inception fic: go up to the resting place (2/3)
Arthur doesn’t run. He wakes up in a bed empty of Eames, he puts on some underwear, then walks to his closet. There, in the back, the space where his jackets used to hang stands empty. Framing the untouched panel in front of his decoy safe.
Eames might as well have left a note. Did you think you could fool me. That my eye wouldn’t find what you value most.
‘Should have known,’ says the voice in Arthur’s head. ‘Should have known, should have known.’
****
He has an idea of where Eames might be, and the prism will take him there quickly. If he runs. Arthur dresses, runes in his pocket, reminds himself of where he could lay his hands on a person’s body. He can break what he can put together.
He finds an alley, just wide enough to accommodate, throws the prism down, feels shocked for the first time, when it shatters.
****
He makes his way to Yusuf.
“No, I had no idea,” says Yusuf.
“No, I didn’t help him,” says Yusuf.
“Would you hit me if I said I was sorry,” says Yusuf.
“Yes, Arthur, there could be an explanation,” says Yusuf. “Should you hold your breath?”
****
Arthur finds a coin in his bag of runes, put where he couldn’t help but find it. Silver amidst dull stones that will go shatteringly, destructively glowing with a word.
There’s a coyote’s smiling face on one side. Empty space on the other. Arthur throws it into the air, flips it over and over.
It lands on heads. Heads. Heads again.
****
Cobb calls. He’s pacing. “I heard about your predicament.”
“How?” Arthur answers evenly, ignoring the throbbing behind his eyes.
“I don’t know. People talk.”
His stomach rolls.
“Are you okay?” Cobb finally comes to a stop. “You don’t look well.”
Arthur laughs grimly. “Humiliation doesn’t agree with me, I guess.”
“I think I contained the rumors.”
“How unexpectedly useful of you.”
“Don’t be a jackass, Arthur.”
Arthur sighs. He unclenches his jaw.
‘Yusuf says you’ve been morose. He thinks eventually you’ll bore yourself to death painting the world as nothing but blighted landscapes and merciless edges.”
“Colorful,” Arthur says.
“After all this time, we might finally have stepped into sync. Humorless at the core.” Cobb’s crossed one arm over his chest, gestures at Arthur with the other.
Arthur keeps his lips zipped.
“The fact that that didn’t make you stumble back in horror is really fucking troubling me,” Cobb says.
“You’re not humorless,” Arthur says, accusing.
****
Arthur insists that Cobb retire to his usual attitude of benign neglect towards Arthur.
Yusuf tells him over dinner, “He was upset you didn’t call him. He said that you’d agreed that silence would mean you were fine or beyond help.”
Arthur raises an eyebrow.
“You aren’t fine,” Yusuf says. He pushes his bowl away.
Arthur brings a spoon to his lips, swallows a mouthful of soup.
“You aren’t beyond help either.”
“Yusuf,” Arthur says, voice bright and full. He leans back in his chair, palms flat on the table. “You look so angry.”
****
Arthur can’t sleep much these nights. He lies in bed and sprawls across it, thinking only, ‘Stupid, how could I have been so fucking stupid.’
At least he’s learned this once before: how to let shame stoke ambition. To let it make you better.
He can’t sleep. Before on those nights, he would walk, seven colors beneath him.
Robbed of that, too.
****
Arthur goes to an island town. The weather very balmy. It’s the kind of atmosphere that urges you to melt, just a little, and at the edges.
He used to live in a place like this. He knows it isn’t possible, but he can’t help but wonder if Eames knew that, somehow.
This was where Eames resurfaced, as near as Arthur can pinpoint. The night he arrives, he walks into a beach bar, well-positioned tourist bait, with straw fringe glued to its roof, a paper lantern at the door.
Arthur feels almost relaxed. He’s determined to find Eames, and thinks he can do it in time. He tries to keep from counting the days excessively. He allows himself to do it once, when he wakes up, to remind himself of his very long-awaited deadline.
Arthur takes a long pull from his mixed drink, scans the crowd as he puts the back of his hand to his mouth, the wet of alcohol on his lips. The mix is decent, the people friendly. There’s an asshole a few tables away wearing a suit jacket over board shorts, which Arthur is initially amused by, and then, upon closer examination --
Arthur feels possessed by a rage, the way it starts as a seed in his chest, shakes itself out until it’s rooting into his limbs. He would embarrass himself, strip himself of dignity, to mete out punishment.
