Re: [Woods: Atticus & Eames]
Eames didn't think of himself as anything but mundane. He lived solidly in the world, he had the scars, the bullet-wounds to prove it. That he dreamed was happenstance, a quirk of chemistry and training and a mind that closed around the details of people like an unapologetic, greedy steel trap. That he dreamed was something altogether different, the byproduct of having once loved a woman who had dissolved like wet tissue on contact with a god. Eames didn't know that, he knew Janus's approbation and the faint smell of scorched earth. Runes, that was different. That was arcane, with history. Eames didn't have history. He'd written himself on a blank piece of paper.
But he would have agreed with the man. Happiness wasn't sentiment, sentiment was like a hot-air balloon, it could soar high but it was flimsy without ballast, without substance. "I just know jealous husbands. Or wives," Eames said, distractedly, "I've not thought about evolutionary jealousy." He looked, for a moment, sharply interested. It was novel, Eames having not considered an aspect of the human condition.
But it was the best, Atticus leaving. He might have dismantled all the surveillance equipment but the property was still not the refuge it looked. Eames cracked a grin, wide and irreverent. "Find me something exciting in your wanderings, darling. Let me know, I'll look it out. I'm not an isolationist by any means." He held out one large paw, again to shake.