. (isconfetti) wrote in doorslogs, @ 2012-06-26 03:29:00 |
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Entry tags: | arthur, door: inception, eames |
Who: Arthur and Eames
What: Dreaming, Inception style
Where: Inception door; Australia
When: Recently
Warnings/Rating: Nope
The architect Eames found left something to be desired, but his only option at this point were men that were still standing. Men like Arthur - who Eames had registered with himself - or men who had lived through fallen teams. As for architects, the rather brilliant ones were still in it, and Eames was on his last life. One more team out, and he would be disqualified along with them. Eames wasn’t even particularly stubborn, but he knew he could best this thing if he’d the right tools. It was a simple enough gambit. Find the safe, crack the code, get in. The setting mattered only to the extent that it made it easier to trick the dreamer in a brilliant setting. Thus far, a train station (where the dreamer had been a lost child) and a lifeboat (where the dreamer had been among the passengers) had failed gloriously.
Eames waited for Arthur in the tent where the shared dreams were being conducted, the dreamer out of sight and behind a curtain, but already connected to the passive. The architect’s name was Dick, and Eames found his faith in people with simple, American names was quickly dwindling. Dick was smiling smugly, blond hair and a surfer’s tan, and Eames assured the chemist that Arthur would be there directly. They had opted to go without a fourth, which was Eames’ decision, as the constructs in the last dreamer’s mind would have been much easier to handle with fewer members on the team. As for whether or not Dick was coming, well, he rather suspected that depended on Arthur’s opinion of the man.
All-American Dick didn’t know what to think about the man that ducked into the tent. He was wearing shades of red so deep that it was almost orange in fabric softer than any fabric had a right to be this deep in the desert. The cargo pants were made for a catwalk, not a hike, and when he shed tortoise shell high-stemmed sunglasses, his bleak, unsmiling gaze contrasted violently with the softness of his face, which was lined with visible fatigue. There were a few intervening seconds while Dick tried to group an impression together: desperate desert job plus expensive clothes minus sleep equals...?
Arthur let the tarp brush from his shoulder as he stepped through, and it was obvious that he really, really didn’t want to be here. He was unarmed by necessity, probably a good thing, because if he stood any straighter he might snap like an overtaxed rubber band. His black notebook was flat against his palm, and he sat down on one of the chairs, moving it from hand to hand. It was filled with what research Arthur had been able to pull together before arriving and on the way here. It wasn’t a lot, not nearly what Arthur was used to working with. Arthur didn’t have a plan of execution, either. All he knew was that they sure as hell better not depend on Dick. He waited for Eames to say something without looking at him.
Eames was dressed in rather bright salmon, buttons down the front and likely a size too snug. His trousers were grey. His shoes were black. And he looked slightly concerned about this entire affair. Arthur’s appearance, looking every bit like an escapee from a fashion show in the middle of the desert, made Eames feel immediately better about everything altogether, and he clapped Dick on the shoulder in a show of much more faith than he’d demonstrated toward the man before that moment. “Dick, darling, this is Arthur. Do ignore his temper; he’s rather put out with me,” Eames assured Dick, who looked about as oblivious as he had moments earlier.
“Arthur,” Eames said, focusing entirely on the scowling man in the bright shirt, “Dick is sending us to the beach, I believe,” which even Eames thought was a questionable location, but there it was. “I’ve ensured there is a mirror present,” he added, because he knew that would be necessary, based on his prior failures. “There could hardly be many hiding places for a safe on a beach, after all,” he said, trying to spin it more positively. And, rather, he was less concerned. Arthur was there, after all, and Eames was quite content to let Arthur do the thinking.
Arthur directed his gaze toward Dick, his look a solid lance of undisguised incredulity undiminished by the glasses that he suddenly put back on. The light even in the low tent hurt. “There’s nowhere to hide from projections on a beach. We’re going to be sitting ducks.” (That was Arthur, ever the positive one, ever the sunshine and unexpected flexibility in every job.) The black book smacked on the heel of Arthur’s palm, like a teacher with a ruler.
Dick explained, with quite a lot of West Coast inflection, that he was setting up a maze with surfboards and beach huts. He sounded quite pleased with his own witticism, and Eames merely settled into the chair and waited for the conversation to end so he could be connected to the PASIV. Eames watched Arthur’s notebook slap against his palm, and he couldn’t help but smile. The man was rather attractive when he was being ridiculously competent, Eames was willing to admit, and his gaze traveled from Arthur’s heel to his shoulder with slow intention. He knew Arthur would notice the perusal (it was rather impossible not to, you see), but he followed through all the same.