He finishes his drink.
After that, he goes to the man, taps his shoulder. “Excuse me,” Arthur says. He puts an apologetic smile on his face as the guy turns. “Can I ask you where you got this jacket?”
“This?” The guy looks over his shoulder at his friends, then back to Arthur. “I bought it from a guy who was selling them from the back of his car this morning. It’s not bad, right?”
“No, you didn’t.”
The guy narrows his eyes at him. “Look, get off my back.”
Arthur reaches around him, takes the kid’s beer and sips it, puts it back on the table. “Where’d you get the jacket.”
“Jesus. I don’t know. It was hanging in the coat closet here. I figured someone forgot it, what was the harm?”
“It’s mine.” Arthur smiles. The guy meets and holds his gaze for a few seconds, which Arthur gives him credit for, then shrugs out of the jacket, holds it out to Arthur.
“You’re a fucking psycho, you know that?”
Arthur knows. He takes the jacket, keeps himself from looking at it until he’s outside.
On the beach, there in the sand, he runs his hands over it, searching for any trace of a flaw, of any break. He concentrates too hard, and the fibers start to stretch, breathing under his hands, brambles sticking to his skin, little points of red dotting his fingertips like so many burning stars.
He forces himself to let go, to drop the jacket at his feet. He puts his hands on his hips, staring out at the ocean rolled out to the horizon, then seizes, ripping the shoes off his feet, throwing them as hard as he can.
Fury, that he had protected his secret for so long only to find his hopes scattered across the world like so much trash. His face hot with it, and he feels small in the face of his terrible anger, so little equipped to satisfy it.
****
“Do you want to hear something funny?” he’d said to Eames once. “I can put bones back together, force a heart to beat, other fucking amazing things, but this?” He lifts his arm, exposing the soft, thin skin over his tricep, how it’d been split like so much tissue paper. He puts a hand to it, only hisses, the wound refusing to close. “I’ll have to get stitched.”
“Arthur,” Eames had said. “We’ll need to work on your delivery.” He got up, put his hand high on Arthur’s side, let the pads of his fingers press in, staking a casual claim. “No matter. Break, and I’ll put you to rights.”
That had been longer ago. Not during the most recent time they had spent together. Arthur doesn’t think Eames saw him as a mark then.
Here’s another thing he thinks about: that he’s never heard stories of Eames giving back something he had stolen.
Arthur won’t beg at first, but he will if he has to. He knows that about himself now.
****
Arthur goes home wearing the jacket. It’s not the relief he thought it would be, having one back. If anything, he wants to crawl out of his skin, loosed from his body to fly around the world again, seeking his quarry from up high.
He’s walking home. He needs new shoes. He hadn’t taken care of these, and the leather is abraded, scuffs clawed into the once-gleaming surfaces.
His ears prick up -- this strange gap sensed behind him. He turns around and sees the bow touch down, the void spinning out behind it.
It’s Eames walking toward him. His arms are full of the jackets Arthur had made.
He holds them out. “You should take these,” he says. “So that I don’t drop them when you hit me.”
Arthur is upset that he doesn’t have his runes tucked away on his person. Still, he knows where he could put his hands on Eames, which nerves he could pluck away at. He takes the jackets from Eames. He runs his hands across the bundle, his eyes never wavering from this man in front of him.
Eames puts his hands in his pockets. He looks immaculate. “I--” He clears his throat. “I thought it would be charming, to have them waiting for you in all the places I thought you might look for me. I should have thought to keep them safer. That git in Kingston wasn’t supposed to--” He coughs. “Anyway. Bad idea.”
“You thought it would be charming.”
Eames grimaces. He takes one hand from his pocket, drags it across his forehead, and Arthur narrows his eyes, catches the trembling in Eames’ wrist. “I did say it was a bad idea.”
He tries to smile, and Arthur, suddenly, feels immensely wearied. Only now feeling the heavy weight of the fury on his back. He wants to want to cry. He thinks there might be catharsis in it.
“I imagine you have some words for me.”
Arthur tries to snatch a good place to begin from his thoughts. “I promised Yusuf I would have a joke ready, for when I finally tracked you down. He thought it was very important that I open with a joke.” Arthur smiles thinly. “Knock knock.”
Eames eyes him warily, doesn’t answer.
