FIC: High Hopes 4/7 || Arthur/Eames || NC-17
See PART ONE or MASTER POST for warnings etc.
Word Count for this part: ~1,400
*
IV: Bridges
It was ridiculous to miss someone he'd barely known, but Arthur managed to do just that. He supposed it made sense, in a twisted sort of way; when it came to Eames, his reactions had always been a bit off, as if sense and rationality were an unknown in any equation Eames was involved in.
As it was, Arthur never did quite get over Eames, always feeling that small, bittersweet pang at hearing his name, rare as it was -- but over time, he thought of Eames less, and his heart stopped jumping at every little mention of him. As months, then years passed without any contact with Eames apart from the occasional comment from Mal or Dom indicating he was still alive somewhere out there in the world, Arthur stopped missing what he'd never had in the first place; he grew up.
He soon understood that however fascinated he was with dream sharing, and for all the talent he did possess, he didn't have the same level of academic knowledge or scope of imagination as Dom and Mal. When he stopped to think about it, he realized he had no idea where his life was going, and as Dom and Mal became more and more focused on the theoretical, as well as each other, Arthur couldn't reconcile himself with being the third wheel in their lives anymore.
He joined the military.
In retrospect, neglecting to mention it to either Dom or Mal in a timely manner was, perhaps, not the smartest thing he'd ever done. Mal, despite her family connections and the fact that she was involved in a project that originated in and was still in large parts controlled by a branch of US military, fancied herself a bit of a rebel, and treated her fickle principles accordingly -- she didn't approve of Arthur signing his life away to the government, and spoke not a single word to him in months. Seeing as he was being run to the ground in basic training at the time, Arthur didn't really have the energy to care. Dom, heaven help him, wanted to talk about it. Being busy with being told what to do turned out to be useful with that as well.
Overall, Arthur liked being in the military more than he'd suspected he would, even if, during the first few years, he only had a chance to use a PASIV when he was on leave. He didn't attempt to make use of his connections to catch the attention of the people running the military side of the Project Somnacin, but at the age of twenty-three, after more than a year in black ops, Arthur found himself being involved anyway. He didn't try to find out if someone he knew had been pulling the strings -- he wasn't sure he wanted to know.
He ended up designing training levels with military architects and running teams through mazes filled with hostile projections, directing gruesome games of cat and mouse. He died, and saw others die, more times than he could count. After a while, it became such routine that even the most horrific deaths barely made him blink. He gained a bit of a reputation; considering that he was the one who spent the most time dealing with people getting shot and gutted and torn apart, Arthur had to wonder what they'd expected would happen.
The work took its toll on him, but some part of him was almost grateful for being forced to learn how to lock himself down and get better at wearing masks; he honed his compartmentalization skills until they shone, and didn't think about the pieces of himself he might be leaving behind.
-
Dom and Mal got married, and Phillipa was born -- not necessarily in that order. Arthur spent his twenty-fourth birthday with the Cobbs, letting their warm laughter, bickering and theoretical arguments ranging from layered dreaming to the qualities of different brands of baby wipes wash over him as he held Phillipa in his arms, careful like he'd never been before in his life.
He felt, almost, content.
-
A year later, he met Richard Hale who, smarmy overtones and all, was sort of regrettably Arthur's type.
Hale was not exactly what one would call an honest businessman, but he wasn't an outright crook, either. He was older than Arthur, and had both money and looks, all of which he was well aware of; he was a bit of an insufferable jerk when it came right down to it, but Arthur found himself enjoying his company nonetheless. What they had could hardly be called a relationship, but Arthur was fine with that. He didn't want what Dom and Mal had, not really. Love complicated everything; being with Hale was easy, and Arthur intended to hold on to that.
He wasn't happy, but he was at peace with his life and his choices, and couldn't find it in himself to complain. And then, late one night, he got a phone call.
Mal was dead, and Arthur's carefully constructed life fell apart like a house of cards.
-
Getting through the funeral (Mal's funeral -- Arthur still felt nauseous at the thought) was hard enough, but when it became clear that the police wasn't going to drop the investigation, and Dom took off instead of fighting the charges, Arthur realized that without him, Dom would self-destruct within a year, and that unless Arthur was willing to choose his career over Dom, he had no choice but to leave the military.
And so, within weeks of Dom fleeing the country, Arthur followed. Whether Dom wanted the company or not was irrelevant -- at the time, he needed looking after at least as much as his kids did, and Arthur wasn't about to just give up on him, even if it meant burning bridges he'd been building for years. Even if looking after him was a thankless task; unlike his kids, Dom was a grown up, and the best Arthur could do was attempt to make sure he ate from time to time and back him up when he started accepting increasingly inadvisable jobs.