Arthur noticed. Arthur noticed everything Eames did, and he was blatant about it where he had not been before. He did not, however, look as if he was playing the game like he was supposed to. No irritation, for one; he just turned his head away, freezing every muscle in his upper body in the unnatural line of someone pretending something didn’t exist, when it most clearly did. “A city I have a chance of knowing would have been better,” Arthur said, chewing on his lower lip. “But if I don’t know it, he won’t.” He glanced blindly at the tent wall, then back. “And what do you plan to do once we find him?” Arthur asked the air above Eames’ head.
“Get the combination and find the safe, darling. No one’s managed yet,” Eames replied, still continuing his annoyingly intimate appraisal. Eames was rather good at multitasking, unlike Arthur, and he had no issue listening while he looked. Granted, Eames wasn’t a planner, and nothing he was saying required a great deal of thought. “They’ve patterns for the dreamers. I suspect it’s why they only allow three gos. Each one makes it easier than the last. Is our friend coming along?” he asked of Dick, who finally realized this might not be a given, and who started protesting about his share of the take, as criminals did.
Arthur was doing his best to pretend Eames was not Eames. Maybe Dom, someone innocuous and distracted enough to need protection. Maybe a little stupid, too. Or a lot stupid. Other than the idiocy of the so-called architect across from him, Arthur’s primary worry was that his emotions were going to get them all killed. He looked over Eames’ head again, frowning. He spoke over Dick’s protests. “What do you mean, ‘patterns for the dreamers’?”
“They only have a certain number of dreamers for this gauntlet, darling, and people talk, though they shouldn’t.” Eames didn’t talk. He knew the price of receiving information was too high in a venue such as this, especially when information gathered from a failed dream might mean victory for someone else. He glanced at Dick, then back at Arthur, because he wasn’t going to continue the conversation if their new friend wouldn’t be joining them. “He can have the cut without coming,” he told Arthur, leaving the decision to Arthur. It was rather Arthur’s job, Eames thought, to make that choice.
It was easier to protect one than two. “You can stay. Thanks for your contribution, bro.” It was a very distinctly patterned appellation, and certainly not complimentary. Arthur ignored everything else the man had to say. Again to the air above Eames: “If he’s not coming then one of us is going to build it?” Arthur looked doubtful. He could construct, he just wasn’t as great as it as an architect with only that on his mind. “And since you’re about as stable as a spinning top, then that’s me. You really go for this beach idea?”
“He’s already taught me his beach,” Eames explained, because he wasn’t about to go into a dream knowing nothing, after all. He wasn’t a novice. “Now, do sit down and stop fretting,” he said and, admittedly, he’d done this twice already. He was nowhere near as worried as Arthur was, and he had far more faith in their abilities than Arthur did. But Arthur worrying was what made him terribly good at what he did. Impossible, but good. “The dreamer is behind the canvas. Do sit down and let Dick get us started, yes?” Eames almost waggled a brow. Perhaps he did, a little. “And, darling, do envision proper beach attire.”
Arthur’s eyes widened slightly to take in Eames’ face without actually looking right at it. “Oh, God,” he said. It sounded even more American than the drawling surfer. He touched his hairline, a gesture that probably replaced a boyish habit of running his hands through his hair. Arthur took one of the slightly reclining seats, wishing he had a gun. He’d just feel better if he had a gun, that’s all. Maybe more than one gun. He tried to impart how easy it would be to shoot Dick if he dared do anything to screw this up; Arthur had enough to worry about. He was going to walk into this without even knowing the fucking map. Great.
Eames wasn’t as concerned with maps. It was, in some cases, a liability. But it was a beach, and Arthur was right about one thing - there was nothing complicated about a beach. As far as architecture went, it was rather unimpressive, and Eames was trusting himself to see variations that might lead them in the right direction. As for planning, that wasn’t what this was about. Arthur was simply going to need to let go some of that steely insistence on logic and rules. He touched one gun-calloused finger to the back of Arthur’s hand, and he allowed the dream to pull him under.
The beach was rather impressive, as far as beaches went. It was vast, to begin with, and it was almost unbelievably crowded. Not a speck of sand was unclaimed, and the water was equally filled with children and adults. There were, as Dick promised, beach huts dotting the sand, and Eames rather hoped they wouldn’t need to check them all, as the constructs would surely notice. The surfboards made a simpler maze, and Eames tugged convenient sunglasses over his eyes and looked about for Arthur. He rather expected to find him easily, somewhere in a suit and tie, sand in his shoes, and he looked for precisely that as he cut through the crowd in salmon boardshorts and black sandals.