Arthur sighs. “I guess--” Arthur stoops to put the jackets down at his feet. He counts them quickly, then stands again. “I guess I want to know how I gave myself away. I’ve had prowlers in my dreams before. It’d be helpful to know where I fucked up.”
Eames shakes his head, opens his mouth to say something, and Arthur, he feels a real alarm. A bone-deep fear that he’ll be refused this, and then where will he be? Wearing armor with a break somewhere he can’t find.
There must be something in his face of it.
Eames’ protest is delivered stillborn. When he speaks again, he sounds resigned. “I had the distinct advantage of being welcome in your life. When you were awake. And even when you were sleeping; your subconscious was tolerant of me.”
Arthur laughs.
“You were very well-defended in your dreams. I thought it might be easier to get you talking. I pushed hard, and was maybe unsubtle.” Eames looks rueful there. “But it worked to my advantage, that you were knocked off-kilter. You checked your defenses.” He meets Arthur’s eyes then. “You went to your closet every time you woke up.”
“The safe didn’t distract you?”
Eames smiles then. “That was a lovely touch, actually. It should have occupied me, but--” He shrugs. “I don’t know. It never really seemed to be the capture of your interest. And by that point I’d become quite expert at gauging your interest.”
Arthur nods. He picks up his jackets, straightens up slowly. He takes care not to stumble. “Okay. Thank you, Mr. Eames.”
“You’re welcome.” Eames takes a step forward. “Don’t you--do you want to know why I stole from you?”
Arthur grins, a wonderful stretch on his face. “What does it matter why? I know that you did it.”
Eames’ voice ravels tighter. “I didn’t think you would be so civil.”
Arthur searches Eames’ face. He wishes he could read it, drag a line with his finger to mark his place as he spoke aloud the volumes written across Eames’ brow, his eyes and mouth, working in concert. “Like you said, you stole from me. But you returned what you stole, and I think--you seem sorry, at least.”
“I am.” Eames steps closer.
“So. Good.” Arthur makes himself smile again. “Let’s not--” He lets his eyes close for a second. “I don’t really want to do the whole fireworks thing. I’m really tired.” He blows out a sigh, hates, briefly, the quaver in it.
“Arthur,” Eames says, and maybe his face is saying something, something important, but really, who can tell, when it speaks in such a foreign tongue? It was Arthur, after all, who had been mistranslating all along.
****
Arthur, at home, unfolds each jacket, places it on a hanger and then back on the rack in his closet. In front of the safe he leaves exposed now.
He feels unburdened, the way he thought he might, but hollow, too. Like he’d just heard a sad song, and it’s rattling inside of him.
The last jacket is heavier. Arthur reaches inside the pocket and finds a prism. When he holds it up to the exposed bulb of the lamp beside him, it casts rainbows like tabs of color.
He decides to get it over with. Rip the band-aid off. Taking some fucking skin with it, if you have to.
****
Arthur walks, one foot in red, the other in yellow. He sees Eames and Izanami, a pair in the distance, there at the vertex. They’re arguing, Eames’ arms spread wide.
As he nears, Izanami catches sight of him, nods over Eames’ shoulder at him. Eames turns around, then steps back, shoves his hands into his pockets. “You came,” he says.
“You came quickly,” Izanami says.
“I didn’t want to drag this out.” Arthur pulls carefully at one earlobe, looking from Izanami to Eames, back again. “I was curious, anyway. How involved you might have been in this.” He looks at Izanami.
“I should make myself plain,” she says. “I asked Eames to find out what you were hiding. I had some suspicions, and when they turned out to be right -- well, I hired him to take your work from you. I had my reasons, but Eames has told me that they wouldn’t matter much to you. Would they? Should I share them with you?”
Arthur keeps his face placid, currents churning far from the surface, in his depths. “No.”
A brisk flash of emotion on her face, and then she speaks again. “No. That’s fair.” She straightens, drawn up to her full height. “Eames and I have negotiated a new deal.”
“A new deal?” Arthur looks between the two of them.
“She’s a difficult customer to satisfy,” Eames says, nearly drawling it. He seems fine. The same Eames he’s always been. Arthur’s teeth clench.
“He failed to deliver what was promised.” She folds her hands together in front of her. “Eames has agreed to our redefined contract on the condition that you give your approval.”
“Why mine?”
“I require that he remain in proximity to you for the time being.”
