Cryo was probably better than this.
He holds it out uncertainly. Arthur takes it with a small quirk of a smile. Their fingers brush and Eames jerks his hand back, startled.
“You can't kill him now,” the Cube says diplomatically, while Arthur eats. “You risked everything to make sure his file was selected for the testing process. He's the only one who can shut her down, you said so!”
I know, Eames wants to say, but look at him. He is skinny and has soft-looking dark hair and brown eyes, and he is sitting before them, alive. He's only human.
“You're only human, and look what you accomplished,” the Cube says, making him jump before he remembers it's in his head and of course it knows what he's thinking. “You've survived for so long! You moved his file. You did, out in the open and everything. What if he fails, Eames? Who's going to shut her down and get you out of this place?”
Eames doesn't know. He's too cowardly, too concerned with saving his own skin, and so he's sat this fight out for years. But the Cube is right, sort of; nobody can traverse this place like Eames, scuttling in the walls like a cockroach, scrawling messages for the test subjects on the walls.
“Everyone's dead here,” he says to Arthur abruptly. “All the scientists. Nobody works here anymore.”
Arthur nods; he's guessed.
“Tell you a story.” Eames clears his throat, thinks back to that other life. “I used to work here.”
Arthur looks intrigued.
“Yeah. I was head of what we called the Experimental Dreamshare Unit. I know, it's hard to believe, but I used to be quite brilliant in my younger years. The technology was imperfect, though,” Eames admits quietly. “I tried so hard, but I could never make it work.”
Arthur's brow knits. A question. Eames isn't sure what he's asking, so he answers broadly.
“The technology made us able to muck around in each other's dreams together. You could bend physics and create mountains out of thin air, 'cause anything's possible in a dream, you know, and you could even change who you were, and that was what I liked best, but I got in too deep, and then I started being other people when I was awake ...”
Arthur puts a hand over his silently, barely startling him. The Cube doesn't speak. Eames clears his throat again.
“So that's that, I got pulled off the project because I was too crazy and the whole thing was eventually scrapped, all my life's work. And then she killed everyone, and I've been alone here for nine years, just living in the walls, me and the Cube ...”
Arthur slides the empty tin of Spam back toward Eames and tilts his head upwards, indicating the ceiling. It takes Eames a moment to figure out what he's asking.
“Oh, the voice? Who is she, you mean?”
Arthur nods, his gaze intent.
“Yeah, her,” and Eames almost laughs, then, but it comes out more like a pained cough. “Meet your God.”
+
“Come back.” Her voice crackles over the intercom in the corner, somehow gentle and coaxing. “This next test involves your Weighted Companion Cube. He isn't even angry that you incinerated him.”
Arthur looks at the intercom.
“She knows we're here,” says Eames quickly. “But she can't see us. She can only speak out of that thing.”
He tips the portal gun toward the movable panel in the wall, and Eames interprets this as, I'm going to keep testing.
“You can't,” Eames blurts out. “She'll-kill you. It's what she does to ... all of them.”
Arthur's eyes are hard and grim.
“I got you into this.” His first real human contact in years, and he can't seem to stop letting the words just spill out. “You weren't supposed to be used as a test subject, you were just supposed to be frozen indefinitely, but I found your file and it said you weren't suitable for testing because you're too-resourceful, and I saw you and-you were beautiful,” he chokes out.
“Keep it relevant, mate,” says the Cube.
“So I'm sorry,” Eames concludes. “I'm sorry because I got you into this. I just wanted ...”
He doesn't know what he wanted. To escape. To kill GLaDOS. At what cost? Now that Arthur is sitting here with them-alive-he finds he doesn't want him to go.
“You could stay with us,” Eames says quickly. “I could show you how to get through the facility and past the turrets. There's food, not very good food, but it's food, and water ...”
“She'll rip this place apart to get the portal gun back,” says the Cube. “Then put it back together so she can keep on testing.”
“So we give her the portal gun and let her test,” Eames says to it desperately. Then, to Arthur: “I could keep you-safe.”
Arthur is smiling again, a small, crooked smile. He shakes his head, just a little. Doesn't want safe.
Eames sags back against the wall. “Please,” he chokes out, because now he has real company, and he has a friend, and he doesn't want that to go away. The Cube talks less when Arthur is here. Arthur makes him less crazy.
Arthur shakes his head again. He hefts the portal gun, a clear message: I have to.
And that's when Eames realizes that Arthur has understood all along, that he was set up for failure, and he will keep going anyway until he's earned his freedom. This is why Arthur was never supposed to be a test subject. He's too strong. He's stronger than Eames, who would barter for his freedom if he could. Arthur fights.
He gets it now, why Arthur has to keep testing: because Arthur woke up in a box and a disembodied voice told him to run through this maze like a rat, and nobody tells Arthur what to do. He's only going along with this so that he can find whoever's in charge and deliver a big fuck you to them-to her. Arthur: one of the best the army had to offer, too good to be tested, too ferocious, too tenacious, too everything. He picked this fight as much as Eames picked him.