After the first few months, Arthur was forced to take a solitary trip back to the states, for both their sakes. He had a breakdown in a bathroom stall in LAX, and instead of going to see Phillipa and James like he'd meant to, Arthur checked himself into a hotel and spent a week alternating between sleeping and staring at the ceiling.
-
As a result of Dom managing to not get himself killed in Arthur's absence, Arthur made a habit of taking off for short periods of time when he wasn't needed. It kept him from having another breakdown, even if it didn't make it any easier to deal with Dom, who became more and more closed off as time passed and Mal stayed dead, her shade becoming more vicious with each day Phillipa and James were out of reach.
Arthur started keeping a coded list of contacts, started tracking some people -- started tracking Eames after finding out he was still in the business, more sought after for his skills than ever. Arthur made sure to have other options whenever they needed a thief, a second extractor, a forger. The last one was the trickiest to find a good substitute for, and sometimes he failed, but Dom didn't push it, and they got by.
Months passed, and they fell into a routine of sorts -- things didn't get better, but they didn't get visibly worse, either. Sometimes, unable to sleep and staring at the ceiling of yet another hotel room, Arthur thought he could almost feel the world watching, waiting, holding its breath. He knew it would be impossible to maintain this uneasy truce for long -- sooner or later, for better or for worse, something would tip the scales, and Arthur couldn't even begin to wonder where that would leave them.
-
There was nothing about the Cobol job to set it apart from a dozen other dangerous, foolhardy offers Dom had accepted since starting to work on the wrong side of the law, except, maybe, that it was that little bit more dangerous and foolhardy than the job before it -- but that had been the norm ever since they'd started gaining a reputation in the business, and Arthur didn't give it too much thought.
Then the job fell through, Nash sold them out, their mark manipulated Dom into accepting an impossible job, and Dom said --
"We don't just need a thief. We need a forger."
And Arthur didn't bother trying to argue about it, knowing the cause was lost; there was no list that could provide him with a name that wasn't Eames', because for a job like this, nothing less than the best would do -- and there was no denying that Eames, ever the opposite of what Arthur needed him to be, was the best.
***
V: The Box
Word Count for this part: ~1,400
*
IV: Bridges
It was ridiculous to miss someone he'd barely known, but Arthur managed to do just that. He supposed it made sense, in a twisted sort of way; when it came to Eames, his reactions had always been a bit off, as if sense and rationality were an unknown in any equation Eames was involved in.
As it was, Arthur never did quite get over Eames, always feeling that small, bittersweet pang at hearing his name, rare as it was -- but over time, he thought of Eames less, and his heart stopped jumping at every little mention of him. As months, then years passed without any contact with Eames apart from the occasional comment from Mal or Dom indicating he was still alive somewhere out there in the world, Arthur stopped missing what he'd never had in the first place; he grew up.
He soon understood that however fascinated he was with dream sharing, and for all the talent he did possess, he didn't have the same level of academic knowledge or scope of imagination as Dom and Mal. When he stopped to think about it, he realized he had no idea where his life was going, and as Dom and Mal became more and more focused on the theoretical, as well as each other, Arthur couldn't reconcile himself with being the third wheel in their lives anymore.
He joined the military.
In retrospect, neglecting to mention it to either Dom or Mal in a timely manner was, perhaps, not the smartest thing he'd ever done. Mal, despite her family connections and the fact that she was involved in a project that originated in and was still in large parts controlled by a branch of US military, fancied herself a bit of a rebel, and treated her fickle principles accordingly -- she didn't approve of Arthur signing his life away to the government, and spoke not a single word to him in months. Seeing as he was being run to the ground in basic training at the time, Arthur didn't really have the energy to care. Dom, heaven help him, wanted to talk about it. Being busy with being told what to do turned out to be useful with that as well.
Overall, Arthur liked being in the military more than he'd suspected he would, even if, during the first few years, he only had a chance to use a PASIV when he was on leave. He didn't attempt to make use of his connections to catch the attention of the people running the military side of the Project Somnacin, but at the age of twenty-three, after more than a year in black ops, Arthur found himself being involved anyway. He didn't try to find out if someone he knew had been pulling the strings -- he wasn't sure he wanted to know.