“Why?” Arthur looks to Eames, but Eames is observing his nails.
“I have reasons, but you didn’t want to hear them, remember?” She cocks her head. “Well?”
Arthur doesn’t hesitate. “No.”
“Very well,” Izanami says. She turns to Eames. “We’ll negotiate again.”
Arthur blinks at her back, a little thrown by her pace. He turns, too, and is walking away when Eames says his name.
Eames is close to him now. “I’m sorry that she asked that of you. I was against it from the first. Do you believe me?”
Arthur laughs. “Why would you lie?” Eames’ lips tighten at that. Arthur pulls a coin from his pocket, his thumb on the coyote’s laughing face. “This is yours. I wanted to give it back.”
Eames ignores him. “I wouldn’t force my company on you now.” He says it like it’s half-joke, his whole self collected.
“You should take it.” Arthur holds the coin out.
“I didn’t tell you that I was sorry, unprompted the last time. And I am. I thought I might be a little sorry as I was skulking away, but it was...” He laughs, the smatter of charm he wears so naturally glinting. “Worse than I thought.”
“Your coin,” Arthur says. He pushes it at Eames.
“Fuck, please!” Eames says, and Arthur blinks at the voice from Eames’ mouth, the drop of the urbanity from it. He’s hoarse. “Arthur, please, will you keep it.” Eames’ coolness a slipping mask. “If you would keep it, I’d be--will you keep it.”
Arthur shrugs, too numb to force it upon Eames now. He closes his hand around the coin.
****
Arthur walked away, back down the bow. At the bottom of it, where it sinks into the asphalt, he takes one last look back. He won’t travel this road again.
Eames is there, a little distance away. He raises a hand.
“Do I have to watch for you now, Mr. Eames?” Arthur asks.
“No. Only I remembered something you’d want to know.” Eames covers the distance between them, stands at the mouth of the bow as Arthur steps back, feet on solid ground. “You asked me before how you gave yourself away, but I forgot to tell you this bit.” He licks his lips. “In the first dream, do you remember? You pulled a sewing kit from under the table to repair the coat you were wearing.”
“That was my tell?”
Eames shrugs. “People dream of things to come unbidden. You always had the needle and thread.”
“Thank you.” Another piece of his defenses restored.
Eames nods at him carefully, then sighs. “I wish you would hit me.”
“I don’t think it would be the solution you think it’d be.”
Eames studies him. “I think you’ll need help. Your lovely jackets, whatever they’re for--you haven’t finished that job yet, have you?”
“How do you know it’s a job?”
Eames smiles, a quirk of his lips. “I know a long con when I see one.”
****
Arthur has six sisters, and a great need.
****
Arthur abandons his lease.
“It will be a long time before I come back,” Arthur tells Eames. “And I won’t come back here.”
Eames glances over at Arthur, and Arthur tries to still his jittering knee. He looks around the apartment, at the many boxes littering the hardwood floors, the emptied rooms reduced to space. “Will you miss this place? I think I will.”
“Eames,” Arthur says. He drops his head into his hands. “Will you go away for a second?”
“Of course,” Eames says, and he puts his hands in his pockets, wanders away into another room.
Arthur, relieved, catches his breath.
****
Anyway, there’s a new thing that Arthur has learned. That Eames could be biddable.
****
They don’t have to travel far at first -- up to the north of California, where the forests are thick with old, silent trees. Redwoods like columns, foundation roots for the world they carry high above this one. Yusuf comes with them; he’s useful here.
They turn off the path, and Yusuf clears a new one for them. The undergrowth retreating the way the briar does when Yusuf wakes from sleeping.
“Handy that,” Eames says. The sun is going down overhead, and Eames borrows the shadows elongating, turns them into his own brand of light.
It’s faster, working with the two of them. They had made a good team before, and they make a good one now, too. That hasn’t changed.
They come across fallen trees, their trunks so wide they tower above the three of them. Arthur throws a rope, braces his feet on the sloughing bark, climbs up, then watches Yusuf and Eames come up after him. At the top, the three of them look out, the pillared forest ahead of them, the coolness outside of Eames’ warmth.
“How much longer?” Yusuf asks mournfully.
“Cheer up,” says Eames.
“What does it say about my nature,” Yusuf asks, “that I find your best behavior so irritating?”
“Good news!” Eames grins, wolfish. “We’re kin souls.”