Arthur looked down at his bare toes as he saw Eames approach and scowled. “White sand. I think Dick was thinking California, not... Bermuda. Or wherever.” Arthur glanced around, watching the patterns of the people around him. He was simply too pale to wander along this beach and pretend he belonged. The yellow-print Hawaiian shirt he wore was something that seemed best attributed to Eames, and may even have been modeled after something equally, if not exactly, as hideous in the man’s closet. Over his shoulder he had a canvas duffle bag out of Ralph Lauren’s Polo catalog, and padding kept whatever was inside from rattling. Arthur’s best shot was to move randomly and yet keep Eames in sight--if that was possible through the absolute rat’s nest of his hair.
“Arthur, that is really a stunning look for you,” Eames said as he approached in far better spirits than he’d been in days. Eames was tattoos all over and skin that had lost its British pallor ages ago. He was, perhaps, a bit too broad for someone who spent a great deal of time lying on the sand, but it didn’t bother him in the slightest. “In the train,” he said quietly, moving forward with a motion of his hand, “it was a young girl, the dreamer. In the boat, I believe it was a young boy.” There were similarities there, of course, but they could be only coincidences, and it was hard to tell. “Our game plan, darling?” he asked, looking over at Arthur’s Hawaiian shirt with a very entertained smirk. Even if they died here, it would still be worth it at this point.
Arthur glanced once at Eames’ body--chest to crotch, back again and then away--and didn’t look back again. He went back to watching the movement of the crowd. Projections would have no direction unless they made a mistake, and then they would become cohesive. The patterns would be military in origin if the dreamer was trained, more chaotic but in one direction, like a wave, if not. Arthur took a couple steps back, providing a certain cushion of distance between himself and the man he was protecting in just the way he had with Evan in Las Vegas. “If you think round three is also likely to feature the dreamer in childhood, and we’re looking for a numerical code, then we’re going to need something young children have that also has numbers. T-shirt print, maybe a handheld video game, sandcastles, toys, something.”
“And where is the safe, darling?” Eames asked, and he thought it was rather endearing, the way Arthur acted like he required protecting, when he was much more competent in the brute force aspect of their work than Arthur was. “Arthur,” he said calmly, moving along and idly glancing at the children and adults they passed, “have you forgotten that I’m the one with the longer track record when it comes to shooting people?” he asked, an almost-smile on his lips. Oh, Eames was certainly enjoying himself. They were being timed, of course, but Eames acted like they had all the time in the world and, after they passed a beach hut, he grabbed that ridiculous Hawaiian shirt and shoved Arthur toward the structure, mouth slanting over Arthur’s with enough possession to make it seem like more than the distraction it was. He pushed Arthur into the cool darkness of the hut, and he grinned in the shadows. “Privacy,” he explained.
The strain of the job made Arthur more efficient, but the presence of Eames was working like too much caffeine during an all-nighter. “Do your fucking job and we won’t need to shoot people,” Arthur said, testily. He was aware that Eames thought he was perfectly capable of protecting himself, but the purpose of a point man was so that the other members of the team could focus on their roles. Eames wasn’t supposed to protect himself. (Arthur would also contend that Eames’ manner of protecting himself was not one conducive to actually achieving Extraction, anyway.)
Arthur did not resist the sudden sideways shove into the musty-smelling hut, his skin striping with the white sun that glinted off the sand and made it through the dried palm leaves. The automatic tip of his chin to relinquish his mouth to Eames seemed to be unthinking, as a second later he tore away. “I’m not doing this with you, Eames,” Arthur said, voice cracking, arm shaking as his grip on the bag turned white. They were trying to work. He was going to make this that difficult? Now?
Eames’ expression in the darkened hut was pure entertainment. “Arthur, it was the best way to get us free of the projections without drawing attention,” he said with perfect honesty. Two men dipping a beach hut without the pretense of privacy? That would certainly not go unnoticed, especially in a dream that was created to be especially hostile. But privacy, that was something couples sought in a place like this, and Eames had rather been thinking with his upstairs brain rather than his cock (for once). But, since Arthur had brought it up, Eames skated a palm along the front of that Hawaiian shirt as he continued. “A parent, do you think? A woman? I was thinking that would be be the best option, when things went poorly on the boat.”
For once, Arthur was not embarrassed that he had leapt to conclusions. He was wound too tight for that, and even Eames’ easy amusement and unhurried instinct for risk couldn’t make him relax. Arthur felt like coming was a mistake. He felt like he was not an asset but a liability. He felt too many things about Eames, and now he was in a beach hut with projections everywhere and a feeling like he couldn’t concentrate on what he was supposed to be concentrating on. He stepped back away from Eames’ hand on his chest, though it would take more than a step to get him out of Eames’ reach, especially in such close quarters. Arthur noticed the hut was dry, but not cool, and it made his skin itch being inside it. He tried to imagine what might convince a dreamer in childhood to give up a numeric code he or she didn’t even know they had. “I don’t know, Eames.” Arthur couldn’t remember the last time he’d said I don’t know on a job.