“I know that you're there.” Her voice again. “If you return to the test chamber now, consequences will be ... minimal. I won't even make a note on your file.”
Arthur leans back and starts to push on the panel.
“Wait,” Eames whispers, grabbing onto his wrist. He isn't ready to be alone again.
Instead of waiting, Arthur leans over and presses his lips against Eames'. Eames' hand around his wrist trembles and he makes a sound like a whimper.
Pulling back, Arthur smiles again, that dangerous little smile, and he husks in a scratching, barely-audible voice, “Thanks.”
Then he's gone, pushing through the panel back into the gleaming test chamber fraught with all its perils, and Eames is all alone again with his Cube, which, for once, has nothing to say.
+
When Arthur does it, there's a far-off explosion. The whole facility gives a shudder and goes very quiet.
“Do you think that's it?” Eames asks, hushed. He's working on the mural he's been at ever since he first laid eyes on Arthur, suspended in sleep. Now that he knows Arthur's face better, it seems imperfect, and that won't do. “Did he do it?”
“Let's hope so,” says the Cube, grim.
It takes Eames a long time to at last leave the safety of the abandoned halls and catwalks and creep onto the floor in plain view of the monitors. Nothing happens. No ringing voice mocks and abuses him, no androids appear to dispatch him.
“She's dead, then,” says the Cube matter-of-factly, strapped to Eames' back.
“We can go up,” Eames breathes, almost unable to believe it. “She can't stop us anymore!”
He thinks he remembers the way out. He sprints through the facility, clambering up staircases, not trusting the elevator chutes. He definitely knows the way, now.
“We're almost out,” he tells the Cube, scarcely able to believe that all the doors aren't sealing shut in his face, trapping him like a mouse. “It's just a little further up-” And then he stops.
“What?” says the Cube.
“Where's Arthur?”
“Who knows? Probably on the surface already. That's where I'd be. Well, not me. I've lived down here my whole life and don't find it so bad, personally. But you're always going on about this sunshine thing, so-”
“What if he's still in here? Hurt?” His mind races over the possibilities. He might have been caught in the explosion. She could have destroyed him mutually, at the same instant. She could have sent an android to finish him before she died. She could have laid any number of plans.
Arthur could still be down here. Hurt. Dying. Dead.
Eames turns and hurtles straight back down the stairs.
“Are you crazy?” the Cube howls. “Of course you are! I forgot who I was talking to! Silly me!”
“Hush,” says Eames, impatiently.
“You just want him to kiss you again!”
He turns left down a corridor and hopes this is still the right way to the nearest control room. He goes through an open test chamber and punches in the keycode to access the control. The door slides open and Eames goes inside.
“Computer,” he says, and the screen flickers to life. “Locate test subject one-nine-one-six Arthur.”
“Locating test subject one-nine-one-six,” the computer chimes back. “Arthur,” it says, and there he is on the monitor.
“No,” Eames breathes. They've put him in long-term relaxation. He stares at the screen for a minute, studying Arthur's prone form in the bed within the Relaxation Vault. His face is beautiful in sleep.
Eames wheels around and bolts out of the room.
“Where are you going?” the Cube demands.
“To the Core Centre,” says Eames stubbornly. “That's where cryo-control is.”
“You can't get to the Core Centre, idiot! Turrets block the way!”
Eames doesn't care. He keeps going, clattering down flights of stairs and over catwalks. The Cube falls silent, perhaps knowing it's useless to argue.
And he's nearly there, he's nearly reached the Core Centre when he skids past a corner and-
“Activated.”
He barely registers the sweet, childlike voice of a turret before he hears the ensuing rtt-tt-tt-tt-tt of gunfire. He flings himself behind a bulletproof panel erected in the middle of the room, heart pounding. There's two of them there. The gunfire stops.
“Are you still there?” one asks in a singsong tone, after a minute's silence.
“Shit,” says the Cube succinctly.
“What now?” Eames pants. He can't even think straight; he's never been able to think straight. Not without the Cube telling him what to do.
“Run for it.”
“They're blocking the door.”
“Can you come over here?” a turret queries hopefully.
“I mean back the other way,” the Cube says. “Get out of here.”
“Arthur's still down here,” says Eames. That's the only thought he needs to motivate him. Before the Cube can argue, he lunges out from behind the panel and starts running for the door.
“There you are,” one of the turrets says sweetly.
They open fire. Some of the bullets glance off the Cube. It yelps when it's clipped.
“Run! Run!” it shouts.
Eames jumps the rail and then he's at the door, hears the hiss of compressed air as it slides open. Feels the distinct pain as a stray bullet passes right through his side, under his ribs.
Then he's through and the door slides shut. He stops, panting, clutching at his side. His hand comes away slick with blood.
“We're in the Core Centre,” says the Cube, its voice a little fainter.