“You don’t have to play sweet for me, Eames,” Arthur says. He drops from the top of the tree, hard, cushioned by the pine and leaves.
****
Eames has never made it so easy for Arthur to ignore him before. At nights, when they make camp, Eames will set off without a word, and Arthur never wonders where he goes.
Tonight, Yusuf asks him for the umpteenth time, “What are we doing out here?”
“You’ll find out soon enough.”
“There isn’t a single comforting thing in that statement.”
Arthur digs in his pack for something to eat, idly reaches out to pat Yusuf’s arm. “You shouldn’t ask questions you don’t want my answers to.”
Yusuf grumbles. He opens his mouth, challenging. “I think it’s a stupid idea, to bring Eames into it, whatever it is.”
“You’re here to keep an eye on him.”
“And will he leave when I do? I can’t traipse around the world with you. It was all I could do to make the time for this excursion.”
Arthur pulls out two rolls, throws one to Yusuf. “I told you Mendocino is lovely this time of year.”
“Yes,” Yusuf says, holding his roll up distastefully. “And the amenities are remarkable.”
Arthur sighs. “I thought you would be happy that I wasn’t nursing my anger.”
“I’m a complicated man.”
“What purpose would it serve.” Arthur finishes the roll in three precise bites, makes himself chew, then swallow.
“Eames is a necrotic tooth. The lack of pain a sign of death at the root. Pull, before the poison.”
“You’re very judgmental for a man who would sell me out for the right price.”
Yusuf meets Arthur’s gaze, unperturbed. “What can I say. I hate to see in others what I know is in me.”
Arthur smiles. He raises a hand, wiggling fingers. “You forget, the power I hold.”
****
You can’t call it a clearing, really. It’s this tight ring of trees, younger redwoods, sprouted up from the same bed of roots in the ground, and Arthur and the rest squeeze inside of it, one by one.
Arthur isn’t sure how, exactly, this will go. The sun is rising, maybe, somewhere above the canopy above them. Soon, the light will filter down, only the greenest of it making it to where they’re standing.
“What are we waiting for?” Yusuf asks. “I worry now that you brought Eames out here to serve as human sacrifice. I worry for myself, too, but I’m comforted in knowing that you would probably rather gut Eames.”
Arthur looks up: these trees, their living branches. They shift, they rustle. Then, finally, a shadow detaches from them, floats lazily down, closer, until its form comes into view: a raven, as big as a child. It perches on a limb just above Arthur’s head.
“Is it going to grant us wishes?” he hears Yusuf mutter.
Arthur pulls a jacket from his backpack. His hands are shaking. There are still so many things that could go wrong.
“Once,” Arthur says. His voice catches, an ingrained instinct to recoil from the next fact, to keep it swallowed. He spits, “I had five sisters. They were tall and strong. They had laughter like the thunder. I loved them, and while they were still young, I cursed them.”
The raven, it lights upon the ground and fixes an eye upon Arthur. From the corner of his eye,, Arthur can see Eames take a predatory step forward, but Arthur outpaces him, he drapes the jacket over the bird. “I’m full of regret,” he says.
There’s a soft, stretching shimmer. For a moment it reminds him of Eames, the shift and change. Then the brambles of Arthur’s jacket burst into fruit and thorn, and fall away as quickly, leaving his oldest sister there.
Arthur hurries to put his coat over her. He drops to his knees, a roar in his ears, his chest split open: grateful, grateful to the core. He touches her face, her tangled hair.
Agnes opens her eyes. She looks wild, the light of recognition in her stare faint. “When he was twelve,” she says, “I taught my brother how to sew. I took his hands in one of mine, because they were small and I could. I showed him how to hold the sides of my wound together. I told him, ‘You won’t want to hesitate. Be sure, and get it over with as quickly as possible.’ And then I smiled at him while he pierced my side. I grit my teeth.”
“Masha’allah,” says Yusuf.
****
He spends as long a time as he can with his sister. When night falls, she sleeps almost immediately. It’s been a long day, but Arthur remains next to her, taking comfort in her presence.
Eames is there, too, standing beside him.
“Do you want to sit?” Arthur asks, then shifts over to make some room when Eames does.
“You know,” Eames begins. “I would never have guessed this.”
Arthur has to smile at that. “How could you have?”
“I had a few outlandish theories. I might have gotten closer if I’d known you had family somewhere in the world.”