Eames’ expression sobered as he realized (finally) that Arthur truly had a problem with this. “Arthur?” he asked, and he sounded rather lost, because there were certain constants in his work career, and Arthur’s eternal professionalism was one of them. They were wasting time, of course, and standing still too long, which would undoubtedly draw attention to them, but this situation with Arthur seemed suddenly more pressing.
Arthur’s answer came through his teeth. “What?” He was watching the place they had come in, but his eyes kept moving, realizing that if anybody wanted to enter, they wouldn’t have to use the door. The result was a slow circle. “We need to move before they find us.”
“Rather,” Eames said, but he didn’t move. He was starting to feel unsettled, which was not the norm in regards to Arthur in work situations. He grabbed the other man’s arm, attempting to divert attention from the door, because the bloody door was suddenly insignificant. “Emotions do not complicate this, Arthur,” he said, because he worked with bloody emotions all the time, and there was no risk in it. If anything, it made the loss greater, and the determination equally more significant. It was, in Eames’ estimation, a good thing. “Not everyone turns out like Mal and Cobb, darling.”
Arthur was not feeling the good things. He was feeling a whole bunch of things, a lot of them anger, all overlaid with a really suicidal feeling like he could just walk into something and end it so he could wake up and have this be over. He twitched in Eames’ grip and gave him a really mad look, as if he couldn’t fathom the man. “This is exactly like that, Eames. Feelings get in the way and then the dream ends. Usually in a lot pain and sometimes blood.” The last was accompanied by a little shift of his shoulders, one after another. The bag swung from his grip.
Eames realized, just then, that bringing Arthur back for this, cajoling him into it, had been a rather terrible idea. He didn’t quite understand why, but he understood that much, at least. He put himself between Arthur and the door of the hut, and he reached for the bag. “You’ve a gun in there?” he asked simply.
Arthur tensed. It was a thing that could be felt, not seen. The white lines of the light made his eyes seem overbright. The Hawaiian shirt just lent an aura of madness to the scene. Arthur’s skin prickled. “No, Eames,” he said, sarcastically. “I brought daisies. Get out the door.” He could only think of one reason why Eames wanted a gun. He pulled the bag slightly back in a defensive position and then, in one movement, slung it over his shoulder so it was protected under one elbow.
Eames blocked the door entirely, and he merely held out a hand. “A gun, Arthur.”
Arthur didn’t move. “I’m not leaving you here by yourself.”
“I’ll take us both out. Now hand the bloody thing over,” Eames insisted, and it was rather obvious that he’d no intention of budging.
The sudden implication of failure disturbed Arthur. “We’re here. We might as well try. Die now or die later.”
Eames had no intention of going through the motions if he wasn’t going to win this, and he jerked his thumb back toward the beach beyond the door. “If we go back there, darling, it’s to win. If that isn’t an option, then I’m not walking back out there. Now, your advice on gender and age, or you hand me a weapon.” And that was Eames at work, undoubtedly.
Arthur hesitated. He wet chapped lips and renewed the bag on his shoulder as he thought. A deep breath in, and one out. “How young you think the dreamer’s going to be?”
“The last two were, I suspect, just shy of ten,” Eames said, watching the other man in the dark hut. The Hawaiian shirt rather overpowered everything else, but Eames could still make out features, and he was attempting to determine if Arthur’s head was back in this game. For the first time since this mess began, he wished for Dom. Truly and honestly wished for the other man’s presence.
Deep breath. In, out. “Try the mother. You’re the best, but I can’t watch you if you’re ten. I don’t exactly look like the Babysitter’s Club.” The chaos of his hair, long enough in the front that it did strange things to his silhouette, made Arthur look young, lost. Such a sight did not encourage confidence, which was why he always slicked it back.
“I wasn’t going to attempt a ten-year-old, darling,” Eames assured the lost looking man in front of him. And it was more than just the messy hair that made him wonder how wise this undertaking was. Eames was always the first to pull out of a job if it was too dangerous or unlikely to work. It rather bothered Dom, but Eames had little interest in putting himself through hell if they’d no chance. But Arthur was being impossibly stubborn, and he was less inclined to argue about work related matters than other matters. He’d said his peace and, as far as he was concerned, Arthur wanted to continue. “There’s a mirror three huts up. You’ll cover?”
Arthur yanked his chin upward, not in acknowledgment but in a failed attempt to get his hair out of face. He tried to steel himself. It would get easier as soon as Eames did not look like Eames. “Yeah, no problem.” He unzipped the cloth bag, but he didn’t pull anything out, not yet. He waited for Eames to precede him out the door-shaped opening of the hut.