Numbly, Eames stares at his hand. All that blood on his shirt; can that really all be from him? He shakes his head to clear it and makes his unsteady way past the shelves of dusty, unused cores, over to the cryo-control panel, where he sets both bag and Cube down on the floor.
“Something's wrong,” he says, examining the panel, flicking through each chamber. “That explosion, it ... it knocked the main grid offline ... life support's been compromised ...”
He starts sucking in shaky breaths, not aware that his eyes are watering until his vision blurs. “What does that mean, compromised?” he grits out.
The Cube doesn't answer.
Eames punches buttons, uselessly. Fuck. Fuck. He already knows it's pointless. “I can't ... I can't override it. I know what I have to do, I can hook up his cryo unit to the reserve grid and reset the fuses, but I'd have to patch straight into the computer, and I don't have ... I don't ...”
His heart leaps. The cores.
He reaches the nearest shelf as quickly as he can, lifting one up. Its ocular aperture is closed. Eames pries it open. There's no light. The aperture slides closed when he lets it go. He checks a few others: they're all dead. Empty. There's no personality embedded in any of them.
He takes one back to the computer, anyway, a core he recognizes, one they tried to attach to GLaDOS to slow her down, obviously a failure. He tries to plug it in to the core receptacle, but nothing happens.
“Fuck,” he gasps.
“Why is this so important, anyway?” the Cube questions weakly.
“Because Arthur's supposed to live!”
“If you love Arthur so much, why don't you marry him?”
Eames clenches a hand on the control panel. The Cube almost sounds like-they've definitely been down here too long.
“Look,” the Cube says, “even if you got life support back online. He's been placed in cryo-suspension indefinitely. There's no wake-up date. He'd be as good as dead anyway.”
Eames slumps against the panel. He doesn't know what to do.
“He'd be around long after you were gone,” says the Cube. “You'd have to live forever.”
“I'm not-”
“Tell the computer to pull up file 'Eames'.”
He's not aware the Cube said it aloud via him until the computer blinks to life and shows his file on the screen.
“Aperture personnel: Eames. Born to John and Elisabeth Wheatley. Head of the Aperture Science Experimental Dreamshare Unit. Diagnosed with multiple personalities following-”
“Stop!” Eames shouts, and the computer does, though his file doesn't disappear. He doesn't need this, he doesn't need to be reminded that it's his fault his whole team went crazy and died, that the only reason he didn't was that he went loopy enough that they pulled him out of the project before the chemicals could rot his brain. At least the voices are gone now, most of them, almost all of them ...
“Eames,” the Cube says, its voice uncharacteristically gentle. “You're dying.”
He blinks away tears and stares down at his hand, clasped over the wound, blood dribbling thickly through his fingers.
“What do I do?” he asks.
“The core.”
You'd have to live forever.
Now Eames gets it.
He picks up the core. It seems to have gotten heavier in the past few minutes.
“Will it work?”
“I don't know,” says the Cube. “I have no idea how core transfer works. Your body will be suspended indefinitely. You might remember everything or nothing. Or it could be corrupted, could give you a whole different personality. And you won't hear me anymore-”
“I know.”
“But if you want to save Arthur so bad-”
“Yeah,” Eames whispers.
He makes his way to the Core Transfer Receptacle by propping himself up against the wall as he goes. He plugs the empty core in and starts toggling the controls. He's not even thinking anymore, he's so exhausted; his only thought is, Now I can watch over him forever.
“Be careful,” the Cube urges.
“I will be.” Eames flicks a switch.
“We don't even know how this works.”
“I know enough.”
“Welcome to the Aperture Science Mind-Core Personality Transfer,” the machine says enthusiastically. “Transfer will begin in-one-minute. Side effects of mind-to-core transfer may include but are certainly not limited to itching, burning sensation, tinnitus, loss of vision, and aggressive braindeath. On behalf of Aperture Laboratories, thank you for donating yourself to science! You are free to disregard our gratitude if you are not a compliant participant, but have been volunteered against your will. Subject, you may now enter the Personality Transfer Chamber.”
The chamber door slides open. Eames has to grip the side and pull himself in, because his legs will barely support him. For Arthur, he just keeps thinking, numbly, for Arthur, for Arthur. He'll have access to the computer, he'll hook Arthur's cryo chamber to the reserve grid, he'll save him, and watch over him for all of time. They'll always be together.
“Goodbye,” the Cube says softly. Eames starts to speak, but the chamber doors gently whoosh shut, sealing him in, and he's cut off from everything.
“Mind-to-core transfer will take place in five-four-three-two-one. Transfer initiated.”
The machine whirs and grinds to life.
Eames is gone before the transfer bar has even reached 50%.
+
After a long time, the computer intones, “Transfer complete,” cheerfully, to an empty room and a solitary old Companion Cube.
“On behalf of Aperture Science, thank you for helping us help you help us all.”