“My silence about them was a prerequisite to bringing them back.” Arthur shrugs. “Otherwise, you know me. My loose lips would have sunken ships.”
Eames snorts, shaking his head, then says, more soberly, “I wouldn’t have come so close to ruining your chance at this, if I had known what was at stake.”
“You already apologized.” Arthur shifts away from him.
“Yes.” Eames nods. “That’s true. Anyway.” He leans back, shifting his weight onto his planted hands. “I don’t think I’m a fan of your sad and haunted backstory.”
“No?”
“It makes you disturbingly human.”
Arthur laughs. He reaches to pull a blanket up higher over Agnes, and something in the action feels striking: her strong shoulders, the crease between her brows as she dream. He looks over at Eames, and that feels like the first time in a long time, too: Eames’ profile almost new to him. “It makes you feel guiltier, doesn’t it?” He feels a sudden rush of amusement at the seriousness in Eames’ face. “I had all this fucking shit in my life, and there you were adding to it.”
Eames startles, takes a sideways glance at Arthur, laughs, and it’s careful only at first. “No, Arthur, please don’t hide your delight at this turn.”
Arthur looks away from Eames and again at his sister, still smiling. “And Yusuf thought you and I would never laugh together again.”
“Could it be that everything can be made new?” Eames asks, and his voice is full of wonder.
****
That last thing Eames said, it stays on Arthur’s mind.
He’d met a storyteller in Portland once, who’d seemed mediocre as fuck. She’d looked young, though, and reminded him, a little, of his youngest sister. She was telling tales in a coffee shop, almost completely ignored, background noise as people worked, sat with friends.
Arthur went over to her, when she finished her set. “You were fine,” he told her.
She laughed. “Um, great. Thanks. No need to bowl me over with compliments.”
Arthur smiled. “We all find our callings.”
She went serious then, annoyance in her brow. “I’m pretty sure this is mine. Thanks, man,” and turned to leave.
Arthur sighed. “Wait, I’m sorry. I don’t mean to -- I was presumptuous.”
She turned back to him warily. “Look, you seem fine,” she lilted over the last word, “but I have a girlfriend.”
Arthur laughed. “Sorry, I’m coming off like an asshole. That’s not what I’m -- I’m not available either.” He paused. “I don’t want to take up too much of your time. I’m an idiot about storytelling. I never understood the point of the career.” He grimaced at the words escaping his mouth. “I’m shocked you’re not finding me charming,” he said, joking.
She rolled her eyes, but there was a reluctant kindness in her face. “It’s an act of creation,” she said, explaining. “Not just the stories I spin on a stage, but the stories we tell about each other, and ourselves, every day.” She stopped. “I don’t know.”
Arthur was only half-engaged, and he must have shown it on his face.
“You should care,” she said, beginning again, a ribbon of strength in her voice. “People will build images of you with what they think about you. If you can’t tell a story, they’ll make you speak with a voice that isn’t yours, with histories they imagine.”
“So?”
She lifted the strap of a messenger bag over her neck, got ready to go. “You know the story of Pygmalion and Galatea? The statue that came to life?” She waited for Arthur’s nod, then continued. “She was stone for so long, letting him spin long stories of her, of what their life could be together. And when he prayed for stone to become flesh, she was praying, too. For a voice.” She paused. “He was kissing her when she came to life, but she was saying her name.”
Arthur frowned. “I think it’s supposed to be a love story.”
She laughed, hopped off the stage. “How did I tell it?” she asked, then tilted her head. “What’s your name anyway?”
Arthur smiled smoothly, prepared to lie.
****
It’s not that he’s beginning to feel like a real boy, or anything ridiculous like that. There are just--fewer parts of his life that have to lie behind stone.
“Jesus,” he says. “You make things new twelve times a day.” He nods at the canteen Eames is carrying, filled to the brim with water that Eames had poured into it from a fistful of sand.
“I need a little bit to hold onto. I can’t create something from nothing.” Eames stops under the desert sun, wiping the sweat from his brow. “I think I told you that once, already.”
“Arthur,” Agnes says. She shouts, from far ahead of them. A heat rising from the sand, obscuring his vision of her, making her flicker and wax. “We’re getting closer.”