Eames didn’t argue. He pushed open the door to the hut and, as expected, the projections waiting for them were in the dozens and simply standing there, staring at the door. It was the kind of thing one expected from horror movies, but Eames had stopped being concerned with projections years ago, and he merely pushed through them, knowing it would take a moment for them to decide whether to continue waiting for the man still in the hut, or whether to follow him. He didn’t look back as he proceeded toward the other hut, which would have weapons and a mirror inside. If Arthur couldn’t hold them off between that moment and the moment when Eames became someone else, well, it would be a rather early day, wouldn’t it?
With a grunt and a snap of breaking branches, Arthur burst out of the back of the hut, black gun in his right hand, finger on the trigger. He shot the first man that lunged for him, a blank-eyed projection with a beach tan and bright green shorts, and a split-second later something inside the hut went off like the Fourth of July. The hut suddenly went up in flames, and every hostile projection within a half mile oriented toward it. For a frozen moment, the beach was a sea of turned heads and staring eyes. Arthur broke through the crowd before it could adjust, choosing a path parallel to that of Eames, allowing the hut to burn behind like a little beacon. The projections were already aware of their presence, and something to draw their attention was a good tactic. Arthur hid the gun in his bag, shoved his hand through his hair, and forced himself into a slow walk, ducking in and out of another hut. The projections were staring around now, all of them stopping occasionally to look at the flaming hut in the white sand. Arthur did the same, choosing a hut at an angle to that Eames had chosen, waiting for the other man to appear--though probably not looking like a man.
Eames knew they were doomed as soon as something exploded behind him. This job required more finesse, and it was entirely his fault for dragging Arthur into something without full bloody explanation. At this rate, he'd be taking low-pay jobs for month to get over three failures on this gauntlet, and there was nothing he could bloody do about it now. He'd no choice but to run, and so he ran. He didn't stop until he reached the hunt he'd indicated, the one with the mirror, but it was not empty when he ducked inside. A small boy was huddled in the corner, and despite his understanding that this was no true child, Eames couldn't bring himself to kill the child or change his appearance in front of him. Something else exploded outside, and it wasn't as if they had any true chance at success anyway.
"The explosions will stop soon," Eames informed the boy, crouching down in front of him in the darkness and giving the child a smile. It said something of Eames, perhaps, that he always did well with children. Possibly, it was too many years spent talking to inner-children during his work, possibly it was just who he was, but he winked at the boy, and the boy relaxed slightly. "I've a friend who's making a bloody mess of everything," he explained of Arthur, a worried glance over his shoulder. "I expect he'll come around directly, and we'll all get to leave this place. Would you like that?" he asked, smiling as the little boy nodded with enough force to make his floppy brown hair fall into his eyes. "How did you get here, darling?"
Eames only half listened to the little boy's tale. He was too caught up in the audible signals from outside the hut. Despite what he'd told the boy, he knew Arthur would not approach the hut. If anything, he'd stray farther from it, but this was all rather pointless now. Whoever they sought would be too aware, too protected by the constructs at this point. And so, Eames stood, and he held his hand out to the boy. "Shall we go fetch him?" he asked.
They could argue about tactics later, if they didn’t have more to argue about. Arthur did finesse, sometimes, but it was usually with a very exact plan and exact timing with people he trusted. But he was still the best, even at his worst. The vast majority of the projections were still staring at the irregularity of the burning hut several rows away in the maze, and Arthur had on a baseball cap and a new tight t-shirt that was even more blinding white than the sand around him. He looked like a horrible American tourist, but then, so did the people around him. He still had the bag over his shoulder, but now it was hanging across his chest. The tortoiseshell glasses were the same ones he had been wearing in Benalla, and before he caught sight of Eames, he’d been gathering beach towels casually, spreading some in the wrong place and tossing others into huts to confuse the path and pattern of the dream. A bright orange square trailed along behind him as he stopped in his path when Eames reappeared.
Eames gave Arthur's trailing orange square an entertained look, and he ducked his head and whispered something in the child's ear that made the little boy giggle. Admittedly, befriending the apparent construct seemed to help, rather than hinder, as they were no longer being pursued. Though the boy looked around at the burning landscape with confused brown eyes that he turned on Arthur once they were close enough to him. "You killed everyone?" he asked sadly.
Arthur looked at the boy, then at Eames, and then back over his shoulder. Pursuit seemed confused, and then dissipated. Interesting. “Did you make a friend?” he asked Eames, quirking a brow at Eames before dropping his chin to look at the boy. “No, not everyone,” Arthur said, not smiling because it was hard to joke about killing people with a tiny boy-like construct. ...And also Arthur rarely smiled.