He ended up designing training levels with military architects and running teams through mazes filled with hostile projections, directing gruesome games of cat and mouse. He died, and saw others die, more times than he could count. After a while, it became such routine that even the most horrific deaths barely made him blink. He gained a bit of a reputation; considering that he was the one who spent the most time dealing with people getting shot and gutted and torn apart, Arthur had to wonder what they'd expected would happen.
The work took its toll on him, but some part of him was almost grateful for being forced to learn how to lock himself down and get better at wearing masks; he honed his compartmentalization skills until they shone, and didn't think about the pieces of himself he might be leaving behind.
-
Dom and Mal got married, and Phillipa was born -- not necessarily in that order. Arthur spent his twenty-fourth birthday with the Cobbs, letting their warm laughter, bickering and theoretical arguments ranging from layered dreaming to the qualities of different brands of baby wipes wash over him as he held Phillipa in his arms, careful like he'd never been before in his life.
He felt, almost, content.
-
A year later, he met Richard Hale who, smarmy overtones and all, was sort of regrettably Arthur's type.
Hale was not exactly what one would call an honest businessman, but he wasn't an outright crook, either. He was older than Arthur, and had both money and looks, all of which he was well aware of; he was a bit of an insufferable jerk when it came right down to it, but Arthur found himself enjoying his company nonetheless. What they had could hardly be called a relationship, but Arthur was fine with that. He didn't want what Dom and Mal had, not really. Love complicated everything; being with Hale was easy, and Arthur intended to hold on to that.
He wasn't happy, but he was at peace with his life and his choices, and couldn't find it in himself to complain. And then, late one night, he got a phone call.
Mal was dead, and Arthur's carefully constructed life fell apart like a house of cards.
-
Getting through the funeral (Mal's funeral -- Arthur still felt nauseous at the thought) was hard enough, but when it became clear that the police wasn't going to drop the investigation, and Dom took off instead of fighting the charges, Arthur realized that without him, Dom would self-destruct within a year, and that unless Arthur was willing to choose his career over Dom, he had no choice but to leave the military.
And so, within weeks of Dom fleeing the country, Arthur followed. Whether Dom wanted the company or not was irrelevant -- at the time, he needed looking after at least as much as his kids did, and Arthur wasn't about to just give up on him, even if it meant burning bridges he'd been building for years. Even if looking after him was a thankless task; unlike his kids, Dom was a grown up, and the best Arthur could do was attempt to make sure he ate from time to time and back him up when he started accepting increasingly inadvisable jobs.
After the first few months, Arthur was forced to take a solitary trip back to the states, for both their sakes. He had a breakdown in a bathroom stall in LAX, and instead of going to see Phillipa and James like he'd meant to, Arthur checked himself into a hotel and spent a week alternating between sleeping and staring at the ceiling.
-
As a result of Dom managing to not get himself killed in Arthur's absence, Arthur made a habit of taking off for short periods of time when he wasn't needed. It kept him from having another breakdown, even if it didn't make it any easier to deal with Dom, who became more and more closed off as time passed and Mal stayed dead, her shade becoming more vicious with each day Phillipa and James were out of reach.
Arthur started keeping a coded list of contacts, started tracking some people -- started tracking Eames after finding out he was still in the business, more sought after for his skills than ever. Arthur made sure to have other options whenever they needed a thief, a second extractor, a forger. The last one was the trickiest to find a good substitute for, and sometimes he failed, but Dom didn't push it, and they got by.
Months passed, and they fell into a routine of sorts -- things didn't get better, but they didn't get visibly worse, either. Sometimes, unable to sleep and staring at the ceiling of yet another hotel room, Arthur thought he could almost feel the world watching, waiting, holding its breath. He knew it would be impossible to maintain this uneasy truce for long -- sooner or later, for better or for worse, something would tip the scales, and Arthur couldn't even begin to wonder where that would leave them.
-
There was nothing about the Cobol job to set it apart from a dozen other dangerous, foolhardy offers Dom had accepted since starting to work on the wrong side of the law, except, maybe, that it was that little bit more dangerous and foolhardy than the job before it -- but that had been the norm ever since they'd started gaining a reputation in the business, and Arthur didn't give it too much thought.
Then the job fell through, Nash sold them out, their mark manipulated Dom into accepting an impossible job, and Dom said --
"We don't just need a thief. We need a forger."
And Arthur didn't bother trying to argue about it, knowing the cause was lost; there was no list that could provide him with a name that wasn't Eames', because for a job like this, nothing less than the best would do -- and there was no denying that Eames, ever the opposite of what Arthur needed him to be, was the best.
***
V: The Box