****
It’s night by the time they reach the spires, the desert plunged into darkness: thrown into the depths with a weight tied to its feet. Arthur can’t sleep. He walks to the base of a spire, puts his hand on it. He can feel a phantom warmth, the rocky outcropping resembling nothing more than a finger.
There’s a god here, under this sand and buried alive. His hand pushing outward, his fingers breaking the surface. One day, he’ll dig himself out.
There’s a coldness in me, Arthur thinks.
“What are you thinking?” Agnes asks from behind him.
Arthur turns around. He takes the sight of her in, shakes his head. “You’re so fucking tall. I’m pissed as fuck that I’m not tall.”
“You’re of average height.”
“That response to this particular insecurity is about as comforting as it’s ever been.”
She smiles. “I’m happy after all this time to make you feel better.”
There’s something in the wording of it that makes Arthur wince.
“You know,” she says. “One day, I look forward to seeing you look at me without any guilt in your face at all.”
“Do you really?”
“It’s a terrible burden for me,” she says, her tone joking. “Your pinched, sad face.” She comes close, kisses his cheek. “My Arthur. Will it bring my years back to me, your misery?”
****
Later, when the sky is graying, a wind beating like a sheet snapping over the desert, Arthur takes a stance, follows through the motions of a tai-chi form. He closes his eyes, feels his breath come in and out, a circular motion.
Halfway through the technique, he feels a presence. There’s a familiar weight to it, and Arthur, he inhales, he roots his feet, he exhales. Maintaining the rhythm of it, trying very hard not to think of the dream where Eames had corrected his form while wearing Cobb’s face.
It takes him another fifteen minutes, maybe, to finish the technique, and he pushes the awareness of company to the back of his mind.
Unmoved , he thinks.
He withdraws to rest, then opens his eyes, ready, now, to engage, only to be surprised to find that there’s nobody there.
****
An owl flies in with the sun, her taloned feet, that threatening beak.
“Once,” Arthur says. “I had five sisters, with laughter like the thunder, and a sixth on the way. They warned us of her; that she would be the end of us -- that if she lived, there would be pain and loss on the horizon. When my sisters refused to help me kill her, we fled.”
His second sister, draped in feathers. Agnes drops to their sister’s side, holds her hands.
Tavia swallows, her voice graveled, “I had a brother,” she says. “And when he said he wanted to kill her, our baby sister, I laughed at him. And later, when she had grown, when she had come to find us, he hid her from us, afraid for her life.”
Arthur he bends down, kisses her cheek. “What can I say.” He smiles at her. “Fickle.”
“We’re the same,” she says. She touches his face. “Blind to where our hearts will set.”
He’s missed her very much. Maybe most. “What can I say,” and he turns, hiding his tears from her.
****
They had had this conversation, the night following. Tavia, still at home in the night; she stood at the mouth of the cave they had taken shelter in, staring out at curves, the belly and hips of sand.
“The triplets will be waiting for you,” she said. She rolled her eyes. “Good luck.”
Arthur grimaced. “I wish you would come with me. They loved you best.”
She laughed at him. “They loved you, too.”
“They tolerated me.”
“Don’t disparage being tolerated.” She tsked. “It can be its own, precious sort of love.”
“You really won’t come?”
“You have Agnes, and Eames. And I have a life to catch up with.”
Arthur crossed his arms, leaned against the rock at his side.
“Who is Eames to you, exactly? He doesn’t seem the most trustworthy of people.”
Arthur shrugged one shoulder. “Agnes seems to like him.”
“Agnes is willfully bad judge of character. I think she hopes to take in bad seeds so that she can beat respect into them when they turn on her.”
“Eames isn’t a bad seed. Well.” Arthur hummed. “He isn’t malicious, anyway.”
“Oh, good. ‘Not malicious’.” Tavia turned to face him, her hands behind her back. “That’s exceedingly comforting.”
Arthur laughed. “I have a hard time believing people would judge me virtuous upon first sight.” He faced her, too, standing tall. “What do you see when you look at me now?”
She narrowed her eyes, then sighed. “How much the world has changed. You’re looking older, Arthur.”
“Sometimes I forget to moisturize.”
She laughed, came close to touch at the wrinkles at the corner of his left eye. “You ignored my advice, didn’t you?” She dropped her hand. “I told you not to put your life in stasis, too.”
“I didn’t,” he insisted. “I just--I had an order I followed. First, to restore all of you. Everything else, after. I can shape the rest of my life later, still.”