"That wasn't very nice," the little boy said, and Eames quirked a brow at Arthur. That was rather interesting for a construct.
"No, it wasn't," Eames agreed with the child, shrugging a broad shoulder at Arthur. "But they were trying to harm us," he logicked, which perhaps wasn't terribly good logic at all, but it was truth, and Eames had little experience in talking down to children simply because they were younger. Plain words, he'd learned, worked best. "But Arthur will take us wherever you were heading, darling, and he won't even harm anyone along the way. Isn't that so, Arthur?"
Arthur’s surprised brown eyes were up and waiting for Eames’ thoughtful look. Many constructs displayed qualities of the subconscious, or said things that the subject might expect them to say, but this was quite a lot of independent thought for a construct. “Uh,” Arthur said, clearly only just returning to the conversation. “Sure.” He hoisted the bag a little farther up on his shoulder self-consciously, but nodded. He looked again at the boy. “What’s your name?”
"Jimmy," the little boy answered, his expression a little too old, a little too knowing for a construct of a boy of his age. He blinked up at Arthur, as if he wasn't sure about the man with the bag on his shoulder, and he pointed at said bag a moment later. "What's in there?"
“Sunscreen,” Arthur said, deadpan.
Eames, who was more forgiving of constructs than Arthur as a rule, found nothing in the boy's words to indicate any higher intelligence, and he wrote him off for a construct and tugged on the boy's hand and pulled him toward the edge of the beach, where white-slat beach houses were just visible at the edge of the dream. "If they're hiding something, darling, it's likely there," he said, remembering the boy a second later. "I suspect that's where you're mother is," he added, smiling down at Jimmy, whose expression lightened after a maelstrom that Eames had not seen in regards to the "they" in the first sentence.
The little boy ran toward the houses, and Eames looked over at Arthur. "Shall we? Or do we end this here, Arthur?" he asked, the question one he'd intended to ask in the hut minutes earlier.
“After you,” Arthur said, somewhat grimly, his eyes on the bobbing figure of the boy as he ran off, his heels flicking small cascades of glittering white sand to either side. Behind the sunglasses, even Arthur’s eyes were beginning to water. He took up that position at Eames’ left heel, protecting the other man’s weaker side rather than his own. He was alert, but he didn’t take anything out of the bag. “Who is the kid?” Arthur asked, as the two of them ate up the distance toward the white houses with long strides.
"A construct that was hiding in the beach hut. I couldn't very well change my appearance while he watched," Eames said, and he followed after the boy without any of the child's speed. They seemed safe enough now, an effect of the boy thinking they belonged, and he looked over at Arthur a moment as he walked. "We should talk about this," he said, and Eames wasn't terribly fond of talking, but it seemed important just now. "Nothing's changed, Arthur." And what he was referring to was anyone's guess, but perhaps that was intentional. He'd trouble understanding what Arthur's problem was, but he felt certain there was a problem. He sighed.
“Constructs don’t hide,” Arthur said, simply, his eyes still focused through the brown glass in the distance where the boy had gone. He didn’t hurry his pace, didn’t look behind. His dark eyes flashed, visible only because Eames was at the right angle to see them move, and then refocused. “Nothing’s changed for you,” he corrected. “Congratulations.”
Eames stopped dead, and fuck the bloody constructs and the bloody dream. He grabbed for the bag over Arthur's shoulder, the movement quicker than should be possible with his size, and he yanked the zipper as he did it, feeling inside for a weapon. "That's bloody it. Done, Arthur. This is work. It isn't about your unjustified bloody fucking anger." The remaining projections looked up from their beach activities, and the little boy stopped in the distance in front of a very white beach house.
This time, Arthur let him take it. He had time, between the sudden halt of forward movement and the turn in his direction, but he let it pass him by. The pull of the bag over his head had dislodged the sunglasses, and he automatically pulled them away from his face before they fell. His eyes were flat, evasive and without focus. He was no longer watching the boy. Arthur’s gaze fell to the bag and then back up to Eames’ face. He stood still on the wide, white beach, and waited.
Eames' finger was quick and calluses as it released the safety, and he lifted the gun and pointed it at Arthur's forehead. A quick tug on the trigger - not a full click, but a mere press and the beginning of one - and then he turned the gun around without warning and blew his own fucking head off.