Tavia fell back against the cave wall again, smiling. “It’s nice to know that some things in this world have remained the same. You,” she said, “still so foolish to think that you’ll never run out of time.”
****
Eames has been occupying Agnes, which Arthur is grateful for, sometimes.
Agnes is wilder at heart than Arthur is, and when they spar, Arthur gets caught up in the fucking messiness of her technique, in the way she’ll throw her weight too far to one side and leave herself open for too strong a counterattack. He’ll wait and wait, absorbing blow after blow from her, his body curling, his hands up and around his face until she lunges, her knee wobbling almost imperceptibly, and then Arthur will lash out with a roundhouse and knock her flat on her ass.
It leaves her angry, and Arthur with purpling bruises.
When she fights with Eames, they dance, Eames weaving back and forth, drawing back, making her chase him. He’ll jab, measuring the distance, swing a cross at her when she’s within arm’s reach.
He’s good. Relaxed, sweat matting his hair to his forehead, and Agnes opens up, the fury she takes out on Arthur growing into a measured discipline.
This is an Agnes that Arthur recognizes: stalking prey.
****
In Montreal, Arthur walks down avenues, takes in the glint of glass, the buildings that soar into the sky and seek a ceiling to brush up against.
They’d all separated when they’d entered the city, eager for solitude, or different company. But when Arthur walks into a bar and sees Eames there, he moves forward on instinct, takes the open seat next to Eames.
“Hello, darling,” Eames says. He’s had a few drinks -- his eyes shining with them. He licks his lower lip, and Arthur can’t help the reflexive way his stomach drops.
Arthur catches the bartender’s eye, orders a beer.
“It’s a lovely vest you’ve got on.”
“Thank you,” Arthur says dryly. It’s strange to feel embarrassed about the vest; nothing in Eames’ compliment should be taken as an indictment of Arthur’s vanities, and yet.
“I’ve upset you.”
“No,” Arthur says. “I’m upsetting myself. You’ve been...” Arthur searches for the right words. “You’ve been kind to my sister. And helpful to me.”
“Cheers.” Eames raises his glass at Arthur, takes a drink.
Arthur barrels forward, hurdling his inhibitions. “This is going to sound conceited as fuck,” Arthur says, “But I hope you’re not jumping through hoops for me. You don’t need to work off a debt you owe me. You can go.”
“You should let me stay. It would be good of you.” Eames finishes his drink, voice rough, his syllables rubbing up against each other. “I’ve never seen so many colors of you, Arthur. Your silences were so legion.” He smiles. “I used to think that knowing just one of your secrets would be satisfying.”
Arthur stares down at the bar.
The stories Eames has heard of him now. Collected, filed away in that mind of his.
There’s a question Arthur had wanted to ask of Eames. He’d wanted to be drunk to do it, but fuck that. “Why did you come back?” Arthur turns to Eames. “After you’d finished your job on me. Why bring what you’d stolen back?”
Eames rolls his cup between his palms. He glances over at Arthur carefully. “It’s funny, isn’t it?” He clears his throat. “You know what I think about repeatedly? How much a story can shift.” He nods at Arthur. “When you tell Izanami’s story, it’s full of devotion. That isn’t the way I tell it. And if you ask her to tell it herself, she won’t. ‘I don’t like the current ending,’ she’ll say.”
Arthur takes Eames’ cocktail napkin, slowly begins to fold it, occupying his hands.
“I respect that she says that. It’s a fascinating transformation, really: how much a story can change depending on where you choose to end it.” Eames moves one hand closer to Arthur’s on the bar. “I thought that it was the possibility of simply being another cautionary tale for you that had me panicking.”
“But it wasn’t.” Arthur presses a crease.
“No,” Eames says. “It just seemed there were so many chapters ahead of me. Enough to grind me down, if empty of you.”
Arthur takes Eames hand, holds it, palm up. He puts the crane he had folded in the middle of it, his every action deliberate, built upon the precise awareness of Eames, who’s been drinking, who owns a persuasive tongue. “It’s a pretty abstract reason.”
Eames laughs. “Maybe it was simpler then. Maybe it had become a habit when I wasn’t looking.” His smile is fond. “Coming back to you, who claimed never to miss me.”
Arthur wishes he could look away from Eames’ gaze. Wishes he wasn’t such a fucking sucker for a dare.
part three