Arthur didn’t even close his eyes when the gun was pointed his way. The number of times he’d died this way... and it wasn’t as painless as everybody thought it would be. There was always this split-second--but it never came, not this time. Arthur had just enough time to avert his eyes, and he heard the body fall. There wasn’t a lot of time, and the gun was right there, but Arthur didn’t retrieve it. He left that one, and then, not glancing back to see if the projections were in pursuit, he picked up his bag and took off at a jog toward the house. He felt the same about the dream as he had before; die now or die later, at least see it until you’re dead. Unless above, Eames decided a kick was more appropriate. With the sand and the body behind him, he came to a stop at the foot of the white house. He looked for numbers. An address, a radio station playing, anything.
The door was open, and the numbers along the frame were weathered black - 567. Inside, and just beyond the partially open wood, the little boy's feet were visible. He was seated on the floor, and he was humming a child's song, something cheery in the echo-gloom of the house, where the only light was the sunlight that filtered past white-wisp curtains in the glassless windows. If the door was pushed open, it would become obvious that the boy was playing with an ornate box, something made of metal and inlaid with even thicker metal at the hinges and weak spots.
The numbers weren’t familiar with Arthur. There couldn’t be many combinations of three digits unless one started working mathematically, and certainly five, six and seven, being consecutive, weren’t going to match a safe. When he moved cautiously into the room, however, tasting the sunlight that made it through the sandy curtains, he saw the box. He stood there a moment, somewhat at a lost--not because of the box, but because of the boy.
You could have knocked Arthur down with a feather when Cory spoke in the back of his mind.
After a short hesitation, Arthur moved forward and crouched to sit on his heels next to the boy. “Hey, Jimmy. What’s in the box?”
Jimmy looked up, big brown eyes blinking curiously, as if he hadn't expected Arthur to come. If the child had seen Eames shoot himself on the beach, there was no indication of it, since he peered around Arthur as if he expected the other man to join them at any moment. "Where's your friend?" he asked, and then he looked down at the box and poked it with his fingers. After a second, he held it out for Arthur to look at (but not to take, as his chubby fingers held it tight). "I found it," he explained, and the combination on the edge became visible with the proffering of the small container. It required six numbers, not three, and not the more common four. "But it won't open up."
Arthur’s expression of regret and fatigue was clear, and he didn’t hide it. Eames wasn’t around to see. “He left. We keep fighting about things,” he confessed, finding it easy to do to a projection that looked so small and helpless. Arthur ran his fingers over the edge of the box as it was offered to him, but he didn’t attempt to take it. It wouldn’t do him any good if he didn’t know the combination, anyway. “I think you need to have the numbers to open the lock. Do you know what they are?” Six digits could imply a date, but without background information on the subject, there were too many combinations. (Even if you assumed no digit could be repeated, that made for over 362,000 combinations, by Arthur’s rough estimate.)
"My mommy left because she and daddy screamed too," Jimmy explained, and he looked at the box with the care of a very serious adult in a tiny little body. "There are six of these things," he said, pointing where the numbers were currently defaulted to 567567. "Those numbers?" he asked, and he looked up at Arthur, as if Arthur had all the answers to all the questions. But he didn't wait for an answer before climbing to his feet, using whatever part of Arthur he could reach as leverage to stand. "Do you want to see my room?" he asked, letting the box fall heavily like a forgotten and unimportant thing, and then running up the stairs without awaiting a response for the second time in mere minutes.
Five-six-seven meant nothing to Arthur, but then, he was not the subject. He was not the dreamer, either. He was just here, trying to win a game because he thought it likely Eames would never play such a game with him again, and at least it could end on a good note. It was utterly illogical. Arthur pushed his hair out of his eyes, feeling the places the ends had brushed itch on his cheek and chin. He glanced up at the boy, startled by his movement, and picked up the box where it had been dropped. Arthur pushed at the lid to see if the default did anything, drifting toward the stairs without thinking.
The default did nothing, and the door at the top of the stairs was open. The boy inside had changed, however, but that wasn't the most memorable thing. The room was filled in by Arthur's subconscious, a perfect replica of Arthur's own room as a child from the ages of five-to-seven, the indiscrepancies of multiple years visible as strange dream items that didn't quite match up - bookshelves that were half one way, half another, for example. The boy, whose back was to the door as he sat on the room's floor, had messily curly hair now, dark and stubborn, and he was playing with something in front of him that was not immediately visible. "Five, six, seven," the child repeated to himself, childishly sing-song, and he didn't turn to look at the man at the door.
Arthur stared around at the room from the doorway. So maybe the Dick the Architect was a little better than Arthur gave him credit for; a room like this would speak to whoever came into it, a perfect place to house a subject whose nature was unknown. Its changeable nature reminded him of Eames, and Arthur went around the edge of the room, box under his arm, touching dusty green army men and a tiny replica of a civil war cannon. His fingers slid over storybooks and VHS tapes in their worn plastic covers, and finally he settled again on the floor next to the boy. “Eight, nine, ten?” he asked. He balanced the box on his knee and absently clicked in “234567.”
The boy turned his head, and it was certainly Arthur - how Arthur remembered himself at that age. Small Arthur shook his head, and he had a copy of the metal box on his lap, the numbers still set to 567567. "It's years," the little boy offered, and he poked at the numbers on Arthur's box with his fingers. "Just like the room. Five, six, seven," he explained, and he did it with an exasperated tone that would be better suited to the ever-logical Arthur now, as an adult. "Five, six, seven," he repeated, and there was a sense that the dream thought itself very smart, that it was unconcerned that Arthur would ever figure out the secret it held. The little boy reached for a green army man, and he placed it on his own version of the metal box and walked it across the lid.
It was very disconcerting to look at oneself this way. Arthur had never felt himself to be a particularly attractive person, but as a child he noted a certain pudgy charm that was inescapable. He smiled. “That makes sense,” he said, moving his foot so that the plastic parachute the army man dragged behind him wouldn’t get caught on his toe. “So how do you get yours open?” he asked, pointing at his younger self’s box. Six digits didn’t allow for the numerals of three years, which was all he associated with age, not unless they were truncated into two digits per year. Seemed unlikely. Arthur tipped his box up and examined it again, spinning the little dials under his thumbs. Something thumped downstairs.
The child looked toward the door, and then he looked at Arthur with somber, adult eyes. "You're running out of time," he said, and it was almost apologetic. But the question was a good one, and it made the little boy's mouth quirk up just a little at the corners. "I open mine by remembering things," he said, and he touched two of the dials and said "five," then proceeded to do the same with six and seven. He turned expectant eyes on Arthur, then, as if willing him to understand.
“I know,” Arthur said, unconcerned about his time running out. Time was always running out. It was just a dream, and in the worst case scenario, he would wake up, and have to deal with Eames. Or maybe he would just be gone...
Arthur ran his fingers over the numbers again. The boy’s hint wasn’t much of one, in his opinion. He couldn’t think of anything in particular that made him think of the numbers, and his childhood was blended all together into a long string of school and empty rooms. When he’d been five, he’d started the army men collection, and six he’d wanted another kid’s blue lunchbox with G.I. Joe on it, and seven was when he’d started doing mock battles with his men based on historical locations. He hadn’t thought about that in ages.
The boy didn't seem to understand why it wasn't a problem, why Arthur didn't feel the sense of urgency that came with the footfalls downstairs. He gave Arthur a look and then, with a guilty glance toward the door, he began to spin his own numbers. "Zero-Six. My little sister was born in June when I was five," he said, and the banging got louder, footfalls heavy on the stairs. "One-One. My daddy left in November when I was six. One-Two. My mommy died just before Christmas." He looked up, eyes wide. "But you're not small like I am," he said, and the room changed, and it wasn't a child's room anymore. It was the flat in Paris, and banging came from the closed door over Arthur's shoulder.
Arthur ignored the door. He looked around at his flat, frowning that anyone else should see it that he had not allowed to do so, and then looked back at the box. Dates were important things. The death of loved ones, the start of a vacation, a special birthday. Arthur didn’t have any of those things. He spun in the boy’s numbers, “061112,” because those were the only numbers he’d heard so far that weren’t his own, and he wasn’t the subject or the dreamer. Someone was kicking at the door now, a clumsy roar of shoving and voices. “No,” Arthur told the boy. “I’m not.”
The little boy sighed a deep sigh. "Who am I?" he asked, as the door shook.
Arthur just blinked at him, and smiled a little at the look on his small face. “I don’t know. You look kind of like me, but that’s not too different in... uh. This kind of place.”
The little boy groaned, and the exasperated sound was very reminiscent of Arthur's own sounds of frustration. "No," he said, and he pointed at the bowing door. "What are they? I'm not them. What am I?" He pouted then, a very seven-year-old pout. "Your friend would have been better at this." Which was true, because logic did not apply here, in this ever changing room that was Arthur's apartment in France.
Arthur’s eyes became dark, even more tired than before. “You’re a dream,” he said. It sounded cruel as he said it. He doubted Eames would have been better at “this,” whatever it was. He imagined Eames would have just destroyed the box by now. When in doubt, shoot it.
The door slammed in, and the boy disappeared, as if he had never been part of the dream at all, which he hadn't, really. He was only a product of the dreamer's mind, and the dreamer was standing in the middle of the room still, in his French apartment. Something rolled to Arthur's feet. Small, metallic and cylindrical, and the dream went up in an explosion of blinding light, waking Arthur along with it.